There's no escape from Barnabas Collins this Halloween

When it rains, it pours: Decades is broadcasting an extended block of DARK SHADOWS episodes in time for Halloween!

Marathons of the series have become a holiday tradition for Decades, a network that specializes in classic television. As a lead-up to its "official" launch in 2014, Decades broadcast  68 straight hours of DARK SHADOWS during the summer, followed later that fall with a weekend marathon at Halloween called "The Binge." This is the third year running that the channel has celebrated Halloween with a DARK SHADOWS marathon, which showcases episodes pulled from the earliest appearances of vampire Barnabas Collins in 1967. While a schedule of this year's activities is pending, look for this extended block of DARK SHADOWS to air the weekend of Oct. 28.

Click HERE to see if you receive Decades in your hometown.

Coincidentally, Oct. 28 is also the day TCM is airing a double bill of HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS and NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS. HOUSE begins at 4:15 p.m. EST, with NIGHT following at 6 p.m. ... which means a few fans will have to decide whether or not to change the channel for a few hours that day. Has something like this ever happened before? It feels unprecedented.

If that's not enough for you, Freeform is offering to rot your teeth with the cinematic equivalent of candy corn, Tim Burton's DARK SHADOWS. While the movie is keeping a respectful distance from Oct. 28, you can catch it on television at 4:10 p.m. EST Oct. 23 as part of a Burton marathon, and again 8:20 p.m. Oct. 26, 7 a.m. Oct. 27, and 11:30 a.m. Oct. 30.

For those of you who cut the cord, fear not! Amazon Prime is now streaming the first 17 DVD collections of the series ... plus two collections of "Dark Shadows: The Beginning," taken from the first 200 "Pre-Barnabas" episodes of the series. All told, this represents more than 750 episodes of DARK SHADOWS, taking you from the introduction of Jonathan Frid as "Barnabas Collins," right up through the entire 1897 story arc and David Selby as "Quentin Collins." (UPDATE: Amazon has since added Collection 23 to their Prime offerings.)

Meanwhile, over at Hulu, you can watch nine DVD collections of the series. Sadly, they're not entirely consecutive ... the streaming service is offering volumes 1 and 2 of the series, followed by volumes 5-9. It's a little anemic, sure, but Hulu appears to be the only service streaming all 12 episodes of the 1991 DARK SHADOWS "revival" series. So, there's that.