Josette du Pres

Josette DuPres or Josette Collins was a character played by Kathryn Leigh Scott during the 1795 flashback/alternate timeline on the cult TV serial Dark Shadows.

Born in 1774 in France, her widowed father was Andre DuPres (David Ford) a wealthy sugarcane planter on the Caribbean island of Martinique. Raised by her father and her paternal aunt, the Countess Natalie DuPres (played by Grayson Hall), the lovely and sympathetic Josette came to Collinsport, Maine in 1795 to marry Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), scion of a family of rich New England shipbuilding family, but there was skullduggery afoot.

Though Barnabas had become engaged to Josette during an earlier visit to Martinique, he had there enjoyed a dalliance with his fiancee's personal maid, Angelique, who was secretly a witch. Angelique invited Barnabas to make love once again before his wedding. During this last tryst, Angelique told Barnabas she loved him; Barnabas brushed her off. This offended Angelique to no end - not a good thing to have happen if the offendee is a witch of any particular skill!

Furious with jealousy of her mistress, Angelique hexed Josette, so that the latter fell in love with Barnabas's uncle, Jeremiah Collins (Anthony George), and he with her. Jeremiah and Josette eloped and were married; this incited Jeremiah and Barnabas to duel, ending in Jeremiah's death. Still under the witch's spell, Josette disavowed her previous love for Barnabas, exclaiming that she would always love Jeremiah.

Through a series of machinations, Angelique tricked the broken-hearted Barnabas to marry her. But once he discovered his new wife was a witch, Barnabas shot Angelique, planning to reunite with a now more receptive Josette. Believing herself to be dying, the witch cursed Barnabas, he died shortly after and rose as a vampire. His first act as a creature of the night was to strangle Angelique.

Grief-stricken, Josette readied herself to leave Collinsport with her Aunt Natalie. Her demon lover had other plans. Once bitten by Barnabas, Josette prepared for unlife as his vampire bride. But the evil spirit of Angelique would not stand for this. She caused Josette to have grotesque visions of herself as a reanimated bloodsucking corpse, a fiend in the winding-clothes of the grave. Horrified and inconsolate, Josette committed suicide, by jumping off the precipice at Widow's Hill.

Barnabas Collins summoned the fetch of his lost love to his side not long after her death. But the now disfigured dead Josette begged him to be allowed to return to her grave. Horrified, the vampire allowed her to go to her rest. But the spirit of Josette was not yet at peace. Over the years, she was said to haunt the Old House, a Federal Style mansion on the Collinwood estate. Often, her ghost was said to warn Collins family members of impending death or other misfortune. During the early days of the series, the ghost of Josette, dressed in white, sometimes appeared to young David Collins.