First of all Happy Halloween!!!
To round out our look at The Third Eye series I’ve saved my
favorite show for last and since it’s Halloween it is defiantly appropriate!
The show is The Haunting of Cassie Palmer; the series was based on a novel by
Vivien Alcock and first broadcast on February 26, 1982 by TVS (Television
South) and aired in the United States on Nickelodeon as part of the series The
Third Eye.
This is the story of 13-year-old Cassie Palmer who is the seventh child of a seventh child. Cassie's mother is a psychic medium who holds tea readings and sayonses (sp?) in their small flat to make ends meet. She claims to be a true physic but admits to using "old tricks of the trade" on those particular nights when she doesn't feel up to par for the evening.
On one of those evenings Mrs. Palmer has tricked a woman
into thinking that she is communicating with her deceased husband by brushing
her face with a feather. When the clients threaten to prosecute her. Mrs.
Palmer pleads with them not too as such an action would render her homeless.
Mrs. Palmer explains to Cassie that as the seventh child of
a seventh child that she would develop great psychic powers, which would mature
as she did, but Cassie has no wish to be a psychic. Still out of desperation to
protect her mother from charges of fraud Cassie goes to a cemetery to try to
call up the spirit of Charlotte Webb who died as a small child. But something
goes horribly wrong when instead of calling up the young girl a dark figure
appears from behind a tombstone. He tells her his name is Deverill and wants to
know why she's summoned him. Frightened Cassie runs away.
After Deverill appears to Cassie several more times she
finally tells her mother who invites him for tea. He complies but vanishes
before her mother can discern if he is a sinister or benevolent entity.
Eventually, as a result of poor business and Mrs. Palmer’s
bad reputation, the Palmers have to sell their house and move to another town.
When Cassie tells Deverill of their plans he reveals to her that when he was
alive he buried a small treasure in the floorboards of a house in town.
After a wrestling with her conscious Cassie decides that
Deverill is an evil spirit sent to temp him and attempts to have him vanquished
but not before the gentlemen from the physic society has a car wreck on the way
to the Palmer household.
Frightened Cassie runs to the graveyard and asked the good
spirits to help her vanquish the evil Deverill. The graveyard fills with ghosts
who have come to Cassie’s aid and eventually Deverill is gone for good.
When it is all over Cassie and her older sister Mary go to
Deverill’s old house and the owner agrees to let them check her attic. The
girls find the treasure and they are able to help their mother buy a lovely
home on a small pond.
==Cast==
*Cassie Palmer: [[Helen Probyn]]
*Mrs. Palmer: [[Elizabeth Spriggs]]
*Deverill: [[Geoffrey Rose (actor)|Geoffrey Rose]]
*Tom Palmer: [[Stephen Bint]]
*Mary Palmer: [[Ruth Adcock]]
==Crew==
Director – Dorothea Brooking
Writer – Alfred Shaughnessy
Producer / Executive Producer – Anna Home
Original Music Composer – Kenyon Emrys-Roberts
Production Designer – John Newton-Clarke
Stunt Arrangers – Sue Crossland & Paul Weston
==Availability==
There was only one season of this television program, which
consisted of six half-hour episodes. At this time it is not commercially
available for sale.
==Trivia==
Charles Shaughnessy
(Shane Donovan – Days of our Lives and Maxwell Sheffield – The Nanny) is
the son of Alfred Shaughnessy who wrote The Haunting of Cassie Palmer
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