Daniel Collins is a fictional character that appeared on the 1960s ABC daytime soap opera Dark Shadows.
In the winter of 1795, he and his older sister Millicent were invited to the town of Collinsport, Maine and to the estate of Collinwood, to attend the planned wedding of their cousin Barnabas Collins and his then-fiancee, Josette du Pres.
Since Joshua's wife, Naomi, and their children, Barnabas and Sarah were all dead (or undead), Daniel became the sole heir to the Collins Family fortune.
He often believed Harriet was haunting him and could appear anywhere in Collinwood except for the Tower Room, where Daniel had strangled her before throwing her body off the cliff.
The head passed through several hands but ultimately came into the possession of a seaman named Gerard Stiles (a friend of Quentin Collins).
Zachery took complete possession of Stiles and used the younger man’s personality and charm to insinuate his way into the Collins family fortune.
In 1991, Dan Curtis Productions revived the Dark Shadows series as a one-hour night time soap opera for NBC.
The series re-imagined the "1795 Flashback" storyline and cast child actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the role of Daniel Collins.