Evan Hanley

From The Dark Shadows Wiki

Evan Hanley was the Collins Family lawyer in the late 1890s. He was also a Satanist who often practiced the Black Arts with Quentin Collins (708). It appeared that Hanley and Quentin Collins were members of the same coven. Evan Hanley had "an extravagant wife", according to Quentin Collins, leaving him perpetually in debt (708). Due to his position in the community, he was quite susceptible to blackmail should anyone discover his interest in the Black Arts. An example of this is when, one night while attempting to summon Satan, Evan and Quentin were discovered by Rev. Gregory Trask, who then blackmailed Evan into arranging the murder of Minerva Trask.

Evan Hanley had many notable contributions to the events of 1897. In particular, Evan and Quentin summoned the spirit of Angelique to help Quentin (711), which she did for a while before washing her hands of him. Without the help of Evan, Angelique would never have appeared in that time band. Many of Evan's adventures had to do with his hunger for more power. Another example of this is when he made an attempt to seize the hand of Count Petofi. His first attempt to do this was by imprisoning Barnabas Collins, but when he obtained the hand, it attacked him, disfiguring his face far beyond recognition. Shortly after this, he stole the hand from the Old House, and eventually was able to use it to turn his face back to normal. Not long after this Quentin came to Evan's house and stole the hand, only to have it almost immediately stolen by Aristede. Some time later after Quentin has his body stolen by Petofi, Evan tried to help Quentin by conducting a ceremony to return the bodies to their rightful owners, and was unsuccessful. This angered Petofi and Evan was essentially made into a servant for a period of time after that.

After the above mentioned events, Evan largely disassociated himself with shady dealings at Collinwood. He was no longer dabbling in the occult or actively blackmailing people at this point. In late 1897, he was unfortunately approached by Aristede who was fleeing from Garth Blackwood. He agreed to let Aristede seek refuge at his house for 30 minutes, but this ended up being too long. During that time, Blackwood arrived and demanded that Hanley let him search the house. When Evan refused he was killed by Blackwood.