(Written by Geoffrey Hamell, first published in "The Eagle Hill Sentinel", Issue 4, February, 1987.)
Joseph Haskell was born in Collinsport sometime in the 1940's. We know little about his family, only that he was a cousin to the Jenningses , and that an uncle (on one side or the other) was a farmer. Since his parents are never mentioned, it is probably safe to assume that they died before 1966.
Like so many local boys, Joe went to work at the Collins Cannery at an early age. Unlike most of the others, he wanted something more, secretly saving whatever he could from each paycheck toward the day when he could start his own fishing fleet. He never thought of his romance with Carolyn Stoddard as something that could advance his career, and this is doubtless the reason they stayed together so long, despite Carolyn's roving eye and the huge difference in their lifestyles. They "went steady" more or less for at least four years.
Ironically, it was Elizabeth Stoddard's efforts to bring them even closer together that finally drove them apart. Liz offered Joe a well-deserved promotion and raise, feeling that this would allow him to propose. Carolyn, unready for marriage, threw a fit when she found out and furiously told Joe off - unaware that he had turned the job down to pursue his private dream. Already stung by Carolyn's flirtation with Burke Devlin, Joe sought moral support from Maggie Evans, and soon found himself falling in love with the "pal" he had always taken for granted. By the time Carolyn realized her mistake, she had lost him.
Willing to forgive and forget, Joe remained on friendly terms with the Collins family, and was soon drawn into the mystery surrounding the return of Laura Collins. Concerned for David's welfare, he even allowed Dr. Peter Guthrie to lead him to Eagle Hill Cemetery, where he helped to open the graves of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge and Laura Murdoch Radcliffe.
Joe's romance with Maggie took a sinister turn when she became the victim of Barnabas Collins' vampiric visits. Shocked and mystified, he watched her life seem to slowly drain away, volunteering a transfusion of his own blood to save her. When she vanished from the hospital, he joined the sheriff's men in frantically searching the countryside. For a while he mourned her seeming death. When she miraculously turned up alive, her memory gone, he willingly took part in Dr. Woodard's bizarre plan to fake her death for her own protection. When the attempt to keep her hidden failed, Joe helped to set a trap for her kidnapper, which succeeded in snaring the hapless Willie Loomis. He had no way of knowing they had captured the wrong man.
When Willie was released from Wyncliffe Sanitarium the following year, Joe was naturally upset. Thinking Maggie was in danger, he harshly ordered Willie to keep away from her, vowing to kill him of she came to any harm. Maggie, however, soon came to believe in Willie's good intentions, and accepted him as a somewhat peculiar friend, to Joe's utter astonishment.
When Sam Evans was killed by the creature called Adam, Joe swore vengeance, again turning to threats of murder. (Perhaps the trauma of Maggie's kidnapping had brought out the fiercer side to his usually easy-going nature.) Discovering Adam at Professor Stokes' apartment, he went after the monster with a rifle, only to be ambushed in the woods and severely beaten. Ironically, it was Willie and the now-human Barnabas who found him and rushed him to the hospital.
When he recovered, he found that Maggie had a new admirer - the suavely sinister Nicholas Blair. Trying to learn what Nicholas was up to, Joe fell prey to the vampire Angelique and became her slave - which made him Nicholas' slave as well. Against his will, he was forced to assist in their evil plans - even to the point of placing his cousin Tom Jennings in Angelique's murderous hands. Too weak to stay awake by day, he no longer cared when he lost his job. He wanted only the vampire's deadly embrace. Baffled and heartbroken by the change in Joe, Maggie tried desperately to stop his seeming self-destruction, but he was unable to accept her help; he miserably warned her, for her own sake, to forget him. Despairing of Joe, Maggie turned from him to Nicholas.
When even Angelique rejected him in favor of her new victim, Barnabas, Joe could stand no more; wanting to die, he stabbed himself. Angelique ordered Barnabas to "get rid of him", but instead he took Joe to to Julia Hoffman, who succeeded in saving his life. Both Angelique and Nicholas were furious to learn of this - for their safety, Joe had to be silenced. Harry Johnson, under Nicholas' spell, poisoned the sleeping man's medicine, but it was Barnabas who got caught trying to feed it to him. Julia swallowed Barnabas' flimsy alibi, but Joe wasn't fooled. Driven to the edge of madness, he tried to strangle Barnabas, and was only stopped by the sudden arrival of Mrs. Johnson. Escaping into the night, he was found lying unconscious at Eagle Hill, and taken to the hospital. (Barnabas, with secrets of his own to protect, made no charge against him.)
When Angelique was freed from the vampire curse, Joe's memory of the horrible ordeal faded, and his sanity returned - at least on a conscious level. But he was in no shape to deal with any more shocks just yet. And that was a shame, for it was only a few weeks before he was attacked by a werewolf. Fending it off by stabbing it with a pair of scissors, he found a patch torn from its clothing afterward - and was stunned to discover that the monster was his cousin, Chris Jennings! At Chris' own request, Joe tried to shoot him; but the bullets had no effect, and he was lucky to escape with his life.
Completely unhinged by the horrors he had seen, Joe kidnapped Amy Jennings, meaning to protect her from her monstrous brother. But the terrified little girl escaped, and the police came after Joe and dragged him off to jail. Raving and hallucinating, the young man who had such high hopes was taken to Wyncliffe in a straight-jacket.
