Where We're From the Shadows Sing A Pretty Song

In Dark Shadows, the Todd's pay off an old alcoholic named Mrs. Hutch who keeps a bird in a cage to pretend that their adopted son Michael is an orphan and not actually the evil Leviathan incarnate. Upon fulfilling her agreement she receives a large sum of cash, but begins to ask questions of Philip Todd. Philip replies that she is to forget the whole thing and to consider it all a whiskey induced dream. Mrs. Hutch wonders aloud if there ever really was a little boy who died or if he was made up as well, or whether it was all made up.

Considering the massive amount of elements Twin Peaks borrowed from Dark Shadows, Mrs. Hutch's musings reflect the doubt of some as to the authenticity of the parable of the Christ Child, a character whose final Passion Play parable is reflected in the story of Twin Peaks itself. Jerry Horne at one point questions whether he and his brother Benjamin are in fact experiencing a dream rather than reality, and the entire Deer Meadow prelude to Fire Walk With Me makes sense if interpreted as another of Agent Cooper's clue-filled dreams. Real and waking dreams factor largely in Twin Peaks, the symbolism of which provide clues necessary for unraveling the story's mysteries.

The major example of a mystical revelation in Twin Peaks is Cooper's definitive dream of the Red Waiting Room where he is given clues which reveal their importance later upon further investigation into the happenings in Jacques Renault's cabin on the night of Laura Palmer's murder. Among Cooper's dream clues and statements made by murder suspects and witnesses in his waking life, there are included a few parallels with the sequence in which Mrs. Hutch openly questions reality in Dark Shadows. In Twin Peaks, Waldo the Myna bird, who is hinted at by the Arm when he tells Cooper that where he and Laura are from the birds sing a pretty song, is reflected by innocuous inclusion of Mrs. Hutch's caged parakeet in Dark Shadows. In Twin Peaks, Jacques alibi of being hit on the head with a whiskey bottle (attributed incorrectly to Leo Johnson when it was actually Leland Palmer), reflects Philip Todd's request that Mrs. Hutch attribute the entire incident to a whiskey-induced dream in Dark Shadows. In Twin Peaks, the large sum of money that Bobby Briggs left in Laura Palmer's safety deposit box which was owed to Leo and Jacques is reflected in the large sum of money Mrs. Hutch waves in front of her parakeet in Dark Shadows. In Twin Peaks, Leland killing Laura on the night of the Renault cabin party because she would not give up her soul to the Black Lodge and afterwards his entering the Red Waiting Room and interacting with the One-Armed Man, the Arm, and Bob on the night of the murder reflects that Philip Todd is under the power of an evil supernatural cult focused on world domination in Dark Shadows.

Also perhaps in reference to the name Dark Shadows, in Cooper's dream a shadow of a page of Laura's secret diary, which is later revealed to a page depicting Laura's account of the very dream that Cooper is experiencing, inexplicably drifts across the curtains in the background.

The mysterious Mrs. Hutch in Dark Shadows could be paralleled with the elderly Mrs. Tremond/Chalfont in Twin Peaks, who cares for her grandson and who seemingly appears not only in waking life to Laura and Donna Hayward, but also in Laura's dreams concerning the White Lodge. Mrs. Hutch's name is also a parallel: a Hutch is a structure for housing rabbits, much like the box of chocolate bunnies belonging to Laura Palmer which Cooper logs to his secretary Diane in his initial investigation which eventually leads to his Christ-like sacrifice in the Black Lodge on the night of the upcoming Easter Sunday.