Sometimes the best bookish stories begin with a dare.
I recently came across JSTOR Daily’s “Frankenstein, The Vampyre, and the Spirit of the Humanities“, and it sent me down the most wonderfully Gothic rabbit hole.
In the summer of 1816, a group of writers gathered at Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva during what became known as the Year Without a Summer. The weather was cold, wet, and miserable, leaving Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori largely stuck indoors.
So, naturally, they read ghost stories.
And then Byron challenged everyone to write one of their own.
I kind of love that. A group of brilliant, complicated people sitting around on a gloomy night, swapping scary stories and daring each other to come up with something even more unsettling. It feels like the most dramatic version of a cozy reading night imaginable.
What came from that challenge would help shape Gothic fiction for generations. That unforgettable gathering has even inspired modern fiction. I read The Glowing Hours by Leila Siddiqui early this year, a novel loosely inspired by the Villa Diodati gathering. If you are curious about a fictional take on this famous creative moment, you can read my review here.
Mary Shelley’s idea eventually became Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a novel that continues to spark conversations about ambition, responsibility, loneliness, and what it means to create life. It is so much more than the green, bolt-necked monster many of us first picture. At its heart, Frankenstein asks some huge and deeply human questions: What do we owe the things we create? What happens when we turn away from something that needs us? How much damage can come from wanting to be extraordinary at any cost?
Those questions still hit.
John Polidori’s contribution, The Vampyre, also grew from that unforgettable gathering. Polidori drew inspiration from an unfinished story by Byron and created Lord Ruthven, an aristocratic, charismatic, and deeply predatory vampire. The character helped shape the kind of literary vampire readers would come to recognize in later books and stories.
There is something fascinating about the fact that Frankenstein and The Vampyre came from the same creative moment. One gave us a story about a creator who abandons his creation. The other gave us a monster who moves through society with charm, power, and danger hiding just beneath the surface.
Both are Gothic. Both are unsettling. Both still have something to say.
But maybe my favorite part of this whole story is that it reminds us how much creativity can grow through connection. These writers were sharing ideas, reading together, challenging each other, and probably getting a little carried away in the best possible way. That one ghost-story contest did not just produce a few spooky tales. It helped create stories that readers are still revisiting more than two hundred years later.
Classics can sometimes feel distant, like they belong behind glass in a museum somewhere. But then you remember that Frankenstein began with bad weather, good company, and a friendly competition. Suddenly, it feels a little more real.
Maybe that is part of the magic of books. A conversation, a challenge, or one strange little idea can become something that lasts.
So this Halloween season, I think I will be holding Frankenstein a little closer and giving The Vampyre the attention it deserves.
Let’s Discuss
If you were trapped inside on a stormy night and challenged to write a ghost story, what kind of monster would you create?