In 1816, teenager Mary Godwin and her husband-to-be Percy Shelley visited Lord Byron, the poet, in Switzerland. Lord Byron owned a villa on a lake, that sometimes experienced stormy weather, and his guests would have to take refuge inside his mansion. For entertainment, it was common for his guests to read ghost stories to one another, and Lord Byron gained much amusement from this. The day that Mary was forced stay at the villa, Lord Byron asked his guests to write their own horror stories for a change, and share them the next day.
This is what transpired. . .
"When I placed my head upon my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think... I saw - with shut eyes, but acute mental vision - I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous Creator of the world.
...I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. ...I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted me. I must try to think of something else. I recurred to my ghost story - my tiresome, unlucky ghost story! Oh! If I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night!
Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke upon me. 'I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted me my midnight pillow.' On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, 'It was on a dreary night of November', making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream."
This dream helped to create her masterpiece, "Frankenstein".
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