The year 1815 saw a massive eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora. The huge ash cloud spread across the earth and was a major contribution, in 1816, to what was called "The Year Without a Summer." In 1816, temperatures in Europe and America were lower than normal, resulting in widespread crop failure, famine, and cold, drizzly weather.
As a result, in the summer of 1816, several spoiled English yuppies (including Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and his paramour and future wife Mary) were cooped up inside Byron's vacation villa in Switzerland warming themselves around the fire. They decided to have a competition to determine who could pen the scariest ghost story. Eighteen-year-old Mary, after reading about galvanism, had a dream at around 2 AM on June 16, 1816, about a corpse being reanimated by a scientist with an electrical engine. She wrote her thoughts down in the form of a short story, which she then expanded into the novel Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. This book is considered by most experts to be the first example of science fiction.
Because the novel was written by a girl, it was originally published anonymously.
In the course of the tale, the monster is repudiated and rejected by his creator, Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein even runs away from the creature when it first comes to life. This passage was actually autobiographical. In 1815, Mary had a kid who was two months premature. Percy, the father, abandoned the infant and his mother and left them so that he could have a torrid affair with Mary's half-sister, Claire. The child died two weeks later.
One of the other yuppies who participated in the contest was John Polidori, Lord Byron's 20-year old physician. Polidori penned for the competition a novel, which was eventually published in 1819, called The Vampyre. This was the story which launched the vampire genre--not, as is commonly assumed, Bram Stoker's 1897 best-seller Dracula. Unfortunately for Polidori, The Vampyre was published without his prior knowledge and was credited as being the work of Lord Byron (who by all accounts was something of an self-centered pooperhead). As a result, Polidori committed suicide at the age of 25 by ingesting cyanide.
In short, the Indonesian volcano not only provoked the death by starvation of millions of people, it also led to the creation of two of the most beloved Halloween monsters of today.
For more information about the disastrous effects of the Mt. Tambora eruption, please click here.
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