The cold summer of monsters

It was the perfect summer for monsters to arise.

The year was 1816, one year after the eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora. About 11,000 miles away, all of Europe and Asia along with parts of North America were plunged into a dark, cold summer. Debris from the eruption blocked the sun. The earth froze solid in June. Worldwide famine was on the horizon as crops failed.

In Switzerland, Mary Shelley was one of a group of writers who warmed themselves around a log fire and decided to write ghost stories.

The poet Lord Byron wrote of vampires. From this, came the first full tale of vampires in 1819 written by another writer around that same fire, John Polidori.

But that cold summer did not produce just one monster, but two. At first, Mary Shelley could think of nothing to write, but then she had a dream of a scientist and the half-living creature he created. Shelley’s tale — Frankenstein — began in draft as: “It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed…”

August 30 is sometimes called Frankenstein Day, in honor of Mary Shelley, born August 30, 1797. She died at age 53.