“We will each write a ghost story,” said Lord Byron; and his proposition was acceded to…. Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady, who was so punished for peeping through a key-hole—what to see I forget—something very shocking and wrong of course; but when she was reduced to a worse condition than the renowned Tom of Coventry, he did not know what to do with her, and was obliged to despatch her to the tomb of the Capulets, the only place for which she was fitted….

I busied myself to think of a story.

—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Introduction, 1831 ed.