The weather went from being beautiful to tempestuous: torrential thunderstorms plagued the Shelleys, Byron and Polidori. The weather -- along with the company and the eerie ambiance of the locale -- contributed to the genesis of _Frankenstein, _ Polidori's "The Vampyre" and in all likelihood, modern weird fiction. On the night of June 16th, the group read aloud a collection of German ghost stories, _The Fantasmagoriana._ This inspired Byron to challenge the group to write a ghost story. Shelley wrote an forgettable story; Byron wrote a story fragment; and Polidori began the "The Vampyre,"...