On a stormy night two hundred years ago, a young woman named Mary waited for inspiration. Her friend, the poet Lord Byron, had challenged her to write a scary story, but no ideas would come. Mary thought back through her life at the eerie things she had seen in her childhood and the losses she had suffered. But nothing was as scary as her own imagination. As she drifted off to sleep, she pictured something monstrous, a creature that was so frightening, people would run from it in terror. And when Mary awoke, she had her story.