The story has its genesis in the summer of 1816 , the Year Without a Summer , when Europe and parts of North America underwent a severe climate abnormality . Lord Byron and his young physician John Polidori were staying at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva and were visited by Percy Bysshe Shelley , Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont . Kept indoors by the " incessant rain " of that " wet , ungenial summer " , over three days in June the five turned to telling fantastical tales , and then writing their own . Fueled by ghost stories such as the '' Fantasmagoriana '' , William Beckford 's '' Vathek '' , and quantities of laudanum , Mary Shelley , in collaboration with Percy Bysshe Shelley , produced what would become '' Frankenstein , or The Modern Prometheus '' . Polidori was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron 's , " Fragment of a Novel " ( 1816 ) , also known as " A Fragment " and " The Burial : A Fragment " , and in " two or three idle mornings " produced " The Vampyre "
Year Without a Summer
Year Without a Summer
The Vampyre