205 years ago today, at the Villa Diodati in the village of Cologny, Switzerland, Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests — Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont and John Polidori — and challenges each guest to write a ghost story, which culminates in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre and Byron writing an unfinished vampire novel and the poem Darkness.