The Modern Horror Story

The nineteenth century and especially the Victorian era, provided the right climate for the first, and some of the most enduring, modern horror stories.

'Dracula', 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde', 'Frankenstein' and the Sherlock Holmes mystery 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', have all influenced our culture, and in turn were influenced by the folklore/legends of Rome and Greece. These stories not only changed the face of horror, but also became ingrained in our culture.

Mary Shelley wrote the first draft of Frankenstein when she was eighteen years old after having a vivid nightmare and it was a departure from the usual female writers fare of the 1800's. The first time it was published she did not even claim it as her own work. In fact, many people believed that her lover Percy Shelley wrote the first edition of the story. He did influence Mary's writing style and proof read the work, he also wrote the preface as if from Mary's point of view.

Mary started work on Frankenstein after Lord Byron issued a tale of terror challenge. A small party including, Shelley and Mary were staying overnight with Byron at a villa on Lake Geneva. Byron read aloud from a volume of ghost stories and suggested they all attempt to write one.

The majestic Alps, winding roads and vineyards were the beautiful setting from which Mary drew some of her inspiration. As for the name Frankenstein, it probably came from a trip along the Rhine that Mary and Shelley took in 1814. They visited a town called Gernsheim and nearby was the castle Frankenstein, built in 1250.

She describes the creature in Frankenstein as beautiful, but this changed when the filmmakers got hold of the story. Boris Karloff's creation in the 1931 Hollywood version is larger than life and topped off with a steel bolt through it's neck.

The birth of the popular vampire story also came about at the same time as Frankenstein and in the same place. Lord Byron's answer to his own challenge was a tale about an aristocrat belonging to the Darvell family who travels to Turkey with a young man. The aristocrat dies in a graveyard there, but promises to return from the dead a month later.

Dr John Polidor who had been with Byron, Shelley, Mary and her stepsister Clare at Lake Geneva later continued the story. The main character Darvell changed into Lord Ruthven, probably based on Byron.

Polidor's vampire returned to England and feasted upon the elite of London society. It was only loosely based on Byron's tale and called The Vampyre. The story was found by a publisher and sold very well due to the hero/villains resemblance to Byron. Byron was not happy about this and disassociated himself from the story with a scathing attack.

But it gave us an image of the vampire that is still popular today. The dark, mysterious aristocrat with impeccable manners and very sharp teeth! Then came one of the most famous vampire stories, 'Dracula'.

In 1890 Bram Stoker holidayed in Whitby, England and started the long haul towards creating the novel 'Dracula'. He too had had a nightmare that left a germ of an idea that refused to be forgotten.

Stories of shipwrecks and the folklore of Whitby, told to him by the older fishermen, all contributed to the story of the now famous Count. The character was originally called County Wampyr, which doesn't have quite the same ring to it!

Stoker was still researching his novel in 1896 and finally published it for the first time in the June of 1897. It has grown in popularity ever since and been the basis for many films and books.

'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' by Robert Louis Stevenson was published in 1886 and looked within for the monster. By the September it had sold 39,000 copies in Britain; in America it was so popular it was pirated.

Between 1884 and 1887, the time Stevenson, his wife Fanny and stepson Lloyd Osbourne spent in Bournemouth, England, Stevenson was ill all of the time, but he managed to write a great deal.

He had being a sickly child and had nightmares, elements of which were later used in his story of human duality. In 1873 he went on to publish 'The Body Snatcher', advance publicity for this story was so lurid it embarrassed him. It was based upon the crimes of Burke and Hare who stole corpses to sell to medical facilities.

In 1887 on May the 9th a dramatised version of Jekyll and Hyde opened in Boston. Adapted by Thomas Russell Sullivan and written for the American actor Richard Mansfield. Some changes to the original story were made. There was now a love interest and a motive for Hyde's behaviour - jealousy.

In 1888 the play transferred to London after a successful run in America to Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre. Mansfield played both Jekyll and Hyde, a new approach to the role as in the past two actors had been used to show the changes in the character.

Jekyll's transformation into Hyde also took place on the stage separated from the naked eye by only a gauze curtain; it took audiences by storm causing several bouts of fainting. Stevenson is said to have enjoyed the play very much.

At the same time there was another sensation sweeping London, the vicious murders of several prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London, England, by the infamous Jack the Ripper. Mansfield was suggested to the police as a suspect because of his transformation on stage and some members of the public claimed that the play had given the killer ideas.

The influence of the times altered future versions of the story. Mansfield had set the scene for one actor to play both Jekyll and Hyde and the Whitechapel murders became mixed up with the story making Hyde a character consumed with Jekyll's lust, a killer of prostitutes and a fiend who haunted the east end of London, even though the original tale appeared several years before Jack the Ripper started his murderous rampage.

Conan Doyle had happily killed off his character, Sherlock Holmes in 1893 with a story called 'The Final Problem', much to the horror of the fictional detectives many loyal fans. There was such an outcry about it that the author had no choice but to resurrect Mr Holmes at a later date.

There has been some controversy as to who actually wrote most of 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'. Apparently a friend of Arthur Conan Doyle's called Bertram Fletcher Robinson was supposed to have collaborated extensively on the project. We do know that Doyle asked him to co-author the story, but there are doubts as to how much he actually wrote, if anything.

There is no doubt however that Robinson told Conan Doyle about the Dartmoor legends concerning huge ghostly black dogs. The author also stayed with his friend who had a house near the moors and Robinson provided a carriage for sight seeing, which must have helped make the tale more authentic in setting. But there are also rumours of a Welsh connection concerning the basis of the story, a cursed family.

The author was particularly interested in tales of mysterious animals; especially dogs and his imagination must have gone into overdrive when told the Dartmoor legends of beasts from hell. He drew inspiration from all the available source of information around him including news articles. And the name Baskerville could have come from a young coachman he met while staying with Robinson at his home Park Hill House, Ipplepen in Devon.

Such a dark tale was not to be resisted by the filmmakers. In 1939 Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson, starred in a black and white version of the tale.

In 1959 Hammer Horror Films starred Peter Cushing as Holmes and remade 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' in Technicolor; it also starred Christopher Lee! It was the first version of 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' to be in colour and the studio went all out with publicity.

They released a story about Robinson's young coachman who was by then 88 years old. He claimed, again, that Fletcher Robinson was co-author of the story. Conan Doyle's son Adrian was quick to refute this claim when the press book came out. He stated that Robinson had turned down his fathers offer to collaborate in the early stages of the tales creation. But the press story took on a life of it's own.

Adrian also stated that his father did not stay with his friend, but at a hotel, only accepting Robinson's offer of a coach to investigate the moors.

It seems likely that Conan Doyle would have stayed at both his friend's house and the Rowe's Duchy Hotel, Princetown and that the young coachman was thanked for the use of his name by the author. And that Robinson did at least play a part in giving Conan Doyle the idea for 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', even if he didn't write any of it.

Friends of Robinson certainly believed so. They claim that when he died in 1907 near Dartmoor, the howling of a dog could be heard as if in tribute to the man who helped immortalise it.

Whatever the truth about these groundbreaking stories it cannot be denied that they changed the face of the humble horror story forever. Modern authors such as Stephen King, James Herbert and Clive Barker, to name but a few, continue to keep the genre alive.