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Speaker 1: dot com. Welcome to Unexplained Extra with Me Richard McClain smith,
Speaker 1: where for the weeks in between episodes, we look at
Speaker 1: stories and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't
Speaker 1: make it into the previous show. In last week's episode,
Speaker 1: A Man of Wealth and Taste, we traveled with the
Speaker 1: enigmatic Count of Saint Germain, who seemingly strange inability to
Speaker 1: age has left many questioning if he'd somehow discovered the
Speaker 1: secret to immortality. It's one of those stories that, on
Speaker 1: first hearing, leads you immediately to suspect it all must
Speaker 1: have been fabricated. And yet Saint German was very definitely
Speaker 1: a real person whose existence was attested to by a
Speaker 1: number of esteemed individuals throughout the eighteenth century, such as
Speaker 1: the mystery surrounding the man in the excitement to fill
Speaker 1: in the gaps of who he might have been and
Speaker 1: where he came from. His story has only gotten more
Speaker 1: and more strange. In truth, I could have filled an
Speaker 1: entire episode just listing the many avenues are neglected to
Speaker 1: go down in telling his story. Some, such as infamous
Speaker 1: occultist Madame Blavatsky, champion Sant German as a master adept
Speaker 1: high up in the Rosicrucian order, unparalleled in his knowledge
Speaker 1: of ancient esoteric truths and secret rites. Others, as the
Speaker 1: episode's title implied, believe he was, or rather is, nothing
Speaker 1: less than the devil. The author, Chelsea Quinn Yabos San
Speaker 1: German cycle historical novel series portrays the Count as a
Speaker 1: vampire born in the Carpathian Mountains in twenty one nineteen BC. Indeed,
Speaker 1: with his reportedly refined manner, aversion to eating food, and
Speaker 1: his elegant sartorial style, not to mention being a count,
Speaker 1: it isn't hard to see where she got the idea from. Interestingly, however,
Speaker 1: although the notion of vampires existed during San German's time,
Speaker 1: or at least the time he is most prominently associated with,
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, his characteristics were not ones that would
Speaker 1: have been associated with them. It wouldn't be until one
Speaker 1: turbulent night in the summer of eighteen sixteen that the
Speaker 1: idea of a vampire as a suave and sophisticated operator,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the foul smelling wretch it had previously
Speaker 1: been thought of, would first be conceived. It was a
Speaker 1: night that has since gone down in horror history as
Speaker 1: the night that spawned not one but two of the
Speaker 1: genre's most affecting and enduring creations. On April fifth, eighteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: Sambawa Island in Indonesia was rocked by acious explosion equivalent
Speaker 1: to the detonation of an eight hundred megaton nuclear bomb,
Speaker 1: blowing the top from Mount Tambora in the north of
Speaker 1: the island. It was five days later, just after seven pm,
Speaker 1: that the island's residence watched in horror as three giant
Speaker 1: columns of flame burst from out of the volcano, merging
Speaker 1: together in a hellish fountain of molten rock and fire.
Speaker 1: The column of flame was seen raging unabated for the
Speaker 1: next hour, until the sheer density of matter spewing from
Speaker 1: the mountaintop completely obscured it from view, and then the
Speaker 1: stones started to fall, Giant rocks of pumice, some the
Speaker 1: sides of a fist, raining down across the island as
Speaker 1: local villagers tried in vain to run for their lives.
Speaker 1: This was followed by a violent rush of hot air
Speaker 1: that swept down the mountain, destroying everything and anything in
Speaker 1: its path. By the time, the largest volcanic eruption in
Speaker 1: thirteen hundred years had finally dissipated. Ten billion tons of
Speaker 1: igneous rock had been expelled into the atmosphere, and Mount
Speaker 1: Tambora was more than a kilometer shorter than it had
Speaker 1: been before. Seventy one thousand people are thought to have
Speaker 1: died as a direct result of the eruption, but the
Speaker 1: effect on the world's climate was only just beginning. Within months,
Speaker 1: due to the volume of ash ejected into the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: the planet found itself in the grip of a volcanic winter,
Speaker 1: causing temperatures to plummet and setting in motion a vicious
Speaker 1: cycle of endless storms and flooding. By the following year,
Speaker 1: the world seemed to be experiencing some terrifying affliction of
Speaker 1: biblical proportions, with red snow falling in Italy and candles
Speaker 1: having to be lit by midday, such was the lack
Speaker 1: of sunlight. By the afternoon, evens had fallen silent. As
Speaker 1: Lord Byron said of that most ominous year, known as
Speaker 1: the Year without Summer, I had a dream which was
Speaker 1: not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and
Speaker 1: the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, rayless
Speaker 1: and pathless, and the icy earth swung blind and blackening
Speaker 1: in the moonless air. In May eighteen sixteen, Byron twenty
Speaker 1: eight at the time and his personal physician, twenty one
Speaker 1: year old John Polidori, were en route to Lake Geneva
Speaker 1: in Switzerland to rendezvous with another group of fellow travelers
Speaker 1: from England, for whom all was not well. Never was
Speaker 1: a scene more awfully desolate. The trees in these regions
Speaker 1: are incredibly large and stand in scattered clumps over the
Speaker 1: white wilderness. The vast expanse of snow checkered only by
Speaker 1: these gigantic pines and the poles that marked our road.
Speaker 1: No river or rock encircled lawn relieved the eye, so
Speaker 1: wrote then eighteen year old Mary Godwin, as she and
Speaker 1: her boyfriend Percy Shelley, along with their four month old
Speaker 1: baby William, slowly made their way through the mountains to
Speaker 1: Lake Geneva. But it wasn't just the landscape that was
Speaker 1: weighing heavily on her mind. Only the year before, the
Speaker 1: couple's first child, Clara, died a few weeks after her birth,
Speaker 1: having been born two months premature. Not a day went
Speaker 1: by that Mary hadn't thought about her Mary's travel sickness,
Speaker 1: and Shelley's struggles with mental illness at the time did
Speaker 1: little to lighten the mood. The trio were joined on
Speaker 1: the trip by Mary's stepsister, eighteen year old Claire Claremont.
Speaker 1: It was in fact Claire's idea to meet with Byron,
Speaker 1: whom she knew was also keen to meet Percy Shelley,
Speaker 1: a new kid on the block whose work he greatly admired.
Speaker 1: For her part, Claire had hoped to use the meeting
Speaker 1: to rekindle the brief romance that she and Byron had
Speaker 1: shared a few weeks previously. Having eventually arrived at the
Speaker 1: Hotel D'angletaere, the group were joined by Byron ten days later,
Speaker 1: announcing himself with characteristic flare by pulling up just after
Speaker 1: midnight in a grand Napoleonic carriage. The following day, with
Speaker 1: the women expected to entertain themselves, Byron and Shelley spent
Speaker 1: the morning getting to know each other as they danced
Speaker 1: and probed around each other's egos. By the end of
Speaker 1: the day, having established themselves as firm friends, the pair
Speaker 1: decided to leave the hotel and rent houses near by instead.
Speaker 1: Despite each renting a property, the incessant rain eventually forced
Speaker 1: them all into Byron's place, a large, grand porticoed house
Speaker 1: on the edge of the lake known as Villa Diodati.
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Speaker 1: One night, with the newly acquainted friends forced to find
Speaker 1: ways to pass the time indoors, Huddling round the fire
Speaker 1: as the endless thunderstorms raged outside, Byron suggested they take
Speaker 1: advantage of the atmosphere and read ghost stories to each other.
Speaker 1: After a few evenings reading from Phantasma Gorriana, a collection
Speaker 1: of German horror stories, Byron eventually board of the game
Speaker 1: and suggested they try something else, challenging them all to
Speaker 1: come up with the horror story of their own to share.
Speaker 1: And so it was, under the flicker of candle light,
Speaker 1: with the thunder rolling off the mountains and violent stabs
Speaker 1: of lightning flashing into the room, the group set about
Speaker 1: penning their latest masterpieces. Percy attempted something inspired by his childhood,
Speaker 1: while Byron composed a story written in the form of
Speaker 1: a letter describing a journey taken by the narrator while
Speaker 1: in the company of a strange man named Augustus Darville.
Speaker 1: As the journey progressed, the man appeared to become weaker
Speaker 1: and weaker, until finally he succumbed to whatever illness had
Speaker 1: been ailing him. Byron had intended to have him rise
Speaker 1: again as a vampire, but neglected to finish the story,
Speaker 1: while Polydori tried something involving a skull headed lady that
Speaker 1: was roundly regarded as a miserable effort. As for Mary
Speaker 1: or though she tried her best to come up with
Speaker 1: something that would, as she put it, speak to the
Speaker 1: mysterious fears of our nature and awaken a thrilling horror,
Speaker 1: in the end she had nothing. It was a few
Speaker 1: nights later, as lightning flashed and the wind and rain
Speaker 1: continued to whip unceasingly at the windows, the talk eventually
Speaker 1: turned to the nature of life and the contemporary fascination
Speaker 1: with galvanism, the use of electricity to stimulate muscle movement.
Speaker 1: Although it was mostly the men who talked among themselves
Speaker 1: all the while, Mary sat listening quietly as talk moved
Speaker 1: on to whether it might even be possible to bring
Speaker 1: a dead body back to life through such methods. It
Speaker 1: was for her an especially difficult conversation, bringing back memories
Speaker 1: of the night her baby died, and although dreams she'd
Speaker 1: had since of her and Percy sat by the fire
Speaker 1: with the child in her arms, hoping that if only
Speaker 1: they could warm her up, she might yet come back
Speaker 1: to life. When Mary's head finally hit the pillow that night,
Speaker 1: her face lit up by the lightning as it flashed
Speaker 1: through the curtains. With thoughts of her dead daughter flooding
Speaker 1: her mind, there would be little chance of sleep, and
Speaker 1: so she lay eyes closed, listening to the rain lashing
Speaker 1: down as a vision slowly came to her. A pale
Speaker 1: student of the unhallowed arts, kneeling beside a thing he
Speaker 1: had put together, A hideous phantasm of a dead man
Speaker 1: stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine,
Speaker 1: slowly it began to show signs of life and stir
Speaker 1: with an uneasy, half vital motion. Rising from her bed,
Speaker 1: Mary grabbed a pencil and began to write. It was
Speaker 1: on a dreary night of November that I beheld my
Speaker 1: man completed, and with an anxiety that almost amounted to agony,
Speaker 1: I collected instruments of life about me, and endeavored to
Speaker 1: infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that
Speaker 1: lay at my feet. The first words of the as
Speaker 1: yet unnamed Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, was
Speaker 1: first published on January the first, eighteen eighteen, when Mary
Speaker 1: was twenty years old. The book, however, was published anonymously
Speaker 1: with a forward written by Mary's then husband to Percy Shelley,
Speaker 1: leading many to suspect that Percy was in fact the
Speaker 1: true author. Such an arrangement was common among publishers of
Speaker 1: the time, fearful of the public's response to authors who
Speaker 1: were women. When Mary Shelley as she was then known,
Speaker 1: eventually had her name added to the book, it had
Speaker 1: become so popular that it no longer mattered, despite a
Speaker 1: number of critics doing their best to disparage what they
Speaker 1: now suddenly perceived as its many feminine infused flaws. To day,
Speaker 1: the book is widely regarded as a landmark in not
Speaker 1: only Gothic literature, but science fiction too, and is among
Speaker 1: the most influential novels of all time. Though many have
Speaker 1: pointed to the death of Mary's child and indeed those
Speaker 1: darkling atmospheric nights spent at Lake Geneva as key inspirations
Speaker 1: for the novel, The tale of a creature so callously
Speaker 1: created and then abandoned also shares parallels with Mary Shelley's
Speaker 1: own complicated childhood, with some speculating that the death of
Speaker 1: Mary's mother in childbirth, celebrated writer and women's rights activist
Speaker 1: Mary Wolston Craft had inevitably left Mary angrily pondering her
Speaker 1: own sense of abandonment. Though Mary would go on to
Speaker 1: establish herself as one of the most revered writers of
Speaker 1: all time, life did not get any easier. A third child, Clara,
Speaker 1: born in eighteen seventeen, died the following year from dysentery,
Speaker 1: then in eighteen nineteen. The next year, Mary and Percy's son, William,
Speaker 1: also died from malaria. Though the couple's fourth child, also
Speaker 1: named Percy, would go on to survive childhood. Only three
Speaker 1: years later, his father and Mary's husband, an undoubted genius
Speaker 1: in his own right, drowned in the Gulf of Spezzia
Speaker 1: off the coast of Italy. He was twenty nine years old.
Speaker 1: As for Lord Byron, he died two years later in
Speaker 1: Greece at the age of thirty six of suspected sepsis,
Speaker 1: while helping to fight for Greek independence against the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 1: In fact, within only eight years of that year, without
Speaker 1: summer or three of the men that shared the trip
Speaker 1: with Mary and her steps as Declare were dead. In
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen. Having tidied up the scraps of Byron's vampire story,
Speaker 1: his physician John Polydori, decided to take a stab at
Speaker 1: reworking it, retitling it the Vampire and reimagining its lead
Speaker 1: as the suave and the charismatic Lord Ruthven, a thinly
Speaker 1: veiled impression of Lord Byron himself. Polydori's creation would become
Speaker 1: the template for almost all vampire stories that followed, most
Speaker 1: famously Browmstoker's Dracula. Unlike Mary, however, he would not live
Speaker 1: to enjoy the success of his creation, dying by a
Speaker 1: suspected suicide in eighteen twenty one years later, Mary returned
Speaker 1: to the Villa Diodati on the edge of Late Geneva,
Speaker 1: saying of her return there that she felt like a
Speaker 1: companion of the dead, for all were gone, even my
Speaker 1: young child. Storm and blight and death had passed over
Speaker 1: and destroyed all. But something had lived, something that she'd
Speaker 1: brought to life one dark and stormy night many years before,
Speaker 1: that would eventually outlive them all. A wondrous story that
Speaker 1: remains today as thrilling moving and influential as the day
Speaker 1: it was born. Please note Unexplained will be taking a
Speaker 1: short break next week, but will return on Friday, January first,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like
Speaker 1: to help support us, you can now do so via Patreon.
Speaker 1: To receive access to add three episodes, just go to
Speaker 1: patron dot com, forward slash Unexplained pod to sign up,
Speaker 1: or if you'd like to make a one time donation,
Speaker 1: you can go to Unexplained podcast dot com forward Slash Support.
Speaker 1: All donations, no matter how large or small, are greatly appreciated. Unexplained,
Speaker 1: the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never
Speaker 1: before been covered on the show, is now available to
Speaker 1: buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 1: and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including
Speaker 1: the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 1: and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts
Speaker 1: or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like
Speaker 1: to share, you can reach us online at Unexplained podcast
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