Both Frankenstein and Dracula indirectly owe their creation to the Tambora eruption of 1815, the largest eruption in modern history.

The eruption sent billions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, which blocked out the Sun and lowered surface temperatures, causing 1816 to become the "year without a summer". In that year, rain and snow fell in mountainous areas in June, and the Sun was hardly seen at all. It was during one such rainstorm that Mary Shelley, Doctor John Polidori, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley, trapped indoors on a holiday to Switzerland, decided to hold a ghost-story competition. Byron and Percy never completed theirs. Mary and Polidori did. Mary's became Frankenstein; Polidori's became a pulp novella called The Vampyre. Dispensing with the rat-like, plague ridden Nosferatu of old, Polidori made his vampire, Lord Ruthven (closely modeled on Lord Byron, who was something of a charming, seductive psychopath) an aristocratic, nattily-dressed antihero. This became the standard depiction for vampires in literature in the 19th century, including Dracula

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I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.