Oh my gods, you guys. SO MUCH GOOD HERE. Let us sum up:

Lord Byron, John Polidori, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley in a dreary Swiss castle during a particularly dreary summer, come up with some of the most enduring works of the Romantic period, including horror stories that inspire literally generations of writers, artists, poets, filmmakers, and others, and play no small part in the shaping of how we see the world and its imagined terrors.

Goths owe a lot to that volcano, is what I’m saying.