In the summer of 1816 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley), and other writers were frequent guests at Lord Byron’s mansion, Villa Diodati, near Geneva. Because of inclement weather, they spent much of their time indoors and engaged in a ghost story contest, which planted the seed for the novel Frankenstein (published by Mary Shelley in 1818). The unusually gloomy weather was thought to be caused by the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in what is now Indonesia, and it is credited with inspiring the creativity of Byron and his guests during the “haunted summer” of 1816.