HORROR FILMS
1.- Some specialist suggest that the myth of the vampire, especially one that is popular in Europe after the seventeenth century, partly due to the need to explain, in an atmosphere of collective panic, the epidemics that ravaged Europe (caused by diseases real), before science explain rationally achieved.
Dr. Frankenstein has a real home. This is Johann Konrad Dippel, a seventeenth-century German scientist.
Johann Konrad Dippel
Dippel was born on August 10, 1673. The son of a Lutheran pastor, and studied theology at Giessen in 1693. He published several books under the pseudonym Democritus Christianus.
In 1711 he graduated as a doctor in Leiden. But his legend came from the dark experiments he did. The scientific crushed animal bones, which then seeped into iron pipes, creating the "Oil of Dippel", he said that it could be use to prolong life beyond 100 years. Dippel paid for his education by selling the smelly liquid to the locals.
Dippel trying to improve its formula had to steal pieces of bodies from the cemetery. Among several of these human limbs was found his body on April 25, 1734. Johann had been testing the ultimate blend of oil, which proved fatal.
2.- BRAM STOKER
Stoker became interested in the theatre while a student. Stoker also wrote stories, and in 1872 "The Crystal Cup" was published by the London Society, followed by "The Chain of Destiny" in four parts in The Shamrock. In 1876, while a civil servant in Dublin, Stoker wrote a non-fiction book (The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, published 1879.
In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, They moved to London, where Stoker became acting-manager and then business manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre, London, a post he held for 27 years. On 31 December 1879, Bram and Florence's only child was born, a son whom they christened Irving Noel Thornley Stoker.
Friend of Irving, he joined to the course of Irving's tours and he traveled around the world, although he never visited Eastern Europe, a setting for his most famous novel.The collaboration with Irving was important for Stoker and through him he became involved in London's high society While manager for Irving, and secretary and director of London's Lyceum Theatre, he began writing novels beginning with The Snake's Pass in 1890 and Dracula in 1897. Before writing Dracula, Stoker spent several years researching European folklore and mythological stories of vampires. Dracula is an epistolary novel Stoker's inspirations for the story, in addition to Whit by, may have included a visit to Slain Castle in Aberdeenshire, a visit to the crypts of St. Michan's Church in Dublin and the novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.
After suffering a number of strokes, Stoker died at No. 26 St George's Square in 1912.[10] Some biographers attribute the cause of death to tertiary syphilis
MARY SHELLEY
Mary Godwin's mother died when she was eleven days old; afterwards, she and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, were raised by her father. When Mary was four, Godwin married his neighbor, Mary Jane Clairmont. Godwin provided his daughter with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his liberal political theories. In 1814, Mary Godwin began a romantic relationship with one of her father’s political followers, the married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, they left for France and traveled through Europe; upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816 after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet
In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein
The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm in the Bay of La Spezia. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumor that was to kill her at the age of 53.
3. - If you join cinema and TV film, there are many versions of Dracula
4. - I can find 13 versions of Frankenstein.
5. - I found various. For example: The Werewolf, King Kong, Alien, The mummy.