According to how Mary Shelley got to write Frankenstein, apparently there was contest one evening among Byron, Shelleys, and the Hungarian Polidari to who could write the best horror story. They were staying along the Lake Geneva shoreline in Switzerland. Hearing Mary Shelley's effort the next day, they considered it the best and encouraged her to keep going and complete it. Polidari also wrote a story which actually introduced the vampire for the first time to European literature even though the first story anywhere of a vampire is apparently found in one of the tales of Indian origin in the Arabian Nights (quite a mistaken title as most of the stories are from Persian and Indian sources).