Gothic novels have been scaring us for 250 years ... On the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron challenges his friends to write a ghost story. Among them is John Polidori. He writes The Vampyre ...

Some writers wanted to write about ghosts and devils - and that's how the first Gothic novel came about. Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto on Christmas Eve 1764. It was so out-of-step ...