The best time to write is often when there is nothing else to do. This trick certainly worked in 1816, when a single writing contest—born out of boredom caused by intense and unseasonable rain—led to the creation of several classics that helped shape the Gothic literature genre: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, John William Polidori’s The Vampyre, and Lord Byron’s poem “The Darkness.” The writers drew inspiration from variety of places, but one of the most important catalysts was a French anthology of German ghost stories called Fantasmagoriana. An abridged version of the tome of spooky tales, titled Tales of the Dead, has since been translated to English—and it can be read online.

Fantasmagoriana was curated and translated by Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès in 1812. Eyriès hand-selected eight frightening tales from German literature to present to a French audience. Lord Byron had the book on hand while staying at a villa near Lake Geneva with Polidori, his personal doctor. Mary Godwin (soon to be Mary Shelley), Percy Shelley, and Godwin’s stepsister Claire Clairmont came to visit, but they all found themselves trapped inside due to the nasty weather. Lord Byron entertained his visitors by reading aloud from Fantasmagoriana, along with other scary stories like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Christabel.”

While Lord Byron captivated his audience with stories of ghosts and spirits, a dark storm outside created the perfect atmosphere. The spooky mood inspired the group to create their own versions of scary stories in a friendly competition. According to The Lady and Her Monsters, Lord Byron declared “We will each write our own ghost story.”

The writers worked at their own pace, each struggling to get started on their story and being secretive with their ideas. Mary Shelley later said those summer nights were what started her famous novel, and named two stories from Fantasmagoriana that directly inspired Frankenstein: “The Family Portraits” and “History of the Inconstant Lover.”

As Mary Shelley wrote in her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein:

When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw — with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, — I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.

Polodori settled on expanding one of Lord Byron’s discarded ideas. His story became The Vampyre, which is considered the first portrayal of the vampire as we know it today. The doctor would also claim that the writing sessions led to another story, Ernestus Berchtold, which was inspired by the rumors of Byron’s affair with his half sister. Lord Byron, meanwhile, wrote “The Darkness,” an apocalyptic tale of a world without any light.

Thanks to Archive.org you can read the English version of the anthology that inspired these classics for yourself. Maybe after reading, you’ll be inspired to write your own scary stories to tell this Halloween.

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

They’ve left our earthly world, but spirits sure have a lot to share with us. At least, that seems to have been the case in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period that witnessed a boom in books said to have been drafted by the departed. That era was the golden age of Spiritualism, and many people claimed they communicated with spirits who guided their minds and hands into recording stories, poems, and even voluminous novels. Here are six books supposedly dictated by ghosts that remain widely accessible today.

1. HISTORICAL REVELATIONS …(1886), EMPEROR JULIAN & THOMAS CUSHMAN BUDDINGTON

The Roman Emperor Julian was apparently so taken aback by how civilization developed in the 1500 years following his death in 363 CE that he felt compelled to express himself from beyond the grave via the printed word. Historical Revelations of the Relation Existing Between Christianity and Paganism Since the Disintegration of the Roman Empire, recorded by American writer Thomas Cushman Buddington, attacked Christianity as the root cause of what Julian supposedly saw as a world in utter disarray and desolation. Julian’s spirit condemned Constantine and his successors for embracing “a false religion” that bred violence and stagnated Europe’s development.

More realistically, this call to return to traditional Roman values was Cushman’s rather creative way to share his own grievances. Perhaps Cushman felt uncomfortable openly lambasting Christianity as an obstacle to moral and intellectual growth and found the emperor, who studied Platonic philosophy, a suitable figure to vocalize his concerns about the human race. In his preface to Julian’s writings, he praises the spirit, saying he “is of the most of the most pure and elevated character.”

2. MY TUSSLE WITH THE DEVIL, AND OTHER STORIES (1918), O. HENRY & ALBERT HOUGHTON PRATT

Born William Sydney Porter, the celebrated writer known as O. Henry died in 1910 with hundreds of short stories to his name. Yet even death could not halt his creative output, as eight years later, a collection of stories surfaced, all purportedly newly written by him. They arrived through the medium Albert Houghton Pratt, who claimed that he communicated with O. Henry through a ouija board. The very first conversation had supposedly occurred on September 18, 1917, and many more followed, with Pratt inviting friends to gather around the board to listen to O. Henry’s spirit rattle off tales. Pratt, in his opening comments to the book, describes O. Henry as a chatty spirit; apparently “overburdened with plots,” the ghost at times even exhausted his human companions as sessions stretched into late hours of the night. He would also self-edit his narrations: Once, he told Pratt to erase the last half of a story that had come to him too quickly and that fell short of his standards.

Pratt apparently had full control over his own thoughts throughout these sittings and found opportunities to pose his own questions. Once, he asked O. Henry what he thought about movie adaptations of his books. The spirit’s response: “Foolish rehash of yesterday’s ignorance.”

It appears Pratt anticipated the negative reception of O. Henry’s alleged latest writings, too. In an introduction signed by “Parma”—Pratt’s pseudonym—he brushed off nonbelievers and any skeptics who might have found the prose style different from O. Henry’s. The spirit world, Pratt explained, simply inspires a different voice; furthermore, the stories prove that a leopard can change its spots.

3. HOPE TRUEBLOOD (1918), PATIENCE WORTH & PEARL CURRAN

Also dictated through a ouija board was Hope Trueblood, just one of many works of fiction purportedly penned by the spirit Patience Worth in 1918. Arguably one of the most famous of spirit authors, Worth communicated through Pearl Curran, a housewife who lived in St. Louis. From 1913 through 1937, Curran dutifully recorded books, plays, poems, and short stories, at times receiving and scribbling thousands of words in one session.

Hope Trueblood, which told the story of a girl in Mid-Victorian England searching for her father, stands out from the rest of Worth’s oeuvre. The spirit was known for her archaic language and typically set stories far in the past: Telka occurred in medieval England; The Sorry Tale was set in the days of Jesus. Hope Trueblood unfolded in the present era (when originally published) and Worth employed plain English for the first time. Like many of her works, the novel received critical acclaim.

Hope Trueblood, however, also drew more skeptics than Worth’s previous works. What would the spirit of a 17th-century English girl (whom Indians murdered when she immigrated to America) know of Victorian life? Yet people had difficulty explaining how Curran, who had little education and opportunity for travel, wove these stories that contained detailed, accurate descriptions of distant settings. The mystery captivated Worth and Curran’s readers, and it went with Curran to her grave. When she passed away in 1937, the headline of her obituary in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat read “Patience Worth is Dead.”

4. TO WOMAN (1920), MESLOM & MARY MCEVILLY

An American medium in Paris known as Mary McEvilly received messages from a mysterious spirit named Meslom during a number of sessions held between October 1919 and March 1920. They form To Woman, a book describing the duties of the female sex to help better the world and lead mankind to salvation. Lofty, abstract statements fill the 108 pages, and Meslom’s often-repetitive ramblings are arduous to read. Overall, the spirit argues that women are responsible for human’s spiritual progression since they are in more in touch with nature and have greater intuition than men, who have more highly developed powers of reason.

McEvilly identifies Meslom as a man, and although he praises women for their sensitivities, he also betrays sexist attitudes. Man will always be master, and women should surrender any hope of gender equality, he tells McEvilly; although they have good judgment, women will never make laws; women who steadily pursue an education may weaken their innate connection to all that is good. Most rewarding, he suggests, would be for a woman to instead pray frequently for knowledge that leads to spiritual development and happiness.

Curiously, To Woman emerged a few months before women in the U.S. received the full right to vote. Little record of Mary McEvilly exists, but her book must have come off as backward to more than a few people even when originally printed.

5. A WANDERER IN THE SPIRIT LANDS (1896), FRANCHEZZO & A. FARNESE

Victorians would find a chilling moral lesson in A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands, supposedly dictated to one A. Farnese by an Italian man who had recently passed away. Identified only as Franchezzo, his spirit fills over 300 pages with vivid descriptions of his lonely, miserable journey through the spirit world. Those dark travels were his deserved punishment, he writes, as he had lived a selfish life in worship of the material rather than of God.

Franchezzo initially ventures into the cold and decaying realms of hell, and only through laborious works of atonement eventually passes through bright heavenly gates. His tale serves as an engrossing sermon, warning its readers of the terrible fate that awaits if they do not start changing their sinful behavior while on earth—before it is too late.

6. OUINA’S CANOE AND CHRISTMAS OFFERING, FILLED WITH FLOWERS FOR THE DARLINGS OF THE EARTH (1882), OUINA & CORA L. V. RICHMOND

One of America’s most beloved spirits, Ouina was believed to be a young Native American girl who spread tens of thousands of uplifting messages from the spirit world. Beginning in 1851, she spoke through Cora Lodensia Veronica Scott, a famous Spiritualist from New York who had begun channeling spirits at a young age and launched a career as a trance lecturer (someone who performed public lectures supposedly received from the spirit world). Scott’s audience was often people who had lost loved ones; her romantic poems and tales painted the afterlife as a place filled with beauty and joy, offering mourners some comfort and rest from grief. Ouina’s Canoe was the first published collection of a handful of the spirit’s works, set to print at Christmas time as her gift to help and heal more people.

Along with verses filled with flowers, sunbeams, moonbeam fairies and morning stars, the book includes a biography of Ouina. Her own story is one of sorrow: Her mother had died in childbirth, and her father, chief of a tribe that resided along the Shenandoah River, decided to sacrifice her when she was about 15 to save his people from misfortune. With her touching history and messages of peace and love, it’s unsurprising that Scott’s guide received such great adoration, rather than cynical criticism.

(For five more books dictated from beyond the grave, click here.)