SOURCE: "Original Communications: Extract of a Letter from Geneva, with Anecdotes of Lord Byron, &c.," in The New Monthly Magazine, Vol. XI, No. LXIII, April 1, 1819, pp. 193-206.

The following excerpt is from an anonymous article mistakenly attributing the authorship of The Vampyre to Byron.

It appears that one evening Lord B., Mr. P. B. Shelly, the two ladies and the gentleman before alluded to [Polidori], after after having perused a German work, which was entitled Phantasmagoriana; began relating ghost stories; when his lordship having recited the beginning of Christabel, then unpublished, the whole took so strong a hold of Mr. Shelly's mind, that he suddenly started up and ran out of the room. The physician and Lord Byron followed, and discovered him leaning against a mantlepiece, with cold drops of perspiration trickling down his face. After having given him something to refresh him, upon enquiring into the cause...