Trick or treat

Hallowe'en seems an appropriate time to talk about our two favourite ghouls - Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster.  The story of Frankenstein and his creation is well enough known - Lord Byron (mad, bad and dangerous to know) was hosting a party in Italy in 1816 when he suggested that all his guests should write a ghost story and one of them, Mary Shelley, came up with Frankenstein - and the monster, created from bits of dead bodies, was born.  Dracula, as written by Bram Stoker, didn't appear until some 70 years later, but in fact had its origins in that same ghost-writing party.  Byron himself and his doctor, a man called Polidori, came up with the idea of a man returning from the dead who needed to feed on the blood of the living to survive, and they named this character The Vampyre.  Over the following years there were several subsequent stories written on the vampire theme, but Bram Stoker's is the one which has stood the test of time.  I imagine that few people have actually read either book (I haven't although I keep meaning to) and so both characters are known from the various films which have been made about them. Which is the scarier?  Well Dracula I would submit, who is driven to do what he does by his need for blood, whereas the monster, although frighteningly hideous is a rather pathetic character who really just wants to be loved.