168, 2016 May)
you believe that a "monster" can be created by stitching together body
parts retrieved from corpses and made alive using the technology of 200
idea is based on Frankenstein, or
The Modern Prometheus (1818), a novel by Mary Shelley
(1797-1851), a classic in English literature.
Hubert Venables in The Frankenstein
Diaries (1980) attempts to make a convincing case that it really
the 20th century "Frankenstein" was commonly assumed to be the name of
Mary Shelley's monster. In her book, however, "Victor Frankenstein" is
the name of the science student who created the monster.
leaves the monster nameless. She has him say: "Remember that I am thy
creature; I ought to be thy Adam…" In Chapter 10 Victor Frankenstein
addresses his creation as "vile insect", "abhorred monster" and
and "vile insect" seemed unsuitable as names for a monster, as also do
"Frankenstein junior", "Anonymous" and "Frank". Commentators as early
as 1844 began to call the creature "Frankenstein" after its creator.
Hubert Venables claims to have "the true story" behind the Frankenstein
extensively illustrated book The
Frankenstein Diaries (1980) purports to be an edited translation
of Frankenstein's diaries from the original German, and the
illustrations exact reproductions from the diaries.
the front cover we read:
For over 150 years,
the diaries lay forgotten and decaying among the Frankenstein family
papers in Geneva...
says a colleague in Switzerland sent him a "bundle of ancient, decaying
papers" and that he has "established beyond all personal doubt the
authenticity of the diaries as a true historical record of fact." He
claims to possess the actual original diaries of Victor Frankenstein
and that he worked on them for six years to produce the book.
you suspect that Venables is "having you on", "pulling your leg" or
treating you like an idiot, consider that he is a "Reverend", or so he
says, and would therefore be as true as his word.
is an "English parson in York" but his name seems an alias as it cannot
be found with Google Search except as the author of The Frankenstein
book has portraits of key characters including Victor Frankenstein,
Victor's mother, Victor's professor (M. Waldman), Victor's assistant
(Igor), and the monster, and drawings of anatomy and scientific
equipment Victor used, and of the castle [Schwartzstein
castle] where the experiments
occurred. There is even an undated newspaper report of a grizzly murder
attributed to the creature, and a page from the diary showing Victor's
diary format lets us see the events through Victor's eyes and the pages
are faintly yellow to represent the age of the alleged diaries.
nightmarish are the contents of the diaries that the Rev. Venables had
severe doubts about presenting them for publication, though his
research had convinced him they were a genuine record. The publishers
are likewise convinced of their authenticity.
Venables is correct then Mary Shelley must have had access to the
Diaries so as base her novel on them — but she nowhere makes such a
subtitle of Mary's novel, The Modern
Prometheus, alludes to Greek mythology in which Prometheus was a
"Titan" who created mankind under instructions from the chief god Zeus.
i.e. Frankenstein's first name, was a pen name of Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822) the poet-author whom Mary married in 1816. Percy's family
was wealthy and distinguished, as is Frankenstein's family in the
novel; and Percy had a sister named Elizabeth the same as Victor's
sister (by adoption) in the novel.
novel shows influence from John Milton's Paradise Lost, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, and Element's of
Philosophy (1812) by Humphry Davy, pioneer in electrolysis.
also knew about dead bodies being used for medical research and about
Giovanni Aldini (1762-1834), Italian Professor of Physics, who gave
demonstrations of electricity making corpses move.
travelled through France, Germany and Switzerland in 1814 with a stop
17 km from Frankenstein Castle (near Darmstadt). A century earlier
alchemist and physician Conrad Dippel (1673-1734) had conducted
experiments there with cadavers. Dippel was born at Frankenstein Castle
and tried to buy it by swapping for an "elixir of life" he had
Although Europe has other places named "Frankenstein" the
connection with corpses and a physician makes the castle near Darmstadt
the obvious main inspiration for Mary's novel.
year 1816 saw Mary, her stepsister, and Percy staying with author/poet
George Byron (1788-1824) and John Polidori (Byron's personal
physician) at a villa alongside Lake Geneva in Switzerland — near
where the Frankenstein family in the novel also had a house.
February 1815 Mary gave birth to a premature baby which soon died —
perhaps additional reason for Mary to be dreaming about reanimation.
summer that year was long, cold and wet due to dust from the largest
volcanic explosion in centuries obscuring the sun. Being housebound the
group engaged in a competition to write the best horror story. During
one sleepless night in June Mary combined events from her own life with
her knowledge of literature and science and came up with a scientist
who creates life.
Percy's subsequent help and encouragement she developed her horror
story into a novel.
became the setting for most of the novel and the dreary weather of 1816
is reflected in Frankenstein's pursuit of his monster to the North
and Percy returned to England and married. Mary completed her novel in
May 1817 and the first edition of 500 copies was published anonymously
in London in 1818. They then moved to Italy.
Shelley's novel begins with a Captain Robert Walton writing letters to
his sister in England dated "17—" i.e. in the previous century.
Walton writes he was attempting to reach the Pacific by ship via the
North Pole when his crew saw a dog sled driven by a giant figure. Later
they rescue Victor Frankenstein, emaciated and nearly frozen, from an
ice-flow. He had been pursuing the giant man seen earlier.
recovers from his near-freezing and tells Captain Walton about his life.
this context of Captain Walton recounting what Frankenstein has told
him, the story unfolds. Walton writes about:
Frankenstein's birth in Naples to a wealthy Geneva family;
Frankenstein's discovery of a technique to make non-living matter
The murders of family members by the monster;
The creation and killing of a female companion for the monster;
The murder of Frankenstein's bride before the wedding;
Frankenstein's pursuit of the monster to the North Pole.
writing Victor's narrative, Captain Walton adds his own involvement to
His ship became trapped in ice;
The creature was discovered onboard mourning over Frankenstein's
The creature explained its viewpoint on all that happened;
The creature drifted away on an ice-flow into the night.
common belief that the monster was made from body parts of cadavers
grafted together is not directly stated in Mary Shelley's novel. But it
is implied because her Frankenstein says: "The dissecting room and the
slaughter-house furnished many of my materials…"
in the novel does not attribute life to electricity, but to an
unspecified discovery: "I succeeded in discovering the cause of
generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing
animation upon lifeless matter."
Shelley's Frankenstein became
the inspiration for many subsequent books. None of the derivatives are
likely to be factual since none are written by a Reverend or based on
(1973) Brian Aldiss. A 21st century American invents a weapon to stop
war which instead sends him back in time to Switzerland in 1818. He
meets Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, their friend Byron, and the monster.
(1978) A.R. Pettersson. Hannah Frankenstein goes to her nephew's castle
to restore order but meets the Frankenstein monster, and Dracula, and a
Frankenstein's Aunt Returns
(1989) A.R. Pettersson. The monster is a child named Franklin who plays
The Frankenstein Papers
(1986). Author Fred Saberhagen describes the monster's viewpoint as it
goes in search of its true identity.
(2005) Joseph Covino Jr., Epic Press
The Frankenstein Murders
(2008) Kathlyn Bradshaw, Cormorant Books.
many movie adaptations of Frankenstein are no more credible than the
novels and should be watched skeptically.
first film was a 16-minute production in 1910 by Edison Studios in
which Dr. Frankenstein creates his creature chemically in a vat.
most famous movie was Frankenstein
(1931) starring Boris Karloff. Some of the movies that came afterwards
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Son of Frankenstein (1938)
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
House of Frankenstein (1944)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957)
Frankenstein 1970 (1958)
Frankenstein's Daughter (1958)
How to Make a Monster (1958)
The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966)
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)
Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)
Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972)
The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (1972)
Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1973)
Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
Frankenstein: The True Story (1973)
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
The Terror of Frankenstein (1976)
Frankenstein's Great Aunt Tillie (1984)
The Bride (1985)
The Monster Squad (1987)
Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)
Van Helsing (2004)
Frankenstein vs. the Creature from Blood Cove (2005)
Perfect Woman (2006)
Frankenstein: Day of the Beast (2011)
Victor Frankenstein (2015)
now to Hubert Venables:
Prologue in The Frankenstein Diaries
is illustrated by portraits of Viktor Frankenstein and his mother and
The reader is bound
to view with some scepticism the publication, over 150 years after the
event, of a volume purporting to contain extracts from the diaries of a
figure universally considered never to have lived… Yet there is some
truth in the saying that there is no smoke without fire, or, more
appropriately, that there is often if not usually a basis in real life
for a legend. Encouraged by this thought, I therefore began my
years" means c.1830 i.e. about ten years after Mary Shelley's novel was
also writes of a discussion at university between Frankenstein and his
professor, M. Waldman, where the latter refers to “the work of Galvani,
Volta and the young Faraday.” (p. 16) Michael Faraday (1791-1867) did
no noteworthy science until the 1820s and would not have been
comparable to Galvani or Volta before 1827 when he published his book
Shelley’s novel mentions the same professor, Waldman, which implies
Mary must have read the Diaries before writing her novel. But she
couldn’t have had read them if they were written about ten years later!
The Diaries don’t mention Mary and Mary never claimed to have read the
Diaries or to have met Frankenstein.
anomaly is that Mary's novel is set in the 18th century, meaning that
the alleged diaries were written at least 30 or 40 years after the
events in Mary's novel. We cannot rectify this anomaly since Venables
supplies diary dates only by month and day of month, never by year or
day of the week.
pinpoints the location of Frankenstein’s “Schwartzstein Castle” on a
map (p. 44), but the “Varta Atlas” of Germany, a very detailed Atlas,
shows no “Schwarzstein” anywhere.
outlines 19th century technology available to Dr. Frankenstein,
illustrates the scientific instruments used, and explains scientific
innovations in which Frankenstein was ahead of his time. He mentions
organ-storage, tissue-rejection and even a brain transplant — problems
not fully solved even today — and suggests Frankenstein solved them.
diary format, visual elements, and explanations of technology support
Venables contention that Mary Shelley's book is based on fact and the
monster was real.
this conclusion we have:
Absence of dates and checkable historical information;
Insufficient detail to duplicate Frankenstein’s work;
No trace of any "Schwartzstein" Castle.
Mary Shelley “Rev. Venables” has merely written fantasy but unlike
Shelley he claims his fantasy is history.
Get the truth on
topics in religion, the supernatural and the paranormal from this