What is your definition of horror? I truly don’t know, anymore. Over the years there have been many attempts in the venues of literature and film to encapsulate the genre.

I certainly remember being a kid who was all wrapped up in those classics of my era.

My local TV station not only had regular movies on a daily basis, Monday thru Friday at 4:00 PM, with what they called The Big Show.

Then on Sundays there was Battleground where I got to watch all those war movies, mostly featuring the cinematic history of WWII.

But the Saturday was the most looked-forward-to Television day because that’s when it was the scary time of watching Shock Theater.

I’m sure many of my age will never forget seeing those iconic actors fill their memorable roles.

There was Boris Karloff in Frankenstein and The Mummy; Lon Chaney, known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces”, portraying The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera; then there was his namesake Lon Chaney Jr. whose claim to fame was The Wolfman; and who could ever forget Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Dracula.

Some of these films had sequels and have also had remakes, but it’s the originals that set the scene.

Of course, in years hence, Hollywood has successfully capitalized on the theme of horror with such series of slasher films such as Friday the 13th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, giving immortality to Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers who turned these franchises into literal gold mines for the studios without any great creativity or thespian activity other then the special effects of blood and gore.

Personally, I can do without such. All those originals were made back in the 20s and 30s with few special effects other than the lighting and smoke and fog to set the scenes.

But recently I discovered one of the beginnings of the horror theme, and it certainly isn’t what I expected.

I ran across a beat up old paperback novel of Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley. At the age of 19 she had married Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the greatest lyric and philosophical poets in the English language whose radicalism was shared in his poetry as well as his political and social views.

Mary, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was the daughter of William Godwin, a political philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a feminist philosopher.

Considering her background, is it any wonder she connected with Shelley and his beliefs? She would certainly in this day and age be considered a liberated woman.

But at the age of 19 she began writing a short story that, with Shelley’s prompting, she expanded into Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The completed version was first published in 1818, 113-years before it began the movies that created the horror culture that lives to this day, even though the original version the book portrayed has nothing to do with what’s seen on the screen.

In reading this particular edition of the novel, with an astounding and educational forward and afterward, you would discover many of her feminist beliefs as well as political themes.

But when it comes to the type of horror we’ve been inoculated with, it doesn’t exist.

The so-called monster itself you come to know almost as a human for he learns how to speak and is touched by the same emotions that we feel.

It’s truly eye opening considering that lugging monster we saw portrayed by Boris Karloff.

You’d just have to read the book to see what a difference was made when Hollywood put its spin on this classic tale from the Age of Enlightenment.