Early travellers returned from foreign lands with tales of fantastic creatures (probably, large reptiles). In the telling, their stories often exaggerated the features of these beasts. Tales of fire-breathing dragons seemed as credible as the Christian Bible’s 'great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns' (Book of Revelation). The ancient Romans acknowledged household gods – Lares, or Lars (the word Larva corresponding to our word Ghost) – as the spirits of deceased mortals. Fabulous and macabre beasts of classical mythology paint the dark heavens above us in star constellations. Old and tragic Nordic and Icelandic sagas ask: 'And how can man die better than facing fearful odds?'

Myths and legends are full of monsters that had to be destroyed by the heroic acts of humans: Theseus was faced with the Minotaur; in Anglo-Saxon literature Beowulf fought Grendel; and Sinbad battled with many horrors, including skeletons that moved and could fight back! In these tales, evil was embodied within some sort of monster – something unnatural, terrifying and powerful, a physical presence that could therefore be defeated.

A macabre one-eyed Cyclops of Greek mythology, Polyphemus, rejected by the sea-nymph Galatea, became so consumed by jealousy that he murdered her lover. (Odysseus subsequently blinded the Cyclops with a sharpened and heated tree trunk.) That the monster could have had feelings prompted Mary Shelley to declare that in her celebrated novel Frankenstein, 'I have written a book in defence of Polypheme'.

Shelley's description of Victor Frankenstein as 'the Modern Prometheus' alludes to Roman mythology's Prometheus plasticator who created (or recreated) and animated a human figure from clay. Frankenstein's obsession was to 'father' a son who would bless his creator but, of course, the plan went horribly wrong!

Shelley's sympathetic treatment of the monster and her philosophic concerns about fatherhood, and the perils of scientific Prometheanism, have rarely been reflected in any of the modern Frankenstein films or comic-book representations. Though, initially, Shelley intended to write merely a ghost story to frighten her readers – to 'speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror' – what she actually created was something altogether more profound.

The Shelley novel is often considered as the most famous of the English Gothic romances which became popular during the late 1700s and early 1800s, following publication of Horace Walpole's novel The Castle of Otranto (1764). The term 'Gothic' came to be associated with this genre when popular novels incorporated the key elements of the macabre, the fantastic and the supernatural. Gothic architecture offered settings with lofty towers, labyrinthine passages, locked attics, deep and dark shadows, ghostly cellars and dungeons. Such settings, tossed by foul weather, were usually located somewhere suitably remote and mysterious in faraway corners of Europe.

The stories were peopled by frightened virginal young women, mysterious threatening men (usually with a secret past), and a hero who saves the day.

Abraham ('Bram') Stoker's Dracula (1897) is another great classic horror. Stoker hid his monster in the cellars of London houses, locating the horror within the everyday life of ordinary people. In The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr Jekyll is a scientist who discovers a potion, which effectively splits his personality, turning him into the evil Mr Hyde. H G Wells created a French scientist in his novel The Island of Dr Moreau, who conducts horrifying experiments of vivisection, and creates strange beings – half beast-half human – that regard him as their god, but which finally turn against their creator.

Moral responsibility is also the theme of Edgar Allan Poe's great story, The Fall of the House of Usher. The novel became famous for its symbolism, impressionism and the grotesque. His equally famous fiction, The Pit and the Pendulum, focuses grimly on man's inhumanity to man. The Gothic novel also influenced fellow American writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville.

The popularity of 'Gothic romance' faded after Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). However, other nineteenth-century writers reinterpreted the genre. Jane Austen subverted the whole idea in her novel Northanger Abbey, making fun of her central character who was obsessed by Gothic novels; Mary Shelley created the monster with whom we could feel sympathy; Charlotte and Emily Brontë used aspects of the genre in their explorations of human relationships and the role of women.

Popular fiction continued to build on the tradition of the supernatural and the horrific, providing a contrast to the increasingly ordered and scientific world of the nineteenth century. Graphic novels and horror films continue to reflect many of the elements above by creating a variety of 'monsters', human and non-human, using powerful visual images to terrify the audience.

Cinema horror's earliest days featured short versions of R L Stevenson's classic novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1908) and Frankenstein (1910). The classic horror formula first appeared with the 1919 film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The sinister and mad Dr Caligari directs the monstrous Cesare (cloaked in black) to murder the beautiful (white-robed) heroine in her bed. However, Cesare cradles his innocent victim tenderly and carries her off, across rooftops, into the dark night. These three characters provided the stereotypes for the horror film genre.

Film versions of classic novels generally reveal more about the times in which they are made (e.g. the equipment and budget available) than offer any authentic relationship to the original literary text. The movie can never be the novel.

Some cinema horror films

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: 1919; dir. Robert Wiene; Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Lil Dagover, Friedrich Feher.
• Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: dir. Rouben Mamoulian, 1931; Fredric March, Ivy Pearson, Muriel Carew, Dr. Lanyon.
• Frankenstein: 1931; dir. James Whale; Boris Karloff, Colin Clive.
• Island of Lost Souls: 1932; dir. Erle C. Kenton; Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen.
• King Kong: 1933; dir. Merian C. Cooper; Ernest Schoedsack, Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot.
• The Mystery of the Wax Museum: 1933; dir. Michael Curtiz; Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh.
• The Black Cat: 1934; dir. Edgar G. Ulmer; Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop, Lucille Lund.
• The Bride of Frankenstein: 1936; dir. James Whale; Boris Karloff, Colin Clive.
• Psycho: 1960; dir. Alfred Hitchcock; Anthony Perkins, Richard Arlen.
• The Exorcist: 1973; dir. William Friedkin; Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Jason Miller, Linda Blair.
• Bram Stoker's Dracula: 1992; dir. Francis Ford Coppola; Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves.
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: 1994; dir. Kenneth Branagh; Kenneth Branagh, Robert De Niro, Helena Bonham Carter, John Cleese, Richard Briars, Ian Holm.

The stories of Dracula and Frankenstein have been filmed many times. Consider why yet more versions have been filmed in the 1990s.

On-line database of classic horror films: http://us.imdb.com/List?genres=Horror

Novelists such as Stephen King and R L Stine, and series such as Goosebumps and Point Horror, are popular with young readers. Other modern writers have examined the darkness that lies within the human psyche: the power of evil within a group of isolated schoolboys in Lord of the Flies, the terrible insights into the minds of psychopathic killers in Thomas Harris's novels, and the simple cruelty of an old woman in Penelope Lively's The Darkness Out There.

A comparison of any two horror novels' plots, characters, settings and themes will reveal both the similarities of the generic conventions and what makes the books different. Readers would soon tire if writers were tied absolutely to the generic formula. Part of the pleasure of reading lies in discovering how a writer satisfies us by mixing familiar devices with fresh ideas.

To read the horror genre is to be prepared to be taken out of ourselves and into a fearful experience. The supernatural ghost, monster or alien presence that we encounter in horror fiction still exerts a universal hold on the imagination.