Short answers, pulled from the story.
Horror fiction traces its lineage to ancient folklore and religious texts that focused on death, the afterlife, evil, and the demonic. Ancient Greeks and Romans produced early examples of horror fiction before the year 1000.
Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto in 1764 to initiate a new literary form. The first edition appeared disguised as an actual medieval romance from Italy that a fictitious translator claimed to have found.
Mary Shelley released Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818. Her famous novel drew influence from the story of Hippolytus, whom Asclepius revived from death.
H. P. Lovecraft transformed and popularized the genre of cosmic horror through his enduring Cthulhu Mythos. He also published stories such as Cool Air, In The Vault, and The Outsider between 1925 and 1926.
H. P. Lovecraft stated that the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. He added that the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.