The very first attempts of Mary Shelley to find an idea for a ghost story are ambitious because she wanted to write a ghost story and was eager to do so. Also, we can say that it was fruitless because she couldn't find something really scary and frightening to write about. Until some years later she met a physician who told her about the galvarian method of stimulating muscles with electricity and how that could be a way of bringing the dead back to life. That is what finally inspired her to write the ghost story actually called "Frankenstein".