This is the old castle that does Halloween parties, mystery dinner parties, and tours, all built around the legend of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The castle is within the Kreis of Darmstadt in the little town of Muhltal (just a few kilometers SW of the city). So you can drive there by car and according to one website, there are 25 parking places available.

Mary Shelley visited the castle ruins in 1814, during a journey down the Rhine with her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. Four years later she published her famous novel. Mary was a mere 19 when she started the novel, and 21 when the book finally came out in March, 1818.

Mary Shelley always maintained, in a claim to originality, that she derived the name "Frankenstein" from a dream-vision. Thus, where the name came from, and what it means, has been a source of speculation and critical analysis. Literally the name "Frankenstein" means "the stone of the Franks" in German. Frankenstein is also the former name of Zabkowice Slaskie, a city in Silesia and the historical home of the Frankenstein family.

Radu Florescu in his In Search of Frankenstein made an argument that Percy and Mary Shelley stayed at nearby Castle Frankenstein on the way to Switzerland, near Darmstadt along the Rhine, where a notorious alchemist named Konrad Dippel had been making experiments with human bodies, but that Mary suppressed mentioning this visit to maintain her public claim of originality. However this theory is not without critics, Leonard Wolf calls it an "unconvincing.. conspiracy theory".

Another theory states that one of the members of the Frankenstein family met with Mary Shelley during her European trip and made a deep impression on her, so she decided to name a character in her novel after him. However this is not well supported and conflicts with her public claim to originality in a dream-vision.

We may never know the truth, but it's still a beautiful castle to check out if you're in the Darmstadt area.