A long-lost short story by Bram Stoker – the author of Dracula – has been unearthed by an amateur historian 130 years after it was published.
Gibbert Hill was printed in a Christmas supplement of the Dublin edition of the Daily Mail in 1890, seven years before Dracula came out.
But the story was never referenced in any subsequent Stoker bibliography or biography and appears to have been completely forgotten until Brian Cleary found it while browsing a library archive in Dublin.
Stoker was a young man when he wrote the tale, but he had already started making notes for Dracula by that time.
The macabre story tells is about a sailor murdered by three criminals whose bodies were strung up on hanging gallows on a hill as a ghostly warning to passing travellers.
According to one of Stoker’s biographers, Paul Murray, Gibbert Hill reveals his development as an author and gives glimpses of his later masterpiece.
‘It’s a classic Stoker story, the struggle between good and evil, evil which crops up in exotic and unexplained ways, and is a way station on his route to publishing ‘Dracula’, he said.
As the rare find goes on show in the Irish capital, where Stoker was from, Brian – a big fan of the author – explained how he came across the story.
He said it all began in 2021 when a sudden onset of deafness changed his life.
While on leave to retrain his hearing after having cochlear implant surgery, Brian visited the National Library of Ireland to indulge his interest in historical literature and the works of Stoker.
There, in October 2023, he stumbled upon Gibbet Hill, a story which he had never heard of before.
(Picture: AFP)
‘I sat in the library flabbergasted, that I was looking at potentially a lost ghost story from Stoker, especially one from around the time he was writing ‘Dracula’, with elements of ‘Dracula’ in it,’ he said.
‘I sat looking at the screen wondering, am I the only living person who had read it? Followed by, what on earth do I do with it?’
After doing a bit of digging, he got in touch with biographer Paul who confirmed the story was unknown.
To celebrate the discovery, Gibbet Hill has been captured in a book that features cover art and illustrations inspired the story by Irish artist Paul McKinley.
‘When Brian sent me the ‘Gibbet Hill’ there was so much I could work with,’ said Paul said.
His eery, sometimes sinister illustrations include a ‘juicy, wet, oily painting’ of worms inspired by a young character in the story who has a bunch of earthworms in his hands.
‘Making new images for an old story that has been buried for so long was a ‘fascinating challenge’ said the artist.
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