Unknown Bram Stoker story rediscovered

While browsing the archives of the National Library of Ireland in October 2023, Brian Cleary, an amateur historian discovered a long-lost short story by Bram Stoker, published just seven years before his legendary gothic novel Dracula.

'Gibbet Hill' was originally published in the 1890 Christmas supplement of the Daily Express Dublin Edition. The short story but has been undocumented ever since.

The story is set in Gibbet Hill in Surrey, a location also referenced in Charles Dickens’ 1839 novel Nicholas Nickleby. It tells the tale of a sailor murdered by three criminals whose bodies were strung up on a hanging gallows as a warning to passing travellers.

The blurb reads 'As if by the irony of fate, there, beside me, was a grim memorial of man’s wickedness and lust for blood─a tombstone by the roadside… A man escaping the confines of London walks on Gibbet Hill in Surrey, drinking in the lush scenery, taking a breath from his busy life, when from this idyllic landscape emerges something out of place: a tombstone, and beside it three children, striking in their youth, yet with a presence that feels almost as old as the hills themselves.

Paul Murray, Bram Stoker's biographer, said 1890 was when he was a young writer and made his first notes for Dracula. He confirmed there had been no trace of the story for over a century. "It's a classic Stoker story, the struggle between good and evil, evil which crops up in exotic and unexplained ways," Murray added.

'Gibbet Hill' is being published by the Rotunda Foundation - the fundraising arm of Dublin's Rotunda Hospital for which Mr Cleary worked.

All proceeds will go to the newly formed Charlotte Stoker Fund - named after Bram Stoker’s mother who was a hearing loss campaigner - to fund research on infant hearing loss.

Order your copy here.