Lost Bram Stoker story found in Dublin

'Gibbet Hill' remained undocumented for 134 years

According to AFP, a short story by Bram Stoker, the legendary author of Dracula, has been unearthed by a lifelong enthusiast in Dublin who stumbled upon the work while browsing in a library archive.

Titled Gibbet Hill, the story was uncovered by Brian Cleary in a Christmas supplement of the Dublin edition of the Daily Mail newspaper from 1890 and had remained undocumented for more than 130 years.

The rare find, which has never been referenced in any Stoker bibliography or biography, is now being brought to the public for the first time at an exhibition in the Irish capital.

Dracula, the Gothic, mysterious and supernatural vampire novel from 1897 may have been set in Transylvania and England but its author, Stoker, was a Dubliner.

"I read Dracula as a child and it stuck with me, I read everything from and about Stoker that I could get my hands on," said Cleary, 44, a writer and amateur historian who lives in the Marino neighbourhood of Dublin where the author grew up.

Thanks to Dracula, Stoker "had a massive impact on popular culture, but is under-appreciated", Cleary told AFP in the Casino at Marino, an opulent 18th-century building near the writer's birthplace that is hosting the exhibition.

Cleary's journey of discovery began in 2021 when a sudden onset of deafness changed his life.

While on leave to retrain his hearing after having cochlear implant surgery, Cleary visited the National Library of Ireland to indulge his interest in historical literature and the works of Stoker.

There, in October 2023, he chanced upon the hidden literary gem, the Gibbet Hill story which he had never heard of before.

"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," said Cleary.