Amateur Historian Discovers Lost Story by ‘Dracula’ Author Bram Stoker Hiding in Plain Sight at a Dublin Library

In 1890, a short ghost story by Irish writer Bram Stoker—who would publish Dracula seven years later—ran in the Dublin Daily Express. The haunting tale, titled “Gibbet Hill,” was then forgotten. For more than 130 years, the piece remained in the shadows—until a clinical pharmacist chanced upon it at the National Library of Ireland.

Brian Cleary, a longtime fan of Stoker, was browsing the library’s archives last year when he noticed an 1891 advertisement in the Dublin Daily Express. The ad referenced a previously published story by Stoker, leading Cleary to an issue that had been printed a few weeks earlier, on December 17, 1890, which contained “Gibbet Hill” in full.

“I was just gobsmacked,” Cleary tells the New York Times’ Sarah Lyall. “I went and checked all the bibliographies, and it was nowhere. I wanted to turn around and shout, ‘Guess what I found?’ but there were proper researchers and academics there, and I was just an amateur.”

Cleary began researching the story and its author, consulting Paul Murray, author of From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker. Literary scholars have never referenced “Gibbet Hill,” and the story doesn’t appear in other Stoker archives, leading Murray to conclude that it had “disappeared for more than a century,” writes Artnet’s Richard Whiddington.

“Gibbet Hill” is an unsettling tale full of dark themes that Stoker would return to in Dracula. Set in Surrey, England, it follows an unnamed narrator who has an ominous encounter with three strange children near a murdered sailor’s grave.

“It’s a classic Stoker story,” Murray tells Peter Murphy of Agence France-Presse (AFP). “The struggle between good and evil—evil which crops up in exotic and unexplained ways.”

Murray adds that “Gibbet Hill” exemplifies Stoker’s development as a writer. It was printed the same year that Stoker began working on Dracula, a Gothic novel about an eponymous count who lives in Transylvania as a vampire. Derived from legends, the literary work informed an entire genre of vampire fiction and lore.

Stoker’s newly uncovered story is being republished in a book that features cover art and illustrations by Irish artist Paul McKinley. The proceeds will go to the Charlotte Stoker Fund, which supports research on deafness in newborn babies. The organization is named after the writer’s mother, who advocated for the deaf.

Coincidentally, Cleary had recently gotten a cochlear implant and was spending long stretches of time in the library as he worked his way through intensive auditory therapy.

“I was like a baby learning to hear again,” he tells the Times. “A lot of things wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t suffered from hearing loss.”

Later this month, the story will be read publicly for the first time at the Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival. The reading will take place at the Casino Marino, an 18th-century temple located not far from the author’s birthplace.

McKinley’s illustrations are inspired by the spooky imagery in Stoker’s story. For example, a “juicy, wet, oily painting” depicts one young character holding a pile of earthworms, as the artist tells AFP.

“When Brian sent me ‘Gibbet Hill,’ there was so much I could work with,” he adds. It was a “fascinating challenge” to make “new images for an old story that has been buried for so long.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.