Dracula author Bram Stoker’s story of lost ghosts was discovered in Dublin

A short story by Bram Stoker, the legendary author of Dracula, was discovered by a lifelong enthusiast in Dublin who stumbled upon the work while browsing a library archive.

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

The rare find, which has never been mentioned in any Stoker bibliography or biography, is now on public display for the first time at an exhibition in the Irish capital.

Dracula, the 1897 Gothic mystery and supernatural vampire novel, may be set in Transylvania and England, but its author, Stoker, was a Dubliner.

“I read Dracula as a kid and it stayed with me, I read everything by and about Stoker that I could get my hands on,” said Cleary, 44, a writer and amateur historian who lives in Dublin’s Marino district, where the author grew up.

Thanks to “Dracula,” Stoker “has had a huge impact on popular culture, but he’s underappreciated,” Cleary told AFP at the Casino di Marino, an opulent 18th-century building near the writer’s birthplace that is hosting the exhibition.

“Dazed”

Cleary’s journey of discovery begins in 2021, when a sudden onset of deafness changes his life.

While on leave to train his hearing following 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 stumbles upon a hidden literary gem, the story “Gibbet Hill”, which he has never heard of before.

“I was sitting in the library amazed that I was looking at a potentially lost Stoker ghost story, especially one from when he was writing ‘Dracula,’ with elements of ‘Dracula’ in it,” Cleary said.

“I sat and stared at the screen wondering, am I the only person alive who has read it? Followed by what on earth do I do with it?’

Cleary did extensive literature searches to confirm the find and consulted with Stoker expert and biographer Paul Murray, who confirmed that the story had been unknown, lost and buried in the archives for over 130 years.

“‘Gibbet Hill’ is very important in terms of Stoker’s development as a writer, 1890 was when he was a young writer and he made his first notes on ‘Dracula,'” Murray told AFP.

“This is a classic Stoker story, the struggle between good and evil, an evil that emerges in exotic and inexplicable ways and is a way station on his way to the publication of Dracula.”

Illustrations

The grisly story tells of a sailor murdered by three criminals, whose bodies were strung up on a gallows or hanging gallows on a hill as a ghostly warning to passing passengers.

To celebrate the discovery, “Gibbet Hill” has been captured in a book that features covers and illustrations inspired by the story by respected Irish artist Paul McKinley.

“It’s pretty surreal now to be standing next to a painting inspired by three of the characters in the story,” Cleary said.

“When Brian sent me ‘Gibbet Hill,’ there was so much I could work with,” McKinley said.

His macabre, sometimes macabre illustrations include a “juicy, wet, oil painting” of worms, inspired by a young character in the story holding a bunch of earthworms in his hands.

“Creating new images for an old story that has been buried for so long” was a “fascinating challenge,” the artist said.

(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published by a syndicated channel.)