A long-lost short tale by Bram Stoker, written only seven years before his famous gothic book “Dracula,” has been discovered by an amateur historian.
When Brian Cleary was looking through the National Library of Ireland’s records, he stumbled upon the 134-year-old ghost story.

“Gibbet Hill” first surfaced in a Dublin newspaper in 1890, when the Irish writer was starting to work on “Dracula,” but it hasn’t been confirmed since.

The narrative “sheds light on his development as an author and was a significant’station on his route to publishing ‘Dracula,'” according to Stoker historian Paul Murray.

The eerie story revolves around the murder of a sailor by three criminals, whose corpses are then displayed as a warning to onlookers on the gallows.

The narrative, which is set on Surrey’s Gibbet Hill, alludes to a place that is also featured in Charles Dickens’ 1839 book “Nicholas Nickleby.”

After taking a leave of absence from work in 2021 due to an abrupt onset of hearing loss, Brian Cleary started visiting the National Library of Ireland in Dublin, the home of Stoker. That’s where the Stoker fan found an obscure title in an 1890 Daily Express Dublin Edition Christmas supplement in October 2023.

In a statement to the AFP news agency, Mr. Cleary recalled the incident as follows: “I read the words Gibbet Hill and I knew that wasn’t a Bram Stoker story that I had ever heard of in any of the biographies or bibliographies.”

“And I was simply stunned, dumbfounded.”

“Am I the only living person who has read it?” I wondered as I sat there staring at the computer.

Speaking about the finding, he said, “What on earth do I do with it?”

Director of the library Audrey Whitty said that she received a call from Mr. Cleary with the following message: “I’ve found something extraordinary in your newspaper archives—you won’t believe it.”

Praiseing his “astonishing amateur detective work,” she said it was evidence of the quality of the records at the library.

“There are truly world-important discoveries waiting to be found,” she said.

After doing some preliminary research, Mr. Cleary contacted biographer Paul Murray, who verified that the narrative had been lost for almost a century.

He clarified that Stoker wrote his initial drafts of “Dracula” in 1890, while he was still a young author.

“It’s a classic Stoker story, the struggle between good and evil, evil which crops up in exotic and unexplained ways,” he said.

The fundraising arm of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital, where Mr. Cleary was employed, the Rotunda Foundation, is publishing “Gibbet Hill,” with artwork by Irish artist Paul McKinley.

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The Charlotte Stoker Foundation, named after Bram Stoker’s mother, who advocated for hearing loss awareness, will receive all earnings to finance research on hearing loss in infants.

Later this month, the find will also be featured during the city’s Bram Stoker Festival.