A previously unknown short story by the famed Irish author of Dracula, Bram Stoker, has been found discovered at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin, 130 years after it was written.
It will be unveiled to the public at the Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival next week.
“Gibbet Hill”, written in 1890, was first published in a Christmas supplement of the Daily Express Dublin Edition. But it was never referenced in any Stoker bibliography or biography, and so it managed to slip through the cracks.
The story revolves a man who meets 3 children standing in front of a memorial to a sailor murdered by three criminals whose bodies were hung up on Gibbet Hill. Together, the four walk to the top of Gibbet Hill. Distracted by the view, the narrator loses sight of the children. He takes a nap among some trees, and wakes to see the children a short distance away, before a snake passes over his feet towards the children, who appear able to communicate with and control the snake. Later, the children attack the narrator. The story culminates with the snake wriggling out of the narrator’s chest and gliding away down the hillside.
Brian Cleary, who works at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, was on leave following receiving a cochlear implant as a result of sudden hearing loss when he encountered the lost text, and was passing the time in the National Library as a Stoker enthusiast.
“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 neighborhood of Dublin where the author grew up.
“I sat in the National Library of Ireland on October 12th 2023, holding my breath while I gazed at what I had just found: a long lost ghost story from Bram Stoker. As I read this gem of a story, the thought struck me that unless someone had found it and had not shared it, I was possibly the only living person who had read it, followed by “What on earth do I do with it?”, said Cleary.
“After realising the literary and historical significance of the find, I found an amazing collection of people who helped bring Gibbet Hill to the world again after over 130 years in the darkness of the archives.”
This short ghost story will be brought to the public for the first time as part of Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival 2024, where the world premiere public reading of Gibbet Hill will take place on Saturday 26th October, at 1 pm in the Pillar Room at the Rotunda Hospital.
This event will feature a panel discussion hosted by RTÉ’s Miriam O’Callaghan featuring Stoker’s biographer Paul Murray, artist Paul McKinley, Brian Cleary and a special guest for the story’s first ever public reading.
A book has been created featuring the story, a foreword by Irish author Roddy Doyle, and Brian Cleary’s narrative on finding Gibbet Hill. The book also features a biographical sketch of Stoker and original artwork. It will be available for purchase on the 26th of October.
There is also a reproduction of Charlotte Stoker’s (Stoker’s mother) 1862 paper, presented at the Dublin Statistical Society, advocating for the education of deaf children – a cause deeply linked to the project’s mission.
Proceeds from the book will go to the newly-established Charlotte Stoker Fund, dedicated to research on preventable deafness in vulnerable newborns. This fund, administered by The Rotunda Foundation honours the legacy of Bram Stoker’s mother, Charlotte, a pioneering social justice campaigner and an advocate for the education of deaf children in her time.
“It’s a classic Stoker story, the struggle between good and evil, evil which crops up in exotic and unexplained ways, and is a way station on his route to publishing ‘Dracula”, says Brian Cleary.
