A short story by Dracula author Bram Stoker, has been rediscovered after an amateur historian found a story written by Stoker in an 1890 Christmas edition of the Dublin Daily Express.
Gibbert Hill is a ghost story which portrays Stoker’s classic themes of good and evil but it was never officially documented.
Brian Cleary found the tale while reading through old archives at Dublin’s national library.
Mr Cleary told the AFP news agency that he contacted biographer Paul Murray – who confirmed there had been no trace of the story for over a century.
He said 1890 was when Stoker was a young writer and made his first notes for Dracula.
“It’s a classic Stoker story, the struggle between good and evil, evil which crops up in exotic and unexplained ways,” Mr Cleary said.
The story tells the tale of a sailor murdered by three criminals whose bodies were strung up on a hanging gallows as a warning to passing travellers. It is set in Gibbet Hill in Surrey, a location also referenced in Charles Dickens’ 1839 novel Nicholas Nickeby.
Gibbert Hill is being published by the Rotunda Foundation, according to the BBC. The discovery is also being highlighted in Dublin’s Bram Stoker festival this weekend.
