Dracula author Bram Stoker's lost story unearthed after 134 years

An amateur historian has discovered a long-lost short story by Bram Stoker, published just seven years before his legendary gothic novel Dracula.Brian Cleary stumbled upon the 134-year-old ghostly tale while browsing the archives of the National Library of Ireland.Gibbet Hill was originally published in a Dublin newspaper in 1890 – when the Irishman started working on Dracula – but has been undocumented ever since.Stoker biographer Paul Murray says the story sheds light on his development as an author and was a significant “station on his route to publishing Dracula”.The ghostly 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 Nickleby.Mr Cleary made the discovery after taking time off work following a sudden onset of hearing loss in 2021 – during which period he would pass the…