Lost Bram Stoker short story "Gibbet Hill" found after 134 years
Dracula author Bram Stoker wrote a short story in 1890, seven years before he published his most famed work. Gibbet Hill is a similarly gothic affair, but its grim outcomeafter we meet a murdered sailor, the three criminals strung up on a hanging gallows as a warning to travellers, an actual traveller, three kids, and a snakecomes much faster than the 165,000-word masterpiece.
It may be read in scans of microfilm copies of the Dublin Daily Express, where it was spotted by Brian Cleary, who the BBC reports was "taking time off work following a sudden onset of hearing loss in 2021" and passing the time at Ireland's national library there. Good for us that Cleary is a fan: "I read the words Gibbet Hill and I knew that wasn't a Bram Stoker story that I had ever heard."
The first paragraph I transcribe below; no-one seems to have posted the full thing yet online. It's very late Victorian; they paid for it by the page. A new collection including it is on the way, with profits to go to infant deafness research. The Bram Stoker Festival opens in Dublin next weekend, too.
Continued https://boingboing.net/2024/10/21/lost-bram-stoker-short-story-gibbet-hill-found-after-134-years.html