All “Dracula”-inspired movies, TV shows and breakfast cereals can be traced back to a story published in 1897 by the Irish writer Bram Stoker.
His work is honored annually at the Bram Stoker Festival, which kicks off in Dublin this weekend.
This year, the festival will highlight a a scary but lesser-known tale called “Gibbet Hill.” It will be read publicly on Oct. 26 for what might be the first time.
The story was published seven years before the original “Dracula” came to be, but received little attention until blogger and Stoker enthusiast, Brian Cleary, rediscovered the story in a library.
Cleary joined The World’s Host Carol Hills to discuss his forgotten find.
Carol Hills: Give us a brief synopsis of the short story, but no spoilers.
Brian Cleary: So, the narrator of the story is a man who’s leaving London and going down to Surrey for a walk in a place called Gibbet Hill. He encounters what’s called the Sailor’s Stone. So, it’s a memorial stone for a sailor. The stone is there because the sailor was murdered by three thieves, and they were actually gibbetted, so strung up on a gibbet was essentially hung. And then, your body is displayed as a warning to other criminals. Stoker sets his story off from that jumping-off point, and it gets a little bit spookier from there. He meets three malevolent children and it gets quite scary.
It sounds pretty scary. Now, tell us how you found this short story, “Gibbet Hill.”
I was interested in Stoker for years. I read “Dracula” when I was 12. I moved to Marino when I was an adult. Marino is where Bram Stoker was born. So, I was interested in local history and probably spent the last 15 years or so reading about every little detail I could get on Bram Stoker. I had some free time and ended up in the National Library of Ireland. While there, I systematically searched the British newspaper archives for all articles mentioning Bram Stoker between 1880 and 1897, when he published “Dracula.”
A few weeks into that process, after reviewing a few thousand results, I got lucky. I hit on an advertisement for Christmas Supplement, the Dublin edition of the Daily Express, and it was referring to something published two weeks prior to that. The supplement had a story called “Gibbet Hill” by Bram Stoker, which just froze me in my seat because I knew this was something that I hadn’t come across before. I did some quick searches, and it was not on the internet or in any of the stalker biographies or bibliographies. So, I went racing back through the editions of the Daily Express, got back to the relevant one from December 17th, and sure enough, there it was in the Supplement among lots of Christmas adverts for Dublin businesses, “Gibbet Hill” by Bram Stoker. All rights reserved.
A few weeks into that process, after reviewing a few thousand results, I got lucky. I hit on an advertisement for Christmas Supplement, the Dublin edition of the Daily Express, and it was referring to something published two weeks prior to that. The supplement had a story called “Gibbet Hill” by Bram Stoker, which just froze me in my seat because I knew this was something that I hadn’t come across before. I did some quick searches, and it was not on the internet or in any of the stalker biographies or bibliographies. So, I went racing back through the editions of the Daily Express, got back to the relevant one from December 17th, and sure enough, there it was in the Supplement among lots of Christmas adverts for Dublin businesses, “Gibbet Hill” by Bram Stoker. All rights reserved.
So, what went through your mind when you realized, ‘Jeez, this is a big find?’
Well, I’m sitting in this churchlike atmosphere. It’s a Victorian building, big, high domed ceilings and beautiful, old paneled walls. So, it’s a really reverent space. And I’m holding my breath and I’m reading it, and I’m surrounded by proper historians and real writers. I just want to shout out and tell people what I found. But I just put my head down and read through, and I was amazed. It was a really good ghost story, you know, it was on a par with some of his other well-known short stories, like “The George’s House,” and I just loved it.
Now, this story, “Gibbet Hill,” was written seven years before “Dracula,” but what does it tell you about Bram Stoker’s evolution as a writer leading up to “Dracula”?
I think it’s really cool that it shows how he was gradually working his way up to this masterpiece. So, in March 1890, he made the first notes for “Dracula” and he was plotting “Dracula.” During that year, he went to Whitby for summer holidays in August 1890. While he was there, he got a book out of the library, and he found the term “dracula” in that book, and he wrote it down lots of times. I think he liked how it sounded on his tongue. And then a few weeks later he was writing “Gibbet Hill.” So, there are themes. There are motifs within us that are very reminiscent of “Dracula.” And you can see he’s very much a writer developing his craft.
Now, I read that there’s a really interesting thing that connects you and Stoker and it concerns hearing loss, and it’s related to how you even found this story. Tell us about that.
Yeah. So I woke up on the 26th of December 2021 with no hearing in my left ear. Sudden sensorineural hearing loss is the name of the condition. About 70,000 Americans every year will develop this. So, I had irreversible, profound hearing loss. I developed quite severe tinnitus that was impacting my life. I ended up getting the cochlear implant that transformed my life. It gave me back an oral hearing, and my word recognition scores are brilliant with it. I had to do a lot of rehabilitation with the cochlear implant, and I spent some of that time in the National Library of Ireland. I figured if I’m going to be listening to lullabies streamed directly into my head to learn how to hear music again, I might as well be doing something productive. So, ultimately found “Gibbet Hill.”
Interestingly, Bram’s mother, Charlotte Stoker, was a campaigner for the deaf, and she wanted to improve the outcome of deaf children in Ireland. And here I was, discovering her son’s last story as a result of my own deafness. Thankfully, the charity associated with the hospital where I work, the Rotunda Foundation, agreed to set up a fund called the Charlotte Stoker Fund. This fund would ring-fence all the proceeds from this book and use them to fund research on potentially preventable hearing loss in vulnerable newborns. So, it’s very close to my heart. It brings a circularity to my own story. My hearing loss led to the finding of the story, and hopefully, the story will fund research that will change the future for some vulnerable preterm babies.
Interestingly, Bram’s mother, Charlotte Stoker, was a campaigner for the deaf, and she wanted to improve the outcome of deaf children in Ireland. And here I was, discovering her son’s last story as a result of my own deafness. Thankfully, the charity associated with the hospital where I work, the Rotunda Foundation, agreed to set up a fund called the Charlotte Stoker Fund. This fund would ring-fence all the proceeds from this book and use them to fund research on potentially preventable hearing loss in vulnerable newborns. So, it’s very close to my heart. It brings a circularity to my own story. My hearing loss led to the finding of the story, and hopefully, the story will fund research that will change the future for some vulnerable preterm babies.
This interview have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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