The story is significant as it sheds light on Stoker's development as an author and serves as a “station on his route to publishing Dracula.”

A long-lost story from Bram Stoker, the Irish author of one of the world's best known gothic horror stories Dracula, has been found in Dublin.

A LONG LOST short story by the famed Irish author of Dracula, Bram Stoker, has been found in Dublin after 130 years – and is to be unveiled to the public at the Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival next week.

Amateur historian Brian Cleary was paging through Stoker's works at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin, the gothic novelist's hometown, when he made the discovery.

"Gibbet Hill" tells of a sailor murdered by three criminals whose bodies were strung up on a hanging gallows on a hill as a ghostly warning to passing travelers.