Brian Cleary, on the 12th of October, 2023, unearthed a forgotten story by Bram Stoker, located within the National Library of Ireland. This narrative, dubbed ‘Gibbet Hill’, was first published on the 17th December 1890 in a holiday supplement of the Dublin edition of the Daily Express. Up until Cleary’s discovery, the story had been absent from anthologies and discussions around Stoker’s work for over a hundred years.
When queried about his reaction upon finding the story, Cleary revealed the sense of unease the experience evoked, echoing the gothic elements inherent in Stoker’s writing, likening it to stepping back in time.
Reacting to Cleary’s discovery, his wife was shared in this excitement, engaging in a text conversation that included the use of emoticons to share their shared fondness for ‘Dracula’, an iconic character from Stoker’s oeuvre who has been recognized with his own emoji.
As part of the Bram Stoker festival organized by the Dublin City Council, the ‘Gibbet Hill’ will be disclosed to the public. The tale, set in Surrey, south of London, unravels around a macabre incident where a man is ambushed by three peculiar children near Gibbet Hill, a location notorious for a real murder.
Cleary’s journey to finding ‘Gibbet Hill’ is a chilling tale unto itself. He woke up deaf in one ear on St Stephen’s Day 2021. On the previous day, he had joined his daughter in her piano rendition of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ on his guitar, followed by watching ‘The Royle Family’ with its signature theme song, ‘Half the World Away’, which proved to be the last stereo sounds he heard before completely losing his hearing on one side.
Cleary was initially administered antibiotics to treat what was believed to be an ear infection. However, as a week progressed it became evident that he was dealing with a more serious health issue. This led to him being prescribed steroids, but it was too late to salvage his hearing. In Ireland, about a thousand individuals annually go through a similar experience of sudden loss of hearing. It’s a condition that could potentially be managed if diagnosed early enough. Nevertheless, the origin of ninety per cent of these cases remains a mystery. Even more debilitating for Cleary was the relentless tinnitus that followed his hearing loss, likened to the sound of a hairdryer, as a result of his brain desperately trying to fill the void left by his deaf ear with white noise.
The intensity of the white noise increased with the volume of sound in his functional ear, making it difficult for him to enjoy music and work, and it was potentially jeopardising his personal relationships. Cleary recounts, “The exertion of trying to hear everybody forced me to scale back my work to four days a week… I work in Dublin’s Rotunda maternity hospital, and the environment is always filled with alarms and crying babies. Vital information is constantly being relayed. Even though my colleagues were quite understanding and helped me function well by putting me in a favourable position, it led to me experiencing severe auditory fatigue.”
He would return from work, immediately doze off, and then wind down on the sofa with an Apple noise-cancelling earphone in his functioning ear to mute the tinnitus in his deaf ear. Cleary, however, maintained an optimistic outlook and stated “People are remarkably adaptable… It’s still entirely possible to experience joy despite the terrible tinnitus. Life continues.”
It’s worth mentioning that having naturally inclined to research, Cleary chose to spend his extra day off delving into studies concerning hearing loss. In his search, he found accounts of people who had experienced hearing loss and tinnitus and had found relief after undergoing cochlear implant surgery. This surgery was publicly available in Germany, and Cleary made a convincing argument to the Health Service Executive (HSE) that he should be allowed to benefit from this procedure under the EU’s treatment-abroad scheme. The HSE concurred with his proposal.
In November 2022, a man underwent surgery for cochlear ear implants, which were turned on in January of the following year. The activation allowed him to hear the voice of his German doctor, although it did remind him of someone speaking through a pipe. Nevertheless, he was delighted to find that his tinnitus had also disappeared following the procedure. The patient took a year’s break for his recovery and to acclimate his auditory senses. He maintained a personal blog titled ‘Noisy Silence’, recounting his experiences and connecting with others suffering from sudden hearing loss.
Residing in Marino, North Dublin, Cleary developed an intense interest in Stoker, coincidentally a fellow Marino native. Towards the end of his break, he devoted his time to research historical figures in the National Library, aspiring to write a novel featuring Stoker.
In the course of his research, Cleary undertook a thorough investigation of Stoker by scouring through the British Newspaper Archive for three and a half weeks. Eventually, in a New Year’s Day 1891 advertisement of the Dublin Daily Express, he came across a reference to a Christmas supplement previously published. Among the listed authors and stories, he found an unfamiliar title, ‘Gibbett Hill’ by Bram Stoker. This discovery necessitated intense reading of advertisements, not immediate search results.
Cleary collected the original paper at the NLI, unable to contain his excitement within the solemn, quiet space. Upon reviewing Stoker’s literature, he was puzzled as he did not find any mention of ‘Gibbet Hill.’ He reached out to Paul Murray, also an expert on Stoker, who confirmed the legitimacy of Cleary’s rare find, equally astounded that it had remained hidden for such a long time.
Murray, when asked about the circumstances under which the story was penned, reveals that early notes for Dracula can be traced back to March of 1890, with the story culminating in December of the same year. He surmises that the bulk of the story was likely written during the Autumn of 1890. Hence, the genesis of Dracula was very much present in Stoker’s mind during that period. Reflecting on Stoker’s literary journey at large, Murray emphasizes the significance of this story, as he has always maintained that Dracula wasn’t a directional shift in Stoker’s fictional narrative but rather an extension of his early stories written in the 1870s.
Speaking to the parallels drawn between Gibbet Hill and Dracula, Murray highlights the replication of language used in both entities. Furthermore, he also underlines a recurring theme in Stoker’s work – the physical embodiment of good and evil in specific locations, similar to the portrayal of Castle Dracula. The nearby residence of renowned poet Lord Tennyson and his wife Emily, adds a peculiar element to the tale. Emily believed the area exuded a vampiric essence which sucked vitality out of every living being. The story also features the evil as malicious, destructive, and somewhat senseless, as exemplified by the narrator being threatened by the children, and their knife dangerously close to his eyeball. This emanates a staunchly ‘Stokerian’ vibe, according to Murray.
Cleary, meanwhile, speculates that the inspiration for the tale could have been during Stoker’s visit to Tennyson alongside his theatre entrepreneur boss, Henry Irving. The trip entailed a listening session of Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava,” a poem commemorating the military heroes of the Crimean War of 1854, on an early phonograph. The original recording of the poem can be found on the BBC’s website. It is also known that they must have passed Gibbet Hill en route.
Stoker mentions in his writings that while Irving was dozing off beside him in the carriage, he noticed the Sailor’s Stone, a memorial marking the murder of a sailor a century prior, at the very location. The three culprits of that homicide were subsequently put on display on a popular gibbet. Intriguingly, there were local tales suggesting that the stone was indeed haunted, hinting at the possibility that the carriage driver would have shared this with Stoker.
Paul McKinley, a fellow Marino resident and artist, was recruited by Cleary to generate a variety of provocative artwork inspired by the narrative. A currently ongoing exhibition titled Péisteanna, on display at the Casino in Marino, showcases these illustrations. Some of these enigmatic pieces encompass aspects such as a gibbet, a bloodshot eye and worms. “The story provided a wealth of material to work with. It was intriguingly bizarre and offered a unique chance that I couldn’t resist. Though the story existed, it hadn’t been given a visual representation. The prospect of being the first one to do so was truly enticing,” said McKinley.
Gibbet Hill is set to be published as a book on the 26th of October, featuring an introduction by Roddy Doyle—and essays by Murray and Cleary respectively, McKinley’s fascinating artwork and a piece composed by Charlotte, Bram Stoker’s mother, in 1863. It was through her involvement with deaf communities, which was deeply poignant to Cleary, that Charlotte furthered the argument for considerable state support for deaf children. All funds accrued from the book sales will be channelled towards the newly-formed Charlotte Stoker Fund. Managed by the Rotunda Foundation, this initiative is focused on studies and preventative measures to reduce instances of deafness in at-risk newborns.
For Cleary, finding the tale signaled the end of a challenging period in his life, marked by the loss of his hearing. “Going deaf led me to discover this. There’s some sort of significance to it… I’ve held the hardcopy of that paper in [the NLI]. It’s amazing. That paper was tucked away by someone in the 1890s and it stayed hidden for over 130 years.”
On 26th October, a reading event will be held, along with a panel discussion hosted by Miriam O’Callaghan as part of the Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival, at the Pillar Room, Rotunda Hospital. McKinley’s exhibition, Péisteanna, at Casino Marino in Dublin, will carry on until the 6th of November. Gibbet Hill is available for purchase on rotundafoundation.ie/gibbet-hill.