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.

Bram Stoker is renowned for creating Count Dracula, one of the most celebrated villains of literature and cinema, but earlier this week it was announced that a long lost short story by the famed author had been found in Dublin after 130 years – and is to be unveiled to the public at the festival.

The story will be presented at this month's Bram Stoker Festival and published as a limited-release book. A long-lost short story by Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, has been re-discovered after remaining undocumented for more than 130 years.

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.

Gibbet Hill, the Irish writer’s macabre tale of a man set upon by strange children at the site of a real murder, was discovered by Dublin researcher Brian Cleary

A long-lost short story by Bram Stoker – the author of Dracula – has been unearthed by an amateur historian 130 years after it was published. Gibbert Hill was printed in a Christmas supplement of the Dublin edition of the Daily Mail in 1890,