Gibbet Hill by Bram Stoker: A Lost Supernatural Story by Bram Stoker

[From the editor's foreward] This publication represents the most significant addition to Stoker's canon since 1914's 'Dracula's Guest', offering readers a rare glimpse into the development of one of horror fiction's most influential voices. A must-read for fans of Victorian Gothic literature and supernatural fiction.<br/><br/>A literary sensation: the discovery of Bram Stoker's lost supernatural tale 'Gibbet Hill' reshapes our understanding of Gothic horror's evolution.<br/><br/>A chilling, and until recently discovered, lost tale - from the master of Gothic horror himself and therefore essential reading for any Vampire, Stoker enthusiasts or Gothic horror scholars alike, this volume illuminates a crucial missing link in the creation of a horror fiction classic - 'Dracula'.<br/><br/>'Gibbet Hill' emerges after more than one hundred and thirty years, hidden from the literary world. This haunting story showcases Stoker's evolving mastery of supernatural horror in the years leading up to 'Dracula', weaving together Victorian anxieties, Eastern mysticism, and the dark history of an English execution site.<br/><br/>When a traveller encounters three mysterious children near an ancient gallows - two Indian girls and a golden-haired boy - he becomes entangled in a terrifying display of serpent-charming that escalates into something far more sinister. Set against the atmospheric backdrop of Surrey's Hindhead, where 'the woods and valley, the copses and villages and hills and ridges ranged in endless succession,' this newly discovered work explores themes that would later define Stoker's masterpiece: the intrusion of exotic threats into English spaces, corrupted innocence, and the thin veil between tourism and terror.<br/><br/>This scholarly edition includes the complete story plus newly discovered connections to Stoker's literary development, extensive notes on Victorian supernatural fiction, and the historical context of the infamous Gibbet Hill.<br/><br/>The discovery of this Bram Stoker story necessitates a reevaluation of Stoker's creative chronology. Its sophisticated handling of themes previously thought to have emerged only in "Dracula" suggests that Stoker's masterwork was the culmination of a longer, more deliberate development than previously understood. The short stories dating to the early 1890s positions Gibbet Hill within what critic Nicholas Daly terms "the crucial decade" of Stoker's artistic evolution.<br/><br/>Included is a masterful foreword by the editor which provides unprecedented insight into Stoker's creative evolution, drawing connections between this lost work and the development of 'Dracula,' while illuminating the author's sophisticated exploration of colonial anxiety, childhood corruption, and supernatural horror.<br/><br/>This is a must-have for any serious literary thinker or lover of Bram Stoker's gothic horror classics.