An amateur historian has discovered a long-lost short story by Bram Stoker, published just seven years before his legendary gothic novel Dracula. Brian Cleary stumbled upon the 124-year-old ghostly tale while browsing the archives of the National Library of Ireland.

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.

The work by Bram Stoker, previously unknown to scholars, will be read and included in a book launched during Dublin’s annual Bram Stoker Festival.

"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.