“Gibbet Hill” by Bram Stoker is a long-lost gothic horror tale that has recently resurfaced after more than 130 years.
Originally published in December 1890 in the Dublin edition of The Daily Express, this chilling story predates Stoker’s iconic novel “Dracula” by seven years and offers a fascinating glimpse into the author’s evolving style.
Set against the eerie backdrop of Gibbet Hill in Surrey, the story follows an unnamed narrator who encounters three mysterious children near a memorial for a murdered sailor. As the tale unfolds, it weaves together elements of the supernatural, psychological horror, and vivid imagery that would later become hallmarks of Stoker’s work.
Rediscovered in 2023 by Brian Cleary, an amateur historian, “Gibbet Hill” showcases Stoker’s early mastery of creating unease and tension. The story features unsettling scenes, including the manipulation of a snake by the children and a climactic moment where the reptile emerges from the narrator’s chest.
Gibbet Hill by Bram Stoker
When I left the Royal Huts Inn on the top of Hindhead in order to visit the Devil’s Punch Bowl and Jibit Hill, immortalized by Turner in the Liber Studiorum, I passed along a wide straight road, the new High Road between London and Portsmouth, and shortly came to the edge of the Punch Bowl and feasted my eyes on its beauty. The fog, which had been heavy in London when I left on this mid-October morning, extended even to Haslemere and hung in the valleys so that the tops of the Surrey Hills rose like islands from the sea of mist.
In the brilliant sunshine that glorified these upper levels, all the wide expanse of hill and dale between me and the southern coast was softened and mellowed. The hill dropped steeply on all sides save the Northwest, where the circular valley opened to the plain below. All the summer tints were chastened and mellowed; all the full colors which the sunshine had glorified had faded into the sear of autumn. The pink and purple of the heather were changed to a brown with only a suggestion of faded color to warm its tone. The bracken was of rich amber and faded yellow, and the myriads of grasses and wildflowers had donned their winter garb, showcasing hues of decay.
Through this rich mass of autumn tints, the broom untouched as yet by frost sent an emerald flash. The green bushes that fringed the tiny stream running through the valley seemed of supernatural vividness, and the dark green of the pines covering the western slope asserted nature’s right to maintain her own color despite all influences.
Away to the north and west past the spurs and shoulders of the hill, woods, valleys, copses, villages, hills, and ridges ranged in endless succession. After a long pause drinking in this beauty with my heart full of nature’s power and majesty, I thought to myself that here at last was a place where the soul of man is elevated. On this higher plane of Nature’s handiwork, the evil in our hearts is lulled.
However, as I turned, I started at a grim memorial of man’s wickedness—a tombstone by the roadside marking where a century ago a poor seaman trudging from Portsmouth was murdered. But not just the stone was interesting; by it stood three figures that would have arrested attention anywhere. They were only children but of uncommon types. Two were young Indian girls, likely around 13 or 14 years old by English standards but probably much younger due to their Eastern birth. They stood on either side of the memorial stone like heraldic supporters, each with a slim brown hand resting on an elbow of the stone, leaning her face on her hand while looking at me gravely with long dark fathomless eyes.
The third was a little boy about 10 years old with spun gold hair, blue porcelain eyes, and a winning smile on his rosy face—indifferently resembling a cupid or an angel. He wore a dark blood-colored tunic.
For a few seconds, I stood looking at this group while they regarded me steadfastly without movement. Then I spoke to them about the beauty of the scene. One girl tapped the stone with her hand and asked if I could tell them anything about it since they were strangers.
“I am a stranger here myself,” I replied, “but I think we will find it here.” I proceeded to read the inscription on both sides of the stone. When I read the word “murder,” they all looked at each other and then at me, shuddering but strangely following it with smiles.
Thinking they might be frightened, I hastened to add that they need not let this disturb them; it all happened a hundred years ago when the country was very different from now. One girl said in a low voice with penetrating tones that she hoped not. The little boy looked up at me with a laugh and said he supposed if there were a murder now someone would be stuck up on Gibbet Hill.
“Hello young man,” said I. “You know all about it! I see I am going up to see where they put the murderer—will you come?”
“With pleasure,” he replied gravely while lifting his cap in acknowledgment of my invitation. The girls bowed too, and we moved up the hill together.
As we went, I noticed that one of his hands was tightly clenched. “What have you got there?” I asked him.
“These,” he said as he opened his hand to show me a crumpled mass of earthworms wriggling in their sudden freedom. “I love worms,” he continued. “See how they wriggle! You can pull them out long,” illustrating this fact.
“Poor worms,” said I. “Why not let them go? They would much rather be on the ground.”
“Shan’t,” was his only reply as he shoved them into his tunic.
There were many people at the cross when we reached Jibit Hill’s top, along with abundant evidence of recent visitors in eggshells and pieces of newspaper since it was a favorite picnicking spot among strangers. My fancy was chiefly taken by a lady and gentleman whom I dubbed “the honeymoon couple.”
I soon became absorbed by the lovely view stretched before me—a wilderness of rising hilltops with green woods and rich valleys—and quite forgot my young companions. I went to sit at the edge of the steep hill looking eastward and lost myself in its beauty.
Presently remembering my young companions, I looked around for them but found they had disappeared completely. My departure from London had been early, and walking from Haslemere in blazing October sun was somewhat fatiguing. After wandering around for some time at the summit, having boxed my scenic compass so to speak, I made my way toward a deep shady grove of hazel and beech with tall pines rising above it—one of those dense copses that creep up from valleys throwing jagged spikes of greenery up slopes.
Here there was perfection in autumn fullness; undergrowth grew luxuriantly under sheltering pines while brown bark contrasted with bluish foliage between them. The sweet aromatic odor exhaled by pines filled this sleepy silence accentuated only by nature’s myriad vitalities—the soft rich grass whose summer greenery remained untouched invited repose with blissful contentment.
I stretched myself on that grass and soon lost my thoughts and consciousness in those interlaced branches above me.
How long I slept I know not, but it must have been a good while, for I felt thoroughly refreshed as to brain and with that half-aching sense of cramped muscles which comes after a long period of unchanged attitude. There was over me that mysterious sense of elapsed time which tells philosophers that our thought is continuous in some form or another. There was, however, no sense of duty omitted, no press of coming work, which in such cases destroys the charm of awaking. I knew there was ample time before me and that I might muse on unchecked; that I could revel to my heart’s content in the sense of freedom and enjoy the freshness and purity of the air in this wonderful spot. And so I did not stir but lay on my back with my hands under my head, looking up into the branches and watching the gleams of light struggle through the tracery of leaf and branch.
I thought of many things in that luxurious half-dreamy way which belongs to the leisure of a habitually busy man, taking up a thread of thought and dropping it again, swaying between general and particular ideas in always realizing that greatest of pleasures—intellectual leisure. There was in the air the same faint hum of varied sounds which had at first lulled me to sleep, but somehow the volume was richer than before, more full and satisfying to the ear, and with a special significance as if not only all nature was speaking but that there was some one voice amongst the myriad more potent than the rest. I listened with growing interest, and the sound seemed to take a more definite place amongst nature’s harmonies. It was not as if it grew in loudness but merely as if the vibrations accumulated, coming in waves more quickly than they could die away.
Gradually all the other noises seemed to die away, and I heard only this one sound. It seemed to be closer and closer as I began to distinguish more clearly until I shortly came to the conclusion that its source was separated from me by only some score of yards. Then I began to be able to analyze it a little. In general effect, it was like a sort of musical muffled corn-crake—a corn-crake in a whisper—but with some subtle prevailing sweetness which seemed of almost irresistible attraction.
Presently I raised my head from amongst the bracken where I lay and looked whence the sound proceeded. There, to my surprise, in an open dell where the light fell through a break in the trees were grouped the children whom I had seen. The two girls were seated, and between them, the little boy stood up. One of the girls held in her left hand something which looked like a set of Pan pipes made of thin canes but slightly thicker than wheaten straws. Across this she drew something attached to the fingers of her right hand which made the base of the strange corn-crake sound. The other girl held a shell with strings across it which she touched lightly, and the boy had a sort of reed flute which gave forth a peculiarly long sweet note but which blended in the mass of music.
Then the girls joined in a sort of monotonous chant of strange sweetness but very faint. They were all three looking well to one side of me. By and by, the girls stood up; they all turned slightly, and I could see that they were evidently turning slowly in a complete circle as though seeking in every direction around them. As they began to face my direction, I sank down again into the bracken so they might not see me, for the affair began to absorb my interest. I took care, however, to peep through the fronds of the bracken and see all that went on.
A very short time elapsed before my attention was diverted—and not in the most pleasant way. Hearing a stir and rustle among the dead leaves beside me, I looked around and almost jumped to my feet; for there close by and approaching closer was a large snake of the blindworm species. It came straight towards me and actually passed over my feet. I did not stir; it went on heeding me no more than if I had been a log of wood and wriggled away towards the group in the sunlit glade.
It was evidently attracted by their strange weird music; as this was my first actual experience with serpent charming, my interest grew, and I watched them more closely than before. They went on with their music while this snake approached closer until at last at their feet stopped curling itself into spiral raising its head beginning hiss—the boy looked down while girls turned eyes towards him—but music did not stop even momentarily; on contrary grew somewhat quicker!
Then suddenly snake twined itself around child’s ankle climbing way up body wriggling round leg thigh until finally crawling along arm holding flute—then abruptly everything ceased: two girls stood up boy stretched out arm SN snake wound around hand stretched wide open palm upwards remaining perfectly still transformed stone-like state.
The girls took hands circling slowly around boy uttering low whispering mysterious chant similar earlier one yet now decreasing volume compared former crescendo minor key lasting quite two three minutes during which boy remained motionless blue eyes fixed upon snake whose head slightly raised seemingly following movements circling girls continued slow movement round round snake’s movements becoming increasingly pronounced each revolution until eventually boldly turning automatic motion firework around boy’s arm.
Gradually girls’ motion slowed correspondingly lessening snake’s activity until eventually both ceased altogether leaving limp lifeless mass hanging across boy’s hand like piece string—boy never moved while girls released hands one stopping directly front taking hold head tail gently pulling straight letting go leaving stiffened wood-like state uncanny recalling recollections man once seen cataleptic fit whose body retained any position placed regardless how grotesque uncomfortable strained appearing under similar condition strange curiosity awaited next development—boy continued impassive hand still stretched out and the snake resting across it.
The girl stood a little in front of and on either side of him so that the outstretched hand was midway between them. Then began some questioning between them in a language which I presumed to be some form of Indian but which I did not understand. Both voices were sweet with a peculiar penetrating power, but one of them I seemed instinctively to fear although it was the sweeter and softer of the two. Somehow, and the idea was quite spontaneous, it seemed to suggest murder. From the tones and inflections of the voices I gathered that all utterances were put in the form of questions, a supposition shortly confirmed in a strange way, for the answers were given by the rigid snake.
When each girl in turn had had her say, and they suggested positive and negative in their tones, the snake would slowly turn around like the needle in a compass and point its head to either one. The sweeter voice seemed to be the positive and the other the negative in the inquiry, and in all the earlier questions the snake, after turning slowly around, remained with its head towards the negative. This first seemed to disturb and then annoy the positive inquirer, and her voice grew more deadly sweet and penetrating until it made me shudder. Then she seemed to get more and more enraged, for her eyes gleamed with a dark unholy light, and at the last came her question in a keen thrilling whisper.
For answer, the snake then spun round quicker and quicker and suddenly came to a dead stop in front of the other girl. The disappointed one gave one fierce short sharp sound like a dog’s bark whilst a look of deadly malice swept over her face and then passed away leaving it as serene as before. At the same instant, the rigidity of the snake collapsed and it hung for an instant as limp as before and then slipped to the ground and lay there all in a heap without motion as if dead.
The boy started as though from sleep to waking and began to laugh. The girls joined in the merriment, and in an instant the glade which had seemed so weird grew instinct with laughter as the children chased each other into the recesses of the wood and disappeared from view.
Then I rose up from the bracken where I lay. I could hardly believe my eyes and thought that I must have been sleeping and have dreamt it all, but there lay the seemingly dead snake before me as a palpable evidence that I had beheld a reality.
The sun was far in the west when I had finished my stroll through the laneways and copses upon the Whitley side of Hindhead and found myself once more at its highest point on Gibbet Hill. The place was now deserted; the picnickers had all gone home, the pony traps and donkeys and parties of school children had disappeared, and nothing remained of the day’s visitation but the usual increase in old newspapers and broken eggshells.
As the light was just beginning to fade and the air to grow a shade colder, the sense of loneliness was more than ever marked, but I had come from the midst of the hum and turmoil of the city to enjoy this very loneliness and its luxury was to me unspeakable. Down in the valleys the mist still lay dim and fleecy white, and from it the hilltops rose dark and grim. A belt of cloud fringed the whole horizon, and above it stretched a sea of sulfur yellow flecked here and there with little clouds of white which, swimming high above the level of the hill, caught the last splendors of the sun now obscured by the horizon.
One or two stars began to twinkle through the darkening sky, and a stillness that seemed sentient stole up through the valley and reached to where I sat. Then the air grew colder and the silence became perfect. The stars swam out into the sky which had now a darker blue, and a soft light fell on the scene. I sat on and on and drank in the wondrous beauty in which I was immersed. Weariness of mind and body seemed of the dim past and as if they could never again be other than a sad memory. In such moments a man seems almost to be born again and to have every faculty renewed to the full.
I leaned with my back against the great stone cross and putting my hands behind me clasped my arms around its back so as to change my position and be able to enjoy more fully the luxury of rest. Suddenly, without a word of warning, each hand was grasped from behind and held tight in a pair of hands thin and warm but so strong that I could make no movement. At the same time, a scarf or shawl of some light fleecy but thick material was thrown over my face and drawn tightly from behind, holding my head close to the stone. So pinioned and gagged, I could neither move nor speak, and had perforce to await the coming events.
Then my hands were tied with a string put around the wrists and drawn tight so that I was fixed more firmly than before. I could hear no sound and took it for granted that I was being prepared for robbery. I was alone, far away from everyone and in the hands of men stronger than I was myself. And so I resigned myself to the situation as well as I could, secretly thankful that I had only a small sum of money with me.
After a time which seemed long but which was probably of but a few minutes duration, the scarf was pulled down so far that my eyes were free though my mouth was still covered and I was unable to cry out. For a few moments I was too much surprised even to think, as strange was what I saw before me. Instead of burly footpads with rude manner and coarse force, there were the three children who had arrested my attention earlier in the day. They stood before me perfectly still and silent for a little while, their eyes being the only features which expressed either consciousness or interest of any kind.
Two of them, the boy and one girl, then smiled on me with an amused superiority while the other, she who in the glade had exhibited such anger, smiled with a deadly cold hate which, bound as I was, made me shudder. This latter then approached me closer, the others remaining quite still and looking on with their superior amused smile. She took from her waist, where it was concealed in the folds of her dress, a long sharp dagger, thin, double-edged and lethal looking. This she proceeded to flourish before me with extraordinary dexterity and rapidity.
Half the time its keen edge actually touched my skin and the contact made me wince, and on she would dart towards my eyes till I could feel its cold point actually touching my eyeballs. Then she would, as if hurl herself at me with the point of the deadly weapon directed to my heart, but would stop just as it seemed that my last moment had come. This went on for a little while, but short though it was, it seemed endless.
I felt a cold chill, a strange numbness growing over me. My heart seemed to get cold and weak, colder and colder, weaker and weaker still, till at length my eyes closed. I tried to open them, succeeded, tried again, failed, succeeded, failed, and at length consciousness passed away from me. The last thing I remember seeing with my waking eyes was the gleam of the long knife in the starlight as it moved in the young girl’s dexterous play. The last sound I heard was a low laugh from all three of the children.
The voice in my ears was dim and distant, but it gradually grew louder and the spoken words became intelligible: “Wake up, wake up man, you will get your death of cold!” Coldly the words struck home, for there was at my heart a numbness and a chill as of death. My consciousness struggled back into existence and I opened my eyes.
It was now much brighter for a great yellow moon had arisen and the common was flooded with its light. Beside me were two persons whom at once I recognized as the honeymoon couple of earlier in the day. The man was bending over me and was shaking me roughly by the shoulder whilst the lady stood by looking on anxiously with her hands clasped.
“He is not dead, George, is he?” I heard her say. The answer came, “No, thank goodness. He must have fallen asleep. It is a mercy that you had the inspiration to come out and see the moonlight view from here. He might have died of cold. See, the ground is white with the frost already. Wake up man, wake up and come away!”
“My heart,” I murmured, “my heart,” for it was icy cold. The man looked more serious and said to his wife, “Bella, this may be serious. Could you run back to the hotel and send someone if necessary? It may be that his heart is affected.”
“Certainly dear, shall I go at once?”
“Wait a minute first.” He leant over me again. The past was coming back to me quickly, and I asked him, “Did you see anywhere some children, two Indian girls and a fair-haired boy?”
“Yes, hours and hours ago as they went down the London Road on a tricycle. They were laughing and we thought them the prettiest and happiest children we had ever seen. But why?”
“My heart, my heart!” I cried out again, for there was a coldness which seemed to numb me. The man put his hand over my heart but quickly tore it away again with a cry of terror.
“What is it George, what is it?” almost shrieked the lady, for his action was so sudden and unexpected that it thoroughly frightened her. He stood back and she clung frightened to his arm as a large blind worm wriggled itself out from my bosom, fell on the ground, and glided away down the hillside into the copse below.
