Unearthing Mary: The Research Behind Dancing Mary- by Jay Lang

 

https://bwlpublishing.ca/lang-jay/

When I first heard the story of “Dancing Mary,” it came as little more than a whispered local legend—just another ghost story, one of many that echo around the misty corners of British Columbia’s Comox Valley. But there was something about her tale that wouldn’t let me go. Maybe it was the image of the glowing blue orb seen drifting across Comox Road. Maybe it was the sorrow I felt beneath the surface of the legend—a grief that felt startlingly human.

I wanted to write Dancing Mary. I wanted to understand her.

What began as simple curiosity turned into months of deep, often emotional research. I pored through old newspaper clippings, dug into settler records, and read the fragmented, colonial accounts of the early days in the Comox Valley. Most haunting were the silences—what wasn’t recorded. Mary, a young K’ómoks First Nation woman, had been betrayed and murdered, yet the details of her life had been mostly erased, overshadowed by the sensationalism of her ghost.

So I listened—to local stories, to Indigenous voices, and, I hope, to Mary herself.

Woven into this research was my own personal journey. As I explored Mary’s story, I found myself reflecting on themes of grief, family, and the invisible threads that connect us to place and memory. Writing Dancing Mary became a way of honoring both historical truth and personal healing.

Because Mary wasn’t just a ghost. She was a girl. And she mattered.