Ghost Stories of British Columbia

M. Wayne Cunningham, formerly the director of Academic and Career
Programs at East Kootenay Community College, is a freelance writer
specializing in the arts in Kamloops, British Columbia.

For anyone interested in the eerie, the macabre, and the supernatural,
this collection of 57 short tales is a fun and fascinating read. The
book, a companion volume to Ghost Stories of Saskatchewan (1995), is
organized into 10 thematic chapters comprising contributions that were
gathered over a two-year period from every part of British Columbia.

The traditional ghostly locations and effects are all here, from
converted museums and haunted hotels to unexplained rattles, blinking
lights, and icy blasts of air. The ghosts themselves run the gamut from
friendly and passive to frightening and aggressive. There is a story of
a ghost dog, another of a fraudulent clairvoyant, and a couple of tales
of murder and mayhem. A few of the ghosts, such as Emily Carr’s
mother, are famous. Others are less well known but every bit as real to
those they have visited.

Contributing to British Columbia’s reputation as “Canada’s most
haunted province,” this is an entertaining, well-researched, and
well-written collection of tales that belongs in every library in the
province.