She’s known only as the “Lady of the Dunes,“ a young woman whose mutilated body was found in the dunes outside of Provincetown, MA in the summer of 1974. Her hands cut off and never found and her head nearly decapitated, the woman has to this day never been identified, nor has her killer been caught. Over 40 years later, the “Lady of the Dunes” remains a complete mystery, though many have conjured up their own theories over the years. One theory, well, it posits that the woman may have actually appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
Jaws was filmed in the summer of ’74, not far from the location where the young woman’s body was found, and author Joe Hill (son of Stephen King) is the man behind the theory that the “Lady of the Dunes” was in town filming Jaws in the days prior to her cold case murder. Hill actually detailed this theory on his blog three years ago, but it has resurfaced this week after being featured on the podcast “Inside Jaws,” brought to our attention by The Wrap. Hill, who admits the theory is “out there,” is convinced that the woman may have been an extra in Jaws.
“In June, Jaws was unleashed on theaters once more to celebrate its 40th anniversary,” Hill wrote three years ago, explaining his discovery. “Naturally, predictably, maybe inevitably, I was there. I was watching in my usual tranced out state of dreamy pleasure… and then, suddenly, found myself half-lunging out of my seat, prickling with gooseflesh. Suddenly, impossibly, there she was… life-size and looking over her shoulder at me. There for a moment in a busy crowd scene, and then gone.”
As Hill then detailed, an extra who appears during a crowd scene 54 minutes and 2 seconds into Jaws bears uncanny similarities to the “Lady of the Dunes,” both artist renderings of what she probably looked like as well as descriptions of the body found: blue bandanna, Wrangler jeans, auburn/red hair in a ponytail, 145 pounds, between 25 and 49 years old.
Regarding the extra he spotted on his 40th anniversary revisit of Jaws, Hill writes much the same description: “Blue bandanna. About 30. Fit, 145 pounds. I don’t believe those are Wrangler jeans, but a lady presumably owns more than one pair of jeans.”
Hill summarizes, again admitting that his theory may be compelling but is far from concrete, “Here’s all we really have: an extra who bears a startling resemblance to a girl who turned up dead, some coincidences of time and geography, and a writer of horror stories who has a feeling. I am under no illusions about the situation here. I was watching JAWS, under the influence of The Skeleton Crew, and my subconscious invented an exciting little story about the Lady of the Dunes on the spot. It was so good, I persuaded myself it might be true.”
He adds, rather chillingly, “It IS a helluva what-if, isn’t it? What if the young murder victim no one has ever been able to identify has been seen by hundreds of millions of people in a beloved summer classic and they didn’t even know they were looking at her? What if the ghost of the Lady of the Dunes haunts JAWS?”
A compelling question, but little more than a fascinating theory at this point in time.
