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Hockomock Swamp: Place Where Spirits Dwell

    “On still nights the evil glitter of fox fire or the demonic cackle of a barred owl sent chills up the spines of the early settlers. Hordes of crows rose each morning for the guts of the swamp to ravage farmer's corn. And from time to time, young girls merrily picking blueberries along the fringes found themselves ‘drawn farther and farther along unfamiliar paths seduced by the increasing size of the berries until at last they were lost and claimed by the swamp forever." Native Americans named the swamp “Hockomock” hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago. "Hockomock" is the Algonquin word for “place where spirits dwell.” The Indians had tremendous respect and awe for the swamp and regarded it as a “magical” place. There being no swamps in England, the colonists had a different take on the place: They were terrified by this foreign terrain that they found nearly impossible to navigate. The fear that Hockomock Swamp instilled in the colonists of the 1600s inspired...
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The Bridgewater Triangle Bigfoot & the Purple Laser Beam

By Kristen Good John Stanga is in his mid-fifties now and far away from the Bridgewater Triangle, having settled in North Carolina as an adult. But not a day goes by where Stanga does not think of most bizarre night of his life, when he and childhood friend witnessed a double whammy of a Class A Bigfoot sighting followed by a strange purple beam that shot down from the sky in South Weymouth. (A location about three miles from the northern tip of the area delineated as "The Bridgewater Triangle. ") John Stanga contacted me in 2011 with the following account: “I want to relay this story about, for the lack of a better term, “Bigfoot” sighting me and my best friend Dave had in September 1972 in South Weymouth, Massachusetts. The date was Friday, Sept. 29, 1972 at about 7:30 pm. Dave and I were 14 years old at the time and had known each other since 1 st grade. What happened that night is as follows: Dave’s family just moved to a new neighborhood they wer...

News Crew Mystified By Equipment Malfunctions While Touring Bridgewater Triangle Hot Spots

When Fox25 reporter Melissa Mahan contacted me last month to ask me to take her and the  film crew out to some of the hotspots of the Bridgewater Triangle, I was happy to oblige. It sounded like an adventure...and an adventure it certainly turned out to be.   On August 7, 2014, Fox 25 featured the Bridgewater Triangle on a Zip Trip to Bridgewater. (Fox25's Zip Trips are live broadcasts from a various featured Massachusetts towns.) Fox25 filmed the town tour of Bridgewater on August 4. I met the crew near Bridgewater State University and we set off for our first location. And that's when the trouble began. The shot should have been easy: Fox 25 reporter Melissa Mahan driving into dirt parking spot in the Mazda Zip Trip Car, stopping, opening the door and introducing herself to me.  But the shot wasn't easy. We had to do at five takes due to "technical difficulties." The microphones had failed on camera. Jennifer, the camera woman, kept trying different microph...

The Bridgewater Triangle Mass UFO Sighting of 1972

Many UFOs have been reported seen floating through the skies over Massachusetts’ Bridgewater Triangle over the years. The most famous sighting being in 1979 when two local newsmen would be two of hundreds of people who witnessed a low flying, baseball diamond shaped UFO.  Many of those sightings have been reported by local newspapers. On the evening of July 3, 1972, residents all around the south shore witnessed a large triangular-shaped, shiny and "translucent" object in the sky. The Weymouth Naval Base received numerous calls by alarmed witnesses seeking answers about what the object might have been. But the Weymouth Naval Base could provide no answer to appease their fear and curiosity. “South Shore residents were still talking excitedly at Fourth of July barbecues and cocktail parties about a weird, unidentified flying object they saw Monday in the evening sky." "Residents in Scituate, Cohasset, Hingham, Marshfield, Rockland, Pembroke, Hans...

Troubled Waters: The Bridgewater Triangle's Infamous Lake Nippenicket

Lake Nippenicket ( or “The Nip” for short) is 354-acres of extreme high strangeness. The Nip straddles Bridgewater and Raynham and is located on the boundary line of Plymouth and Bristol counties. Cryptic creatures, spectral fires, Native American ghosts, UFOs and other unusual sightings have all been seen here at Lake Nip, a body of water that holds a mysterious history of accidents and drownings. For decades, this lake has held the reputation of stealing the lives people too young to die. With an average depth of a mere three feet—and just six feet at its deepest point—The Nip’s morbid history of drowning certainly is one of The Nip’s biggest mysteries.  It seems as though Lake Nippenicket is a a place where anything can happen. The skies over The Nip are a favorite hangout for UFOs, and those same strange skies over the lake have rained frogs on at least on Alien pods? No, just a bryazoan, a rare organism that survived the ice age which made an appearance in Lake Nip ...

Comfort Bridge & The Solitude Stone

The Solitude Stone lay undiscovered for 80 years...until a local girl went missing after one fateful canoe trip in West Bridgewater in the summer of 1916. If Evelyn Packard hadn't mysteriously died, her body not found for days, the Solitude Stone might never had been discovered at all. 1916. A missing girl vanishes from a canoe on the Town River in West Bridgewater within a half hour after she rents her canoe. The canoe is found shortly after with no clues as to her whereabouts. Her coat and a pillow are found inside the canoe "bone dry." One headline read: "Doctors Fear Girl is Crazed in Hockomock Swamp." After combing the woods for days and finding no clues as to her whereabouts, foul play is suspected. During one of grueling searches of the woods of the swamp, a local reporter decides to take a break and sits down  on nearby Comfort Bridge, a bridge that at the time was made out of three immense ancient stones. Up until of August of 1916, no ...

Horror In The Bridgewater Triangle: Is There A Serial Killer Among Us?

Police search the area for more bodies and possible clues. By Kristen Evans January, 2014 A dark cloud has cast an evil shadow over the Bridgewater Triangle in the shape of what looks like a local serial killer. The terror started when the remains of two women were found in a heavily wooded area on the Brockton/Abington line on the outskirts of Ames Nowell Park at the end of December. Local papers reported that the women's remains were "stacked" atop one another, the top being the dismembered body of  20-year old Brockton woman, Ashley Mylett. The remains that lie beneath Mylett were identified as a 51-year old Linda Schufedt,  living in nearby Quincy at the time of her disappearance last July.  This story that sounds like an episode from " Dexter"  broke on Sunday December 28th when a local man walking his dog in the woods not far from his house stumbled upon a pile of severed body parts, including a foot, a calf, and an arm. On Dec...