“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...
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...