The Grizzly Death of King Philip: Beheaded and Quartered, Body tied in Trees For the Birds To Pluck

On August of 1676, King Philip's luck had run out. Though he escaped capture by the skin of his teeth twice before in Hockomock Swamp, in Miery Swamp in Mount Hope, he had nowhere to hide. Philip was shot in the chest by John Alderman, "a praying Indian whose brother King Philip had ordered executed after a being deemed a traitor." Alderman was accompanied by Captain Benjamin Church himself, the most famous Indian hunter of the day. (It is interesting to note that in the scene depicted in the picture below of the death of King Philip, it is Church and not Alderman who is holding the gun.)

"The Death of King Philip," Harper's Magazine, 1883

Church ordered Philip's body to pulled up to higher ground to begin the act of his mutilation. His body was beheaded and dismembered. Quartered, Church picked four nearby trees and ordered four pieces of Philip's body to be tied to them for the birds to pluck. His hand was given to Alderman as a trophy of the kill. Philip's hand was very unique. It had been disfigured when a pistol misfired years before. Alderman took the maimed hand happily and later would place it in a jar preserved with rum. Alderman would take the jar to taverns where he would allow the owners to display it in exchange for free drinks.

Philip's head was spiked and proudly carried through the streets of Plymouth before it would meet it's final resting place upon Plymouth Colony Fort, now Burial Hill Cemetery. It would soon be joined by the heads of Chief Anawan and Tispaquin. How long the other Wampanoag leader's heads remained displayed on the fort is unknown. But we know that Philip's head remained on the fort for at least 25 years. As if sight of Philip's skull was not horrific enough, one day the Puritan leader Cotton Mather removed the jawbone, to keep "the devil from speaking from the grave." Historian's estimate that King Philip was 38 at the time of his death.

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...

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 Mystery of The "Black Dog" of The Bridgewater Triangle

In the spring of 1976, the town of Abington went into lockdown mode when a huge throat-eating, "bullet-proof" dog mysteriously appeared in a rural residential area surrounded by over 100-acres of dense swamp. Fear rippled through the south shore of Boston after word got out the killer dog had ripped the throats out of two ponies. The dog had intelligently chased the animals--who had been tethered to trees--around and around until the they were tied helpless, unable to escape the teeth of the horrid beast. When locals read the news that the beast had evaded two different bullets fired by two seperate town officials, all out panic ensued. This event was documented in the chapter on the Bridgewater Triangle in Loren Coleman's "Mysterious America" and has gone down in the Bridgewater Triangle legend books as the "The Black Dog of Abington." A Gruesome Discovery: Two Ponies Throats Ripped Out By Dog Reportedly As "Large as the Dead Ponie...

Beyond The Bridgewater Triangle With Kristen Evans

Search This Blog