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 1st grade. What happened that night is as follows:

Dave’s family just moved to a new neighborhood they were building behind my street (Courier Street). His family lived in my neighborhood before that. That’s how we knew each other for so long. We were walking around his street (Lintric Drive) which is a loop. We all hung up there because there weren’t many houses up there yet, especially on the farm side of his development and we went to school with other kids up there. We happened to run into his 15-year old sister, who was babysitting one of the kids who lived there. Dave’s sister wanted to go over to the old farm field and smoke a cigarette. The incident happened  at the old farm field. The field was part of a large horse farm, but not kept up. The grass probably stood three-feet high. The field was between my street, a new elementary school (Union Street Elementary School), and Lintric Drive. There was a pond in the field to one corner and woods on three sides. Other fields, heavier woods, swamps, and creeks went on for quite a distance plus there was a sandpit and the Old Swamp River out in those woods. Dave’s neighborhood was built over the dirt access road that used to be the right of way to the farm. Most of it was still there in 1972.

We walked over to the farm field using the old dirt road.

Because of the lights around the school, the field was quite brightly lit once your eyes became accustomed to the available light.  The vegetation between the school and the field was low enough at that time to allow a lot of light into the field. We stood in a circle under one of the two large trees that stood on the field. I stood facing Dave, with the school to my left. Dave was busy talking to his sister when I heard or sensed something was with us in the field and at the same time it caught my eye. It was to the left of me, no more than 30 to 50 feet away!  It was a large, hairy creature walking parallel to the school to my left. It kind of looked like a gorilla, but was huge. I remember it had huge shoulders and head. The shoulders looked to me like they were six to eight feet off the ground. The head just went into them, maybe with a slightly conical shape, with no real neck to speak of. Its arms were quite long and the legs short. It looked hairy, but was really just a dark shape against the lights of the school.

It crept in short movements. By that I mean it put its arms out, hands down on the ground, and then moved its back legs forward about the same distance...  I saw it do this a few times.  I never saw it walk upright. Although the creature was silhouetted in the light, I could tell it was watching us. I believe it did not want us to see it and was trying to move quietly through the grass on the edge of the field. It did not make any sounds. It had large shoulders, no neck and a large head. The body was heavily built. The head profile looked like the “Bigfoot” in the 1967 Patterson film when it turned and looked at them as it walked away. Needless to say I must have looked freaked out and turn to look at Dave who also looked the same. I said to him,” do you see that” and he said “yeah”. We just started to run away up the dirt road by to his neighborhood.  We didn’t even say why we were running to his sister. Naturally she and the kid ran when we did. Once we got safely back to Lintric Drive and stopped running Dave’s sister asked why we ran. When we told her, she called us a couple of jerks and though we were trying to just scare her. She went back to the house she was babysitting at and Dave and I hung out in front of a house that was under construction that bordered the field.

There was a small strip of woods between the house and the field. It was right in front of the sighting spot. We wanted to go back and see if the creature was still there, but were too afraid. We heard some noise, wood banging or wood being knocked around at the house under construction and decided that it was in our best interest to leave the area and see if we could find some of our other friends to tell them what we saw and maybe to go back there "in force". As we were walking back to a house where our other friends usually were hanging out at, things got weirder if you can believe it.

After walking maybe a couple of hundred down Lintric Drive, the second strange thing happened that night. We had a beam or a ray shoot in front of us. It was higher than the tree tops, but went right across our path. It looked like a black light stretched across the sky because it was purple. It was bright but did not illuminate anything. It was almost like it was a solid rod of purple light. It actually hummed and had a feeling of power to it. Very strange!

It lasted only a second or two, but truly shocked us.  I’d say it was like 6” in diameter and shot across the sky like a laser beam. We lived less than a mile from the South Weymouth Naval Air Station which was active at the time. I would say the beam would have to cross over the air base and maybe even came from it.  I lived around that base for over 30 years and never saw any beams come from the base before or after that event. I never saw anything like the beam or the creature again. We were always in those woods and fields AT ALL HOURS after that and never saw anything else strange or unexplained ever again.

Unfortunately the farm field, woods, and sandpits are gone, all developed, although the field remains as a golf course. I cannot say if the creature and the light beam were related, but they happened within 10 minutes or less of each other. Dave and I always felt the creature was not of the world and the beam had something to do with it.  That is only our speculation though. There has not been one day in my life that I have not thought about that night. It is probably good to note that Dave and I did not take drugs or drink alcohol and were completely straight at the time of the incident. Of course, most people never believed us and still don’t. I swear that all of the above is true to my best recollection.”

Stanga’s incredible story is intriguing on many levels. Weymouth borders the Bridgewater Triangle apex town of Abington to the north. Lintric Drive is a mere three and a half miles from Abington. Weymouth--and many other towns surrounding the delineated map of the Bridgewater Triangle--could certainly qualify as inclusion as part of southeastern Massachusetts’ “Bridgewater Triangle,” based on bizarre and unexplained activity,  archaeological mysteries,  and Native American sacred grounds.

Many UFOs have been reported seen whizzing through the skies over Massachusetts’ south shore over the years and many of those sightings have been reported by local newspapers. The published UFO sighting that we are interested in right now though, is the one published in July of 1972. The article appeared in The Boston Globe with the headline,  “Up In the Sky: Not a Bird, not a plane. Not superman either--it’s a UFO” on July 5, 1972--just two months before John Stanga’s encounter.

On the evening of July 3, 1972  residents all around the south shore witnessed a large shiny object in the sky.The Weymouth Naval Base received numerous calls by alarmed witnesses seeking answers about what the object might have been. But 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. ..it was apparently the first mass UFO sighting since a rash of flying saucers appeared over New England back in 1966.

Paul Kamp, 45, of Dog Lane road, Marshfield, was among the first to see whatever it was.

I looked up and saw it too--a triangular shaped object that looked like one big wing,” he said. “It was translucent and I thought I could see blue sky through it, but its edges were white and well defined...it remained in sight for 45 minutes  and then disappeared in cloud cover.”

Kamp said about 25 of his neighbors could verify they saw what he saw.

He and other South Shore residents reported the UFO sighting to the South Shore Weymouth Naval Air Station.”

“All I can say is we received maybe 15 calls between 8 and 10 p.m., about a silvery, triangular transparent object moving west,” said a duty  officer at the air station. “We don’t know what it was.

All rights reserved. Copyright, 2017, Kristen Good