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Showing posts with the label Hockomock Swamp

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

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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

Hockomock Swamp

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“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 farmers 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 in the Algonquin word for “place where spirit’s 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 swamp. They were terrified by it. The fear that Hockomock Swamp instilled in the colonists of the 1600s inspired the nicknames “The Devil’s Swamp” and “The Devil’s Bowl.” Hockomock Sw

The Surpising Truth About Who First Carved Into "The Bridgewater Triangle Explorer's Tree:" An Interview With the Bridgewater Triangle's own, Horror Writer James Michael Rice

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Early on in my exploration of the Bridgewater Triangle, I spent a lot of time with one Joseph DeAndrade, Bridgewater Triangle researcher and alleged Bridgewater Triangle Bigfoot witness. DeAndreade and I spent hours talking on the phone about his experiences hunting for Bigfoot and discussing our theories on this strange area where we live. We took many hikes through Hockomock Swamp. One day, he said he wanted to show me something very special: "The Bridgewater Triangle Explorer's Tree." The tree is located off the Elm Street Hockomock Swamp path and for all means, is hidden in the middle of nowhere. It took us two trips back to the swamp to find it, but we did (with the help of a helpful young man who knew that area of the swamp like the back of his hand.) So there we were...at the tree. The over-sized Beech Tree was covered in carvings. The two most profound carving being "Welcome to the Triangle" and another, a very creepy looking carving that simply