Submitted by Olivia on
The Black Triangle or the Bridgewater Triangle is an area of about 200 square miles within southeastern Massachusetts in the United States. Since colonial times the area has been a site of alleged paranormal phenomena, ranging from UFO and "black helicopter" sightings (including many with multiple points of corroboration including police and a local news team), to poltergeists and orbs, balls of fire and other spectral phenomena, various "bigfoot" sightings, giant snakes and 'thunderbirds', as well as the mutilation of cattle and other livestock.
Although known for centuries as an area of unusual and unexplained activity, the specific boundaries of the Bridgewater Triangle were first defined by paranormal researcher Loren Coleman in his book Mysterious America. The Triangle encompasses the towns of Abington, Rehoboth and Freetown at the points of the triangle, and Bridgewater, West Bridgewater, Middleboro, Dighton, Berkley, Raynham, Easton, Lakeville, and Taunton inside the triangle.
In the upper section of the Bridgewater Triangle is the mysterious and largely untouched Hockomock Swamp, which means "the place where spirits dwell", and which was called "The Devil's Swamp" by early settlers.
One of the most common phenomena observed in the area is "spooklights" or the will-o'-the-wisp, sometimes known as ghost lights, a phenomenon typically seen in boggy or swampy areas. Mysterious lights also appear along train tracks every January, and foxfire has often been observed within the swamp.
There have been many who have claimed to see UFO's in the Bridgewater Triangle area. These reported sightings are still unexplained even today. One particular sighting story keeps getting told.
Here is the story about the famous sighting:
There has been a few in the paranormal field who claim that President Ronald Reagan had an encounter with a UFO over the Assonet Ledge. Their story claims that the "during the 1980's the UFO began to follow Air Force One, thus prompting fighters to be scrambled." The story then changed into "Its' claimed a mysterious light came out of the forest from the area of the Assonet ledge, and was stalking Air Force One".
For hundreds of years, the Hockomock and surrounding areas have been a hotbed of reported supernatural events and strange sightings and experiences.
The Hockomock Swamp, contained within parts of Bridgewater, Easton, Norton, Raynham, Taunton, and West Bridgewater, and crossed by a number of roads (including Route 24 and Route 138) and an old railroad bed, is 6,000 acres of black rivers, marshes and ponds, thickets of cedar and maple trees, beds of brush, twisting vines, sinkholes, and quicksand, with some of it miles removed from human habitat. It is rich in animal, plant, and geologic diversity. The swamp itself and the 17,000-acre ''Area of Critical Environmental Concern" (a designation granted by the state in 1990) in which the swamp sits, serve as a sponge and release valve for rain water and melting snow, thus protecting the area from flooding. The swamp and its environs represent the largest freshwater vegetated wetland system in Massachusetts. Human artifacts discovered in the swamp have been dated at some 9,000 years old.
Over generations, many have believed the Hockomock is home to spirits, strange animals, and more. Stories abound: There are the vicious, giant dogs with red eyes seen ravenously sinking their fangs into the throats of ponies; a flying creature that resembled a pterodactyl, the dinosaur that could fly; Native-American ghosts paddling canoes; and glowing somethings hovering above the trees. There's also talk of a shaggy
Students of the paranormal have speculated that negative and disruptive energy was created when the Native Americans of the region were so horribly persecuted, and that that energy continues to circulate in the Hockomock. There have been reports of cult and satanic rituals conducted in the swamp.
Joe DeAndrade thinks the swamp may be the habitat of a creature yet to be identified. In 1978, DeAndrade, then 24, was standing on the shore of Clay Banks, a pond in Bridgewater near the swamp. His back was to the water.
''I was standing there, and for some reason I had to turn around," DeAndrade says. '' maybe 200 yards away, there was this -- well, I don't know what it was. It was a creature that was all brown and hairy, like a big apish-and-man thing. It was making its way for the woods, but I didn't stick around to watch where it was going. I ran for the street."
He has never figured out what it was he saw. Not long after his encounter, the Bridgewater resident organized expeditions in search of the Bigfoot-like creature. Equipped with cameras and rifles, the searchers trekked deep into the Hockomock Swamp two or three times. They found not a trace of the beast. About five years after DeAndrade saw his creature, another local resident reported seeing something similar.
John Baker, a veteran fur trapper, was about a mile from his West Bridgewater home, on a canoe in a river in the swamp, laying muskrat lines on a winter night. Paddling along in the quiet, Baker heard a loud crash and rumble of an animal in the nearby woods. Frozen with fear, he saw a large hairy beast slog into the river and pass within a few yards.
''I knew it wasn't a human because when it passed by me I could smell it," Baker said in an interview in 1998. ''It smelled like a skunk: musty and dirty."
Baker, who died in 2001, always maintained that he could not identify what he saw, but that in his more than 30 years of trapping in the swamp, he never saw such a thing before or since.
http://www.neparanormalresearch.com/hauntedhistory.htm