‘Bridgewater Triangle’ film cites litany of mysteries
NOTE: Film director Aaron Cadieux and paranormal / Bridgewater Triangle investigator & author Chris Balsano will be joining us on Beyond The Edge Radio this Sunday May 11th at 8PM ET on www.para-x.com - you can find the film at The Bridgewater Triangle or at the film's website...Lon
It was a late-night walk in a Raynham neighborhood silent and still, lost in sleep.
Suddenly, William Russo’s dog, Samantha, began to shake and quiver — as he describes it, “rattlin’ like an old Chevy.”
Russo looked around, listened, and finally heard what was terrifying her.
“Eh wan chu. Eh wan chu. Keahr. Keahr.”
A sort of high-pitched wail.
And then he saw it.
Illuminated in the circle of a street light was a creature unlike any he’d ever seen: 3 to 4 feet tall, potbellied, big-eyed, covered in hair, unclothed.
Later, as he struggled to make sense of what he’d seen, Russo realized that whatever it was, it was beckoning him: “We want you, we want you . . . Come here, come here.”
But he never saw it again.
These are the sorts of stories — seemingly endless and diverse, bizarre and flouting reason — that emanate from the so-called Bridgewater Triangle, the subject and title of a full-length documentary by local filmmakers Aaron Cadieux and Manny Famolare (to whom Russo told his story).
The film, making the rounds in local screenings, weaves history, paranormal research, first-hand accounts, police reports, and urban legends as a means to explore, if not completely make sense of, the “how” and the “why” of this infamous area’s multitude of unexplained phenomena.
“Our goal was to present information from eyewitnesses and experts in a neutral, journalistic way, and let the viewer make their own determination,” said Cadieux, a Dartmouth resident.
Local residents will have several opportunities to see for themselves, with a free screening at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Raynham Public Library, as well as a Dead of Night Tours presentation at 8 p.m. Friday at the Trask Museum in Plymouth, and a 7:30 p.m. showing May 16 at Uplifting Connections in Bridgewater.
You may have heard some of the stories. The 200-square-mile Bridgewater Triangle, whose rough borders stretch from Abington to Freetown to Rehoboth, abounds with them — apparitions, UFOs, Bigfoot, killer dogs, mystical creatures, enormous birds and snakes, satanic rituals, disappearances, murders.
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman thought up the ominous name in his 1983 book, “Mysterious America.”
“It’s becoming one of the preeminent paranormal stories in the world,” Tim Weisberg, host of the radio show “Spooky Southcoast,” says in the film.
The cinematographically rich documentary, narrated by John Horrigan, started out as a practice film more than a decade ago. While a student at Fitchburg State College, Cadieux made a 30-minute short about the triangle.
But the film got passed around and generated so much interest that in 2010, when he was a professional filmmaker with his own production company, Bristol County Media LLC, Cadieux set out to make a full-length version.
Around the same time, Famolare, a lifelong East Bridgewater resident, was looking to do a similar project; the two eventually teamed up.
Like many people growing up in the area, Cadieux, who lived 6 miles from the Freetown-Fall River State Forest, had always heard the stories, but never experienced anything firsthand.
“I consider myself a skeptic when it comes to this stuff,” he said. “The Bridgewater Triangle is an interesting topic, but it takes a lot to convince me.”
Famolare, on the other hand, likens the proliferation of tales to the smell that permeates a house even years after its cigarette-smoking denizens have left.
“The amount of stories that come out of there, and the consistency of stories — there is something with that area,” he said. “I do think there are some things that are definitely overexaggerated. But there are stories that are very believable.”
According to the film, the most “active” spots are the Freetown-Fall River State Forest and the roughly 17,000-acre Hockomock Swamp, which extends into Bridgewater, East Bridgewater, Easton, Norton, Raynham, and Taunton.
According to Weisberg, “Hockomock” was Algonquin for “place where spirits dwell,” and it became a hiding place for Native Americans after King Philip’s War in the late 17th century.
Some credit the pervasive, unexplained happenings to the mistreatment of the Native American population at the time. Entire towns were destroyed, innocent women and children were slaughtered, and, ultimately, 5 percent of the region’s residents — of all backgrounds — were killed. The Colonial forces eventually prevailed, capturing King Philip — who was drawn, quartered, and beheaded — and selling surviving non-Christian Native Americans into slavery, according to the film.
Within the Hockomock Swamp, there have been reports of dancing orbs of light, raptors with 12-foot wingspans, snakes “the size of stovepipes,” red-haired orangutans, “ravenous red-eyed cats,” black panthers and mountain lions, and, most consistently, Bigfoot, the film says.
In the early 1980s, the Boston Herald interviewed now-deceased West Bridgewater resident John Baker about his purported brush with the hairy beast.
“Something was following me and I knew it was big,” Baker is quoted as saying in the story, which is read by its author, Ed Hayward, in the film. “I knew it wasn’t a human because when it passed by me, I could smell it. It smelled like a skunk, musty and dirty, like it lived in the dirt.”
Other headlines over the years blared: “Mysterious Balloon over Bridgewater!” “UFOs over Randolph? Some Persons Say Yes!” “Killer Dog Eludes Abington Police!”
In the 1970s, UFO sightings were rampant. Former WHDH reporter Steve Sbraccia recalls in the documentary that, while driving along Route 106, he saw an illuminated object resembling a baseball home plate and as wide as five side-by-side 747s hovered and then took off.
Elsewhere, there have been reports of lingering and mischievous apparitions, phantom hitchhikers and antagonistic ghost trucks, drums and voices speaking Algonquin, and fires that gave off no heat, smell, or smoke. Others have sworn to have seen puckwudgies, 3-foot-tall beings with magical powers associated with Wampanoag folklore.
In the Freetown-Fall River forest, meanwhile, police have investigated a series of satanic activities, most of them in the 1970s and the 1980s. According to police reports, the murders of three women were linked to satanists who held rituals there, a dozen baby calves were slaughtered, birds were sacrificed in the center of pentagrams, animal bones of all types were discovered, and graves (both mausoleums and pet cemeteries) were robbed.
The filmmakers themselves recalled how their lights went on and off of their own volition while filming, and batteries drained much faster than usual.
As Famolare said, the stories are so copious that the documentary could be 60 hours long.
“Whatever it is, we keep talking about this region for some reason,” said a well-known paranormal researcher, Jeff Belanger. “And the reason is, something real happened here. There’s no other way. You take away the real events, and it’s just a story. Stories go away.” - Boston Globe
Ghosts of the Bridgewater Triangle
Dark Woods: Cults, Crime, and the Paranormal in the Freetown State Forest, Massachusetts
Monsters of Massachusetts: Mysterious Creatures in the Bay State
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Brazilian Fan Killed By Flying Toilet Bowl
A football fan in Brazil has been killed after he was struck on the head by a toilet bowl hurled from a stadium in the World Cup host city of Recife.
The man died on Friday night after a large fight erupted following a match between Santa Cruz and Parana at the Arruda Stadium, across town from a brand new World Cup venue.
A police officer at the scene said fans inside the stadium ripped out three toilets from a lavatory and threw them from the stands at rivals on the streets below.
He said one hit and instantly killed the fan.
Brazil's Tribunal for Sporting Justice has opened an investigation and ruled the stadium be closed pending its outcome.
Recife has built a new stadium, the Pernambuco Arena, for four World Cup matches in June and July on the northeastern city's outskirts.
The country is scrambling to get ready to host the tournament but preparations have been marred by delays, costs and several fatal accidents.
Fifa President Sepp Blatter has told fans to be optimistic that Brazil's hosting of the event will be a success, despite growing concerns over security and public unrest. - SKY
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Shrimper who caught rare goblin shark: "Man, he's ugly!"
He has a face only a mother could love -- a mother who lives 1,000 to 3,000 feet under water and voraciously feeds on live squid and fish.
We're talking about a goblin shark -- only the second member of his species ever caught in the Gulf of Mexico, and the first since 2000, shark expert John Carlson said.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," Carlson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research biologist said. "Some would call them 'ugly.' I think, 'interesting.'"
Carl Moore, 63, of Townsend, Georgia, was the unlikely archeologist of this ichthyological wonder, which he estimates was 18 to 20 feet long. He caught it on April 19, about halfway through an 18-day fishing trip.
Carlson guesses it was closer to 15 feet, with the largest goblin shark ever measuring 18 feet.
Moore decided an exact appraisal wasn't in his best interest.
"I was going to take the tape measure, then he flashed around again. I said, 'Forget the measurement. That thing'll eat me up!'"
Moore has been shrimping the Atlantic and the Gulf for 50 years, with a short break for a stint in the Air Force, and he's "caught so much weird stuff: sawfish, Bahamian anglefish, loggerback turtles weighing 1,000 to 1,500 pounds." But when the goblin shark spilled out of his trawling net full of royal red shrimp, Moore felt "disbelief."
"First thing I told them boys was, 'Man, he's ugly! Looks prehistoric to me,'" Moore said.
Goblin sharks do resemble some prehistoric species, and Carlson said Moore made a "pretty important find." They're not seen anywhere all that often, though the coast of Japan boasts the shark's share of recorded sightings.
"We don't know a lot about deep water fauna," Carlson said. "We know little about (goblin sharks) -- how long they live, how fast they grow." One thing that's fairly certain: At their size, goblin sharks have few natural predators, according to Carlson.
The photographs Moore provided to NOAA will help expand that knowledge. Carlson said he and a colleague now are writing a paper on goblin sharks to submit to a scientific journal.
And Carlson can thank a 3-year-old boy for that. Moore just recently began carrying a camera with him on his shrimping expeditions. He wants to share pictures of what he does with his grandson Keaton, who turns 4 on Wednesday.
Moore released the shark after getting photographic evidence of his -- and just about anyone's -- greatest fish story ever.
"Anything that's alive we try to put back in the ocean," he said. - CNN
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