Ghosts of the SouthCoast Read Online Free

Triangle, the mysterious spot in which many ships and aircraft were said to have disappeared. With all the reports of strange phenomena Coleman was receiving from eastern Massachusetts, he eventually came to realize that much of it was centered on a specific hot spot, and he gave it a catchy name to equate it in people’s minds with its Bermudan counterpart. Coleman’s original Bridgewater Triangle was much more condensed, but modern reinterpretation of the triangle extends it with the towns of Abington, Freetown and Seekonk as its vertices.
    The exact points aren’t important, however; further work from Coleman and researchers such as Chris Pittman and Christopher Balzano has shown that the triangle is gradually extending beyond any preconceived borders andthe heightened amount of paranormal activity extends to the SouthCoast and beyond into northeastern Rhode Island.
    Balzano has also noted that the triangle area has unusually high rates for both crime and mental illness in comparison with locations outside of it. In fact, one of the most controversial films ever produced in the Bay State, Frederick Wiseman’s
Titicut Follies,
was banned upon its release in Massachusetts because of the way it portrayed the mentally ill residents of Bridgewater State Hospital—even though the commonwealth declared it was due to privacy issues. Watching the way the staff handles the patients in that film is allegorical to how we’re treated by the Bridgewater Triangle—the inmates are already a little bit crazy, but the asylum is only making it worse.
    The triangle area was considered to have a certain power long before the English settlers first trekked through it. At its center is the Hockomock Swamp, which at six thousand-plus acres is the second-largest wetland in Massachusetts. At least thirteen rare and endangered species live in the swamplands—and possibly some hereto undiscovered ones as well—and archaeologists have found materials around the swamp that date back some nine thousand years.
    The name
Hockomock
comes from the Wampanoag languages, and means “place where spirits dwell.” The Wampanoags felt that both good and evil spirits resided near the swamp, which if properly revered could bring great fortune in hunting and fishing but if mistreated could bring doom and destruction.
    As civilization has encroached upon it, attempted to develop it and continually misunderstood it, the swamp may have gone into permanent negative mode.
    Those who visit the swamp have reported seeing thunderbirds (mysterious birds the size of a full-grown man), pterodactyls, dogs with glowing red eyes, huge snakes, black panthers and, perhaps most notably, a Bigfoot-like creature traipsing about the area.
    UFOs have been reported flying over the swamp as far back as May of 1760 and again in 1908. They are commonly sighted throughout the Bridgewater Triangle in modern times, but reports of a “sphere of fire” (according to Pittman’s website) appearing over the skies 150 years before the first airplane certainly makes the triangle sightings historic.
    With all the mysterious phenomena that take place within the triangle, ghosts actually tend to fall by the wayside when investigating the area.However, it was within the Bridgewater Triangle that I had my first ghostly experiences.
    In my teenage years, I had relatives living in the small town of Halifax, on the outer eastern edge of the Bridgewater Triangle. My aunt and uncle purchased a home that, while not terribly old, stood on what had been farmland since the first settlers came in the late 1600s. It was country living at its finest, and I often spent time there during the summer.
    During their first years there, it became apparent that they weren’t alone in that house. Shadows would move along the walls down the hallway. Faucets would turn themselves on in the middle of the night. The door to the closet in a child’s bedroom would fly