Post by Tim Weisberg on Oct 30, 2006 12:52:31 GMT -5
"Spooky Southcoast" Science Advisor Matt Moniz is prominently featured in today's edition, in a story about the mysterious Bridgewater Triangle.
www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/10/30/the_old_haunting_grounds/
Matt Moniz, host of the radio show ‘‘Spooky Southcoast,’’ in the reportedly haunted Freetown State Forest. (Barry Chin/ Globe Staff)
The old haunting grounds
Some say Bridgewater Triangle is a paranormal hot spot
By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | October 30, 2006
FREETOWN -- When Matt Moniz looks at craggy Profile Rock, he does not see the graffiti that deface what local legend says is the proud visage of a Wampanoag chief. He does not see the litter left by partiers, either.
What Moniz sees is one of the supernatural superstars of the Bridgewater Triangle, a 200-square-mile swath of swamp and towns that devotees of the paranormal call New England's hot spot for the weird and inexplicable.
Moniz, a chemist by profession, also cohosts "Spooky Southcoast," a weekly radio show on a New Bedford station. Profile Rock, tucked away in Freetown State Forest, holds a special fascination for Moniz because he grew up hearing of its reputation for hosting Native American ghosts in battle dress. The 39-year-old has yet to see a spectral warrior, but that has not stopped him from looking.
Profile Rock, however, is only one locale in a cornucopia of the creepy in this corner of southeastern Massachusetts, where the bloody legacy of King Philip's War in the late 17th century remains a tragic, delicate subject for the Wampanoag people, whose ancestors were brutally vanquished by the English settlers.
But in the so-called Bridgewater Triangle, points of which reach Abington, Freetown, and Rehoboth, a 250-year-old chronicle of the otherworldly has included reported sightings of UFOs, Bigfoot-type creatures, household-variety apparitions, and ghostly, psychotic truckers.
"In all my experience as a person who investigates the paranormal, I haven't found a similar area in this part of the country that's comparable for so many of this kind of claims," said Christopher Pittman, 27, of Franklin, a salesman who collects paranormal reports on a website and investigates many of them.
From 10 a.m., May 10, 1760, when a "sphere of fire" reportedly was seen in the sky over Bridgewater, Pittman said, the triangle has provided steady fodder for those who suspect the world holds more than meets the eye.
Other reports, Pittman said, have included the sighting of two UFOs landing near Route 44 in Taunton in 1976; large prehistoric-looking birds fighting over the inhospitable 6,000-acre Hockomock Swamp ; and several glimpses of a terrifying 7-foot-tall creature that seemed half human and half bear.
Moniz says that, in his role as "science adviser" to the "Spooky Southcoast" show on WBSM (1420 AM), he attempts to find scientific explanations for easily explainable phenomena that listeners report. Sometimes, those lights in the sky are only a meteor shower, according to Moniz.
Other times, he offers, there is no ready explanation, such as the time he says he saw a female form on a sheer cliff face on Assonet Ledge in Freetown. After he turned to his friends to announce they had company, Moniz said, he turned to the woman again -- only to see she had vanished.
To Moniz, who has journeyed to England to study UFO-linked sites, the paranormal is just a different kind of normal.
Chris Balzano, 31, a writing teacher at Notre Dame High School in Lawrence, thinks the number of odd occurrences defies logic in the Bridgewater Triangle. "I've seen cycles of tragedy and what might be a negative force popping up in different forms down through the centuries," says Balzano, of Woburn, who operates a website called Massachusetts Paranormal Crossroads.
And Freetown, he said, is the "psychic-energy heart" of the triangle. In the rural community of 8,500 people, reports have passed by word of mouth about a ghostly trucker who speeds on winding, lonely Copicut Road, blares his horn -- although no one can say whether the rig is a Mack, a Peterbilt, or some foreign job -- and threatens motorists, Balzano said. Talk about road rage.
But as quickly as the trucker appears, Balzano said, he disappears.
Winifred Sienkewicz, who owns a farm off Copicut Road, was asked this week if she had ever encountered the "mad trucker."
"It's news to me," Sienkewicz said, shortly after leading a horse on the broad expanse of Land's End Farm. "I've been here since '81, and I've never heard anything about it."
A few miles away, at the gate leading to Profile Rock, Bruce Rymszewicz, 55, had just returned from the outcropping with his daughter and a few of her friends.
Stories of Native American ghosts still angered by their defeat in King Philip's War do not frighten him.
Still, Rymszewicz, a Freetown native, said he remembers long-ago tales about a phantom with green eyes in these woods where he played as a child. "Thank God I never saw it," he said.
www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/10/30/the_old_haunting_grounds/
Matt Moniz, host of the radio show ‘‘Spooky Southcoast,’’ in the reportedly haunted Freetown State Forest. (Barry Chin/ Globe Staff)
The old haunting grounds
Some say Bridgewater Triangle is a paranormal hot spot
By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | October 30, 2006
FREETOWN -- When Matt Moniz looks at craggy Profile Rock, he does not see the graffiti that deface what local legend says is the proud visage of a Wampanoag chief. He does not see the litter left by partiers, either.
What Moniz sees is one of the supernatural superstars of the Bridgewater Triangle, a 200-square-mile swath of swamp and towns that devotees of the paranormal call New England's hot spot for the weird and inexplicable.
Moniz, a chemist by profession, also cohosts "Spooky Southcoast," a weekly radio show on a New Bedford station. Profile Rock, tucked away in Freetown State Forest, holds a special fascination for Moniz because he grew up hearing of its reputation for hosting Native American ghosts in battle dress. The 39-year-old has yet to see a spectral warrior, but that has not stopped him from looking.
Profile Rock, however, is only one locale in a cornucopia of the creepy in this corner of southeastern Massachusetts, where the bloody legacy of King Philip's War in the late 17th century remains a tragic, delicate subject for the Wampanoag people, whose ancestors were brutally vanquished by the English settlers.
But in the so-called Bridgewater Triangle, points of which reach Abington, Freetown, and Rehoboth, a 250-year-old chronicle of the otherworldly has included reported sightings of UFOs, Bigfoot-type creatures, household-variety apparitions, and ghostly, psychotic truckers.
"In all my experience as a person who investigates the paranormal, I haven't found a similar area in this part of the country that's comparable for so many of this kind of claims," said Christopher Pittman, 27, of Franklin, a salesman who collects paranormal reports on a website and investigates many of them.
From 10 a.m., May 10, 1760, when a "sphere of fire" reportedly was seen in the sky over Bridgewater, Pittman said, the triangle has provided steady fodder for those who suspect the world holds more than meets the eye.
Other reports, Pittman said, have included the sighting of two UFOs landing near Route 44 in Taunton in 1976; large prehistoric-looking birds fighting over the inhospitable 6,000-acre Hockomock Swamp ; and several glimpses of a terrifying 7-foot-tall creature that seemed half human and half bear.
Moniz says that, in his role as "science adviser" to the "Spooky Southcoast" show on WBSM (1420 AM), he attempts to find scientific explanations for easily explainable phenomena that listeners report. Sometimes, those lights in the sky are only a meteor shower, according to Moniz.
Other times, he offers, there is no ready explanation, such as the time he says he saw a female form on a sheer cliff face on Assonet Ledge in Freetown. After he turned to his friends to announce they had company, Moniz said, he turned to the woman again -- only to see she had vanished.
To Moniz, who has journeyed to England to study UFO-linked sites, the paranormal is just a different kind of normal.
Chris Balzano, 31, a writing teacher at Notre Dame High School in Lawrence, thinks the number of odd occurrences defies logic in the Bridgewater Triangle. "I've seen cycles of tragedy and what might be a negative force popping up in different forms down through the centuries," says Balzano, of Woburn, who operates a website called Massachusetts Paranormal Crossroads.
And Freetown, he said, is the "psychic-energy heart" of the triangle. In the rural community of 8,500 people, reports have passed by word of mouth about a ghostly trucker who speeds on winding, lonely Copicut Road, blares his horn -- although no one can say whether the rig is a Mack, a Peterbilt, or some foreign job -- and threatens motorists, Balzano said. Talk about road rage.
But as quickly as the trucker appears, Balzano said, he disappears.
Winifred Sienkewicz, who owns a farm off Copicut Road, was asked this week if she had ever encountered the "mad trucker."
"It's news to me," Sienkewicz said, shortly after leading a horse on the broad expanse of Land's End Farm. "I've been here since '81, and I've never heard anything about it."
A few miles away, at the gate leading to Profile Rock, Bruce Rymszewicz, 55, had just returned from the outcropping with his daughter and a few of her friends.
Stories of Native American ghosts still angered by their defeat in King Philip's War do not frighten him.
Still, Rymszewicz, a Freetown native, said he remembers long-ago tales about a phantom with green eyes in these woods where he played as a child. "Thank God I never saw it," he said.
