By Justin McKinney, Staff Writer

Last week I weaved an article that attempted to shed light on the strange things that have been happening in a 200 mile piece of land in southeastern Massachusetts, known as the Bridgewater Triangle. I wrote of ghostly hitchhikers, ancient Native American curses as well as legends, satanic rituals, and even real-life murder.

Last week’s article barely touched the surface of the Bridgewater Triangle, since I wasn’t able to include anyone else’s experiences or feelings on the triangle other than my own.

So, the Bridgewater Triangle is returning to the Torch one last time before Halloween.

I reached out to a few UMass Dartmouth students this week to gauge feelings and hopefully hear some true stories from students about the triangle. Luckily I got a fantastic response.

Senior Criminal Justice major Pat Reimer gave me a riveting account about what may have been a ghostly encounter he had in the Triangle.

Reimer said “I was walking around Freetown State Forest for fun and happened to see a very large black dog about forty feet in front of me perched on a very small hill. It was motionless and just staring at me. I froze for a minute, looked to my right as I heard rustling in the leaves and when I turned back the animal was gone without a trace”

Reimer claimed to have looked around for the animal for about a half hour and found nothing. Eerily, in 1976 an Abington resident claimed to have seen a black phantom dog with red eyes ripping out the throat of his horse.

  An officer backed up the man’s statement saying he fired his gun at the dog when it charged him, but to no avail.

While Reimer’s story does not take place in Abington, Abington is a part of the Bridgewater Triangle and it would not be shocking to me, given the history of the Triangle, if these two events were loosely related.

In a discussion I had with junior Computer Science major Derek Cohansky, he claimed that he had seen what he claimed was some type of ghost light around the Swamp.

“I couldn’t tell you what it was, I was doing a little investigating for myself and then all of the sudden I see a few mysterious white lights coming from around the swamp. It was just myself and two friends, no one else, [and] whatever it was I certainly can’t explain it.”

Cohansky’s account isn’t the first of mysterious lights around Hockomock as it is possibly the most common report coming out of the triangle, specifically around Hockomock Swamp.

Some claim that the lights are the spirits of those buried in a mysterious tomb that was excavated in 1928 on a grassy island in Hockomock Swamp.

According to different reports, the tomb was unearthed and the red ocher within the tombs had somehow bubbled and completely dissolved, as if they had been exposed to extreme heat.

Not a single one of the pictures of the tomb had developed correctly, coming out either completely black or gray.

Some claim that the anthropologists involved with the expedition went back and forth a few times, taking several rounds of photos until they eventually gave up on the idea.

This week, I made my way to Freetown State Forest and it was even more frightful for me than Hockomock. I trekked my way fairly deep into the forest and just as in the swamp I felt eyes on me the whole time.

However, in Hockomock it felt like an entire village was watching me, while in Freetown State Forest it was simply one set of eyes stalking me like prey.

At a certain point I stopped to evaluate my surroundings and I was hit with a harsh smell of rotten eggs and it felt as if the temperature was rapidly dropping. While I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, it certainly didn’t feel right as my stomach felt as if it was in my chest. I can’t say for sure what caused the drop or the smell, but both are supposedly sure signs of ghosts.

Anyone who is interested to in the Bridgewater Triangle should check it out for themselves. I’ve been writing about this for two weeks now; if you go into the Triangle, fright will find you!