Tom, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.
Yeah, thanks for having me back.
So, before we get out of Plymouth and into the countryside, uh, on New England's haunted Route 44, I wanted to, uh, take just a quick step back and ask you about some of the research that you've done and some of the approaches that you take to paranormal studies.
And the reason I ask this is because we have had in our various spooky seasons here at Crime Capsule over the years, um, authors who are really at every point on the spectrum.
We have some of our guests subscribe to it's all folklore, and folklore is fun, and folklore is great, but we have to remember it's folklore. Okay. So, there's that wing.
There's the opposite end of the wing, which is that it's all real, it's all crazy. Like, life is not what we think it is, and we better get ready. I'm exaggerating, but you know. The sort of, everything is credible approach.
And then we have the folks in the middle, who occupy the position of, you know, let's test our methods. Let's do the best we can to establish good documentation. Let's take everything with the appropriately sized grain of salt.0711066000
And the further away in time we get from an incident or a recounting of the incident, the more our skepticism should be a tool in our toolkit, you know, that we reach for. You get kind of all variety of responses to, to paranormal.
Where really do you fall on that spectrum?
Actually, all three of them apply because when I go into a case or an incident, I don't expect anything, and I'm not looking for exactly, "Okay, it's a ghost. We gotta go." I walk in and I say, "Okay, you heard this, this happened, this happened, this happened. Let's see if we can find out why."
We've had cases where, yeah, this person, um, was, uh, hearing noises in the wall. And come to find out somebody had walled up a set of keys and it was very drafty, and you'd hear the keys banging against the side of the wall. And when heavy things like that ...
We had one case where these people-
Slightly disappointing, I have to say. When you find that out, you're like, "Oh, man. Dang it."
Yeah, it is. But we've had one case where the people moved into this house and they go, the house is definitely haunted. I mean, we didn't hear this kind of noises in our old house.
So, we set up cameras and leave it open. And come to find out the house was haunted by their cat.
When they lived in the city, it was so noisy, the midnight rounds of the cat jumping around and going nuts could not be heard. But in the dead end of a, you know, little roundabout and with the woods and everything, it was so quiet. Yeah, that's what they were hearing. The cat just doing his nightly rounds.
Well, I can tell you that Snickers is haunting my studio desk right now, and she's very pleased to be doing so. But yeah, go ahead.
Yeah. So, and we hear the folklore and the things, and I do research, like we wouldn't believe on a place we, I wanna know who owned it right to the point from where it began as just a piece of land with nothing on it.
All the way up until, you know, and how many people lived in the house and how many children and who may have passed away in the house, and their ages and what they did for a living. I mean, everything I wanna find out. I go to the town halls, look up deeds.
And this way when I'm going in, I have a whole giant thing. I'm not just saying, "Oh, James Brown was the guy who was the most prominent one. He's the ghost." It could have been a friend who visited James every week.
So, I get it all. I'm on the whole spectrum there because, uh, I know of the folk law.
And first of all, in New England, behind me, you can see we have over 2,000 books and 98% of them are on all New England history.
There's sources. You have to check, you know, what else has been, you know, written out there and who's credible and who's not credible, of course. Yeah.
And I like to go all the way back to the very first writing to see why and how that came to be.
Yeah. We did have one guest, uh, last year who, uh, established, you know, uh, an investigative unit, uh, out west. I mean, do you take specialized gear when you kind of go out into the field, so to speak, if you're traipsing around the Plymouth burial ground or a new burial ground, you know, deep in the boonies of Western mass?
Yeah. We actually have, um, everything from what they call REM pods, which is nothing more than a theremin, but if something energy comes close to it, it'll start going off. What I did is I built them into, uh, candles.
Because rem pods, they look very modern and they'd say, REM pod now. Yeah, I'm gonna tell a guy from 1760, "Hey, can you touch that REM pod?" They go, "Oh, yeah, yeah. I had a ton of those when I was a kid in 1740." But you can say, "Can you hand me that candle?"
And then we use all the modern equipment, you know, for different reasons and things like that. And we use very old dowsing rods.
And Arlene as a tarot card reader, and she knows the tarot inside out. I mean, what every card goes with which. And, uh, so, we use them to field questions, and that way, it's better than saying, "Hey, do you like pizza?" We're fielding the questions, trying to work off the energy of the area. And we've been very successful like that.
Yeah, it is interesting because I imagine you have such a wide variety of cases that you describe in the book from the colonial era, from the first contact with indigenous peoples, you know, all the way up until things that happened in 2021 in the middle of the pandemic. Right?
And it sounds like you kinda have to tailor your approach to the time period of the incident you're investigating in a way.
Yeah. We have a very big tackle box and we bring it all with us because you never know. But yeah, we do use the tarot cards, dowsing rods, pendulum mats, uh, EMF meters, K-II, we use the ramp pods, uh, spirit boxes, you know, that kind of thing.
And the spirit box, we even have like battery packs for them and stuff like that, so you can take them into the woods.
I will be watching safely from a distance as you go into the woods at midnight on the stroke of Halloween. I'll be waiting at the car with some sandwiches for you, uh, you know, for when you get back. But, um, no, that's really fascinating.
I think, you know, it's always intriguing to see what are the things that we can measure. And what tools do we have are available to us to investigate these things.
Now, let's head out to Plymouth. Let's get in the car, got the sandwiches packed, got a flask whiskey for when we stop. And let's head down Route 44 a little bit.
You described this one surprised me, uh, Tom. I have to confess, as I was reading your account, I did not expect to learn about UFO activity in that part of New England.
I always associate UFO activity with, of course, the desert Southwest or, you know, parts of California. We've got plenty of the Great Lakes region, you know, we've had on the show before. But this was new to me. I did not realize that New England was such a hotspot for UAPs, we should call them, using the contemporary, you know, terminology.
And what was doubly interesting was that many of these accounts of sightings of strange things in the sky, they too date from the colonial era. You have sightings from the 1700s, not just from, you know, a drunk apple farmer in the Berkshires, you know, last year.
Exactly, yeah. Well, that's what makes these so much more interesting is because, uh, you know, John Winthrop, and he writes in his journal in 1639 that, uh, a sober and discreet man with two others saw a great light in the night over a muddy river.
And it moved around and they watched it for a while, and you can't say, "Oh, ah, it was just a drone, or maybe it was an airplane or a helicopter." Because nothing like that even existed back then. So, they'd see this bright light in the sky moving around like that. It's quite interesting.
In 1808, Cynthia Everett, um, saw one while in Camden, Maine, and she writes about it, how it moved in different directions and stuff. I mean, so, it's quite interesting.
It is. And it's also, what set it apart for me, uh, from other, uh, aerial phenomena of the time, is that the motion described cannot be a comet. It can't be a meteor breaking up in the sky. Those are unidirectional every single time. Right?
Right. And a comet doesn't move that fast either. You're looking at sky and the next night it's over there, not too far 12 hours later. And yes, media is, they don't, ()
Right, right. Exactly. So, I thought that was kind of interesting that they observe us.
How many of these accounts from the colonial and revolutionary era, you know, do we have of UAPs or UFOs in this area? Are they common, I guess is what I'm asking?
Not really. We have several, but I don't know if people who saw them may have wrote about them. Like, you know, these people who were actually writing journals, things like that. Someone may have seen one or several people may have seen one, but nobody could really write about it. Or maybe they didn't know how to.
And, uh, they could say word of mouth, which would die off over time. But, uh, to chronicles them is rare, which is great because who knows how many people actually saw these things
Right. Now, and the ones you mentioned here, um, did we get those from letters, from diary entries, from personal journal entries? What was the kind of context of the recounting?
Yeah, they were in journals, which is really cool that they wrote about it.
The one, Cynthia Everett, I mean, she was like a teacher, you know, so she was definitely gonna write about it. And John WinDor was keeping journals. And so, he writes about it because of that, keeping his journals. Cotton Mather and those people writing books on the strange things that happened in New England.
They were actually looking for something like this to write about instead of saying, "Nah, nah, nah, nah, I don't want to write about that." That was something, "Wow. I've gotta record this."
Yeah. And it raises the question of, you know, if your only intended audience is yourself, I mean, if you're actually not trying to hawk something or sell something, you're writing this down in a journal and it's for your eyes only, and you don't intend anybody else to read it because it is so private.
I've not of course seen the, you know, the originals or the, you know, the, uh, textual history. But I mean, to my mind, that just makes it like a little more credible.
If I'm writing for something for my own personal use and not to kind of put it out there in the marketplace or to kind of gin up interest among the local villagers or, you know, whatever it might be. This is really just something I saw and I'd like to make sense out of, or record so I don't forget, that just ups the credibility meter, like one half notch from the get-go. You know what I mean?
Yeah, definitely. And it wasn't like when Edgar Allen Poe wrote that article about, um, the air ship going across the thing and everything, and people were like, "Holy Jesus, this is great." He was doing it as a stunt to make money. So, if it was put out in the papers.
But these people, yeah, they're writing in their journal going, "Geez, this happened. This is amazing." And they weren't going around opening their page in the town hall going, "Look, everybody, this is what I wrote."
Exactly. Shameless plug here for our most, uh, recent guest here on Crime Capsule, Chris Semtner. We had him describe the Edgar Allen pose, uh, article on mesmerism and Misser Waldemar, you know, who is mesmerized back from the grave, um, you know, across the veil, you know, that sort of thing.
And of course, I mean, he was, he was doing it to make the money to sell the article, to further his career. And it's just classic, classic example.
Great story. Now, you write in the context of your UFO sightings on Route 44, uh, two very important institutions, which were founded in order to track these things. Project Blue Book, of course, which, you know, many people know about. And then MoveOn.
What was the kind of upshot of Blue Book and Muon with respect to this particular area along 44?
Well, muon, they did a lot of the, uh, you know, investigations and things like that. And Project Blue Book came along - Well, they were furs, obviously.
And when I was a kid, the first book I wanted to read when I was like eight or nine was Project Blue Book when it ... and, uh, but Muon was an all, you know, volunteer when that began sometime after Project Blue Book ended their thing.
And, uh, they've grown since, but wow. I mean, they have so many cases from, uh, 1947 to 1969, 12,000 sightings alone for Blue Book and 700 remain unidentified. You can get that book anyway.
Then Muon takes over where they are. And at the time it was just Midwest, Midwest and UFO, you know, that's what Muon meant. But, well, they're looking going, "Holy crap, look at this stuff that's going on in New England. Maybe we should branch out a little bit."
Yeah. Let's branch out a bit. So, yeah, they do a lot of work here too. So, it went from the Midwest to Whoof everywhere.
Yeah. And of course, for UFO trackers or UAP, you know, enthusiasts, the news in the past couple months has just been very interesting that we may begin to see the creation of a more formalized, uh, database, you know, of federal database of sightings that can be, you know, archived and documented and securely submitted, you know, for pilots, you know, who are seeing things that they can't quite explain.
I mean, um, who knows what could come out of that, you know, when you have an actual federal entity devoted to it, and not just a bunch of guys in the backyard or drunk Apple farmers in the Berkshires, to whom my heart absolutely goes out in solidarity.
Now, you had a couple of sightings very, very recently, that came up really as you were writing the book. And I was thinking of, um, the incidents along (I'm gonna try to pronounce this correctly) as Wset Pond, is that right?
Yeah. As Wset Pond. Yeah.
That's, um, cool because, uh, that's a place where, uh, uh, basically John Saman was found killed. That was one of the really big, uh, preludes to King Philips war. And, uh, of course there's a place Betty Neck. Betty's neck that's haunted.
Now, the UFOs and stuff, uh, areas, Middleborough is part of the Bridgewater Triangle, and boy, is it known for, uh, weird stuff. In 1998, people watched this bright object maneuvering over Aset Pond in middle Borough. Then it split in two.
Then the two objects began doing these weird patterns and, you know, display these weird lights and stuff. Well, they rejoined and flew off. Moments later we see Air Force Jets flying in the area.
No. Wow. Wow. Now, don't forget, this is a time when we didn't really have drones back then. You know how you can buy a drone at Walmart now or any store and just yahoo and do something with it. You can put like, you know, little battery pack with weird flashing lights you get at the Dollar Store and stick it on it and go up there and people go, "What the heck is that?"
This is also a couple years before the whole Chinese spy balloon debacle as well.
And our knowledge of how Chinese spy balloons maneuver does not match the description of what these folks saw there too.
I mean, yeah, because you got them going down even in 2021 and 2020. So, it's not like, uh, this just happened once. You got people ()
Who knows what's going on over there.
So, let's keep traveling down the highway here. And there's a major stop, which I'm gonna be completely honest, Tom, I don't want to ask you about. I really don't wanna ask you about, because when I read this section in your book, in the pantheon of spooky sites, there's one which just really hits close to home for me.
And that is, uh, abandoned or derelict hospitals. I just cannot stand that as a locust, as a, you know, setting. That just really gets under my skin.
And I'll take an abandoned prison over an abandoned hospital any day of the week. And you have one of the granddaddies of abandoned medical institutions along Route 44. So, I'm gonna take a shot of whiskey right now.
Oh, hey. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show.
I'm gonna take my shot of whiskey and I'm gonna ask you about Old Taunton, and I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna grit my teeth while you tell me about Old Taunton, because it's brutal, and I don't like it one bit. And I'm just gonna close my eyes and hope it's over really, really fast.
Oh, yeah. I thought you were gonna mention the DMV, but okay. About the vision.
Oh, well, yeah, there's that too.
We'll get there next. They are.
Well, yeah, the old asylum, I mean, first of all, the colon, it an asylum does, you know, wow, that conjuress up some thoughts. But it was erected in 1854. And Jesus, uh, it was called the State lunatic Hospital. Though, right off the bat, I don't think it was gonna gonna have any positive energies going with it.
Not a lot of happy vybes, no.
There was, um, neglect unspeakable atrocities that took place in there. Cult activity actually reported to take place in the basement where the patients were used in these rituals, which was pretty horrible.
The facility closed in 1975. Now, a lot of the facilities closed around here from neglect and everything in the '90s. So, for that, to close that early, there must have been something really bad.
And it was neglected. I mean, these patients, I guess, were living not only in this horrible atmosphere, but in a building that was derelict, falling down practically.
And actually part of it did finally collapse in 1999. They actually put this building on the register of historic places. Unbelievable, huh?
Wait, but that means people are gonna go and visit it. We don't want that. No.
But a lot of it was demolished for safety reasons later on. But a lot of them were just left and fenced off to the public, and, uh, they wanted to use some of them for modern use. But the problem is, people in the basement and in the buildings of any of these that would repurpose.
They hear like things going up and down the stairs. They get cold spots. That fear that overcomes them, that they know is not their feeling, but something being permeated into them that they run. Lights going on and off all of a sudden, uh, doors flying open, faceless, shadowy figure of a man who appears in rooms. This figure of just a dark person just appears in certain rooms.
You could not pay me enough money ever to go and check this place out. What is this?
A lot of the patients too, were buried in paupers' graves, which in the Mayflower Hill Cemetery, uh, down the road. And this is funny because the women in the hospitals used to sew burial gowns, I mean, for those who died while in the care for the facility.
So, these people would pass away and the care, and they'd had these people making just burial shrouds for them within the thing.
Yeah, yeah. This spirit of a man who walks the GOs building, which is one of the repurposed buildings, I guess. And, uh, people who went to these certain rooms, man, they get like these feelings that just, whoa, almost want throw them back into the hallway, because this place is like ...
It was also, the best part of it was home to one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.
Oh, great. Let's just add some more to the, shall we?
Oh, yeah. As if that wasn't good enough, here we go.
Jane Toppin, who was born actually honor a Kelly in 1857. Her father just dropped her off at the, uh, Boston female asylum, and then he vanished, boom, forever.
And so, the top in the family of Lowell took her in as an indentured servant. "Yo, you can come help us and you can live here." And then over time, she adopted their last name.
But she was record intelligent. However, she was a sociopath. She actually trained for nursing. And in 1885, she made many, many friends and she was nicknamed Jolly Jane because of her friendly nature.
Well, jolly Jane obviously had another side, which, uh, where she began using her patients with experiments and morphine and atropine. Now, this is cool, because she'd inject them with lethal doses, and then she would lie in bed next to them as they died.
And she would go on, she'd killed about 30 something patients before she turned a killing spree towards others. Like her sister, her foster sister.
Yeah. And, uh, other people. Well, she was arrested in 1901, so she had a lot of time to, you know, have some fun here. And she was found guilty by reason of insanity. Well, not guilty, I'm sorry. She was found not guilty by reason of Insanity. And she was committed to the state hospital, where she died in 1930.
The irony, the horror, the tragedy, the insanity of it. It's all like, wrapped up into one package, you know, just like right at this spot.
I think I need another shot of whiskey just to get to the end of this chapter.
Well, during her interview, which is kind of funny, she said her goal was to have killed more helpless people than any other man and woman who ever lived. So, she was like going on a spree. She wasn't like, "Okay, I'm done here." Had she not been caught, she probably would've kept going and going and going.
So, I have to ask you, and I don't want to ask you, but I have to, have you been to this asylum? Have you been to the site? You guys went and visited?
Yeah, but, um, like I said, some of the buildings we purposed, they don't want people going in. And it's like any other place, it's kind of private. You can't just walk into a hospital like that, or buildings like that, that have been repurposed.
I mean, like you can just walk into like, you know, day Kimball Hospital down the road and they'll still ask you, "Can I help you," as a security guard there. If you don't have a reason, it's like, "Alright, get back in your car."
Stay in the car, Tom, stay in the car and don't get out of the car. Keep driving past this particular location.
"Can I help you?" "Yeah, we wanna contact Jane Toin ghost and hang out for a while." "Okay. Yeah, yeah, sure. Come right in. Go to room eight."
Exactly, yeah. "Well, she's right over here in room 3 0 2. Waiting for you with a fresh needle."
They're not exactly welcoming on that kind of a level.
No, no. Okay. So, I'm gonna refill my, uh, pint glass of Whiskey. I'm gonna pour some coffee into my whiskey, and then we will continue this journey.
No, um, actually, as we continue the journey, I do want to ask you about one of my favorite cases in your book, and it pertains directly to driving away from the old lunatic asylum as you continue down Route 44. You have one of my absolute oldest paranormal story champions.
And I'm gonna reveal my age a little bit here, but when I was a kid, you know, growing up, uh, in the '80s and '90s, one of my favorite TV shows was Are You Afraid Of the Dark? It's like late night, you know, kinda like it was, you know, spooky kind of serialized.
And one of my favorite early episodes of Are You Afraid Of the Dark, uh, is ... I don't know if it would hold up, you know, 25 years later, you know, 30 years later and have to go and kind of, you know, check that out independently to see whether it's still spooky.
But one of my favorites was this great episode about a phantom hitchhiker. Like taxi cab driver picks somebody up, gets in the backseat, and, you know, different versions of it.
Number one, he turns around and he's gone. And number two, he turns around and like the hitchhiker's head is missing. Number three ...there's all sorts of variations.
But I mean, it's a legend or an a case, I guess, you know, on your highway that recurs. A lot of people have seen this phantom hitchhiker, so introduce us to him.
Well, the Phantom Hitchhike of Route 44. As far as I, I go back, uh, with this story, 50 years that I know of, I mean, it could've gone back further, but for me it's been 50 years.
I used to drive ... we owned a bait and tackle shop in Smithfield, Rhode Island, right on Route 44. Go figure. And I'd have to travel the middle borough, uh, to get shiners bait, you know, for the thing twice a week, sometimes during the big peak season, all the way down to 44.
And I gotta tell you, I did this for several years, and I never saw the hitchhiker. I probably wasn't looking for him at that time, but I never saw anyone hitchhiking that I could remember. You're not gonna stop, pick someone up with piles of, uh, fish in your car, but.
Well, it's kind of up to them, although it's a very interesting question. Tom, you raise a very interesting epistemological question here, which is that if you go hunting for the hitchhiker, are you less likely to find him? Does the hitchhiker only appear to those who are not expecting to see him?
That is a good question. I mean, so many people have, actually, you can go on like YouTube and everything, see how many people go. We're going to the most haunted place in the country, Route 44, rahho with the hitchhiker, who was basically, he's described as a not too tall, but a tall guy. He's described as about 40 years old with a red plaid shirt and very disheveled red hair. Basically looks like a farm person or something like that.
And people have seen him, they've stopped to pick him up. And there's some cases where the guy or girl will open the door to let them in and look back and there's nobody there. Or this person will get in and they'll be really silent. And about, you know, several seconds later, they look over and there's nobody there in the car.
One guy went as far as to say he, uh, was driving down the road and he saw this hitchhiker and he stopped. And when he went to let the person in, there was nobody there. And he started driving off.
And a few seconds later, he's up to 50 miles an hour, which is the speed limit for that area. And there's his face in the window on the outside of the window, keeping up with the car.
They'd stopped, and they pick him up, and then they hear this ghostly wild laughter that emanates from all around. They actually, driving down the road, he's in the middle of the road, they'll lock up their brakes, go right through him.
So, this redheaded hitchhike, uh, I mean, he's been out there for a very, very long time, and there's a lot of stories of an accounts of people who have actually got so scared when these things happened. They pull over and called AAA or the police. They're afraid to move, or they broke down in that area, and they encountered the hitchhiker.
So, I don't know if people looking for him or not looking for him. I think this redheaded hitchhiker will appear when he wants to appear. It is a busy road. Route 44 can be a pretty busy road at certain points.
I know some paranormal investigators, uh, really like to kind of work the data angle. I mean, is there any data on, uh, more commonly seen at night as opposed to in the daytime or commonly seen on busier, um, stretches of the highway as opposed to maybe more sparse or like between settlements, you know, kind of areas there?
Yeah, it's right near the Rehoboth line. And it doesn't go a far stretch, I'd say within a half a mile. And it's mostly dusk and night time, not so much during the day. And that area is travel. It's not exactly like, you know, Ventura Highway or something during rush hour, but it is travelled.
But as the night sets in, there's not much reason for an awful lot of vehicles to be going down that stretch. There's no Mecca Malls or anything. There are stores, but, you know, stores close at 6:00, 7:00. But that's about when he's seen mostly.
I mean, if anyone wants to take that little triangulation, where to go, when to go, you know, and try your luck, let us know what you find out, folks. Let us know what you find out.
Let's take one last stop on this magical mystery tour of Route 44. And, um, you mentioned earlier, a kind of the American, uh, landlocked version of the Bermuda Triangle, which is the Bridgewater Triangle. And specifically within the Bridgewater Triangle, you have cryptids and you've got some great cryptids.
As a southern boy, I love a good critter. Just like give me a log, I'm gonna roll it over, find out what's underneath it. Like let's go.
What kind of critters do you have in the Bridgewater Triangle?
Well, oh, wow. There is, for some reason-
All of them, he says. We've got all of them.
Yeah, we got a good array here.
Now, believe it or not, the Bridgewater Triangle was studied by Lauren Coleman and, uh, Christopher Bolzano, who wrote a book on it, goes to the Bridgewater Triangle, which is pretty cool. And, uh, Lauren Coleman has, you know, written several things.
But a lot of people besides them, people who have witnessed these creatures, uh, one of them is a person, uh, well, looks like a small person with very gangly arms, like they're broken swinging freely as it moves. And they've seen this run boom, coming out of the woods into path of automobiles or running back into the woods.
And, um, they believe it looks something like the famous Dover Demon, which is a kind of very strange looking creature, not of this world, definitely. And, um, some people have seen what looked like it was a ...
These kids, followed three toed footprints into the swamp. Now, hock Ach swamp is where it's a native, uh, place where spirits dwell. This is pretty interesting. And the hock ach swamp is pretty big. And this is where a lot of it takes place in the Bridgewater Triangle.
Well, as they followed it, they saw this giant creature, which shook half human, half bird, and it was tall, and it took, boom, straight up into the air like a rocket.
Now, Sergeant Downey was driving along home one time. This is a police officer now in 1971. Where all of a sudden he saw the same thing at the edge of the swamp. This like six foot tall bird or over six feet tall.
He stops because whoa, you know, you don't see that every day. And it starts moving toward the car, and then it stretch its wings, which he said was to be about 8 to 12 feet long, and went off into the sky again.
Now, the cool thing about this is the place is called Bird Hill, and it's a native area where the natives said this is, uh, where they've seen Thunderbirds, which is a-
Yeah. A Thunderbird is a giant mythical creature of native origin that would fit this description pretty well.
And, uh, also, uh, a couple of police officers were parked in the area. They were just, you know, near the swamp doing either a routine, let's do a traffic thing. Suddenly the rear end of the car lifts up and then dropped. And they just spin around and they spin their lights, and they see this creature that resembles a bigfoot running behind a few houses.
Yeah. Another hunter, uh, saw this bigfoot one time. He actually shot at it because it scared the crap out of him. It scared the heck out of him so much, and he found some brown hair and some little bit of blood on the leaves.
But, um, a man named Joseph m Andre spent decades collecting reports on this Bigfoot creature who many people who have seen it describe it over six feet tall, brown, and hairy.
This Bridgewater Bigfoot has been cited for I don't know how many decades, so, we'll, if it's either one creature or several of them. There's also one of a giant creature that resembles like a giant dog, but more like a wolf.
Yeah. And, uh, he was terrorizing the area. Search parties came and looked for it and could not find it. And at one point, they did see what they called a monstrous looking dog, and they fired at it, but the thing ran off into the swamp, never to be seen again. They don't know if they hid it or not.
But the most famous of these is called the puck Wedgie.
Oh, yeah. These little guys.
Yeah, the little puck wedgies.
Now, Tom, I gotta tell you, the puck wedgies, we have had, um, another one of our guests, uh, you know, has had a word or two to say about puck hudgies.
And in a way, we can have a chat about a Thunderbird or, you know, like a giant half human, half bird monster, which to my mind, I hope must resemble the giant spoon bill. If you've ever seen one of the giant spoon bills, the most ridiculous looking birds. They're enormous, but they're ridiculous. Anyway-
...you those guys. Yeah, yeah. You got Hellhounds, you got your Sasquatch, you know, your green Mountain Variety Sasquatch or your Berkshire Sasquatch as opposed to your, uh, lower Appalachian Sasquatch. I'm sure there's, you know, important distinctions between subspecies here.
All those are fine, and all those are decently scary and, you know, kind of unsettling and unnerving.
But, you know, you make the point in your book, and I think you were dead right, that the smaller something is actually the scarier it is.
And it's like when you think about the great kind of like horror movies or, uh, you know, cultural icons, I'm thinking gremlins, I'm thinking Chucky, you know, it's like the sort of the evil dolls. The smaller, the tinier, the more compact. I mean, the fear factor magnifies inversely with the size of the creature.
And puck wedgies, man. I mean, like I wouldn't wanna touch those guys with a barge pole. Get me away.
Yeah. They're like, what, two or three feet tall?
It reminds me a lot of that movie that came out in like 1971 called Trilogy of Terror with the Karen Black with the little monster, the Doll.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But because a lot of people describe him as looking kind of like that.
But yeah, puck wedgies is according to a translation, is like supposedly Wild Man of the woods that a wild man of the woods that vanishes. And again, Christopher Bolzano, the author, he really, this is like his thing, puck wedgies.
And, uh, yeah, they like, um, covered from head, you know, with head, and they resemble a troll, basically, so they could just be a troll. Which is in a lot of cultures, uh, they ... I mean, they go back to old very indigenous law and then writings about them go back to their, you know, early 20th century if not further back.
And what they do is they use the souls of the dead to lure their victims to their demise. Some people have seen them.
One man was walking his dog, and all of a sudden this creature comes out of the woods in that area and he could see the creatures beckoning him to follow him into the woods. Well, what do you think he did? Of course not. I would've ran the other way.
Tom, hold that thought real quick. Bill, let me get you to, um, come in real quick. There's somebody at my door, it looks like they're about to knock. Let me see what that is. I'm gonna shoo them away and then we'll pick right back up where we left off. Okay?
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. That's why I like this study because it's way on the ... what is this, western wing? Yeah, the western wing of the house.
Yeah, they left before I could get there, so I don't know what that was about. It's no big deal. That's fine. That's fine.
Alright, let's pick up right where you were saying what do you think that guy did. You were telling us about that particular guy.
Oh yeah. Well, he was pretty-
Yeah. What do you think he did? Well, I think he ran. But he did tell the story later. So, he lived. He must have ran.
And, um, these puck wedgies, uh, basically supposedly according to legend, they were friendly and helpful to the Indians until the Indians thought they were a nuisance. And then had them gotten rid of by, you know, another God called marsh shop or something.
But they appear and disappear and vanish, but they're known to be very alluring. Like in other words, they can put you into a trance and make you follow them to somewhere like a cliff or somewhere where you jump to your death.
Right. And then they harvest your soul for-
Whatever. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And you don't wanna annoy them.
But here's a funny thing because, um, in Freetown, near the Freetown State Forest, they actually have a sign that says Puck gie Xing
Not crossing, but X-ing as in like 86 ing us.
Yeah. It's like, you know, so in that area, I guess a lot of puck wedgies cross the road.
Yeah. Have you ever seen any small humanoid, hairy figures in your travels up and down 44?
No. It would be cool though if we did, but no, not that I can think of. Well, I'd remember, but.
Yeah, yeah. Well, if you see them, please keep, for our sakes, driving. And, uh, don't feed the locals.
Yeah. Well, the funny thing is, my whole life I've lived on or right off Route 44.
So, you have a chance. I mean, if anybody's got a chance at seeing these little guys.