By Mack Eon:
Nestled in southeastern Massachusetts, the Bridgewater Triangle is a 200-square-mile region infamous for a baffling range of paranormal phenomena.
First coined by cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, the area includes towns such as Freetown, Rehoboth, and Bridgewater, and is associated with an eerie cocktail of unexplained activity- ghosts, UFOs, cryptids like Bigfoot and Pukwudgies, bizarre crimes, and even ancient curses.
Over time, the Bridgewater Triangle has become a folkloric beacon that attracts skeptics, believers, and investigators alike.
But what keeps them coming back? The answer may lie in the profoundly different ways people experience the triangle.
The Scientific Eye: Matt Moniz
Matt Moniz, a molecular chemist and analytical scientist by profession, has spent over four decades researching the unexplained. His journey into the unknown began with a personal experience.
“I saw something when I was younger that looked like a non-human craft in the sky,” he said. “I’ve been looking into the unexplained since the unexplained started looking into me.”
Despite his career in hard sciences, Moniz approaches the paranormal with an open yet critical mindset.
“I am a skeptic by nature, and by job. I work with the information and am willing to accept that something is a possibility, especially if it has some evidence to back it,” he said.
Moniz believes that the Bridgewater Triangle deserves rigorous attention.
“There have been strange things happening in this area since the colonial period, and if you talk to the Wampanoag, they will tell you strange things have been happening here since long before that,” he said. “Scientifically, seeing a pattern of encounters lends credence to the idea that something exists.”
Testimony from reliable individuals holds the most weight for Moniz.
“Their description is 8-foot tall and hairy or something, and from reliable individuals—a police officer, whose testimony is good enough to put someone on death row—then I’m willing to consider it as truth,” he said.
Unlike many who chase ghosts with shaky phone footage, Moniz prefers tangible data.
“A camera is not going to suffer from a hallucination; you can’t say definitively what it is, but you can say for sure that it’s on film,” he said.
He’s even tackled the folklore surrounding creatures like Bigfoot.
“Native Americans don’t call them what we call them, and the translation typically means brother, or friend. People are confusing these things for being ape-like, when they are actually just feral people,” he said.
For Moniz, the paranormal isn't magical, just misunderstood.
“The magical and mysterious will always be held out at arm’s length until it becomes science… something will always be magic and woo-woo until you investigate it and it becomes science,” he said.
He also described how things in the triangle seem to have their own desires.
“What you go looking for in the Bridgewater Triangle is not necessarily what finds you,” he said.
The Skeptical Lens: Aaron Cadieux
Independent filmmaker Aaron Cadieux is best known for his 2013 documentary The Bridgewater Triangle, which helped bring the region into the national spotlight.
“If you Google the Bridgewater Triangle, it opens kind of like a Pandora's box,” Cadieux said. “It's a well-known place naturally when it comes to weird stuff, nationally.”
Despite dedicating years to the strange occurrences, Cadieux admits he remains largely skeptical.
“I walked into the documentary 99% skeptic, and walked away about 96% skeptic,” he said.
He’s seen how stories evolve, often into something more sensational than what it began with. He emphasized that people who don’t name a cryptid in their story, typically have the best story.
“This random old guy, Bill Russo, back in 1990, was the most convincing thing to me. He described this little 3–4-foot hairy creature when walking his dog. It’s morphed into the sighting of a ‘Pukwudgie,’ but that was not what he described. He didn’t name it. He seemed very genuine,” he said.
He also notes the power of cultural influence, and how it can shape perception.
“It’s mostly because the region was defined as a hotspot for this kind of stuff. By Loren Coleman, a high-profile guy in this field, people are more willing to entertain the unexplained when you’ve thrown it into the public consciousness,” he said.
Cadieux believes the local terrain doesn’t support some of the more outlandish claims.
“If Bigfoot is hiding anywhere, it’s not here. The Freetown State Forest is barely 5 miles from civilization,” he said.
He said the perception of the area as a hotspot for the unexplained could warp the explained into things that they aren’t.
“It’s one of those chicken and the egg kind of things, and since you live in an area where strange things are reported, it’s easy to mistake the mundane, like a deer crashing through the woods, as Bigfoot,” he said.
While ghost stories were the most submitted content during the making of the documentary, Cadieux remains highly skeptical.
“Unfortunately, it sometimes seemed like a lot of people were looking for their 15 minutes of fame,” he said.
The Folklorist’s Path: Christopher Balzano
Christopher Balzano’s introduction to the Bridgewater Triangle wasn’t dramatic, but rather very gradual.
“I kept getting dragged back to the triangle without even realizing it existed,” he said.
A folklorist and former acquisitions librarian, Balzano began his research by tracking down legends throughout Massachusetts.
“The folklorist in me kicked in, and I realized something was going on here, in this triangle,” he said.
Balzano sees himself as a documentarian, approaching things from a neutral perspective.
“I don’t approach anything as trying to prove or disprove, but rather document,” said. “You can’t deny what’s going on. You can deny what exactly it is, but you certainly have to acknowledge something is going on.”
He explained that his work began before the Triangle’s fame.
“A lot of my research was from before the triangle was big, back when people didn’t know it was this big thing,” he said.
He credits his early work to researcher Chris Pittman, and filmmaker Aaron Cadieux.
“Nobody was talking about the Bridgewater Triangle in 1990, it wasn’t until my work, Chris Pittman’s work, and Aaron’s documentary that things took off,” he said.
What sets the Bridgewater Triangle apart, according to Balzano, is its darkness, and the context of its legends.
“There’s a distinctive difference between stories from inside the triangle and the stories from other places. The stories in the Bridgewater Triangle are much darker, much harder to explain, there is no origin,” he said.
He said there are some troubling trends in the area, and strange outliers from national statistics.
“There was a noticeably higher rate of divorce (6.4 per 1000), higher rate of teen suicide (9.0 Per 1000), higher rate of fatal car crashes on Route 24 (1.17 per 100 million cars traveled), and Bridgewater State had a student suicide rate 10 times the national average (9.0 per 100,000),” he said.
He also said folklore has shifted to contribute to the Triangle’s lore.
“You see folklore creatures, like the Pukwudgies for example, shift dramatically in personality folklore-wise in the past couple centuries. They’ve grown darker, more malicious,” he said.
To Balzano, the Triangle itself appears to be a sentient creature.
“I think whatever the darkness is of the triangle, it has to be some living, breathing thing,” he said. “It has to have a consciousness, and a desire. From all my research, it does everything a predator would do.”
He explained how exactly it appears to prey on people.
“It watches. It waits. It picks its targets. It adapts. It knows your weaknesses,” he said. “It’s a hodgepodge of folklore from other places. Like it’s dragging these things in, hanging lures.”
He even suspects the Triangle affects those who investigate it.
“If you look at people who are triangle investigators, bad things happen to them. We’re almost all divorced, almost all languishing and stuck in this thing,”
Balzano also told some disturbing anecdotes from his own research.
“I had kids I worked with describe waking up and seeing what they described as Venom… they saw shadow people,” he said. “Others all dreamed of the same witch, this dream of being assaulted by this witch, and could follow their steps back to this old house in the woods. The odds of them all having this exact dream about this exact place is so low, it’s crazy.”
He also offered an insight into why the triangle is so prominent.
“Once you start looking closely at the Bridgewater Triangle, it’s very hard to pull away. It’s almost impossible.”
The Experiencer: Tim Weisberg
Tim Weisberg is a radio host and paranormal investigator whose journey into the Bridgewater Triangle began with curiosity.
“I had paranormal experiences my entire life, but it wasn't until I started my Spooky Southcoast radio show on WBSM in 2006 that I first heard about the Bridgewater Triangle,” he said.
It was Aaron Cadieux’s student film Inside the Bridgewater Triangle that introduced him to the legend. At first, he only wanted to report others’ experiences. But that changed quickly.
“Capturing a disembodied voice on my first real investigation led me to want to have more such experiences and figure out what was actually going on,” he said.
Weisberg, like others before him, said that the Triangle has a unique pull.
“Every time you think you’re out of the Bridgewater Triangle, it pulls you back in,” he said.
Over time, his involvement deepened.
“At first it was just wanting to tell stories, then I started having my own experiences, then I started trying to help other people make sense of theirs,” he said.
His encounters range from shadow figures and strange sounds to moments where he felt watched or even targeted.
“Sometimes it feels like the Triangle knows exactly what you’re afraid of and delivers it,” he said. “There are moments that leave you shaken for days, and others that leave you questioning everything you thought you knew.”
Due to this, he echoes Balzano’s belief that the Triangle must be alive in some way.
“I think the Triangle is almost like a tulpa. It’s taken on a life of its own. It reacts to you,” he said.
For Weisberg, the line between storytelling and personal experience has blurred.
“There are things I’ve seen and heard that I can’t explain, and frankly, I don’t want to try anymore. I just want to understand how to live with it,” he said.
The Experiencer’s Journey: Marc Colocousis
Marc Colocousis approaches the Bridgewater Triangle not as a scientist or a folklorist, but as someone compelled by personal experience and driven by an analytical mindset.
A security officer working on a defense contract involving bioterrorism vaccines, Colocousis admits his curiosity was first sparked by childhood interests in UFOs and shows like Project Blue Book. But his path into the paranormal deepened with a single article.
“My father, later, showed me the article from Chris Pittman about the Bridgewater Triangle, and from there, I was hooked,” he said.
Equipped with a camcorder, an EMF detector, and a critical perspective, Colocousis began his own investigations into the region’s mysteries. His first experience came one cold November night near the Hockomock Swamp.
“I was already done with it. I was already willing to give it up,” he said, when something inexplicable happened. “He turns on the lights, and we see this thing… it was tall, about six foot, and it glimmered. And then I see another, and another, and another.”
Like many experiencers in the Triangle, Colocousis’ encounters didn’t stop at one. From strange sightings in the woods, eerie sounds like that of a spider monkey, to what he describes as spiritual contact at the Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Taunton, each event seemed to pull him deeper.
“I remember we heard this sound… I stayed with the equipment, and everyone else moved toward it. They saw a lantern, like the one I was holding, and they thought it was me. I never left the equipment.”
His approach remains skeptical but open. “There’s high air traffic in the area, so you’ve gotta take that into account,” he noted after witnessing strange lights in the sky. “I have a very analytical approach- I don’t just believe everything going into it.”
Still, Colocousis acknowledges the Triangle has a way of feeding on energy. “The more people come to investigate and bring stuff here, the more things we see,” he said. “The bigger it’s gotten, the more the triangle is investigated, the more it’s fed, the more it expands.”
His experiences reflect a pattern often echoed by investigators and experiencers alike: the Triangle doesn't just contain stories—it seems to absorb and evolve them.
“You become an antenna,” Colocousis said. “The more you go, the more the spirits want to talk. You get stuff more and more, more frequently than you think you should.”
The Bridgewater Triangle: A Kaleidoscope of the Unknown
Whether you view the Bridgewater Triangle through a camera lens, a microscope, an ancient myth, or a childhood nightmare, one thing is certain- this is a place that refuses to be pinned down.
Whether viewed through the microscope of science, the lens of skepticism, the framework of folklore, or the lived experience of those who venture into the unknown, the Bridgewater Triangle continues to resist easy explanation.
For researchers like Matt Moniz, it's a pattern of anomalies waiting for scientific validation. For Aaron Cadieux, it's a cultural phenomenon shaped as much by perception as by fact.
For Christopher Balzano, it's a dark well of folklore that defies narrative closure. For people like Marc Colocousis, it's something even more personal; a place that watches back.
Comments
Post a Comment