The Bridgewater Triangle Casebook - The 'Nip'

The Bridgewater Triangle Casebook - The 'Nip'

The Deadliest Place in the Bridgewater Triangle

by Bill Russo

author of The Creature From the Bridgewater Triangle

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What is the Bridgewater Triangle? 

It's a group of 17 towns in Southeastern, Massachusetts, in the New England region of the adjacent 48 states of the U.S.A. The area has been host to a massive amount of paranormal activities, hauntings, UFO sightings, and various weird creatures and events dating back to colonial days, some 400 years ago.

When the Europeans first came to what is now called America, they killed off a great percentage of the Native Americans with two things they carried with them - muskets and diseases.  The indigenous people had few defenses against either one.  

With his dying breath, one of the Wampanoag chiefs cast a curse both upon the people and the land of the Bridgewater Triangle. Some researchers believe the curse may be the reason for the spate of problems that have plagued the region for the past four centuries. 

Though the troubled area does not really have fixed boundaries, it  corresponds roughly to the triangle shown in the following illustration..... 

The Bridgewater Triangle begins at the City of Champions, Brockton, Massachusetts.  It was home to Rocky Marciano, the only undefeated Heavyweight Champion in the extensive history of Boxing.  Longtime Middleweight King, Marvelous Marvin Hagler also is from Brockton.  The success of its high school athletic teams also contributed to the community's nick-name. 

From Brockton,  the lines of the triangle extend towards Providence, Rhode Island to the left, and Fall River, Massachusetts towards the right. 

It was in Fall River, you'll recall, where a young woman named Lizzie Borden is said to have taken an axe and gave her Mother 40 whacks and when she was done, she gave her father 41.  

Though she was found innocent by a jury, most people think her long standing anger at her rich but very stingy father, boiled over after his parsimony made the whole family sick with rotten food they ate.   Whether true or not, it is a fact that after they recovered from severe food poisoning, Mr. and Mrs. Borden were brutally murdered by a unknown person wielding an axe.

"I didn't do this horrible crime," Miss Lizzie did chime, "I was busy in the attic eating apples at the time!"

After she was arrested and during the time of her trial, Lizzie Borden was held in the old Taunton Jail on Hodges Street - but oddly, until the day she died she claimed that she was detained in the Taunton State Hospital for the Insane.  She refused to admit that she was actually a prisoner in the jail. 

An Ode to the 'Nip'

by Bill Russo

In summer it was a great spot for a dip,
that scary lake the locals call the 'Nip'.

Though long, but scarcely six feet deep, 
it sent a dozen souls into endless sleep. 

The selectmen, after a long legal wrangle
sealed off this eerie part of the Triangle.

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Lake Nippenicket, known in Southeastern Massachusetts as the 'Nip' is a deceptively serene looking 350 acre body of water that was for many years one of the most popular swimming spots in all of New England.  

It also became known as perhaps the most deadly place of recreation in New England, after each new season produced a number of drowning victims.  Eventually the Town officials decided to forever close the lake to swimming, or even wading at the shoreline. Violators can be fined or jailed, or both!

What is so strange about the situation is that the Nip is a very shallow lake. Most of the pond is just three feet deep!  At its greatest depth, most of the basketball players in the NBA could walk from the North Shore of the Nip to its South Side without getting their chin wet, because at its greatest, it's only six feet deep! 

The average sized adult can literally wade a quarter of a mile along the sandy bottom towards the middle of the lake, before the waters reach his or her shoulders.  

Back around the turn of the century, my dog Sammy and I spent many hours splashing around in the Nip.  It was Sammy's pond of choice. We had a few other swimming spots one town over in Raynham, but Sam preferred the Nip in Bridgewater. We never encountered a problem or were witness to any drownings.

Each year during the 1990s one or more persons would somehow manage to drown in this strange little pond that's not much deeper than a bathtub. 

How then, could the shallow pond be guilty of sending so many victims to a watery grave?    

I have two possible answers.  

One: There must be hidden, deep channels in the lake.  Perhaps the channels shift from time to time so that nobody knows exactly where they are.  A person could be wading in water scarcely equal to a yard-stick, before making a fatal step into a swift-running channel that might be 20 feet deep.  

Two: The lake was cursed by the Native Americans who were slaughtered by the invading Europeans from the Plymouth Colony. This is a theory subscribed to by many people who have studied the lore of the Wampanoag Tribe, which was responsible for saving the lives of the 1620 Europeans at what is now called Plymouth. As a reward, a generation later, most of them were killed or sold off as slaves. (See King Phillip's War for more information.)

Though I suspect that Number One is the reason, it's possible that both answers are correct - because the 'Nip' is, after all, right in the beating heart of The Bridgewater Triangle. 

In the two decades or so, since the sandy beach at the Nip was covered with a layer of jagged rocks - and swimming, and even wading; was banned, there have been zero deaths.  

The Nip was the only public swimming area in the entire town of Bridgewater. That being the case, you might think that in the heat of July or August, people would be tempted to test the warm waters of the mild looking pond. 

But it is not so! Even bold young people on hot summer nights, parking at the side of the lake, perhaps fortified with spirits - don't dare to challenge the spirits that might be in the Nip. 

It was once the Most Deadly Part of the Bridgewater Triangle - and if it's ever re-opened, I suspect it will quickly reclaim its title. 

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Bill Russo, a retired Journalist, Broadcaster, and Union Ironworker, is the author of The Creature From the Bridgewater Triangle, and is featured in the Bridgewater Triangle Documentary now playing on Amazon Prime.  His books and short stories are on Smashwords (where many are free) as well as on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple.