Secrets of the Bridgwater Triangle - The Deadly Nip
by Bill Russo
The quiet little nip, a pond in the Bridgewater Triangle, is more like
an enormous bathtub or a
back yard pool than a lake.
It is just three feet
deep on average and six feet at its deepest.
The bottom is sandy from the shoreline to the very center of the
350 acre pond.
Details of the most dangerous body of water in the 'Triangle' will follow after
we examine details of the triangle itself.
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. Lake
Nippenicket is a 354-acre natural pond with 4.8 miles of shoreline in
Bridgewater and Raynham. It borders the Hockomock Swamp, forms the headwaters
of the Town River, and is part of the Taunton River Watershed.
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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