From Bill Russo, the author of The Creature From the Bridgewater Triangle, comes new tales from the 200 square mile area that is sometimes called 'America's Bermuda Triangle'. This time the stories are fiction - and yet these yarns come from a place where 'real' and 'unreal' collide and exist in an uneasy truce in the same space.
Four young friends gather at a summer camp near the eerie Hockomock Swamp. They spin a few campfire yarns. The oldest of the group tells a story that could be called The Cold, Clammy Touch of Death.
His narrative is derided by his companions so he offers them a far darker scenario when he relates the bizarre life of Jimmy Catfish of the devilish body of disparate waters called Codfresh Lake.
As the last hushed words of the story fade away, more firewood is piled on the campfire and an unforeseen event ratchets the mood of the friends from jocular to tense as they contemplate a new horror - a reanimated warrior from a hundred years ago who wears a string of scalps around his neck and head - some of which are fresh with blood from the newly dead.
Swamp Tales
Horrors from the Hockomock Swamp
and the Cape Cod Marshes
by Bill Russo
Copyright 2015
Also by Bill Russo
The Ghosts of Cape Cod
In paperback, E-book And as an audiobook narrated by NPR’s Scott R. Pollak
The Creature From the Bridgewater Triangle
Available in both
Paperback and e-book formats.
It’s a book of New England stories, including the account of the author’s encounter with a Puckwudgie, as featured on national television and in the award winning documentary, “The Bridgewater Triangle”.
Jimmy Catfish – the Beginning and the End
The prequel and backstory to a story first told
In chapter three of this book.
Crossing the Musical Color Line
Stories of singers and players that the Bill Russo knew or interviewed; some famous, some only known as ‘musician’s musicians – but all iconic and influential.
Table of Contents
Foreward
Chapter One: The Campfire
Chapter Two: The Ironworks
Chapter Three: Codfresh Lake and Jimmy Catfish
Chapter Four: Rip and Joe Santini
Chapter Five: The Taunton State Hospital for the Criminally Insane
Forward:
The greatest boxing match ever, was not contested in a slick Las Vegas fight room with glitzy ringsiders paying $2500 a seat; but in a back alley, most likely in a rust belt city, by two unknown combatants - probably with no onlookers.
The most skilled baseball player? He was surely a farm boy in Texas who never traveled more than a hundred miles from his home, but could 'chunk' a fist sized rock 61 feet through the air and knock a fly off a frog's tongue.
So too with stories of the paranormal - Ghost stories, Vampire Tales, and Werewolf Wanderings. The best of these don’t come from Hollywood or from television.
The grimmest of yarns come from close to the ground. From trailside cooking fires and bunkroll musings; the scariest narratives are born.
Are they real? Right up front I will tell you they are not! They are merely campfire tales. Keep telling yourself that as you read the yarns from a place where reality, imagination, and the impossible exist at one time in the same place.
I will only repeat again, that the truest yarns are the ones that emanate from the source. When the tales being told, are being iterated in one of the most haunted places in the world, the stories get even icier.
Such is the case with the offerings in this short book. It takes place mostly in the area of the Hockomock Swamp, which is a spooky place that lies within the even scarier, Bridgewater Triangle.
The Bridgewater Triangle is a focus point of some 200 square miles in Southeastern Massachusetts about half way between Boston and Providence, where thousands of unexplained happenings have mystified residents and researchers for hundreds of years.
The areas of strange activity are centered around the towns of Raynham and Bridgewater, but many weird tales also come from the whole area, stretching down even to the island/peninsula of Cape Cod.
In one of the most credible UFO sightings ever, two respected TV journalists reported seeing a large spacecraft over the Raynham Dog Track.
Bigfoot, Middlefoot and even Littlefoot sightings are as common as Little League baseball fields, in the towns of The Bridgewater Triangle.
Cannibalistic monster dogs with glowing red eyes and sharp, long fangs have been spotted dining on local farmers' stock. A 40 ton rock, unearthed at low tide in a salty river turned out to be the prehistoric equivalent of a graffiti wall. Thousands of ancient scrawlings on it, of undetermined meanings have boggled the brains of men and women of science for over a hundred years.
One man was walking his dog on a midnight trek when he met a squat, hairy swamp creature (probably a Puckwudgie) who spoke to him; begging him to 'come here'. The gentleman refused the chance of chatting with the pleading bushy being, and in so doing, most likely saved his life - according to those who claim to know the power of such demons.
Ancient extinct dinosaurs with the ability of flight; (pterodactyls) reportedly still fly in the spirited air of the vast, uncharted Hockomock Swamp. The most reputable witness to such a featherless flyer, was a Norton, Massachusetts Police Sergeant, who besieged with so many questions, eventually declined any further comment on the matter.
Serpents, or snakes, nearly as big around as telephone poles, are seen with some regularity. Ghostly lights sometimes illuminate whole sections of trees in the thick forests that surround tiny kettle ponds.
Spectral illuminations, on occasion, shine far above 'The High Tees' - a swath of land running from Boston to Providence, hosting the high tension wires of the Electric companies. There are those who say that this verdant strip is a superhighway for all manner of odd creatures traveling back and forth from Lizzie Borden's home in Fall River, to Boston and Providence.
The stories in this work, come from four Counselors of a Summer Camp deep inside the Hockomock where the trees and the rocks are the same as they were hundreds of years ago. On a three day training mission before the official start of the season, they were seated around a smoky fire; doing what people have done ever since fire was first captured and corralled by a group of round stones: sharing campfire tales.
(Author’s Note: These tales make no claims of authenticity, though many are based on local myths and legends.)
Part of the Hockomock Swamp
In their words, here are the Tales From The Swamp: