Speaker 1: What happens if you walk into a swamp at night
and say three times, we have your baby. If you
do that in the Bare Creek Swamp in Pratful, Alabama,
you might not like the answer. Legend has it that
a woman lost her child in that swamp and spent
the rest of her life trying to find it. It
isn't clear how the child disappeared. Maybe it wandered off,
or there are those who say it was taken by
a war party of the Native Americans. We don't even
know for sure if the child was a boy or
a girl. But what we do know is that death
wasn't enough of a deterrent to make the woman stop looking.
Imagine how it must have been for that poor woman.
It probably started like any day she was going about
doing her chores. It was a long time ago when
different chores required a whole day's work just to complete
one task. Maybe it was laundry day. She was busy
boiling water and shaving strips of soap into it from
a homemade bar. She would have been bent over while
scrubbing the bedding and clothes on a washboard before passing
them through another tub of water to rentse away the
excess soap and finally hang them out to dry. While
Mama worked diligently at her burden, the child let's assume
it was a girl and let's call her Sarah, played
with her doll in the grass nearby. Mama didn't have
much time to give little Sarah much attention. She had
to rely on the child to play contently and stay close.
Mama probably didn't think much of it. The first time
she stepped around from behind a freshly hung sheet to
see her daughter wasn't in her place on the ground, Sarah.
She most likely called, putting just enough of an edge
on her voice to warn her daughter to come back
to her spot. Then she picked up the next sheet
and hung it. When she stepped around from behind the
laundry again, her daughter was still nowhere in sight, Sarah.
She called again, this time with a little more authority.
A third trip to the clothes line occupied Mamma for
a few more minutes. When little Sara still wasn't back
in her place, she probably muttered something like where is
that child off to As she walked around to the
side of the house. Sarah wasn't there. She looked around
and listened for a moment, hoping to hear her little
girl's laughter. She heard nothing. Mamma continued around to the
back of the house and then to the other side.
By the time she'd made her way back to the front,
she was beginning to worry Sarah. She called out loudly
and then stopped to listen. A cool breeze rattled the
budding leaves on the trees, but no child's voice could
be heard. Panicked now, she left the house yard and
went down to the barn, scattering the hens that pecked
at the dirt in her path as she passed. Sarah,
where are you, she repeatedly called. As she swung open
the door, the contrast of light and dark temporarily blinded her.
She stood there for a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust.
In focus, Sarah, she called out again. A bird took
flight as she ducked as it swooped low over her
head to escape through the open door, and silence followed. Slowly,
With terrified eyes, the woman turned and gazed into the
swamp that bordered their little house to the south and east. Sarah,
she whispered, as thoughts of the child wandering in such
a danger's place filled her mind. She imagined cotton mouths
and copper heads singing their fangs into the little girl's legs,
and calculated how quickly she would succumb to such a
bite without someone there to help. She had visions of
alligators dragging her precious child into the water and tearing
her to pieces, and her mind raced through scenarios where
predators clamped down on the back of the baby's neck
and dragged her deep into the swamp to gnaw on
her tiny bones. Dear God know, she managed to cry.
She raced into the thick briars, mindless of the thorns
that tore at her own clothes. She had to find
her baby, she swore, as she'd never stop looking until
she did. Hours later, her husband came in from the
fields and found the cabin empty. He called to his wife,
but she didn't answer. She hadn't started supper, and he
couldn't help but notice the half finished laundry out in
the yard. Where was she? He stepped back outside and
called her name, and then he listened. Sarah. He heard
somewhere in the distance Sarah. Was she lost? Was his
wife out looking for her? He followed his wife's path
into the swamp, calling to her as he went. Sometimes
he'd stop and listen, and again and again he heard
his wife's voice calling Sarah. But no matter how hard
he searched, he couldn't pinpoint the location of the sound.
Night fell on the swamp, crushing the light and his
hopes of finding either his wife or his child with it.
The next morning, he saddled a horse and went to town.
A search party was formed, and every inch of the
swamp that could be accessed was searched. There was no
sign of the man, wife, and child. Once in a while,
everyone would stop and listen, Sarah. They heard deepen the
by you, Sarah, but they couldn't tell where it was
coming from. After several days of looking, they gave up. Eventually,
the man packed up and moved away. Living so close
to the place that had swallowed up everything that meant
anything to him was more than he could stand. No
one knows whatever happened to him. I'd like to think
he found happiness somewhere else. As for his wife, they
say she is still out there searching. So what happens
if you step into Bear Creek Swamp and say three
times we've got your baby? Her mother will appear and
attack you, and if you escape, more power to you.
But if she catches you, you'll wind up up like
little Sarah. No one will ever find you. This isn't
the only story about Bear Creek Swamp. There are tales
of mysterious lights that appear in the road ahead. The
ghost of the Alibaimu Indians are often reported drifting in
and out of the fog and then disappearing altogether. It
is even said that a civil war battle plays itself
out over and over again on the breeze at night.
You'll never find the source, they say, but you will
hear cannons or is that just someone's still blowing up.
Aside from these frightening paranormal stories, there's one true and
verified incident that happened just a few short years ago.
While on patrol on dirt Road three through the swamp,
an officer happened to glance over and see a porcelain
doll sticking up out of the muddy waters. At that time,
he thought, well, that's odd, but didn't give it much
more thought until over the next few days, dozens of
reports came in of a doll's head seen in the swamp.
The police went out to investigate and discovered a total
of twenty one dolls impaled on bamboo poles and stuck
down in the mire. It was a veritable dull graveyard.
Some of their faces were painted white, further enhancing an
already grim scene. I don't know who the prankster was
or who took the time to place all those dolls
out there, but kudos to you. You succeeded in creating
one of the creepiest practical jokes I have ever known of.
All swamps contain an air of mystery, a feeling of
being otherworldly, whether you feel like you've stepped through some
kind of a time warp, landed on another planet, or
passed through the vales that separate life from after life.
All swamps at some point will impose uncomfortable emotions on
the bravest of men. When that swamp bears the name Hackemack,
which means the place where spirits dwell and was originally
called the devil Swamp by white settlers, those feelings are
likely to come more frequently and with greater intensity. While
we tend to think of swamps as being a Southern landscape,
they're not Hakamack is located in southeastern Massachusetts, square in
the middle of the legendary Bridgewater Triangle. Stories have poured
out of that region of weird creatures, ghostly apparitions, and
unexplainable disappearances for generations. Places like a Sonnet Ledge, where
even the happiest of souls fell the suicidal urge to
throw themselves into the waters below, and Easton's Mill Pond,
where satanic imps were said to be employed by Nathan Seleah,
a wizard to run the mill at night, can be
found within the triangle. It seems that everywhere within the
triangle hides one legend or another, but within the swamp
there are many. Early one morning, a fisherman was quietly
running his boat along the banks of the non Catessit River,
moving into the swamp through a heavy fog, when he
heard what sounded like a distant drum beeat. It only
lasted a moment, but it got his attention. He glanced around,
but the mists were too thick and the sound had stopped,
so he continued on his journey with nothing more than
a gentle whirring of his trolling motor to break the silence.
When he heard it again, and again he stopped and listened.
The slapping clunk of waves lapping at his boat echoed
around him, and somewhere a bird called for its mate.
The wind rustled in the trees, and the occasional raindrop
fell with a splat against the aluminum seat at the bow.
The drums he thought he heard were gone, and again
the warring trolling motor kicked up, and he moved on.
Now on the edge, the fishermen began to feel as
though he were being watched. His natural response was to
watch back, except he didn't know what he was looking for.
And then he saw it. It was nothing more than
a patch of fog that seemed a little denser than
the rest, but it was moving rhythmically. The fisherman cocked
his head to listen, and there were no drumbeats now,
just the even gentle, trickling woosh of a paddle being
swept through the water, over and over as it propelled
a boat forward. The fisherman craned his eyes hard on
that point, and the haze was spinning and dissolving and reforming.
White particles of water disintegrated into darkness and then reformed
in shades of buff and brown. Tendrils that trailed into
space solidified into arms, and a spherical object that once
floated aimlessly, became a human head. Before the fisherman's eyes.
A Native American slid out of the void and appeared
to be paddling his canoe toward him. Too stunned to move,
the fisherman grasped the sides of his boat and waited
for impact. He was sure this strange man in the
traditional apparel of the Wampanawag people was going to steer
his canoe right into him. Seconds before he would have
done just that, the strange man turned the canoe slightly
and glided silently past. He was so close that the
fisherman could have reached out and touched him. The fisherman
never took his eyes off the bazaar site. As the
canoe passed, he turned his head to follow, and just
as it had materialized into existence, it dissolved out of it.
Not once did the man in the canoe acknowledge the fisherman.
Seconds after the apparition disappeared, the distant sounds of a
drum could be heard. One last time. The fisherman might
have counted himself lucky. That day, another man, this one
outlaying muskrat lines, had a similar experience. It wasn't drums
that he heard that morning, but a loud crash startled The
man looked up to see a massive, hairy beast to
break through the trees and slog down into the waters
of the swamp. It growled with a low, menacing rumble
before passing within a few yards of the terrified man.
I knew it wasn't a man because it smelled when
it passed. He would later say it smelled like a skump,
musky and dirty. Aside from ghostly apparitions and unknown beast,
Hackamack Swamp has a reputation for another phenomenon. In nineteen
oh eight, two undertakers were traveling between West Bridgewater and
Bridgewater when they spotted something in the sky that looked
to them like a giant lantern. The two men stopped
and watched the peculiar light while it hovered in place
for nearly forty minutes. In nineteen oh eight, there were
no blaming experimental military aircraft for what the undertaker saw.
Granted Orville and wilbur Wright first achieved flight just south
of Kittyhawk North Carolina in nineteen oh three, but craft
capable of hovering in nineteen oh eight I was still
getting no more than a few feet off the ground
and never managing to stay in the air for more
than a few minutes. The first practical helicopter wouldn't come
into existence until nineteen thirty nine. Even if it were
possible that the inventors working diligently to give wings to
man just happened to fly those machines over Hackamack's Swamp
on the same night that two undertakers happened to be
traveling past, it doesn't explain the first documented UFO sighting
ever recorded there. John Winthrop was a lawyer and a Puritan.
In sixteen thirty he helped establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
the second settlement in New England after the Plymouth Colony.
For twelve years, he served as governor. During that time,
he kept an extensive diary of the trials and triumphs
of his fellow Puritans. One entry in particular is now
referred to as the first documented u FO siding in
American history. In his March first, sixteen thirty nine entry,
Winthrop told the story of John Everell and two others.
He declared Everell to be a man of good reputation, activity,
and estate in Boston. The following is an excerpt from
the diary. In this year, one James Everell, a sober,
discreet man, and two others saw a great light in
the night at Muddy River. When it stood still, it
flamed up and was about three yards square, and when
it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine.
It ran as swift as an arrow towards Charleston, and
so up and down for about two or three hours.
They were come down in their lighter about a mile,
and when it was over they found themselves carried quite
back against the tide to the place they came from.
Diverse other credible persons saw the same light after about
the same place. These men in good standing with the Governor,
along with several others, saw these lights over the course
of three hours. They hovered and darted and shot back
and forth as these men watched, And when it was
over they found themselves a full mile upstream from where
they'd been when they first spotted the lights. Upstream? Were
these men also the first alien abductees? UFO reports continued
to come out of this region today. In nineteen ninety nine,
a woman saw lights while she was at a cookout.
She says they too darted around. At one point, she says,
they looked as if they were heading right for the
house where the cookout was being held. What makes her
story so fascinating is that once the lights disappeared, helicopters
swarmed the area where they'd been, as if they were
looking for something. Was our government searching for something? Or
had they just missed a rendezvous