Cryptid-Ape Inhabited Island Vanishes
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 18th, 2008
Lake Nippenicket (above) is a freshwater lake in the town of Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The lake borders a tiny portion of Route 104, and is near the vicinity of I-495 and Route 24. Most of the lake is included with the Hockomock Swamp Wildlife Management Area, within the Bridgewater Triangle (a term I coined over 25 years ago to describe the location of an intriguing anomalistic and cryptozoological concentration in this section of southeastern Massachusetts).
Jeff Belanger has informed me that the island in the middle of Lake Nippenicket (“The Nip”) in the Bridgewater Triangle, Massachusetts, has disappeared. Red-haired little apes were seen on this island in the 1970s and 1980s.
Today, Belanger (see below) and members (i.e. Stacey, Tracy, and Tiffany) of a southeast Massachusetts investigative group ventured into the Hockomock Swamp (above) to photograph the former location of this island.
Belanger introduces Weird Massachusetts, (shown is Dighton Rock which is part of the Bridgewater Triangle) in the following video:
Jeff talks about the Bridgewater Triangle in this video:
Jeff and Chris Balzano discuss the little trolls of the Freetown State Forest and Hockomock Swamp:
Chris discusses the Bridgewater Triangle in this short video:
A chapter in my Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation’s Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures specifically deals with the cryptozoology of this location and details the little ape sightings.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I don’t understand how an island can “disappear”. Has the water level of the lake raised?
Loren,
We had a great time with Jeff out in the swamp today. We hope to be able to investigate it with you in the near future.
Don’t you just hate those disappearing islands?????????
Stacey, Tracy, & Tiffany
Southshore Paranormal Investigators Eastcoast Society
To echo Jayman, how did this island disappear?
well if the water raised then i hope those Red-haired little apes can swim
The only “little red-haired ape” that I can think of, that could survive in Massachusetts would be the Japanese snow monkey.
Does anyone know more of the sightings, and if that is a possibility?
That would have been an easy one for one of the cryptid tv shows to get to.
Loren, did you ever check it out?
Great post. Would have like more info on the actual subject of the title. Still, informative and worth 1/2 hour to watch the videos.
1) It looks like the Nature Conservancy bought 102 acres on the lake, including a large island, per their website.
2) That’s a big island to just “vanish”. You can look at the lake on Google Earth at 41° 58′ 19″ N, 71° 2′ 28″ W
I keep thinking of Melville: “It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
You know what, i knew this may be what having faith on. 🙂 well not really faith, but… 😉
If a Big Island or any island can dissapear. GUESS WHAT IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN.
Hear me out. What if another Island Shows up, but!!!!! it’s Tropical Big, Beautiful and somehow it escaped the maps nationwide and space maps.. 😉
What if all the cryptids living there, or at least living fossils and Unknown animals that are not living fossils just new to science. 🙂
What if that Giant Turtle lives there let’s say 65ft turtle.. This is paradise of the oceans my Friends. 🙂
Animals that will Change Science forever..
The disappearance of an island suddenly like that would be very odd indeed. But then again, we are talking about an area where all manner of strange going ons have happened. Orbs, ghost lights and other spectral weirdness, UFOs, cattle mutilations, poltergeist activity, as well as the cryptozoological phenomena such as these red apes, thunderbirds, and giant snakes, have all been reported in the area for years so I suppose a vanishing island sort of fits into all of the bizarreness. If I remember correctly, even the name of the place, Hockomock, means “the place where spirits dwell”. However, I am very much into wanting to know the precise physical and scientific means by which things like a missing island happen in this case. Very interesting story.
I also would like to know more about these “apes” that were seen there and the island itself. It sounds like an interesting case. How big was this island, and how frequently visited? Has it been implied that these creatures were a self sustaining, viable breeding population living there in the middle of the lake? It seems unlikely such a population could live on a lake island without being discovered. Surely they must have been traveling out to the island for some reason? Or were they escaped or released exotics?
These are the kinds of questions I find myself asking here. I want to get at what the small apes could possibly realistically be. Great story for speculation!