New England's Haunted Route 44: An interview with author Thomas D'Agostino

CC_Tom 2

Speakers: Benjamin Morris & Thomas D’Agistino

Benjamin Morris (00:00):

Tom, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thomas D’Agistino (00:03):

Yeah, thanks for having me back.

Benjamin Morris (00:06):

So, before we get out of Plymouth and into the countryside on New England's haunted Route 44, I wanted to take just a quick step back and ask you about some of the research that you've done and some of the approaches that you take to paranormal studies.

Benjamin Morris (00:28):

And the reason I ask this is because we have had in our various spooky seasons here at Crime Capsule over the years, authors who are really at every point on the spectrum.

Benjamin Morris (00:40):

We have some of our guests subscribe to it's all folklore, and folklore is fun, and folklore is great, but we have to remember it's folklore. So, there's that wing.

Benjamin Morris (00:57):

There's the opposite end of the wing, which is that it's all real, it's all crazy. Like life is not what we think it is, and we better get ready. I'm exaggerating, but you know. The sort of everything is credible approach.

Benjamin Morris (01:13):

And then we have the folks in the middle, who occupy the position of let's test our methods. Let's do the best we can to establish good documentation. Let's take everything with the appropriately sized grain of salt.

Benjamin Morris (01:31):

And the further away in time we get from an incident or a recounting of the incident, the more our skepticism should be a tool in our toolkit that we reach for. You get kind of all variety of responses to paranormal.

Benjamin Morris (01:52):

Where really do you fall on that spectrum?

Thomas D’Agistino (01:56):

Actually, all three of them apply because when I go into a case or an incident, I don't expect anything, and I'm not looking for exactly, "Okay, it's a ghost. We got to go." I walk in and I say, "Okay, you heard this, this happened, this happened, this happened. Let's see if we can find out why."

Thomas D’Agistino (02:18):

We've had cases where, yeah, this person was hearing noises in the wall. And come to find out somebody had walled up a set of keys and it was very drafty, and you'd hear the keys banging against the side of the wall. And when heavy things like that ...

Thomas D’Agistino (02:37):

We had one case where these people-

Benjamin Morris (02:39):

Slightly disappointing, I have to say. When you find that out, you're like, "Oh, man. Dang it."

Thomas D’Agistino (02:44):

Yeah, it is. But we've had one case where the people moved into this house and they go, the house is definitely haunted. I mean, we didn't hear this kind of noises in our old house.

Thomas D’Agistino (02:53):

So, we set up cameras and leave it open. And come to find out the house was haunted by their cat.

Thomas D’Agistino (02:57):

When they lived in the city, it was so noisy, the midnight rounds of the cat jumping around and going nuts could not be heard. But in the dead end of a little roundabout and with the woods and everything, it was so quiet. Yeah, that's what they were hearing. The cat just doing his nightly rounds.

Benjamin Morris (03:17):

Well, I can tell you that Snickers is haunting my studio desk right now, and she's very pleased to be doing so. But yeah, go ahead.

Thomas D’Agistino (03:24):

Yeah. And we hear the folklore and the things. And I do research, like you wouldn't believe, on a place. I want to know who owned it right to the point from where it began as just a piece of land with nothing on it.

Thomas D’Agistino (03:38):

All the way up until and how many people lived in the house, and how many children, and who may have passed away in the house, and their ages, and what they did for a living. I mean, everything I want to find out. I go to the town halls, look up deeds.

Thomas D’Agistino (03:52):

And this way when I'm going in, I have a whole giant thing. I'm not just saying, "Oh, James Brown was the guy who was the most prominent one. He's the ghost." It could have been a friend who visited James every week.

Thomas D’Agistino (04:08):

So, I get it all. I'm on the whole spectrum there because I know of the folklore.

Thomas D’Agistino (04:14):

And first of all, in New England, behind me, you can see we have over 2,000 books and 98% of them are on all New England history.

Benjamin Morris (04:24):

There's sources. You have to check what else has been written out there and who's credible and who's not credible, of course. Yeah.

Thomas D’Agistino (04:31):

And I like to go all the way back to the very first writing to see why and how that came to be.

Benjamin Morris (04:37):

Yeah. We did have one guest last year who established an investigative unit out west. I mean, do you take specialized gear when you kind of go out into the field, so to speak, if you're traipsing around the Plymouth burial ground or a new burial ground deep in the boonies of Western Mass?

Thomas D’Agistino (05:01):

Yeah. We actually have everything from what they call REM pods, which is nothing more than a theremin. But if something energy comes close to it, it'll start going off. What I did is I built them into candles.

Thomas D’Agistino (05:16):

Because REM pods, they look very modern and they'd say REM pod now. Yeah, I'm going to tell a guy from 1760, "Hey, can you touch that REM pod?" They go, "Oh, yeah, yeah. I had a ton of those when I was a kid in 1740." No. But you can say, "Can you hand me that candle?"

Thomas D’Agistino (05:32):

And then we use all the modern equipment for different reasons and things like that. And we use very old dowsing rods.

Benjamin Morris (05:45):

Oh yeah, sure.

Thomas D’Agistino (05:46):

And Arlene as a tarot card reader, and she knows the tarot inside out. I mean, what every card goes with which. And so, we use them to field questions. And that way, it's better than saying, "Hey, do you like pizza?" We're fielding the questions, trying to work off the energy of the area. And we've been very successful like that.

Benjamin Morris (06:09):

Yeah, it is interesting because I imagine you have such a wide variety of cases that you describe in the book from the colonial era, from the first contact with indigenous peoples, all the way up until things that happened in 2021 in the middle of the pandemic. Right?

Thomas D’Agistino (06:28):

Yeah.

Benjamin Morris (06:28):

And it sounds like you kind of have to tailor your approach to the time period of the incident you're investigating in a way.

Thomas D’Agistino (06:37):

Yeah. We have a very big tackle box, and we bring it all with us because you never know. But yeah, we do use the tarot cards, dowsing rods, pendulum mats, EMF meters, K-II, we use the ramp pods, spirit boxes, that kind of thing.

Thomas D’Agistino (06:54):

And the spirit box, we even have like battery packs for them and stuff like that, so you can take them into the woods.

Benjamin Morris (07:04):

I will be watching safely from a distance as you go into the woods at midnight on the stroke of Halloween. I'll be waiting at the car with some sandwiches for you for when you get back. But no, that's really fascinating.

Benjamin Morris (07:22):

I think it's always intriguing to see what are the things that we can measure. And what tools do we have available to us to investigate these things.

Benjamin Morris (07:31):

Now, let's head out to Plymouth. Let's get in the car, got the sandwiches packed, got a flask whiskey for when we stop. And let's head down Route 44 a little bit.

Benjamin Morris (07:46):

You described … this one surprised me, Tom. I have to confess, as I was reading your account, I did not expect to learn about UFO activity in that part of New England.

Benjamin Morris (08:04):

I always associate UFO activity with, of course, the desert Southwest or parts of California. We've got plenty of the Great Lakes region we've had on the show before. But this was new to me. I did not realize that New England was such a hotspot for UAPs, we should call them, using the contemporary terminology.

Benjamin Morris (08:26):

And what was doubly interesting was that many of these accounts of sightings of strange things in the sky, they too date from the colonial era. You have sightings from the 1700s, not just from a drunk apple farmer in the Berkshires last year.

Thomas D’Agistino (08:46):

Exactly, yeah. Well, that's what makes these so much more interesting is because John Winthrop, and he writes in his journal in 1639 that a sober and discreet man with two others saw a great light in the night over a muddy river.

Thomas D’Agistino (09:03):

And it moved around, and they watched it for a while. And you can't say, "Oh, ah, it was just a drone, or maybe it was an airplane or a helicopter." Because nothing like that even existed back then. So, they'd see this bright light in the sky moving around like that. It's quite interesting.

Thomas D’Agistino (09:24):

In 1808, Cynthia Everett saw one while in Camden, Maine, and she writes about it, how it moved in different directions and stuff. I mean, so, it's quite interesting.

Benjamin Morris (09:39):

It is. And it's also, what set it apart for me from other aerial phenomena of the time, is that the motion described cannot be a comet. It can't be a meteor breaking up in the sky. Those are unidirectional every single time. Right?

Thomas D’Agistino (10:01):

Right. And a comet doesn't move that fast either. You're looking at sky and the next night it's over there, not too far 12 hours later. And yes, meteorite are [crosstalk 00:10:14].

Benjamin Morris (10:15):

Right, right. Exactly. So, I thought that was kind of interesting that they observe this.

Benjamin Morris (10:21):

How many of these accounts from the colonial and revolutionary era do we have of UAPs or UFOs in this area? Are they common, I guess is what I'm asking?

Thomas D’Agistino (10:34):

Not really. We have several, but I don't know if people who saw them may have wrote about them. Like these people who were actually writing journals, things like that. Someone may have seen one or several people may have seen one, but nobody could really write about it. Or maybe they didn't know how to.

Thomas D’Agistino (10:57):

And they could say word of mouth, which would die off over time. But to chronicle them is rare, which is great because who knows how many people actually saw these things.

Benjamin Morris (11:10):

Right. Now, and the ones you mentioned here did we get those from letters, from diary entries, from personal journal entries? What was the kind of context of the recounting?

Thomas D’Agistino (11:21):

Yeah, they were in journals, which is really cool that they wrote about it.

Thomas D’Agistino (11:25):

The one, Cynthia Everett, I mean, she was like a teacher, so she was definitely going to write about it. And John Winthrop was keeping journals. And so, he writes about it because of that, keeping his journals. Cotton Mather and those people writing books on the strange things that happened in New England.

Thomas D’Agistino (11:42):

They were actually looking for something like this to write about instead of saying, "Nah, nah, nah, nah, I don't want to write about that." That was something, "Wow. I've got to record this."

Benjamin Morris (11:57):

Yeah. And it raises the question of if your only intended audience is yourself, I mean, if you're actually not trying to hawk something or sell something, you're writing this down in a journal and it's for your eyes only, and you don't intend anybody else to read it because it is so private.

Benjamin Morris (12:19):

I've not of course seen the originals or the textual history, but I mean, to my mind, that just makes it like a little more credible.

Benjamin Morris (12:29):

If I'm writing for something for my own personal use and not to kind of put it out there in the marketplace or to kind of gin up interest among the local villagers or whatever it might be. This is really just something I saw, and I'd like to make sense out of, or record so I don't forget, that just ups the credibility meter like one half notch from the get-go. You know what I mean?

Thomas D’Agistino (12:57):

Yeah, definitely. And it wasn't like when Edgar Allen Poe wrote that article about the air ship going across the thing and everything, and people were like, "Holy Jesus, this is great." He was doing it as a stunt to make money. So, if it was put out in the papers.

Thomas D’Agistino (13:13):

But these people, yeah, they're writing in their journal going, "Geez, this happened. This is amazing." And they weren't going around opening their page in the town hall going, "Look, everybody, this is what I wrote."

Benjamin Morris (13:26):

Exactly. Shameless plug here for our most recent guest here on Crime Capsule, Chris Semtner. We had him describe the Edgar Allen Poe’s article on mesmerism and Monsieur Waldemar who is mesmerized back from the grave across the veil, that sort of thing.

Benjamin Morris (13:48):

And of course, I mean, he was doing it to make the money to sell the article, to further his career. And it's just classic, classic example.

Thomas D’Agistino (14:01):

Great story.

Benjamin Morris (14:01):

Great story. Now, you write in the context of your UFO sightings on Route 44, two very important institutions, which were founded in order to track these things. Project Blue Book, of course, which many people know about. And then MUFON.

Benjamin Morris (14:19):

What was the kind of upshot of Blue Book and MUFON with respect to this particular area along 44?

Thomas D’Agistino (14:31):

Well, MUFON, they did a lot of the investigations and things like that. And Project Blue Book came along — well, they were furrows, obviously.

Thomas D’Agistino (14:46):

And when I was a kid, the first book I wanted to read when I was like eight or nine was Project Blue Book when it ... but MUFON was an all volunteer when that began, sometime after Project Blue Book ended their thing.

Thomas D’Agistino (15:02):

And they've grown since, but wow, I mean, they have so many cases. From 1947 to 1969, 12,000 sightings alone for Blue Book and 700 remain unidentified. You can get that book anyway.

Thomas D’Agistino (15:21):

Then MUFON takes over where they are. And at the time, it was just Midwest. Midwest and UFO, that's what MUFON meant. But, well, they're looking going, "Holy crap, look at this stuff that's going on in New England. Maybe we should branch out a little bit."

Benjamin Morris (15:37):

Have a look.

Thomas D’Agistino (15:38):

Yeah. Let's branch out a bit. So, yeah, they do a lot of work here too. So, it went from the Midwest to whoof, everywhere.

Benjamin Morris (15:49):

Yeah. And of course, for UFO trackers or UAP enthusiasts, the news in the past couple months has just been very interesting that we may begin to see the creation of a more formalized database of federal database of sightings that can be archived and documented and securely submitted for pilots who are seeing things that they can't quite explain.

Benjamin Morris (16:14):

I mean who knows what could come out of that when you have an actual federal entity devoted to it, and not just a bunch of guys in the backyard or drunk apple farmers in the Berkshires, to whom my heart absolutely goes out in solidarity.

Benjamin Morris (16:32):

Now, you had a couple of sightings very, very recently, that came up really as you were writing the book. And I was thinking of the incidents along (I'm going to try to pronounce this correctly) Assawompset Pond, is that right?

Thomas D’Agistino (16:47):

Yeah. Assawompset Pond. Yeah.

Benjamin Morris (16:50):

What's going on there?

Thomas D’Agistino (16:51):

That's cool because that's a place where basically John Sassamon was found killed. That was one of the really big preludes to King Philips war. And of course, there's a place, Betty's Neck that's haunted.

Thomas D’Agistino (17:12):

Now, the UFOs and stuff areas, Middleborough is part of the Bridgewater Triangle, and boy, is it known for weird stuff. In 1998, people watched this bright object maneuvering over Assawompset Pond in Middleborough, then it split in two.

Thomas D’Agistino (17:33):

Then the two objects began doing these weird patterns and display these weird lights and stuff. Well, they rejoined and flew off. Moments later, we see Air Force jets flying in the area.

Thomas D’Agistino (17:49):

Now, don't forget, this is a time when we didn't really have drones back then. You know how you can buy a drone at Walmart now, or any store and just yahoo and do something with it. You can put like little battery pack with weird flashing lights you get at the Dollar Store and stick it on it and go up there and people go, "What the heck is that?"

Benjamin Morris (18:11):

This is also a couple years before the whole Chinese spy balloon debacle as well.

Thomas D’Agistino (18:17):

Oh, yeah. Yep.

Benjamin Morris (18:18):

And our knowledge of how Chinese spy balloons maneuver does not match the description of what these folks saw there too.

Thomas D’Agistino (18:27):

I mean, yeah, because you got them going down even in 2021 and 2020. So, it's not like this just happened once. You got people seeing these sightings.

Benjamin Morris (18:39):

Assawompset Pond.

Thomas D’Agistino (18:40):

Assawompset.

Benjamin Morris (18:40):

Who knows what's going on over there.

Benjamin Morris (18:42):

So, let's keep traveling down the highway here. And there's a major stop, which I'm going to be completely honest, Tom, I really don't want to ask you about, because when I read this section in your book, in the pantheon of spooky sites, there's one which just really hits close to home for me.

Benjamin Morris (19:10):

And that is abandoned or derelict hospitals. I just cannot stand that as a locust, as a setting. That just really gets under my skin.

Benjamin Morris (19:26):

And I'll take an abandoned prison over an abandoned hospital any day of the week. And you have one of the granddaddies of abandoned medical institutions along Route 44. So, I'm going to take a shot of whiskey right now. I'm going to take my shot of whiskey and I'm going to ask you about Old Taunton, and I'm going to sit here and I'm going to grit my teeth while you tell me about Old Taunton, because it's brutal, and I don't like it one bit. And I'm just going to close my eyes and hope it's over really, really fast.

Thomas D’Agistino (20:18):

Oh, yeah. I thought you were going to mention the DMV, but okay. About the vision.

Benjamin Morris (20:23):

Oh, well, yeah, there's that too.

Thomas D’Agistino (20:24):

Those are scary too.

Benjamin Morris (20:25):

We'll get there next. They are.

Thomas D’Agistino (20:27):

Well, yeah, the old asylum. I mean, first of all, they call it an asylum, does wow, that conjures up some thoughts. But it was erected in 1854. And Jesus, it was called the State Lunatic Hospital. Though, right off the bat, I don't think it was going to going to have any positive energies going with it.

Benjamin Morris (20:49):

Not a lot of happy vibes, no.

Thomas D’Agistino (20:51):

There was neglect unspeakable atrocities that took place in there. Cult activity actually reported to take place in the basement where the patients were used in these rituals, which was pretty horrible.

Thomas D’Agistino (21:03):

The facility closed in 1975. Now, a lot of the facilities closed around here from neglect and everything in the '90s. So, for that to close that early, there must have been something really bad.

Thomas D’Agistino (21:15):

And it was neglected. I mean, these patients, I guess, were living not only in this horrible atmosphere, but in a building that was derelict, falling down practically.

Thomas D’Agistino (21:29):

And actually, part of it did finally collapse in 1999. They actually put this building on the register of historic places. Unbelievable, huh?

Benjamin Morris (21:42):

Wait, but that means people are going to go and visit it. We don't want that. No.

Thomas D’Agistino (21:49):

But a lot of it was demolished for safety reasons later on. But a lot of them were just left and fenced off to the public, and they wanted to use some of them for modern use. But the problem is, people in the basement and in the buildings of any of these that would repurpose.

Thomas D’Agistino (22:07):

They hear like things going up and down the stairs. They get cold spots. That fear that overcomes them, that they know is not their feeling, but something being permeated into them that they run. Lights going on and off, all of a sudden doors flying open. Faceless, shadowy figure of a man who appears in rooms. This figure of just a dark person just appears in certain rooms.

Thomas D’Agistino (22:39):

Now, a lot of the-

Benjamin Morris (22:41):

You could not pay me enough money ever to go and check this place out. What is this?

Thomas D’Agistino (22:48):

A lot of the patients too were buried in paupers' graves, which in the Mayflower Hill Cemetery down the road. And this is funny because the women in the hospitals used to sew burial gowns, I mean, for those who died while in the care for the facility.

Thomas D’Agistino (23:08):

So, these people would pass away in their care, and they'd had these people making just burial shrouds for them within the thing.

Benjamin Morris (23:17):

Some dignity there.

Thomas D’Agistino (23:19):

Yeah, yeah. This spirit of a man who walks The Goss building, which is one of the repurposed buildings, I guess. And people who went to these certain rooms, man, they get like these feelings that just, whoa, almost want throw them back into the hallway, because this place is like ...

Thomas D’Agistino (23:41):

It was also, the best part of it was home to one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.

Benjamin Morris (23:48):

Oh, great. Let's just add some more to the pile, shall we?

Thomas D’Agistino (23:54):

Oh, yeah. As if that wasn't good enough, here we go.

Thomas D’Agistino (23:57):

Jane Toppan, who was born actually Honora Kelley in 1857. Her father just dropped her off at the Boston female asylum, and then he vanished, boom, forever.

Thomas D’Agistino (24:11):

And so, the top in the family of Lowell took her in as an indentured servant. "Yo, you can come help us and you can live here." And then over time, she adopted their last name.

Thomas D’Agistino (24:25):

But she was record intelligent. However, she was a sociopath. She actually trained for nursing. And in 1885, she made many, many friends and she was nicknamed Jolly Jane because of her friendly nature.

Thomas D’Agistino (24:38):

Well, Jolly Jane obviously had another side, where she began using her patients with experiments and morphine and atropine. Now, this is cool, because she'd inject them with lethal doses, and then she would lie in bed next to them as they died.

Thomas D’Agistino (24:59):

And she would go on, she'd killed about 30 something patients before she turned a killing spree towards others, like her sister, her foster sister.

Benjamin Morris (25:10):

Oh, good Lord.

Thomas D’Agistino (25:10):

Yeah. And other people. Well, she was arrested in 1901, so she had a lot of time to have some fun here.

Thomas D’Agistino (25:17):

And she was found guilty by reason of insanity. Well, not guilty, I'm sorry. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity. And she was committed to the state hospital, where she died in 1930.

Benjamin Morris (25:31):

I mean-

Thomas D’Agistino (25:31):

Yeah. So, there you go.

Benjamin Morris (25:33):

The irony, the horror, the tragedy, the insanity of it. It's all like wrapped up into one package just like right at this spot.

Thomas D’Agistino (25:49):

I know, huh?

Benjamin Morris (25:50):

I think I need another shot of whiskey just to get to the end of this chapter.

Thomas D’Agistino (25:55):

Yeah, grab a pint.

Thomas D’Agistino (25:56):

Well, during her interview, which is kind of funny, she said her goal was to have killed more helpless people than any other man and woman who ever lived. So, she was like going on a spree. She wasn't like, "Okay, I'm done here." Had she not been caught, she probably would've kept going and going and going.

Benjamin Morris (26:17):

So, I have to ask you, and I don't want to ask you, but I have to, have you been to this asylum? Have you been to the site? You guys went and visited?

Thomas D’Agistino (26:27):

Yeah, but like I said, some of the buildings repurposed, they don't want people going in. And it's like any other place, it's kind of private. You can't just walk into a hospital like that, or buildings like that, that have been repurposed.

Thomas D’Agistino (26:44):

I mean, like you can just walk into like Day Kimball Hospital down the road and they'll still ask you, "Can I help you," as a security guard there. If you don't have a reason, it's like, "Alright, get back in your car."

Benjamin Morris (26:58):

Stay in the car, Tom, stay in the car and don't get out of the car. Keep driving past this particular location.

Thomas D’Agistino (27:06):

"Can I help you?" "Yeah, we want to contact Jane Toppan ghost and hang out for a while." "Okay. Yeah, yeah, sure. Come right in. Go to room eight."

Benjamin Morris (27:13):

Exactly, yeah. "Well, She's right over here in room 302. Waiting for you with a fresh needle."

Thomas D’Agistino (27:19):

They're not exactly welcoming on that kind of a level.

Benjamin Morris (27:22):

No, no. Okay. So, I'm going to refill my pint glass of whiskey. I'm going to pour some coffee into my whiskey, and then we will continue this journey.

Benjamin Morris (27:34):

No, actually, as we continue the journey, I do want to ask you about one of my favorite cases in your book, and it pertains directly to driving away from the old lunatic asylum as you continue down Route 44. You have one of my absolute oldest paranormal story champions.

Benjamin Morris (27:56):

And I'm going to reveal my age a little bit here, but when I was a kid growing up in the '80s and '90s, one of my favorite TV shows was Are You Afraid of the Dark? It's like late night kind of like it was spooky kind of serialized.

Benjamin Morris (28:16):

And one of my favorite early episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark is ... I don't know if it would hold up 25 years later, 30 years later. And have to go and kind of check that out independently to see whether it's still spooky.

Benjamin Morris (28:31):

But one of my favorites was this great episode about a phantom hitchhiker. Like taxi cab driver picks somebody up, gets in the backseat, and different versions of it.

Benjamin Morris (28:46):

Number one, he turns around and he's gone. And number two, he turns around and like the hitchhiker's head is missing. Number three ... there's all sorts of variations.

Benjamin Morris (28:54):

But I mean, it's a legend or a case, I guess, on your highway that recurs. A lot of people have seen this phantom hitchhiker, so introduce us to him.

Thomas D’Agistino (29:10):

Well, the Phantom Hitchhiker of Route 44. As far as I go back with this story, 50 years that I know of, I mean, it could've gone back further, but for me it's been 50 years.

Thomas D’Agistino (29:23):

I used to drive ... we owned a bait and tackle shop in Smithfield, Rhode Island, right on Route 44. Go figure. And I'd have to travel the Middleborough to get shiners bait for the thing twice a week sometimes during the big peak season, all the way down to 44.

Thomas D’Agistino (29:39):

And I got to tell you, I did this for several years, and I never saw the hitchhiker. I probably wasn't looking for him at that time, but I never saw anyone hitchhiking that I could remember. You're not going to stop, pick someone up with piles of fish in your car, but.

Benjamin Morris (29:58):

Well, it's kind of up to them, although it's a very interesting question. Tom, you raise a very interesting epistemological question here, which is that if you go hunting for the hitchhiker, are you less likely to find him? Does the hitchhiker only appear to those who are not expecting to see him?

Thomas D’Agistino (30:18):

That is a good question. I mean, actually, you can go on like YouTube and everything, see how many people go, “We're going to the most haunted place in the country, Route 44 with the hitchhiker.”

Thomas D’Agistino (30:30):

Who was basically, he's described as a not too tall, but a tall guy. He's described as about 40 years old with a red plaid shirt and very disheveled red hair. Basically, looks like a farm person or something like that.

Thomas D’Agistino (30:50):

And people have seen him, they've stopped to pick him up. And there's some cases where the guy or girl will open the door to let them in and look back and there's nobody there. Or this person will get in and they'll be really silent. And about several seconds later, they look over and there's nobody there in the car.

Thomas D’Agistino (31:13):

One guy went as far as to say he was driving down the road and he saw this hitchhiker and he stopped. And when he went to let the person in, there was nobody there. And he started driving off.

Thomas D’Agistino (31:23):

And a few seconds later, he's up to 50 miles an hour, which is the speed limit for that area. And there's his face in the window on the outside of the window, keeping up with the car.

Benjamin Morris (31:33):

What?

Thomas D’Agistino (31:33):

Yeah.

Benjamin Morris (31:35):

Oh man.

Thomas D’Agistino (31:36):

They'd stopped, and they pick him up, and then they hear this ghostly wild laughter that emanates from all around. They actually, driving down the road, he's in the middle of the road, they'll lock up their brakes, go right through him.

Thomas D’Agistino (31:49):

So, this redheaded hitchhiker I mean, he's been out there for a very, very long time, and there's a lot of stories and accounts of people who have actually got so scared when these things happened. They pull over and called AAA or the police. They're afraid to move, or they broke down in that area, and they encountered the hitchhiker.

Thomas D’Agistino (32:11):

So, I don't know if people looking for him or not looking for him. I think this redheaded hitchhiker will appear when he wants to appear. It is a busy road. Route 44 can be a pretty busy road at certain points.

Benjamin Morris (32:27):

I know some paranormal investigators really like to kind of work the data angle. I mean, is there any data on more commonly seen at night as opposed to in the daytime or commonly seen on busier stretches of the highway as opposed to maybe more sparse or like between settlements kind of areas there?

Thomas D’Agistino (32:51):

Yeah, it's right near the Rehoboth line. And it doesn't go a far stretch, I'd say within a half a mile. And it's mostly dusk and night time, not so much during the day. And that area is travelled. It's not exactly like Ventura Highway or something during rush hour, but it is travelled.

Thomas D’Agistino (33:14):

But as the night sets in, there's not much reason for an awful lot of vehicles to be going down that stretch. There's no Mecca Malls or anything. There are stores, but stores close at 6:00, 7:00. But that's about when he's seen mostly.

Benjamin Morris (33:33):

I mean, if anyone wants to take that little triangulation, where to go, when to go and try your luck, let us know what you find out, folks. Let us know what you find out.

Benjamin Morris (33:48):

Let's take one last stop on this magical mystery tour of Route 44. And you mentioned earlier, a kind of the American landlocked version of the Bermuda Triangle, which is the Bridgewater Triangle. And specifically within the Bridgewater Triangle, you have cryptids and you've got some great cryptids.

Benjamin Morris (34:18):

As a southern boy, I love a good critter. Just like give me a log, I'm going to roll it over, find out what's underneath it. Like let's go.

Benjamin Morris (34:29):

What kind of critters do you have in the Bridgewater Triangle?

Thomas D’Agistino (34:38):

Well, oh, wow. There is, for some reason-

Benjamin Morris (34:41):

“All of them,” he says. “We've got all of them.”

Thomas D’Agistino (34:44):

Yeah, we got a good array here.

Thomas D’Agistino (34:44):

Now, believe it or not, the Bridgewater Triangle was studied by Lauren Coleman and Christopher Bolzano, who wrote a book on it, goes to the Bridgewater Triangle, which is pretty cool. And Lauren Coleman has written several things.

Thomas D’Agistino (35:00):

But a lot of people besides them, people who have witnessed these creatures, one of them is a person well, looks like a small person with very gangly arms, like they're broken swinging freely as it moves. And they've seen this run boom, coming out of the woods into path of automobiles or running back into the woods.

Thomas D’Agistino (35:23):

And they believe it looks something like the famous Dover Demon, which is a kind of very strange looking creature, not of this world, definitely. And some people have seen what looked like it was a ...

Thomas D’Agistino (35:40):

These kids followed three toed footprints into the swamp. Now, Hockomock Swamp, it's a native place where spirits dwell. This is pretty interesting. And the Hockomock Swamp is pretty big. And this is where a lot of it takes place in the Bridgewater Triangle.

Thomas D’Agistino (35:57):

Well, as they followed it, they saw this giant creature, which shook half human, half bird, and it was tall. And it took, boom, straight up into the air like a rocket.

Thomas D’Agistino (36:11):

Now, Sergeant Downey was driving along home one time. This is a police officer now, in 1971. Where all of a sudden, he saw the same thing at the edge of the swamp. This like six foot tall bird or over six feet tall.

Thomas D’Agistino (36:25):

He stops because whoa, you don't see that every day. And it starts moving toward the car, and then it stretch its wings, which he said was to be about 8 to 12 feet long and went off into the sky again.

Thomas D’Agistino (36:42):

Now, the cool thing about this is the place is called Bird Hill, and it's a native area where the natives said this is where they've seen thunderbirds, which is a-

Benjamin Morris (36:55):

What is that exactly?

Thomas D’Agistino (36:56):

Yeah. A thunderbird is a giant mythical creature of native origin that would fit this description pretty well.

Thomas D’Agistino (37:03):

And also, a couple of police officers were parked in the area. They were just near the swamp doing either a routine, let's do a traffic thing. Suddenly the rear end of the car lifts up and then dropped. And they just spin around, and they spin their lights, and they see this creature that resembles a bigfoot running behind a few houses.

Benjamin Morris (37:25):

Hey.

Thomas D’Agistino (37:28):

Yeah. Another hunter saw this bigfoot one time. He actually shot at it because it scared the crap out of him. It scared the heck out of him so much, and he found some brown hair and some little bit of blood on the leaves.

Thomas D’Agistino (37:41):

But a man named Joseph M. DeAndrade spent decades collecting reports on this Bigfoot creature who many people who have seen it describe it over six feet tall, brown, and hairy.

Thomas D’Agistino (37:59):

This Bridgewater Bigfoot has been cited for I don't know how many decades, so, if it's either one creature or several of them. There's also one of a giant creature that resembles like a giant dog, but more like a wolf.

Benjamin Morris (38:17):

Oh, yeah.

Thomas D’Agistino (38:18):

Yeah. And he was terrorizing the area. Search parties came and looked for it and could not find it. And at one point, they did see what they called a monstrous looking dog, and they fired at it, but the thing ran off into the swamp, never to be seen again. They don't know if they hid it or not.

Thomas D’Agistino (38:37):

But the most famous of these is called the Pukwudgie.

Benjamin Morris (38:42):

Oh, yeah. These little guys.

Thomas D’Agistino (38:43):

Yeah, the little Pukwudgie.

Benjamin Morris (38:44):

Now, Tom, I got to tell you, the Pukwudgies, we have had another one of our guests has had a word or two to say about Pukwudgies.

Benjamin Morris (38:53):

And in a way, we can have a chat about a thunderbird or like a giant half human, half bird monster, which to my mind, I hope must resemble the giant spoon bill. If you've ever seen one of the giant spoon bills, the most ridiculous looking birds. They're enormous, but they're ridiculous. Anyway-

Thomas D’Agistino (39:14):

Yeah, like

Benjamin Morris (39:14):

... you those guys. Yeah, yeah. You got Hellhounds, you got your Sasquatch, your green mountain variety Sasquatch or your Berkshire Sasquatch as opposed to your lower Appalachian Sasquatch. I'm sure there's important distinctions between subspecies here.

Benjamin Morris (39:37):

All those are fine, and all those are decently scary and kind of unsettling and unnerving.

Benjamin Morris (39:41):

But you make the point in your book, and I think you were dead right, that the smaller something is actually the scarier it is.

Benjamin Morris (39:53):

And it's like when you think about the great kind of like horror movies or cultural icons, I'm thinking gremlins, I'm thinking Chucky, it's like the sort of the evil dolls. The smaller, the tinier, the more compact. I mean, the fear factor magnifies inversely with the size of the creature.

Benjamin Morris (40:22):

And Pukwudgies, man. I mean, like I wouldn't want to touch those guys with a barge pole. Get me away.

Thomas D’Agistino (40:30):

Yeah. They're like, what, two or three feet tall?

Thomas D’Agistino (40:31):

It reminds me a lot of that movie that came out in like 1971 called Trilogy of Terror with the Karen Black with the little monster, the doll.

Benjamin Morris (40:41):

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thomas D’Agistino (40:44):

But because a lot of people describe him as looking kind of like that.

Thomas D’Agistino (40:50):

But yeah, Pukwudgie is according to a translation, is like supposedly a wild man of the woods that vanishes. And again, Christopher Bolzano, the author, this is like his thing, Pukwudgies.

Thomas D’Agistino (41:09):

And yeah, they like covered with head, and they resemble a troll, basically, so they could just be a troll. Which is in a lot of cultures, I mean, they go back to old very indigenous law and then writings about them go back to their early 20th century if not further back.

Thomas D’Agistino (41:32):

And what they do is they use the souls of the dead to lure their victims to their demise. Some people have seen them.

Thomas D’Agistino (41:41):

One man was walking his dog, and all of a sudden this creature comes out of the woods in that area and he could see the creatures beckoning him to follow him into the woods. Well, what do you think he did? Well, I think he ran. But he did tell the story later. So, he lived. He must have ran.

Thomas D’Agistino (43:08):

And these Pukwudgies basically supposedly according to legend, they were friendly and helpful to the Indians until the Indians thought they were a nuisance. And then had them gotten rid of by another God called Moshup or something.

Thomas D’Agistino (43:24):

But they appear and disappear and vanish, but they're known to be very alluring. Like in other words, they can put you into a trance and make you follow them to somewhere like a cliff or somewhere where you jump to your death.

Benjamin Morris (43:46):

Right. And then they harvest your soul for-

Thomas D’Agistino (43:49):

The next victims.

Benjamin Morris (43:50):

Whatever. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Thomas D’Agistino (43:52):

And you don't want to annoy them.

Thomas D’Agistino (43:53):

But here's a funny thing because in Freetown, near the Freetown State Forest, they actually have a sign that says Pukwudgie X-ing

Benjamin Morris (44:04):

Not crossing, but X-ing as in like 86-ing us.

Thomas D’Agistino (44:12):

Yeah. It's like so in that area, I guess a lot of puck wedgies cross the road.

Benjamin Morris (44:18):

Yeah. Have you ever seen any small humanoid, hairy figures in your travels up and down 44?

Thomas D’Agistino (44:26):

No. It would be cool though if we did, but no, not that I can think of. Well, I'd remember, but.

Benjamin Morris (44:34):

Yeah, yeah. Well, if you see them, please keep, for our sakes, driving. And don't feed the locals.

Thomas D’Agistino (44:43):

Yeah. Well, the funny thing is, my whole life I've lived on or right off Route 44.

Benjamin Morris (44:50):

So, you have a chance. I mean, if anybody's got a chance at seeing these little guys or the thunderbird or the other local fauna, it's you. And we hope you will come back and tell us all about it.

Benjamin Morris (45:07):

This really has been such a wild and fun, and in some cases with respect to a certain asylum, which shall not be named, a terrifying journey, Tom. And we really appreciate your willingness to come and take us on this tour.

Benjamin Morris (45:28):

It's funny because I realize that as we prepare to conclude our extended spooky season, Snickers here is weighing in. She's lamenting the end of spooky season because it's the end of her season.

Benjamin Morris (45:45):

But as we have gotten ready to say goodbye to spooky season this time around, I realized it is always spooky season on Route 44. And anyone who wants to come and visit, now that they have your book in hand is absolutely equipped to do so.

Benjamin Morris (46:08):

Tell me, where can folks find you and your work? What is the best place, if they want to grab a copy of this one or one of your other titles, how can they find you?

Thomas D’Agistino (46:18):

They can go to www.tomdagistino, that's just D-A-G-O-S-T-I-N-O.com. Or they can go to www.diningwiththedead1031.com. And you can get the-

Benjamin Morris (46:37):

And what is that second resource? Tell us about that second resource.

Thomas D’Agistino (46:41):

Oh, my wife and I do interactive paranormal investigation dinner events in the most haunted areas in New England. Like the Colonial Inn in Concord, the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, The Tavern on Main in Chepachet, The Publick House in Sturbridge.

Thomas D’Agistino (46:59):

And what it is, you buy a ticket, and they give us the most haunted rooms to investigate. And we'll have a delicious buffet dinner. We do giveaways, which is really cool. Lots of dual prizes.

Thomas D’Agistino (47:14):

We explain how to use the equipment, the history, and haunts of the building. And then we break into four groups and each group will in turn, investigate an area till all four groups have investigated the four areas using all the equipment we have, and we have lots of it.

Thomas D’Agistino (47:30):

And so, you learn to not only investigate, you're doing an actual investigation, but you're working with different investigators who have different styles as well. And then we go over all the evidence and then we send it out to everyone.

Benjamin Morris (47:45):

How about that? That is so cool. I mean, next time I'm in your neck of the woods, count me in, man. I'd love to come and dine with the dead. Everybody out there in podcast land, y'all know what to do. That sounds great. What fun.

Thomas D’Agistino (48:00):

Yeah, you can find the books on our website also obviously, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, everywhere there, it's great. We actually went to eat at a Cracker Barrel, which is a restaurant around here. I don't know if you have them down there.

Benjamin Morris (48:13):

Oh, we do. Oh, yeah.

Thomas D’Agistino (48:14):

They were for sale over there.

Benjamin Morris (48:17):

Awesome. Well, this has been such a pleasure with the exception of the asylum. Thank you and all the best to you for your next book.

Thomas D’Agistino (48:31):

Oh, thank you.

Benjamin Morris (48:32):

And we will see you out there on Route 44.

Thomas D’Agistino (48:35):

Oh, thank you very much. Awesome.