Monster Turtle In Plymouth Pond?

Great Herring Pond, Plymouth MA

I was doing some research for an article that involved me needing to know some basic facts about Great Herring Pond in Plymouth/Bourne. I went to the Wikipedia page for GHP, and lo and behold!!

"There has been multiple sightings of massive turtles on Great Herring Pond. They have been seen to be in size of 4–5 feet long, with heads the size of footballs. They have been seen floating down stream from Little Herring Pond, under Carters Bridge."

Granted, "There has been multiple sightings" is some poor English, but I mangle smart-people talk in here all the time, so who am I to judge? If it's on Wikipedia, it has to be true, right?

If you need a laugh, know that I'm using the "if it's on Wikipedia..." argument to convince Jessica to spend some of her rare off duty time (she's working like 15 of the next 14 days) stomping through a Wallencamp swamp after a fictional giant turtle. I'll take her to Mezza Luna after, she'll be OK.

The important part is that Cranberry County Magazine owes it to our readers to chase monsters, especially when they are in our backyard.

Again, this is most likely what Colonel Potter used to call "bull hockey." Anyone can edit Wikipedia. Some kid may have slipped in a bit of fantasy about his neighborhood. We should be able to see what's what easily enough.

You see waves... I see "Monster Turtle Wake"

There are only a few species of turtles in Massachusetts. You can check them all out right here. The biggest of the bunch is the Common Snapping Turtle. They range across the US from the Atlantic to the Rockies, a range that includes all of Massachusetts.

The Common Snapping Turtle is the heaviest turtle in Massachusetts by a country mile. Unfortunately a record-breaking snapping turtle would be a shade less than 2 feet long (that's carapace or upper shell length, the lower shell/plastron is smaller... a snapping turtle can't hide in his shell like most other turtles when threatened, hence the Baby's Momma-like disposition), and northern specimens tend to be smaller than southern ones. 75 pounds would approach the weight record. "Two feet long max" is about a yard less Turtle than we need to support a search for a 4-5 foot turtle.

A turtle more in that range is the Alligator Snapping Turtle. They are a more southern turtle, and don't get north (naturally) much further than Tennessee. Could one survive here? Could a breeding, sustainable population exist in Massachusetts? How long until the National Marine Life Center herpetologist calls me back?

Alligator Snapping Turtles can grow to 30 inches long, and there is talk of one caught in Kansas who weighed 403 pounds. 30 inches is about where you call in the QB sneak in a goal line offense.

While a path to the sea does exist (you can herring your way downstream to the Cape Cod Canal from Great Herring Pond, and turtles can walk on land), the presence of giant sea turtles in a freshwater Plymouth pond seems unlikely. Still waiting for that NMLC call....

The kind of turtle we're looking for would have plenty of food to sustain it. This isn't Nessie that we're looking for. Great Herring Pond has, and I quote the Commonwealth of Massachusetts herself:

Fish Populations:
The pond was last completely surveyed in the summer of 1984 and nine fish species were present: yellow perch, white perch, white sucker, brown bullhead, banded killifish, smallmouth bass, chain pickerel, golden shiner and American eel. A May 2001 fish survey found abundant smallmouth bass and three additional species: largemouth bass, pumpkinseed and tesselated darter. Also, an occasional walleye is also reported. Alewife and blueback herring are abundant in the pond from late spring through fall.

That's enough for our Behemoth. The herring alone sustained the entire village of Wallencamp ("Wallencamp" is an avoid-a-lawsuit name an author hung on the Pondville section of the village of Cedarville in the town of Pymouth) for a while, and they eat more than one turtle can... even a big one.

He'd have plenty of room to hide. Great Herring Pond and the swampy area around it use up 400 acres or so, about the same area occupied by the Mission Hill neighborhood in Boston. The pond is 20 feet deep, and the turtle can stay submerged for two hours without breathing.

Great Herring Pond is just off of the southeastern edge of the Myles Standish State Forest. It is part of a vast swampy area that makes up the whole of interior Southern Plymouth. He (or even a brood of them) could very easily range from the Freetown/Lakeville area to Cape Cod up to Duxbury and over to Bridgewater. It'd just take him a while to walk through it all, because he's, like, a turtle.

The authors are not unaware that this monster turtle would be very much like a Bridgewater Triangle story, and his presence in Plymouth would further validate our theory that the Bridgewater Triangle should expand out to Cape Cod. The turtle could even be the guardian spirit for the cursed Sacrifice Rock Woods.

He'd also have plenty of time to grow. Studies suggest a possible 100 year life span for a Snapper, and they grow constantly from when they are born until the day that they die. This monster may have been born during World War I.

A four-foot snapping turtle, whether it was Common or Alligator, would be a terrible thing to have snapping at you. It could bite through your Achilles Tendon. It could easily kill any unattended baby that it got the drop on. It could kick in your back door, slap your best dog in the face, and make your wife cook it a T-Bone steak. It could tear out your heart and show it to you.

Bah Gawd, you know Cranberry County Magazine has to look for that!

1619 AD Cedarville

The part of Plymouth known as the Lakes region is a series of isolated villages where everyone knows everyone, and outsiders are suspicious just for being there. It's the sort of village where tales of a giant man-eating turtle shouldn't leak onto Wikipedia from. If you ain't from here, you don't come here, son.

Locals are reluctant to speak of the giant turtle, not wanting the circus media environment that would surround the announcement of the presence of a turtle large enough to merit hiring Quint. I'm local enough that I did manage to unearth some amazing stories, as the Monster Turtle is the subject of an intense if isolated urban legend.

"I never let my kids near that cursed pond," said one Cedarville housewife. "I didn't wreck my figure and nag my husband into an early grave just to feed my kid to some lake monster."

"I saw it once. It was the size of one of those sissy electric cars," said one man who asked to not be identified. He asked for privacy because he feared retribution from the turtle. "It was pulling a deer into the pond by the throat."

"You don't see a lot of transients in this area, which is unusual for a seasonal cottage neighborhood," said a source within the Plymouth Police Department. "We do get a lot of calls about roaring, splashing sounds and people screaming 'Help! I'm being devoured by a rhino-sized turtle!' now and then, but you know how those kids eat LSD these days."

"Cape Cod is a vastly overdevloped  tourist region right up until Cedarville, where it suddenly becomes isolated. Isolated forest is one thing, but this is isolated lakefront property on the largest body of freshwater east of Lakeville. It makes one wonder what chased the people away," said a local realtor. She even implied that the Cape Cod Canal was actually dug by the Cape's elite as a sort of anti-turtle salt water moat.

"People assume that the Wampanoags were cleared out of what is now known as Plymouth by plague," said historian Stephen Bowden. "One idea that has never been explored is the possibility that they were instead consumed by a bloodthirsty, Anklyosaurus-looking snapping turtle."

"There's probably a good reason for that," he added, rather buzzkillishly.

Bowden did add that the Algonquin name for the pond was "Dubbadoo," which roughly translates to "the place where the Monitor Lizard-sized turtle lives."

Approaching Carter's Bridge, site of the Turtle Sightings

All of these experts only get in the way of a good Monster Turtle Story. What we need to do is Field Research.

We put on the battle gear, loaded the car and weaved up Bournedale Road/Herring Pond Road, heading into the belly of the beast. We had consumed a large lunch, and partook in some fortifying liquid refreshments.

Of course we were armed!

"Remember, you have to shoot him in the head. His shell can withstand depleted uranium rounds, " I told Jessica needlessly.

"He doesn't scare me a bit. I'll make soup out of him," she replied.

I gave her a serious look. "That's what Doctor Neverwas said before the turtle ate her."

"Doctor Neverwas?"

"OK, I just made her up. Let's park here." I pulled the Volkswagen off onto the shoulder, crushing a dozen saplings.

Missing shoe of a turtle victim?

The people at the car rental place thought it was odd that I wanted a green Volkswagen Beetle, but it is the most turtle-looking car I could think of, and it is important to Go Native in these sorts of situations. I was insistent, and they eventually found me one somewhere.

My man Cranberry Jones and assistant editor Stacey Monponsett pulled up shortly after with the U-Haul. We were planning to not only find this turtle, but to capture him. I'm not sure how much money you can make with a 400 pound killer turtle, but I know that you can make money with such a beast.

"Starve it, sell tickets, feed it steroids, and have a dwarf fight it with a sledgehammer," said Jones, which is why I'm writing this column instead of him. "OK, the dwarf has to be drunk."

"Build a miniature city, teach him to walk upright through it, and make a monster movie," said Stacey, who is too young to have seen Gamera movies.

I was envisioning a scenario where we get it on The Late Late Show, and one of us (whoever has the best Turtle voice, probably Stacey) just hides behind the couch and speaks for him. It would help soften his image some if he got some jokes off, especially if Gamera got all anti-social and bit that chubby little English guy.

Fortunately, it never came to that. We struck out like A-Rod in a playoff game. The four of us have maybe zero (0) hours of turtle-hunting experience, and a turtle hunt is right where a flaw like that becomes apparent.

However, our ineptitude as turtle hunters should not obscure the fact that there is something very strange going on in Great Herring Pond.

Jess has a better camera....

The Most Isolated Roads In Eastern Massachusetts

While Jessica and I are finishing up work on the South Coast Compound of our media empire, we thought that we would take to the countryside and see what we could do for you all...

This article could have had several titles. I've erased several of them myself, and Jessica vetoed one. Among those titles that we considered and discarded for one reason or another were:

"Where To Hide A Body In Eastern Massachusetts"

"Where To Have A Sasquatch Run In Front Of Your Car"

"Where To Teach Your Clumsy Daughter How To Drive"

"Where To Smoke A Joint And Drive 27 MPH With No One Behind You"

"Where To Illegally Dump Your Washing Machine"

"Where Old People Who Just Now Bought The '57 Chevy That They Always Wanted Go To Drive With Elvis Playing And Not Have Modern Kids Laugh At Them"

"Where UFOs Look To Scare Isolated Individuals Whom No One Will Believe"

"Where To Stumble Onto A Satanic Ritual"

"Where To Bet Your Car's Pink Slip On A Drag Race"

"Where To Introduce The 'Put Out Or Get Out' Dating Quandary" 

"Where To Be Mistaken For A Deer And Shot By A Hunter"

"Where To Go If You Feel Like Driving But May Have A Warrant Out For Your Arrest"

Among the contributors to this website... Stacey, who is a soccer mom, came up with "stashing a body," "Satanic ritual" and the date rape joke. Her daughter, who is in her teens, came up with the Elvis joke. Non-hunting Stephen came up with the hunting joke. Abdullah, who has no kids, came up with the Clumsy Teen Driver joke. Stephen had Stacey's "Where To Stash A Body" joke as a working title for this article before Jessica intervened.

A nice, isolated stretch of road is a wonderful thing, and it gets more and more rare every passing day. In other parts of the world and even in other parts of Massachusetts, a lonely run of street isn't a rare thing. Eastern Massachusetts isn't other parts of the world, however.

As my friend Beth once noted after leaving New Jersey, "You forget how accustomed you can be to white trash, overpopulation and air pollution."

As people diffuse throughout America, these empty spaces will become harder and harder to find. Our elderly residents can no doubt recall when somewhere with a busy mall used to be a back road to nowhere.

We all have our own reasons for seeking an isolated road to drive on. We listed some up above, you may have other reasons, and no one is here to judge you. We're just here to guide you to some cool places to drive.

We'll use some of those aborted titles as logic for including certain streets in the list, and we will also try to point out where certain practices might prove impractical. We try to be inclusive to anyone who might stumble onto our humble web page, even chronic litterers and serial killers.

So, without any further ado, we give to you but a small sample of some places you can go in our area to have the road all to yourself.

courtesy of Sara Flynn

Gurnet Road/King Arthur Road, Duxbury

I use the dual designation here because, even after growing up there for 30 years, I'm not 100% sure where Gurnet Road ends and King Arthur Road begins. Google Maps says KAR juts out just a few hundred yards from Saquish. Other people, maybe more for convenience than for authenticity, use the Powder Point Bridge as the dividing line between the two roads.

Gurnet Road implies the residential section of Duxbury Beach, while King Arthur Road would be very handy for describing the road south of the bridge. However, I'm fairly sure that it is Gurnet Road right up until you get to the actual Gurnet, at which point it gets named after the silly English king.

The differences are minimal, however. What you have here is about 5 miles of sand road, as bumpy as a golf ball, and probably the best coastal scenery in non-Cape Massachusetts. 4WD only, at least once you get to the bridge.

You can very easily pull over on this road somewhere and, if you see no approaching headlights, be pretty sure that the closest person to you would have to swim across Duxbury Bay to say "hello."

Bournedale Road, Bourne

There is no truth to the story that "Bournedale" is an Algonquian word for "Shortcut." That may have been made up by a Bournedale-area website content generator guy.

Other than a few dozen houses, Bournedale Road is uninhabited. It's little more than some gorgeous scenery, and a way for Buzzards Bay and Wareham residents to get home from Route 3 without messing around on the Scenic Highway.

This road can be fairly busy at certain times of day, but you can have it to yourself if you pick your spots.

This is a terrible road to train a teen driver on. It winds a lot, has numerous high-angle descending S curves and is lined with sofa-sized boulders right at the road's edge. It isn't a very challenging road, but it is very unforgiving.

Added bonus: The Buzzards Bay end of it has a farm stand and a horse farm.

West Wind Shores, Plymouth

Not a lot of people know about this area, as there is really no reason for anyone to use it. "If you ain't from here, you don't come here" applies to this tiny Plymouth village.

Essentially all of Plymouth 1) west of Cedarville, 2 ) south of The Ponds Of Plymouth, 3) east of Wareham and 4) north of the village of Buzzards Bay, it's a unique spot on a political map. You can fire a gun from certain spots in the area and have it be heard in 4 towns, 3 regions and 2 counties.

West Wind Shores is fed by what is either Bourne or Plymouth Road, depending on what town you're in. There are some side roads which veer off into extreme southern Plymouth's lake region.

Where the mentioned-earlier Bournedale Road is a shortcut which Wareham and Buzzards Bay people use to skip the main road traffic when coming and going from Route 3, West Wind Shores is what they use when traffic is bad enough to snarl up Bournedale Road.

If you're reading this to find a place to illegally dump a sofa, this is a bad spot. The road, perhaps owing to her shortcut status, is busier than it should be.

However, once you got the sofa off the road and into the woods a few dozen yards, even God might have trouble finding you.

Just be careful that the locals don't see you... you can get a smack for that.

Glen Charlie Road/Agawam Road, Wareham

It is somewhat interesting to note that of the first four or five roads we mentioned, only Duxbury's contribution is not in a fairly linear run of roads, separated by mere meters of forest.

West Wind Shores, Bournedale Road, the College Pond Roads and Agawam Road are really only kept apart by there being no real need for a shortcut from an isolated Plymouth lakes village to an isolated Wareham one. They wouldn't be isolated if they cut out a road to them, right?

Some people, myself included, even pay to be isolated.

The Myles Standish State Forest and her adjoining regions provide a great portion of the areas we'll explore in this article. It's the Swamp Yankee hinterlands.

Glen Charlie Road, while sticking out into the middle of nowhere, isn't that isolated. If you really need to pour some lime on a former human, you want to veer off onto Agawam Road.

I have no idea who Glen Charlie is/was. I know the road is named after Glen Charlie Pond, which used to just be called Glen Pond. If you know, hit us up in the comments.

Lower/Upper College Pond Road, Carver/Plymouth

That's actually Barrett Pond, not one of the College Ponds. It's off one of the College Pond Roads, so it's good enough.

These roads punch into the Myles Standish State Forest, and you can pretty much go from Carver to the Pinehills on them.

This one is the #1 seed if we break this down to brackets. It is one of or perhaps the only road that goes through the seasonally uninhabited MSSF region. The MSSF makes neighboring towns like Plympton or Freetown look like the lights of Paris.

There are probably some serial killers in the region who have buried two or three generations of victims in this area.

This is as much road as you can have to yourself in Eastern Massachusetts, to my knowledge. It would be awesome for a very brief and hotly-contested NASCAR race. I might have to make some calls.

Old Indian Trail, Marion

This road isn't that long, but it does have the look that we were seeking. I was creeped out driving down it, and it was 2 in the afternoon. There was definitely a chance of Yeti Attack on this street.

There is no Young Indian Trail in Marion, or anywhere that I'm aware of. That might be in regular India.

This was our bumpiest road, and you wouldn't want to try it with an open beer or mixed drink. It's not the road to try in a Dodge Stratus. There were a few potholes on this road in which, if it rained, you could float a battleship around. If your girl isn't having any nonsense and you both know it, this road will at least bounce her around a bit. You gotta take what you can get sometimes, player.

Fortunately, we only needed to go 20 yards from the last house on the street to get the shot above. We went deeper, but that shot did the trick.

Quanapoag Road, Freetown/ Braley Hill Road, Lakeville

There's actually a road or two between Q Road and Braley Hill Road, but the differences will only matter to locals.

This is actually a very nice drive through some beautiful Lakes country. If you're here looking for nice country drives as opposed to somewhere to get rid of a refrigerator, you can do a lot worse. I intend to return with a camera next October, during foliage season.

After researching this project- which for some time had the title Where To Bury A Body In Eastern Massachusetts- one thought kept hitting me. Whitey Bulger used to dump bodies on the banks of the Neponset River. He was about 100 yards from one of America's main highways. He must have been able sit on his own balls.

I suppose some audacity is a must in his line of work, and nobody knew the dark spots of the town better than Whitey Bulger... but we'd be driving 10 minutes in isolation on some roads without being 100% sure that we could get a (theoretical) body out of the trunk and into the ground without being seen, even in a Nowhere Land like Lakeville.

That's why I got into Journalism, folks. I just murder time. Mine, yours, Jessica's... whatever pays.

Lingan Street, Halifax

The lakes region of the interior South Shore has been used as a dumping ground by numerous killers. The killers that I'm aware of used the Chaffin Reservoir in Pembroke and Bartlett's Pit in Pembroke instead of the wastelands at the end of Lingan Street in Halifax. They also got caught.

This road punches through the swamplands on the south side of West Monponsett Lake. It ends at a former campground, if you are willing to circumvent some gates. It looks exactly like where they should have based the Friday The 13th movie.

I used to teach in the city, and I'd take my little Hood Rats out into this area for field trips. Several of my students, far more used to an urban environment, were nervous about being in such a remote area... even in broad daylight.

"This is the s**t where Michael Myers kills all those white girls," one kid from Roxbury told me. "Black people have more sense than to go to places like this." I really couldn't argue with him.

I used to date a girl from Lingan Street. "Date" may be the wrong term, as I do believe that she could barely stand me. She looked like she could scrap some, too. I'm probably lucky that I'm not pushing up daisies at the end of Lingan Street.

Thompson Street, Middleboro/Halifax

You know that you're in the boondocks when you can host drag races on one of the main roads (Route 105, nonetheless) in this area without getting caught or endangering innocents.

I don't want to say that I have gone out early on Sunday morning and seen crude START/FINISH lines painted a quarter mile apart on a straightaway here... but would you look at that, I just said it!

This road is also full of farms. It's a great place to buy flowers, as well as a great place to go if you have never seen a cow in person.

Much like that Camp Murder from the Lingan Street section of this article, this is another spot that I used to field trip my city students to when I lived in Monponsett. Even a genuinely dangerous thug student becomes a cute 7 year old when he sees farm animals for the first time.

This is a beautiful road for the most part. I just shot the scariest part of it.

Will's Work Road, Mashpee

I fished WWR off of Facebook suggestions, and we here at CCM thank the readers for their help.

We'll use WW Road (which I didn't feel like driving to) and this awful screen cap to illustrate a few things this list is looking for.

It's easier if you highlight "Will's Work Road" and Google up the map, but we can see enough here for the basics.

Isolated area? A beach? A marsh? No houses? Minimum expectation of police interference, perhaps a border area of two towns? Plenty of road? Chance of wildlife? In our coverage area?

Will's Work Road, off of Waquoit Bay meets all of those criteria. She'll hold a nice rank on this list if we decide to get competitive.

Oyster Way/Seapuit River Road/Indian Trail, Osterville

This is another reader submission, much obliged!

Oyster Way has a lot of the same features that Will's Work Road enjoys, such as a tidal bay, some nice road to work with and a lot of forest cover.

Working among the wealthy neighborhoods entails a certain set of risks. For starters, you have to get by a gate. Also, the kind of guy who is disposing of a washing machine illegally might stand out in Osterville. Calls to the police will be investigated promptly. There is the chance of video surveillance.

Added bonus: After burying that body, why not unwind with 18 holes at the neighboring Oyster Harbors Golf Club? Not a member? Hey, you've already buried one body today, why shirk at adding a bothersome golf course employee onto your tab with God? God may even take your side on it, there is little guidance in the Bible concerning golf etiquette.

Big ups for being the second Indian Trail to make the list.

Service Road, Sandwich

You could actually classify this as anything between Sandwich and Shootflying Hill in Centerville.

This one requires a Bulger level of testicular fortitude, as you are 50 feet from Route 6 when doing whatever it is that you're up to. However, with the cover of darkness, some foliage... may as well be the deepest, darkest part of the forest, right?

It can also be highly-used, and that usage can spike unexpectedly if there is an accident on Route 6 and people start seeking alternate routes.

This is a nice, safe road that is fine for teaching the teen to drive on. However, the people you do encounter there may be in a great hurry.

Navigation Road, West Barnstable

The Cape is dotted with fire roads, roads that were abandoned after hurricane flooding, Indian trails and service roads. The minor width of the Cape prevents you from getting too isolated, but it can be done... especially in the off-season.

On this road I visualize a guy with every possible sort of infraction on his driving record who just needs "Deer Strike" to win a sort of Irish Lottery with the insurers.

Don't let the name of the road intimidate you... it's a straight line. "Forward" is all the navigation you'll need.

This was another FB suggestion, many thanks! The comments around the FB suggestion include "I drove down there, and my gas tank fell off the car."

Collins Road, Truro

This was the stomping grounds for the Beast Of Truro, who tore up a bunch of livestock in 1981-82.

The Pamet Puma was neither caught nor identified. There were numerous sightings, including one by a Truro policeman.

Some people said it was a pack of dogs, some thought it was a cougar, some thought it was a monster like The Beast Of Bray Road.

He eventually just went away... or did he?

If a monster, mythical or not, roamed your road... your road is going to be on this list, my friend.


Bonus: 

Not Massachusetts, but here's what Stanley Kubrick did with the Isolated Road theme....

We hoped you enjoyed.... here's some more Duxbury, Plymouth and Halifax , below...

via Kerri Yanovitch Smith

Did we leave any roads out that deserve to be on this list? Let us know!