Perhaps by sheer coincidence, this town is located a mere nine miles across Long Island Sound from Plum Island, the site of highly secretive biological warfare experiments conducted by government scientists.

For two decades, the vast majority of documented Lyme disease outbreaks were within a few hundred miles of the secret labs. Since the mid '90s, it has spread across the U.S.; and in the last decade, globally.

Stranger still was that the carrier of the Borrelia bacteria responsible was caused by the sudden and inexplicable appearance in the Northeast of the relatively rare Lone Star Tick, a sedentary tick species formerly confined to the state of Texas.

Despite the U.S. Department of Agriculture's repeated denials of their work with these organisms at Plum Island, there are documents that reveal otherwise.

Over time, the disease spread slowly but gathered steam. In part, this is because of a slow medical response and understanding of the organism and its affect. Incredibly, in 1981, such organisms and bacteria were subject to patents and privatization, which made research more closed and difficult. Yes, some star chamber "justice" system has allowed patents on disease organisms. Naturally, publications like Winter Watch must ask: Did the Crime Syndicate play a role?