Bennington Triangle

Circulated photograph of Paula Jean Welden; clipping from missing persons flyers.

"Bennington Triangle" is a phrase coined by American author Joseph A. Citro to denote an area of southwestern Vermont within which a number of people went missing between 1945 and 1950. This was further popularized in two books, including Shadow Child, in which Citro devoted chapters to discussion of these disappearances and various items of folklore surrounding the area. According to Citro, the area shares characteristics with the Bridgewater Triangle in Southeastern Massachusetts and stories of strange happenings had been told about Glastonbury and the surrounding area for many years, the best-known of which is probably that of the disappearance of Paula Jean Welden.

Precisely what area is encompassed in this hypothetical "mystery triangle" is not clear, but it is purportedly centered on Glastenbury Mountain and would include some or most of the area of the towns immediately surrounding it, especially Bennington, Woodford, Shaftsbury, and Somerset. Glastenbury and its neighboring township Somerset were both once moderately thriving logging and industrial towns, but began declining toward the late 19th century and are now essentially ghost towns, unincorporated by an act of the Vermont General Assembly in 1937. Robert Singley, a 27-year-old Bennington College student got lost in the area but was found safe by Vermont State Police in 2008.

Reported disappearances

Middie Rivers (1945)

The first disappearance occurred on November 12, 1945, when 74-year-old Middie Rivers vanished while hunting in Bickford Hollow, about two miles north of the intersection of Long Trail Road and Vermont Route 9. Rivers was a skilled outdoorsman who frequented his son-in-law's hunting camp in the area and was described by friends as well-aquainted with the local trails. Around 4 PM on November 9, 1945, Rivers was seen by a friend on a nearby trail walking in a direction opposite to camp. When he failed to return that evening, a search party was launched. Extensive searches were conducted that autumn and included volunteers from nearby Fort Devens and from the Vermont State Guard. A search party leader anticipated finding Rivers' remains, noting that numerous people has been lost in the region in recent decades but all had eventually been found. The only evidence discovered however, was Rivers' handkerchief found by a hiker the following spring along a trail south of his last known location.

Paula Welden (1946)

Paula Jean Welden, aged 18, disappeared on December 1, 1946. Welden, a freshman at Bennington College, left campus early in the afternoon, walking and hitchhiking five miles to the intersection of Long Trail Road and Vermont Route 9. The last confirmed sighting of Welden was by a Bennington Banner employee who encountered her on foot at about 4 PM when she asked him directions to the Long Trail. She was dressed in a red jacket, jeans, and lightweight sneakers, but was not carrying any camping gear or clothing appropriate for frigid temperatures. Welden failed to attend class the following morning and an extensive search was eventually launched, which included the posting of a $5,000 reward and help from the FBI, but no evidence of her was ever found. Welden's disappearance was the inspiration for the 1951 novel Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson.

James Tedford (1949)

James Tedford, a 68 year-old World War I veteran, went missing on December 1, 1949, three years to the day after Welden was last seen. Tedford, a resident of the Vermont Soldiers' Home in Bennington, had been in St. Albans visiting relatives who accompanied him to local bus station. The last confirmed sighting of Tedford was at the bus depot in Burlington where he had a brief conversation with an acquaintance before transferring to a Bennington-bound bus at about 6:15 PM. The bus driver later reported to police that a man resembling Tedford may have disembarked in the village of Brandon about 70 miles north of Bennington while, that same night, Brandon police investigated a report of a man fitting Tedford’s description “acting queerly” in the village’s downtown. Tedford's disappearance went unreported for one week until the superintendent of the Bennington Soldier's Home notified police on December 8. Newspaper reports indicated that Tedford was mentally ill at the time of his disappearence and his family stated that he was "despondant" about returning to the Soldier's Home. Author Tony Jinks discusses Tedford’s disappearance, saying that "The popular conception is that he vanished into thin air while on the bus, but like many missing person stories there's a gap between when he was last seen and when he was reported missing a week or so later. Regarding Tedford's disappearance, there is enough evidence to suggest he did not "dematerialize,” even though no trace of him was ever found."

Paul Jepson (1950)

On October 12, 1950, Paul "Buddy" Jepson, a special needs child aged 8, vanished while accompanying his mother on farm chores. At about 3 PM, his mother drove with him to the Bennington town dump where the family kept a herd of pigs. She left him unattended in the vehicle for about 30 minutes but when she returned around 4 PM, he was missing. Authorities initially focused their search on the dump and surrounding woods, but a bloodhound later tracked Jepson’s scent along an adjacent road to an intersection where the trail abruptly ended. Police theorized that rain may have washed away the scent while Jepson’s father theorized that his son may have been picked up or struck by a passing car. He also stated that searchers might have overlooked the boy in nearby woods because his brown and tan clothing blended in with the fall leaves.

Frieda Langer (1950)

On October 28, 1950, sixteen days after Jepson had vanished, Frieda Langer, aged 53, and her cousin, Herbert Elsner, left their family campsite near the Somerset Reservoir to go on a hike. During the journey, Langer slipped and fell into a stream. She told Elsner if he would wait, she would go back to the campsite, change clothes and catch up to him. When she did not return, Elsner made his way back to the campsite and discovered that Frieda Langer had not returned, and that nobody had seen her since they had left. Over the next two weeks, five searches were conducted, involving aircraft, helicopters, and up to 300 searchers. No trace of Langer was found during the search. On May 12, 1951, Langer's body was found three and a half miles from the campsite in the eastern branch of the Deerfield River, an area that had been only lightly searched seven months previously. No cause of death could be determined because of the condition of her remains.

In popular culture

The events of 1945 to 1950 are told in episode 67 of Lore, titled "The Red Coats". The case was featured as one of the haunted locations in the paranormal TV series Most Terrifying Places in America which aired on the Travel Channel in 2018. The episode, title "Unnatural World" told the stories about the reportedly missing persons in a five-year span, and local lore of the "Bennington Monster", a Bigfoot-like creature that supposedly roams these wooded areas.

Further reading

• Adams, Mary Gavel "The Bennington Monster." Green Mountain Whittlin's, 1950
• Stock, R.D.; Zeller, J. "The Strange Disappearances at Mt. Glastenbury." Fate, July 1957
• Brandon, Jim (1978). Weird America. Penguin Publishing.
• Jacobs, Sally (1981). Ghost Towns. Burlington Free Press.
• Citro, Joseph A. Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls, and Unsolved Mysteries. University of New England/ Vermont Life, 1994
• Citro, Joseph A. Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors, 1996
• Citro, Joseph A. and Sceurman, Mark. Weird New England, 2005, p. 74-75
• Waller, John D., Lost in Glastenbury, Bennington Banner (VT) (Oct 4, 2008), [1] accessed 13 March 2017
• The Bennington Triangle, The Cracker Barrel (Wilmington, VT) (Fall 2004), available at vitualvermonter.com, accessed 2009-09-03
• Glastenbury tales: Town offers no clues to mysteries hanging over it, Rutland Herald (Nov. 8, 1999)