In the remote forests of southwestern Vermont lies a stretch of wilderness that hikers describe as beautiful, quiet, and strangely unsettling. Locals know it as Glastenbury Mountain, a rugged, heavily forested peak once home to mining settlements that later fell into silence. But to many who study American disappearances, the region is better known by another name: the Bennington Triangle. Between 1945 and 1950, a series of unexplained vanishings occurred here, each stranger than the last. No bodies were ever recovered. No definitive clues surfaced. And the mountain, long steeped in Abenaki legends of cursed stone and “winds that behave unnaturally,” became the center of one of New England’s most enduring mysteries.
The first disappearance occurred on November 12, 1945. Middie Rivers, an experienced woodsman and hunting guide familiar with every ridge and riverbend around Glastenbury, was leading a group of hunters back to camp. He walked a short distance ahead, close enough to be seen at intervals, before stepping around a curve in the trail and vanishing. The hunting party reached the bend moments later, but Rivers was gone. Searchers scoured the area for weeks, covering miles of terrain with dogs and volunteers. They found no blood, no clothing, no tracks. Rivers seemed to have slipped into the mountain itself.
Five years later, the most famous case occurred. On December 1, 1946, Paula Welden, an 18-year-old Bennington College sophomore, went hiking along the Long Trail wearing a bright red coat. She was seen by several witnesses, a couple walking along the trail, a man working near a covered bridge, but somewhere along the ridgeline, she disappeared. Despite national headlines, a massive search effort, and even help from the FBI, no trace of Paula ever emerged. Her disappearance led directly to the creation of Vermont’s state police force, as the state had no centralized agency to handle large-scale investigations at the time.
The disappearances continued in unsettling rhythm. In 1949, 68-year-old veteran and occasional hiker James Tedford vanished while riding a bus from St. Albans to Bennington. Multiple passengers recalled seeing him in his seat as the bus approached the town, but when it arrived at its destination, Tedford was gone, leaving behind his luggage, his ticket, and an open bus timetable. He had somehow vanished from a moving vehicle without anyone witnessing his departure.
A year later, on October 12, 1950, eight-year-old Paul Jepson disappeared while helping his mother tend livestock. The boy was last seen near their truck, wearing a bright red jacket like Paula Welden’s. Bloodhounds tracked him to the edge of a nearby pigpen before the scent abruptly stopped. A massive search was launched across Glastenbury’s lower slopes, but nothing surfaced, no clothing, prints, or signs of struggle. The abrupt cutoff point led investigators to speculate he had been carried or lifted away, though by what or whom they could not say.
The final major disappearance came only sixteen days later. On October 28, 1950, 53-year-old Frieda Langer, an experienced outdoorswoman, fell behind her hiking companions after slipping into a stream. Soaking wet, she told them she would return to camp to change clothes and catch up. She never arrived. Unlike the other cases, Frieda’s remains were eventually found, but only after seven months, and in an area that had been thoroughly searched multiple times. Her body was so decomposed that no cause of death could be determined. The fact that her remains appeared in a previously cleared zone deepened the mystery: either she had lain undiscovered through repeated searches, or she had been moved there after the fact.
These vanishings did not occur in a neat geometric shape, but writer Joseph A. Citro later coined the term “Bennington Triangle” to describe the cluster surrounding Glastenbury Mountain. He noted that the region had long carried an uneasy reputation. Native Abenaki stories warned of lands where stones swallowed those who passed over them, and hunters avoided certain ravines where compasses allegedly malfunctioned. Strange winds that shifted direction abruptly, sudden silences in the forest, and reports of lights above the treetops added to the folklore.
Skeptics argue that the disappearances resulted from natural hazards, hidden sinkholes, swift rivers, hypothermia, and disorientation in dense forest. Glastenbury’s terrain includes old mines, collapsed shafts, and thick underbrush capable of concealing remains for decades. Animal predation could explain why some victims were never found. But this explanation struggles to account for the sheer variety of vanishings: a skilled tracker, a college student in daylight on a popular trail, a man disappearing from a moving bus, a child whose scent simply stopped, and a woman whose body appeared in a place previously searched.
Other theories drift toward the extraordinary. Some point to the region’s magnetic anomalies, claiming compasses behave erratically on the mountain and can disorient even experienced hikers. Others link the disappearances to tales of a large, man-like creature sometimes reported in the area, a regional analog to Bigfoot, although no physical evidence has ever emerged. A few speculate that human involvement or criminal activity played a role, though the lack of tracks, signs of struggle, or consistent motive has kept these theories largely speculative.
What remains undeniable is that something about Glastenbury Mountain has a long history of unsettling those who enter it. In the decades since the disappearances, the wilderness has reclaimed the abandoned logging towns that once dotted its slopes. Few people live there now, and hikers report that the forest falls strangely quiet as trails climb into the old ghost settlements. The Bennington Triangle, whether a product of geology, chance, criminal activity, or something stranger, endures as a pocket of American wilderness where people have stepped into the trees and never returned.
Sources & Further Reading:
– Vermont State Archives: Missing persons reports and investigation records (1945–1950)
– Joseph A. Citro, “Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors”
– Bennington Banner archives: Contemporary reporting on the Welden, Tedford, Jepson, and Langer cases
– Vermont Historical Society: Glastenbury Mountain settlement history and disappearance analyses
– Appalachian Trail and Long Trail hiker accounts referencing compass anomalies and terrain hazards
(One of many stories shared by Headcount Coffee — where mystery, history, and late-night reading meet.)
