Mystery of the month: The Bennington Triangle
Is there a paranormal explanation for the five people missing from Vermont, USA?
Pulling on her red coat, Paula Welden turned to smile at her roommate Elizabeth Johnson. The two girls were students at Bennington College, in Vermont, USA.
‘I’m going to hike on the Long Trail,’ Paula, 18, told Elizabeth. It was 2.45pm on 1 December 1946.
That was the last time Elizabeth ever saw her friend.
The Long Trail is a famous hiking path that runs the length of Vermont state. It’s thought that Paula hitched a lift down Route 67A, where she was dropped off near the Long Trail. Elizabeth Johnson raised the alarm the next morning when Paula failed to show up for her classes.
Dead end
Unfortunately, at this time, the state of Vermont did not have its own police force, and the search for Paula was disorganised and lacking in resources. There were a number of leads - such as the claim by a waitress in the town of Fall River, in Massachussetts, that she’d served an agitated young woman matching Paula’s description – but none of them led anywhere. Paula’s father was questioned when it was discovered that he and his daughter had had a falling-out, but this too proved to be a dead end.
The disappearance of Paula Welden remains an unsolved mystery – but what’s even more unusual about this case is that, between 1945 and 1950, four other people vanished without trace in the same area.
Experienced local huntsman Middie Rivers was the first to disappear in 1945, followed by Paula Welden in 1946. James Tedsman, an army veteran, disappeared mysteriously from a bus exactly three years later on 1 December 1949, and eight-year-old Paul Jephson vanished from his mother’s truck while she was feeding their pigs in 1950.
The final disappearance was just 16 days later, on 28 October 1950, when 53-yearold Frieda Langer left her fellow hikers to return to their campsite alone. She was never seen again.
None of their bodies were ever found – and, oddly, all six were said to be wearing red at the time of their disappearance. Some people suggested that there may be a serial killer on the loose, but there appeared to be no common link between the ‘victims’ that would support this theory. Others posited that the woods were filled with wild animals, ravines, cliffs and abandoned wells, and even locals who knew the area well could fall prey to these hidden dangers.
In 1992, paranormal author Joseph A. Citro dubbed the area the ‘Bennington Triangle’ – like the Bermuda Triangle, in which a number of ships have vanished without trace over the years. The area covered by the Bennington Triangle has long been a hotspot for paranormal phenomena including
UFO sightings, Bigfoot, and shadow people. Since the earliest colonial days, there have been reports of people wandering off into the thick, wild woods and never coming back.
UFO connection
Native American groups, including the local Algonquin and Micmac tribes, are said to avoid Glastenbury Mountain, in the middle of the Bennington Triangle, believing it to be cursed. Since the 1890s, there have been reports of a ‘Glastenbury wild man’ living in the mountain caves. In 1892, a local man named Henry Mcdowell murdered John Crawley by beating him to death with a rock. He told the authorities that demonic voices in his head made him do it. Mcdowell was committed to an asylum but he managed to escape and was never seen again. Some people believe he returned to Glastenbury mountain, where he still lives, over 120 years later, a demonic force with dark appetites that compel him to kill…