Glastenbury Mountain And The Bennington Triangle – Where Did All Those People Vanish To?
There are some places on Earth that folklore will state you just shouldn’t go. One of these is the “Bennington Triangle”, an area in the north east of the United States that seems to be home to very strange goings on and where several people appear to have simply vanished off the face of the planet.
Of course there have been disappearances all over the world throughout history, but some, are far stranger than others I am sure you will agree.
In 1880 for example, in Tennessee in the United States, David Lang was said to have vanished into thin air in full view of his family. A friend had arrived at the Lang property by carriage, and as David left his wife and two children in the garden to walk across the field to greet his friend, he simply disappeared into nowhere.
His family suspected he had fallen down a sinkhole and rushed over to help him but there was no sign of Lang or of any hole in the ground. His family and friends searched the land nearby for him but nothing was found. A few months later his children noticed that an area close to where they last saw their father had a circular patch of grass that had died and would not regrow.
Although some state the Lang case to be a hoax, he is still officially regarded as missing.
In August 1971 at the famous Stonehenge sight in Salisbury, England a group of campers seemingly vanished. At this time the ancient sight was not a protected area meaning that anyone could access the land, which on this particular night, a group of campers did. They had decided to pitch their tents in the middle of the stone circle.
At around two in the morning a freak storm blew over Salisbury Plain. Bright bolts of lightning were seen to hit the area and even the stones themselves. Two witnesses (a policeman and a local farmer) both separately stated that the stones lit up a bright blue colour “so bright they had to avert their eyes!”
The screams of the campers could be heard and when the witnesses arrived expecting to find burnt and injured people, they instead found only smouldering tent pegs and the remains of the fire the campers had lit.
In 1975 in New Jersey, Jackson and Martha Wright were driving through the Lincoln Tunnel on their way to New York City. Once they had passed through the tunnel, Jackson pulled the car over so that he could wipe the windscreen of condensation. His wife offered to wipe the back window while he did so. When Jackson turned around his wife was no longer there – he had heard no struggle or any sign of anything wrong. He stated she was there one minute and gone the next.
Police conducted their own investigation upon Jackson reporting his wife’s disappearance, and despite the obvious suspicion of foul play, they could find no evidence whatsoever that Jackson had done anything untoward.
Of course there have been disappearances all over the world throughout history, but some, are far stranger than others I am sure you will agree.
In 1880 for example, in Tennessee in the United States, David Lang was said to have vanished into thin air in full view of his family. A friend had arrived at the Lang property by carriage, and as David left his wife and two children in the garden to walk across the field to greet his friend, he simply disappeared into nowhere.
His family suspected he had fallen down a sinkhole and rushed over to help him but there was no sign of Lang or of any hole in the ground. His family and friends searched the land nearby for him but nothing was found. A few months later his children noticed that an area close to where they last saw their father had a circular patch of grass that had died and would not regrow.
Although some state the Lang case to be a hoax, he is still officially regarded as missing.
In August 1971 at the famous Stonehenge sight in Salisbury, England a group of campers seemingly vanished. At this time the ancient sight was not a protected area meaning that anyone could access the land, which on this particular night, a group of campers did. They had decided to pitch their tents in the middle of the stone circle.
At around two in the morning a freak storm blew over Salisbury Plain. Bright bolts of lightning were seen to hit the area and even the stones themselves. Two witnesses (a policeman and a local farmer) both separately stated that the stones lit up a bright blue colour “so bright they had to avert their eyes!”
The screams of the campers could be heard and when the witnesses arrived expecting to find burnt and injured people, they instead found only smouldering tent pegs and the remains of the fire the campers had lit.
In 1975 in New Jersey, Jackson and Martha Wright were driving through the Lincoln Tunnel on their way to New York City. Once they had passed through the tunnel, Jackson pulled the car over so that he could wipe the windscreen of condensation. His wife offered to wipe the back window while he did so. When Jackson turned around his wife was no longer there – he had heard no struggle or any sign of anything wrong. He stated she was there one minute and gone the next.
Police conducted their own investigation upon Jackson reporting his wife’s disappearance, and despite the obvious suspicion of foul play, they could find no evidence whatsoever that Jackson had done anything untoward.
Stonehenge is Salisbury, England - five campers allegedly vanished here in August 1971.
The “Bennington Triangle” appears to be an area that has claimed more than one person and is seemingly a hive of strange activity. It is in southwestern Vermont, and was named by author Joseph A. Citro who had looked into a particular spate of disappearances between 1945 and 1950.
On 12th November 1945, experienced hunter Middie Rivers vanished along an area known as the “Long Trail” which is where “Route 9” is in Vermont today. Rivers, who was leading a hunt that day went on ahead of the group and essentially vanished. The only item of his person that was found was an unspent gun cartridge that was found in a stream nearby. Despite searching the area for days, he was not found.
The following year on 1st December 1946 Paula Weldon, a nineteen year old student at Bennington College disappeared on the same “Long Trail.” She had been seen by many people on the route, including an elderly couple on the trail who claimed they had been around one-hundred yards behind the young girl. They stated that she turned a corner of the trail and when they themselves arrived at the same corner moments later, she had “simply vanished!”
There were some rumours around the college campus that Weldon had crossed the border to Canada with a boyfriend, but she had not packed or taken a bag with her before going on the trail and had not taken any extra money or documentation. Her actions suggested that she only expected to be gone a few hours at best. Despite extensive searches and even a $5,000 reward posted by the FBI (which in 1946 was quite a substantial amount of money) nothing was ever heard or seen of her again. It should also be noted that local law enforcement were heavily criticised for leading what many consider a poor investigation into Weldon’s disappearance.
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Exactly three years later on 1st December 1949, a military veteran James Tedford was claimed by Citro to be the Bennington Triangle’s third victim – although strangely there is no evidence he vanished from within the triangle itself – but he did by all accounts vanish.
Tedford was a resident at a Bennington Soldier’s Home and was returning there from visiting family in St. Albans. He was traveling by local bus and according to witnesses he was confirmed as being on the bus at the stop before Bennington, but was not on it when it arrived there. On his seat there was said to have been found a bus schedule. None of the passengers nor the driver of the bus had any idea what happened to him, but all stated they had clearly seen him, sat on the bus, at the last stop before Bennington.
Less than a year later on 12th October 1950, eight year old Paul Jepson vanished from his mother’s truck. His mother had left her son in the truck while she went to feed her pigs that she looked after. She returned to the truck around an hour later to find her son missing.
A search was done of the area but there was no sign of the boy. Bloodhounds did track his scent to the same stretch of road where just under four years earlier, Paula Weldon had disappeared. From there the scent suddenly went dead.
Sixteen days later came the last disappearance when on 28th October, Frieda Jackson seemingly vanished. She had been camping with family when her and her cousin, Herbert, decided to go on a hike for the day. Early on in the hike, Frieda slipped and was said to have fallen in a stream. She suggested that Herbert wait where he was while she quickly returned to camp to change clothing and then they could go on with their hike as planned.
Herbert waited and when she didn’t return he went back to camp himself, only to find that Frieda had not returned to camp either. Five separate and extensive searches were made for Jackson, including the use of aircraft searches with no trace of her being found.
However, unlike the first four disappearances, the following year in May 1951, her body was found. It was discovered in full view in a field that had been searched five separate times in the weeks following her going missing. Incidentally the body was so badly decomposed that a cause of death was not able to be determined.
There was also the lesser known case of 13 year old Melvin Hills who vanished in the Bennington area on 11 October 1942. His body has also never been found.
So are all these just coincidence or is there something strange happening in this particular area?
What exactly lies within the Bennington Triangle?
There have been many theories as to what happened to these people ranging from the side of the spectrum to the other.
Some speculate that the disappearances were the work of a serial killer who had simply disposed of the bodies. However, there seems to be no pattern – usually serial killers will target a certain sex or race or age group. All of the “victims” were different ages, sex etc. and the serial killer theory does not explain the disappearance of Tedford who seemingly vanished from his seat on a moving bus (although it should be noted - it was a week before the Soldier’s home reported him missing and a further week before the bus driver and the passengers were interviewed by police – in short their testimony needs to be treated with caution simply because they may have struggled to remember accurately so long after the event).
The only thing that did link the disappearances – aside from the area – was that they all happened in the last quarter of the respective year, October, November or December. Perhaps this was significant to the killer, or perhaps this was simply when the “window of opportunity” presented itself – perhaps the killer was only in this area during those months.
For some thought, the disappearances are far more other-worldly.
Some claim that the area houses “dimension gateways” that are essentially doorways to other dimensions and worlds that people can step through - whether they intend to or not. Many fringe researchers suggest that these gateways are opened periodically due to minute tectonic plate activity – there are tectonic plates near this area of the United States.
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Others state that the Bennington Triangle victims were in fact victims of alien abductions – there are said to be many UFO sightings around the area, while others claim that Bennington Monster is responsible for the disappearances.
The Bennington Monster seems to be a “Big-foot” type creature and again the area is a hot-spot for this type of activity – incidentally so is the upper north west of the United States (state of Washington) and California, both of which have tectonic plate activity in the area, as well as numerous UFO sightings. You can read a little more about the Big-foot legend and the various theories here.
The Bennington Monster theory is interesting if only because the roots of the story are set over a hundred years before the 1940s disappearances but virtually in the very same spot.
Sometime in the early nineteenth century the story tells of a stage coach that was making it’s way through the Glastenbury Mountains, close to where Route 9 is today – the same Route 9 near the “Long Trail” where Rivers, Wheldon and Jepson vanished between 1945-1950.
The stagecoach was forced to stop by a terrific storm that hit the area. The driver of the stagecoach was said to have taken his lantern and exited the coach to see how things looked from outside and if it was safe to carry on the journey.
He noticed his horses were acting “spooked” and it was then that he noticed strange tracks in the mud. He asked his passengers for their opinion of the strange large footprints and as they were leaving the coach a huge bang knocked on the side of it.
As the passengers scrambled from the stagecoach the bangs kept coming until the vehicle was knocked completely over, exposing the culprit. The witnesses described a large hairy creature , around eight foot tall with piercing red eyes. This became The Bennington Monster.
Aside from alleged disappearances the Bennington Triangle is said to be home to strange phenomena.
One thing is for certain – the area named The Bennington Triangle, aside from the mysterious disappearances, is home to lots of strange activity, and a lot of it long before the 1940s.
As far back as 1892 there were official accounts of people going missing when a millworker named Henry MacDowell killed a fellow worker, Jim Crowley, in a drunken fight. He was sentenced to life in an asylum. However shortly afterwards he escaped. Although there was a search for the man he was never seen again.
The local tribes also stayed away from the area around Glastenbury Mountain (which makes up the Bennington Triangle) as they suspected the land to be cursed and used it only to bury their dead. They state that this area is “where all four winds meet” and native American folklore states the area is home to a stone that will “swallow anything that steps on it!”
Even the early colonists who “settled” the area spoke of “strange sounds, noises and odours” of the area. Again, modern day “Big-foot” accounts speak of strange noises and powerfully bad aromas.
Even as recently as 2003 a “Big-foot” like creature was spotted near the area in question. You can read about that here.
Another point of interest is that many of the locals to the area at the time thought it was bad luck to wear red clothing in that area – at least two of the victims (Wheldon and Jepson) were both wearing distinctively bright red coats when they vanished.
The disappearances seem to have stopped after 1950 – however strange activity still occurs and many hikers and paranormal enthusiasts still flock to the area.
More recently in the mid-2000s strange stone cairns were found around the area. The cairns appear too high up to have been used by farmers, and too far off the “track” to have been made by hikers as beacons. You can read more about them here. Whether they have anything to do with the strange activity and disappearances of the 1940s is anyone’s guess.
Make sure you check out the two videos out below – a brilliant documentary in two parts from Matt Garland – you can check out his You Tube Channel here.
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