You’ve heard of the Bermuda Triangle, an area in the North Atlantic Ocean where many ships and airplanes have mysteriously disappeared over the years. But equally mysterious is the Bennington Triangle, an area centered around Glastenbury Mountain in Vermont where five people disappeared in mysterious circumstances between 1945 and 1950, and all but one of them were never seen again.
The first person to disappear in what became known as the Bennington Triangle was seventy-four-year-old Middie Rivers. He was guiding a group of hunters up the mountains when he went ahead of them and disappeared – completely and forever. About a year later, a similar thing happened to eighteen-year-old college student Paula Jean Welden. Paula was last seen by an elderly couple hiking on a trail through the mountains, but then she turned a corner before them and disappeared. Despite extensive searches for both Middie and Paula, no trace of them was ever found.
Perhaps the most mysterious disappearance of all was that of veteran James E. Tedford. He was returning home to the town of Bennington on a bus in December 1949 when he disappeared inside the same triangular area. People said they saw Tedford on the bus after the final stop before Bennington but that by the time the bus arrived in Bennington, he had disappeared, leaving only his luggage behind.
The last two people to disappear, in 1950, were eight-year-old Paul Jephson from a truck, where his mother had left him alone for an hour, and fifty-three-year-old Frieda Langer, while hiking with her cousin. Frieda was the only victim whose body was found, near a river about six months later, but a cause of death was never established. The cause of all five disappearances remains a mystery to this day.
