Brave Little State is 开云体育鈥檚 listener-powered journalism podcast. Every episode begins with a question submitted by our audience. Today, a question from Kevin Landry, of Claremont, New Hampshire:
鈥淲hat is the Bennington Triangle?鈥�
In this episode, we revisit the initial disappearances and trace the rise of the 鈥淏ennington Triangle鈥� in the popular imagination.
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The local perspective
Howard Weiss-Tisman: If you hang around downtown Bennington for a little while and ask people what they know about the Bennington Triangle, you鈥檒l get a pretty wide range of answers.
(Street sounds)
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Have you heard of the Bennington Triangle?
Bennington Resident 1: No.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Never heard of it?
Bennington Resident 1: Don鈥檛 know about it, and don鈥檛 care. More pressing things in town.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: How long have you lived in Bennington?
Bennington Resident 2: I鈥檝e been born and raised here.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Have you heard of the Bennington Triangle?
Bennington Resident 2: Bennington Triangle? Yeah, up in Glastenbury.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Tell me what you know.
Bennington Resident 2: Not a whole lot. I hear of spooky stories of the triangle. I have not been up there myself. But I鈥檝e just heard spooky stories. That鈥檚 all.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: And born and bred in Bennington?
Bennington Resident 2: Born and bred in Bennington.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: And that鈥檚 all you know about it?
Bennington Resident 2: That鈥檚 all I know about it.
Nancy Koziol: I know everything about it.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: You do?
Nancy Koziol: Literally.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Tell me a little bit.
Nancy Koziol: Uh, don鈥檛 go up wearing red. And then the guy that was on the bus? And all they found were his glasses and his timetable.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: And how do you know all this?
Nancy Koziol: Just local lore. I think when you move here it鈥檚 one of the first things people kind of initiate you to.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Have you heard of the Bennington Triangle?
Bennington Resident 3: No.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Never heard of it?
Bennington Resident 3: No. Should I have? (Laughter)
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Five people went missing between 1945 and 1950 from the area that is now known as the Bennington Triangle, a region that extends from downtown Bennington out into the rugged terrain of the Green Mountain National Forest and Glastenbury Mountain to the east.
There鈥檚 no plaque in downtown Bennington commemorating the disappearances.
Visitors don鈥檛 ask about it much at the state rest area.
And Mike Madison, who鈥檚 co-owner of a brewpub right along the main drag in Bennington says he doesn鈥檛 get too many questions about it at the bar.
Mike Madison: Yeah, I mean you don鈥檛 hear too much about it. You know, every once in a while you鈥檒l see it come up, like I鈥檒l see it on Facebook, or a write up or something on it, but it鈥檚 not like a daily conversation.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: It's just not really a big deal to most of the folks I've met who call southwest Vermont home. But if you go on YouTube, and put Bennington Triangle into the search bar, you鈥檒l find people across the country 鈥� and around the world 鈥� are talking about it.
: The mysterious disappearances of Bennington Triangle in the heart of Vermont, USA鈥�
(video audio )
Howard Weiss-Tisman: So how did the story about what is most likely five random, and tragic, disappearances become conspiracy theory fodder for podcasters, YouTube creators and TV stations around the world? Settle in and pay attention. The answers might be a little scary.
I went to meet our question asker at The Daily Grind coffee shop in Claremont, New Hampshire, near where he lives.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Are you Kevin?
Kevin Landry: Yeah.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Oh, I鈥檓 Howard.
Kevin Landry: Howard.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Excellent. Nice to see you.
Kevin Landry: Good. Good.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Thanks for coming.
Kevin Landry: Yeah. No problem. We鈥檙e just waiting for a table.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Kevin Landry grew up in Concord, New Hampshire.
He told me that he went through Bennington once or twice as a kid, but he had never heard of the Bennington Triangle 鈥� until one night, a few years ago. He couldn鈥檛 sleep. And he started flipping through his TV channels.
Kevin Landry: I think I was just, you know, scrolling through channels, and there was probably nothing else on.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: He landed on a show called Unnatural World: The Scariest Places in America.
TV audio: Be afraid, be very afraid, evil lurks here.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: And then, just as he started to doze off a little, his ears perked up.
Kevin Landry: They mentioned Vermont.
TV audio: Along the southwestern edge of Vermont鈥檚 Green Mountains is Bennington County.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Kevin remembers Bennington as a nice little town, surrounded by the Green Mountain National Forest. It was not a place he considered to be one of the scariest places in America.
TV audio: My hands are shaking. I don鈥檛 scare easy, but that scared me.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: And this all kind of piqued his interest. He wondered what really happened to the five people who disappeared.
And he also wondered about all of these supernatural theories that were mentioned in the TV show.
Kevin Landry: You know, had they ever resolved it, or what the different theories were, you know, like Sasquatch, or, you know the different, aliens, or just environment, right, they fell off the face of the mountain, or whatever happened, And so I think the TV show was really sensationalizing it. And I would like kind of the facts. Like, what is the information?
My name is Kevin Landry and my question is, 鈥淲hat is the Bennington Triangle?鈥�
Five disappearances
Howard Weiss-Tisman: So the first person to disappear from around Bennington was a guy named Middie Rivers, a 74-year-old outdoorsman who wandered away from his hunting camp in November of 1945.
And it was pretty big news around town when Rivers went missing. The Vermont State Guard was called in and troops from Fort Devens, Massachusetts helped with the search.
In the end, only a single rifle cartridge and a handkerchief were found, which may, or may not, have belonged to Rivers.
But the legend didn鈥檛 really take hold until the following year. That鈥檚 when an 18-year-old Bennington College student named Paula Welden told her friend she was going for a hike on the Long Trail and never returned back to her dorm.
Jamie Franklin: Because Welden was a young, pretty, 18-year-old girl who was a student at Bennington College, her father was wealthy, they were from Connecticut, that story kind of blew up.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: This is Jamie Franklin.
Jamie Franklin: J-A-M-I-E. Franklin, like Benjamin. I鈥檓 the director of collections and exhibitions here at the Bennington Museum.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: We meet in the museum鈥檚 Regional History Room, a soaring 19th century building with high ceilings and sober paintings of Bennington鈥檚 founding mothers and fathers looking down on the display cases, book stacks and long wooden tables in the research room.
I ask Jamie to show me around and he takes me to the museum鈥檚 file cabinets.
Jamie Franklin: You know this one, Robert Frost, of course, lived and worked here in Shaftsbury, Vermont in Bennington County from 1920 to 1938, so we have a folder on Robert Frost. William Lloyd Garrison.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: And there in the museum鈥檚 file cabinet, wedged between Daniel Webster, and former New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth, who the town of Bennington is named after, there鈥檚 a file on Paula Welden.
Jamie Franklin: You know the Paula Welden case was on the front page of the Bennington Banner, like I said, for at least a couple of weeks after her disappearance. There were articles running on a daily basis updating all the kind of up-to-date news.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Bennington College shut down for a few days and the students helped search for her. Missing person posters were plastered around town, and volunteers stepped up to look for Welden. But Jamie says the search was frantic and disorganized.
Jamie Franklin: Welden鈥檚 father was involved in politics in Connecticut, and was very unimpressed and upset with the lack of coordination amongst the various authorities 鈥� the police, sheriffs.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Welden鈥檚 father called in his own investigators. A year later the Vermont Legislature created the Vermont State Police, largely due to the painful shortcomings that were laid bare during the Welden investigation. And to this day, her disappearance remains an unsolved missing person case by the Vermont State Police.
Before the end of 1950, three more people 鈥� five in total 鈥� had seemingly vanished from Bennington and the nearby Glastenbury Mountain wilderness.
James Tedford, a 68-year-old World War I vet with mental health issues, got on a bus heading towards Bennington and was never seen again.
Paul 鈥淏uddy鈥� Jepson, who was just 8 years old when he disappeared, vanished from his mother鈥檚 truck after she left him while taking care of some business at the town dump. His body was never discovered.
And Frieda Langer, who was 53, was with her family at their camp near Somerset when she disappeared. Her body was recovered the following spring, but no cause of death could be determined.
The mystery of what happened to the five people kind of bubbled up from time to time. Especially the Welden case. The local paper would occasionally write a story if some kind of lead developed, or around the anniversary of her disappearance. But for the most part, if you didn鈥檛 live in southwestern Vermont, you probably didn鈥檛 know too much about it.
Until a Vermont author gave the five, random disappearances a name.
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鈥楽ome fanciful speculation鈥�
Howard Weiss-Tisman: So five people went missing in the Bennington area between 1945 and 1950. And the disappearances were followed in the local press.
But it wasn鈥檛 until 1992 that a Vermont author named Joe Citro laid the foundation for what would eventually become an internationally discussed phenomenon.
Joe Citro: I wanted this commentary series to be about Vermont鈥檚 historic and folkloric past.
Joe had a recurring gig on 开云体育 Radio, of all places, and a few times a month he would delve into what he likes to call Vermont folklore.
Joe Citro: So I was looking for stories that would kind of fit in that category. And it was history dash folklore, or whatever. I don鈥檛 even know what it is. I don鈥檛 have a name for what I do.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: He鈥檇 tell stories about ghosts and monsters. Mysteries and legends about abandoned villages, and haunted covered bridges, the imposing mountains, dark forests and howling winds that blow through Vermont 鈥� the place he was born and raised.
And in one of these radio commentaries, Joe told the story about the five disappearances and he let loose the name: the Bennington Triangle.
Joe Citro: I was trying to use a seemingly familiar phrase, and that would have been, 鈥淭he Bermuda Triangle,鈥� everybody knew about that. And so, hey, 鈥淏鈥�, 鈥淏ennington鈥�, 鈥淏ennington Triangle.鈥� So yeah, I just pulled it out of the air. It was just part of the process of being at the keyboard.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: And once the disappearances got a name, Joe says, the legend grew.
Joe Citro: Each of these disappearances got a lot of publicity in its day. And that was kind of dormant for a while. And I kind of reawakened that. Since then, it鈥檚 kind of exploded.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: After a few years of telling his ghost stories on VPR, Joe started writing a series of books on Vermont folklore and mysteries.
And he鈥檇 revisit the Bennington Triangle story in some of those books, embellishing the tale a little bit each time.
He introduced the idea of an alien abduction.
He retold a story he thinks he heard somewhere about a man-eating rock on Glastenbury Mountain.
And he made his own connection to a local story about the Bennington Monster, a Sasquatch-like creature that Joe read about in an old book about Vermont folklore.
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With each retelling, Joe鈥檚 story of the Bennington Triangle grew more outrageous.
Joe Citro: I added some fanciful speculation that I didn鈥檛 believe, and I didn鈥檛 think the reader would, like, you know, little aliens came down and scooped the people up. Or, the rock. I may have made that up, and I may have found that, I just don鈥檛 know. And that鈥檚 the thing about folklore and fact: there鈥檚 a weird alchemy that mixes them, and even the creators can鈥檛 go back and separate them.
Local to global
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Joe has written these stories down and sold some books through the years, but the interest in Vermont folklore is probably mostly regional, so any discussions of the Bennington Triangle stayed pretty local.
But then as the internet grew, he started getting more and more calls from YouTubers and podcasters. Television shows and newscasts.
And in the dark corners of the World Wide Web, the number of stories of what has come to be known as the Bennington Triangle exploded.
Maurice Hall: We鈥檝e been knit together as a virtual village by media, by social media in particular, so what used to be locally contained is now global.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: Maurice Hall is provost at Bennington College and he鈥檚 done lots of research and writing on social media and communications.
He says that while legends like the Bennington Triangle are inherently regional, the internet has introduced them to a whole new audience around the world.
Maurice Hall: Because of the algorithms of these platforms you can get lost in a rabbit hole. You see more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and you keep going deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and at some point, before you realize it, you鈥檙e all the way in.
J.P. Schmidt: I think human nature tends to want to have answers, and tends to want to have bad guys responsible for bad things that happen, and bad things happen more than I think the general public realizes.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: J.P. Schmidt is a captain with the Vermont State Police, and J.P. is the guy who organizes the search when a Vermonter is reported missing.
And he鈥檚 also the one likely to investigate the body in the unfortunate situation when a missing person turns up deceased.
J.P. Schmidt: I think as far as trying to, you know, pin point that there鈥檚 this triangle where there's some sort of mysterious or otherworldly thing happening, um, again, I won鈥檛 say that there鈥檚 nothing there, but it鈥檚 something I鈥檓 highly skeptical of, versus I think this is just circumstance and we want to pin it on something because that makes us, honestly, it makes us feel like we have a little more control over the world, and it makes us feel a little bit better.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: So until he鈥檚 convinced otherwise, J.P. says he鈥檒l assume that each of the victims of the Bennington Triangle met their own tragic end.
J.P. Schmidt: Sometimes people do just disappear. And it鈥檚 Vermont. It鈥檚 a mountainous region. When, you know, a person dies in the woods, it鈥檚 not a super long period of time before that body is no longer recoverable. Or, you know, it鈥檚 scattered by animals, it鈥檚 buried under leaves and decomposes and nobody sees it.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: The Vermont State Police Missing Persons list currently has 38 people on it.
But of the five missing people included in the Bennington Triangle story, only Paula Welden鈥檚 name is on the list, as the person who led to the creation of the state police. But there are many more Vermonters who vanished whose names have been lost to history.
It鈥檚 not likely that we鈥檒l ever really learn what happened to Welden, or to the other four people who disappeared more than seven decades ago.
And so without any clear answers, the story of the Bennington Triangle will be told, and retold, on podcasts, videos and on TV shows.
But for his part, Joe Citro says he鈥檚 grown kind of weary of the Bennington Triangle phenomenon.
He doesn鈥檛 watch the YouTube videos, and he says he turns down most of the requests for interviews. When I visited him, he was juggling interview requests from Toronto, Canada and the UK. And he doesn鈥檛 expect these requests to stop anytime soon.
Joe Citro: I can鈥檛 explain it. There鈥檚 something in us that longs for the unexplained, that longs for the mystery.
I try to be really clear that there is a line somewhere between reality and fabrication. My responsibility is to let people know there is a line, but what people do with that, it鈥檚 not up to me. The line is serpentine. It moves all over the place, it鈥檚 hard to keep track of it, but it鈥檚 there.
Howard Weiss-Tisman: And so, dear listener, take care of who you listen to and what you believe. Check your sources. Question authority. After all, it鈥檚 scary out there.
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Credits
Thanks to Kevin Landry of Claremont, New Hampshire for the great question.
This episode was reported by Howard Weiss-Tisman and produced by Burgess Brown. Editing and additional production from Josh Crane and Sabine Poux. Our intern is Catherine Morrissey. Angela Evancie is our Executive Producer. Digital support from Sophie Stephens. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Laura Nakasaka, Jon Ehrens, Betty Smith, Eric Ford, Laurie Kigonya, Matt Harrington, Ashley Jowet, Nancy Koziol, PJ DeVito, Tyler Resch and Brian Campion.
As always, our journalism is better when you鈥檙e a part of it:
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Brave Little State is a production of 开云体育 and a proud member of the NPR Network.
