Vermont’s Bennington Triangle is my first stop on the Triangle Trope Trip this year. See also I Survived the Bermuda Triangle. And for a deep dive into the history of how these places became known, check out Paranormal Vortex Areas.
Glastenbury Mountain
On my way back from Vermont earlier this year, we passed Bennington and its infamous Glastenbury mountain, which has accrued a reputation as a spooky area hosting an array of supernatural and generally weird phenomena.
This reputation was boosted by real life tragedies, but also by writers and media producers who lumped events together, exaggerated some, made up others, and molded a contrived narrative. Their efforts enhanced and popularized the legends, eventually consolidating the package as the ‘Bennington Triangle.’
I did not have the chance to stop and explore Glastenbury, a lost village and rugged mountain that is likely named after Glastonbury, Somerset, England, though not spelled the same. The tiny town, now abandoned, had poor rocky soil and harsh winters, though it did manage to eek out an existence for a while in the mid 1800s. The railroad carried lumber and charcoal from the location to Bennington. But Glastenbury, Vermont only lasted 103 years, until 1937 when the trees had all been cut and last ditch efforts at tourism failed. The village lost its railroad line to flooding which scuttled any remaining potential and heralded its turn into a “ghost town”. It was unincorporated for lack of residents. (See also Glastenbury: A history of a Vermont ghost town by Tyler Resch, 2008)
Part of the Appalachian Trail, called The Long Trail through Vermont, passes over the Glastenbury mountain. From what I’ve gathered, trails through the old town and the mountain are not well-marked and a traveler could easily become lost. Haunted Hikes writer Andrea Lankford labels the 21-mile Glastenbury Loop as a ‘strenuous’ route today rising 2000 ft in elevation, not recommended for amateurs, with primitive roads and few rough shelters for bad weather. It’s a rugged environment, so, it’s not a wonder that several people have disappeared in the area, never to be found. The several disappearances, which were never fully explained, contributed mightily to the manufactured idea that the area, and the mountain in particular, was cursed and dangerous.
The Disappearances
In 1946, Paula Welden, a student of Bennington College, which was an all-women’s school at the time, disappeared after going for a hike one December day. She was never found. Welden’s disappearance was the most famous one of six supposed incidents. It was preceded by the vanishing of experienced but elderly outdoorsman Middie Rivers in 1945, and followed by a cluster of mysterious missing persons in 1950: eight-year old Paul Jepson went missing from a truck, Frances Christman and Frieda Langer disappeared within days of each other. Langer’s body was later discovered seven months later in an area around her campsite that had been previously thoroughly searched. Her cause of death was never determined. In November of 1950, Martha Jones disappeared after supposedly hitchhiking. One of the weirdest tales is that of James Tetford who was said to have vanished from a bus from St. Albans to Bennington in 1949. That is, he got on but never got off. This story has been greatly exaggerated, as it was many days before it was noticed that he didn’t return home. You won’t hear that part on paranormal media because it ruins the mystery.
It seems plausible that the disappearances in this localized area of Vermont inspired various fictional tales of haunted mountains. Weldon’s story, in particular, was loosely tied to the novel Hangsaman by author Shirley Jackson. Jackson lived in Bennington where her husband was a professor; she later became renowned for her uncanny tales including the shocking short story The Lottery and the short novel Haunting of Hill House, which was made into movies and a series. I recently finished a biography of Jackson (Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin) in which little mention was made of any unsettling characteristics of the Bennington area except for the way she was treated by the insular community.
Mystery mongers
In 1992, author and storyteller Joseph Citro described the area around Glastenbury mountain and Bennington where the disappearances and other strange tales had been reported as the “Bennington Triangle”. He admitted in the book Weird New England (p. 74) that he “swiped” the term Triangle because of the mysterious association (presumably with the Bermuda Triangle). Citro, who is not a trained folklorist, also popularized other spooky tales such as that of UFOs, hauntings, hairy monsters, portals to other dimensions, and man eating rocks. (I will try and treat that Spooky Geology topic at another time.) Reading Citro’s writing, he plays at mystery mongering, a characteristic that genuine folklore scholars would not exhibit. If the disappearances were not supernatural, he suggests, perhaps they were the work of a serial killer dubbed the Bennington Ripper or Mad Murderer of the Long Trail. There is no solid evidence for this but became a popular idea for discussion for armchair true-crime fans.
As happens with difficult or unique places, insinuations were made that the natives claimed the mountain was cursed and that unexplained lights and sounds emanated from it. The origins of such tales are dubious, but often repeated, nevertheless. The strange stories are often connected directly to Glastenbury mountain and town, which did have some history of violent crimes and murders. However, many of the publicized incidents didn’t happen on the mountain.
Monster tales
Man-like monster stories also became attached to the area. Numerous residents reported a “wild man” terrorized the people of Bennington and Glastenbury around 1867. Witnesses reported an unkempt naked man in a coat flashed residents and waved a pistol before hiding in the forest. Rumor was that he existed among the boulder caves. Incredibly, this story later seemed to morph into Bigfoot lore. There is considerable reason not to read this as a Bigfoot tale but that didn’t stop people conflating the story and creating the Bennington Monster. Various internet and book sources reference an account of a stagecoach in the 1800s halted by a washed out road. The coach was attacked by a large creature with glowing red eyes. Another tale was popularized by Ripley’s Believe It or Not (so I am rather inclined towards “not”) where a man named Carol Herrick was found dead in the woods in 1943 having been “squeezed to death and his body surrounded by huge footprints.” This was also associated with the Bennington Monster. I’d be grateful if people who knew anything about that story could supply a credible source. A few people have also claimed to have heard animal screams in the woods at night or having seen the typical hair-covered tall bipedal creatures as recently as the early 2000s
None of these claims, however, stand up to any scrutiny. In my admittedly cursory searches for legitimate sources of these accounts, I found the usual copy-paste efforts of paranormal web pages replete with mistaken spellings and attributions. The intent of the stories is to feed into the paranormal spirt of place and to bolster the lore of a paranormal “Triangle” area. Some exaggerated and poorly researched YouTube features even compare the Bennington Triangle to areas in the Western US known as supernatural hot spots like the Uinta Basin in Utah, home of Skinwalker Ranch.
The Bennington “square”?
Other than the fact that some people did actually disappear and were presumed dead, very little evidence supports the overreaching paranormal and monstrous claims made by mystery mongers promoting the Bennington Triangle. The events from 1945 to 1950 and those fore and aft were connected and judged to be significant by one person, Joe Citro, who sensationalized the events and native legends. Heck, it’s not even close to being a triangle!
As with other paranormal “triangle” areas, we can see the accretion of additional reports and facts that are added simply due to proximity. In this case, the abandonment of Glastenbury along with unfortunate human and natural events that seem to be due to social and environmental circumstances, fed into the supernatural themes that became popular fodder for the TV shows, podcasts and self-made videos from the late 90s to the present. Notably, the events of the Bennington Triangle are mostly in the past, as no recent events are attributed to it. However, we can guarantee that the preexisting framing allows any strange event that takes place in the vicinity to be conveniently hanged onto the body of tales and add to its mystique.
Here is Part 1 & 2 of a short documentary featuring local historians.
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