Glastenbury and neighbouring Somerset were once logging towns in the Green Mountains of southwestern Vermont. By 1937 they were all but empty. Between 1945 and 1950, five people went missing in the area.
Hunter Middie Rivers, 74, vanished in November 1945 near Bickford Hollow; only his handkerchief was ever found. In December 1946, Bennington College student Paula Jean Welden, 18, set off for the Long Trail and was never seen again. James Tedford, a veteran, was seen boarding a bus to Bennington in 1949 and did not arrive. In October 1950, eight-year-old Paul Jepson disappeared from his mother's truck, and two weeks later Frieda Langer vanished while hiking near Somerset. Langer's body was found in May 1951, but no cause of death could be determined.
Local papers linked the cases at the time, and later author Joseph A. Citro named the area the 'Bennington Triangle' and gathered local folklore about it. Most investigators see separate tragedies in rugged, thickly wooded country. These were real people with families, so we stick to what was reported.