EPISODE 51 - The Bennington Triangle

It just made me so happy to see the us people well , both of us , because they sent it to you immediately . The people are listening and continuing to listen and it fills my heart with pure joy . Our hearts , our hearts . I'm just speaking for me . I love you guys .

We get nothing but great feedback , but we never know if sometimes we're doing bits that you guys think ugh , sick of that .

As of today , when we were recording , it is my last ever chemo , yay , so that's also a very joyous occasion .

But so the Bermuda Triangle is one of the highest incidents of UFOs science ever .

They think that it's actually a portal to another world .

So I've tried to research it and map it , just so I could get a better understanding . If I get any of it wrong , I do apologise . So I'm going to give you a small overview on the history of Glastonbury and then the surrounding area of Glastonbury as well , because that is where the Bennington Triangle is and the history of Glastonbury .

It kind of sets the tone for why it kind of becomes so synonymous , I think . So . Glastonbury was established in 1761 and it was unpopular from the get-go . So Benning went with who is the founder of Bennington drew the boundaries of the town on a map without ever stepping foot there . He just went there .

That there , right there , that is where I want my town to be .

So the town was actually built on rugged mountainous terrain and it wasn't a settlement that had been founded because of its prosperous environment or its transport links or you know anywhere that a settlement would normally be established , and between the years of 1761 and 1791 , only six families inhabited the town . Not popular .

These first settlers found life on Glastonbury mountain very difficult , as would residents ever after , and by the 1800s they had all packed up and left . I say all , I mean the six families that lived there had all picked up and left and they had actually been replaced by eight entirely different families .

However , during the 1800s , like the beginning of the 1800s after the Civil War had ended , businesses in the nearby Bennington County saw an opportunity in the vast wooded areas around Glastonbury . They wanted to use it for log in and things like that .

So the population steadily grew and it kind of grew so much that a railway line was actually built from Bennington up to the Glastonbury town to transport the goods kind of down and to transport people up and things like that , and it was the steepest railroad ever built and parts of it still remain there to this day .

Oh really , yeah , I wouldn't advise going to see it because you'll see why the log in business was booming in Glastonbury .

Obviously , surrounded by trees , it was a very , very wooded area and sawmills were later erected and brick-built kilns had also been made as well to turn the wood into charcoal , and by 1880 , the population had grown to a staggering 241 people .

The railroad shut down , and it kind of that was it In 1894 , so a few years afterwards the town was given a makeover . They wanted to try and reinvent the town from this log in business that it had been into a summer mountainous travel resort .

But three years later the railroad and most of the buildings were completely wrecked by a huge flood that they had . So the deforestation of the area , the removal of all the trees , had left it kind of open to the elements . So they said , had the trees still have been there , the flood would have been a lot less .

But because it was kind of so open , the rain it was kind of like a mud slide . It kind of just washed everything down . So it ruined the railroad and everything else that they tried to build up . So no other attempts to reinvent the town were ever made and today , based on the census in 2020 , a grand total of nine people live in this .

I think there's less people in that town and there are , like the house when I say houses they're not really houses , kind of like shacks and things that people live in have got really aggressive signage out the front warning people not to trespass and don't come by here , and so they're very reclusive Get off my land , get off my land .

So the Bennington Triangle it was named by a gentleman called Joseph Citro and it was based mostly on the strange disappearances in that area over the course of five years from 1945 to 1950 .

And so he recognised a pattern from the disappearances and then , kind of like , delved into the area , the history of the area , and he found a lot more mystery and all like strange things that had happened , more so than these disappearances .

And so he named the area the Bennington Triangle , much like the Bermuda , obviously got his inspiration from the Bermuda Triangle . It was said that Native Americans , from the very start , before the start of the Glastonbury town , the Native Americans didn't step foot on Glastonbury mountain unless it was to bury their dead .

They believed that the whole mountain was cursed land and they said that the four winds met there . So it was kind of like old folk law that the Native Americans said that the Glastonbury mountain was cursed and they always mentioned about these four winds . It's where the four winds meet .

And so , like I say , most people say that this is old Native American folk law , but there was actually some truth behind it . So the wind patterns , and normally you've got , you know , a south-easterly wind , or the wind does change direction .

But the wind pattern on Glastonbury mountain is so erratic that the weather changes so suddenly and the plants actually grow at odd angles . So plants normally grow in the direction of the wind , obviously , because that's where the wind sweeps all the seeds or whatever else .

I'll go through what a cairn is as well , because I didn't know what it was . But they believed that this enchanted cairn ate people . It was a man-eating stone . So a cairn is a collection of stones . They generally mark different waypoints on like trails .

So you do generally find them on mountains and things like that , and they're just like not boulders , just kind of like the size of a foot or something , stones all gathered up in a circle , I guess , all on top of each other , and they just marked different waypoints . Sometimes they'd have like a sign in the middle .

And there was a man-eating one on this one there was just so happened to be a man-eating one .

So because they were there to mark the points on the trails and things , there were actually a collection of them near , somewhat , it's a place that they called Long Trail through the Glastonbury mountain , but they were there a long time before the trail was ever made .

So there's a lot of confusion between professionals as to why these cairns were actually there , and professionals would go there and sort of try and date the rocks . So they were always . They're all covered in like moss and algae and all sorts of nonsense , and they found that the moss actually was prehistoric on these rocks .

So they've been there for millions of years . They predate any making of the trails . They predate the starting of the town . Nobody knows why they're there or how they were there . They're stacked , one on top of each other in a circle . They're not haphazard , they're not just stones that have been found . It's a built structure but the moss on it is prehistoric .

So it's a very strange . It almost like a stonehenge where nobody knows how the stones got there or why they're there or what purpose they're there for . But we'll come back to the man-eating stone later on . So the next strange thing about the Bennington Triangle was the Glastonbury Wildman .

So the Glastonbury Wildman was perhaps the first documented bazaar happening in the area and it was in 1867 . Numerous residents reported encountering a cave-dwelling wildman who was known to terrorise women in the towns of Bennington and Glastonbury . Witnesses reported that the man .

He would pull back his long coat , he would reveal his entirely nude self and he would wave a pistol at them and then run back off into the woods . The women would obviously run off absolutely terrified and they'd go to their local men and they would grab their pitchforks . They'd go out searching . But they never , ever found this Glastonbury Wildman .

Nobody knows who he was or he was just never identified . He was never found .

In 1892 , in the town of Fayville , which is considered to be the heart of what is now known as the Bennington Triangle , a 38-year-old jobber and I looked up what a jobber was because I had no idea and it was just somebody that kind of ran the books , I think , that kind of I think you would call like an accountant nowadays .

So 38-year-old jobber John Crowley was bludgeoned to death with a rock by a fellow mill worker , henry McDowell . And nobody knows what provoked the attack . It was completely unprovoked and it was unwarranted and it was just , it was completely out of the blue .

So after realising what he'd done , henry McDowell skipped town , he hopped onto the nearest train and he attempted to flee Canada . He didn't know why he'd done it or what had come over him .

I think on the way to him being locked up into the mental asylum he managed to escape by hiding in a coal train and he fled into the surrounding woods in the Bennington Triangle and he was never seen again .

So the folklore around that is that he still lives there to this day and he still terrorises people and nobody knows what became of him At all Got eaten Perhaps ?

Five years later , in 1897 , john Harbour , he set off into the area , into an area of the Bennington Triangle , to hunt and he was later found killed by a single gunshot wound . His body had been found behind like a giant tree and it was clear that it had been hidden there .

His rifle was beside him , placed carefully , still fully loaded , and no suspects were ever found .

They did an extensive search of the area to try and track who might have killed him , but the murder went unsolved and nobody there was never any suspects or anybody ever found , and for more than two centuries there have been numerous sightings of a big foot-like creature in Glastonbury Mountain , and this became known as the Bennington Monster .

One of the first reported sightings occurred in the early 1800s when a stagecoach full of passengers that was on its way up the mountain during a storm . What happened was , as they was going up , the downpour was so heavy that it actually washed away the road . So , as it was going up , the road was then completely washed away , so it forced the coach to stop .

The coach driver got out to see what he could do and he noticed some huge footprints in the mud and they were too large to be human . But he was confused because there was , wasn't and nobody makes their way on foot up the mountain .

There was nobody else around other than the coachload of people that he had , and it was quite fresh mud as well , because the rain had just washed away all of the road , so it was very fresh , so the footprints had to be left there quite recently and then , while he was pondering what on earth was going on , the coach was attacked by a giant creature and it

runs straight into the side of the stagecoach and it knocked it on its side and all of the passengers . They were obviously terrified . All they could see was a glaring pair of eyes in the darkness , like bright , brilliant , white , staring eyes . And it was just stood .

This thing , this creature was just stood there staring at these stagecoach that had been knocked over , and then it gave an almighty roar and it ran off into the forest . Later sightings described the creature as a large , hairy black thing standing over six feet tall , and the most recent sighting of the Bennington Monaster was in 2003 .

So there's been continuous sightings of Bigfoot , continuous sightings of UFOs , strange lights in the sky , strange sounds in the mountain , odd odours as well people generally describe in the Bennington Triangle , and these all continued for the next four decades until the .

But there's one before that and it tends to get overlooked . But I thought I would include it because it's very strange . But it's not a disappearance as such , but it is a very strange death . So in 1943 , carl Herrick was hunting with his cousin Henry six kilometres northeast of Glastonbury Mountain , which lies at the centre of the Bennington Triangle .

The pair somehow got separated and despite Henry's attempts he couldn't find Carl . They hadn't been separated for very long , but he couldn't find Carl at all . So Henry ended up contacting the authorities to look for him .

The search lasted three days before they found Carl's body , and it was in an area that wasn't particularly far from where the pair had been separated . Henry had been certain that he'd searched that area and was sure Carl hadn't been there . But Carl's body had been found surrounded by giant footprints and his gun was also nearby , with no bullets discharged .

So at first it was thought that Carl had been attacked by a bear due to the footprints . However , the footprints were much larger than that of a bear and also Carl's body appeared to be completely undamaged from the outside .

His ribs had been squeezed so tight that his ribs had broken and punctured his lungs , which had led to him dying . This is screaming diet loft .

I think they were so used to the mysteries of what happened in Glastonbury Mountain that they was like , oh well , I told him not to go up there . Yeah , I told him . Two years later , 74 year old Middie Rivers went missing .

So Middie Rivers was an experienced hiker and hunter and he went missing on November , the 12th 1945 , while he was guiding a group of four hunters on this mountain trek , glastonbury Mountain , through the Bellington Triangle . He was very familiar with the trail , he walked it all the time .

But the hiker said that Middie was kind of ahead of the pack , so he was leading the trail and he was walking up ahead . And then they traveled through an area of the trail which was called Hell Hollow Brook oh , I think you'd steer clear of that , I would not go anywhere near that no , hell Hollow Brook . And this was on the long trail .

And as they kind of got up to a curve , middie disappeared around the corner , and then the rest of the hikers thinking that they'll see him as they turn the corner , didn't ? Middie had just kind of disappeared off the trail , almost as if into thin air .

So they thought that perhaps he'd just been a lot quicker than them and that they would catch up at some point at the end of the trail , but they never came across him . Feynman , local volunteers and the US Army all searched for Middie for over a month . The only clue they ever found was one rifle cartridge .

They didn't find anybody and the case still remains unsolved . Middie disappeared .

He gave her a ride and then dropped her off a few kilometres from the trail . So there were a few eyewitness accounts on seeing her arrive at the trail . On arriving she spoke with some hikers before she just ventured off on her own . But when she didn't show up for classes the next day , people started getting concerned .

So she was reported missing and a huge search was launched . And this case is probably the most infamous case of all the disappearances . Because of the large-scale search Her father was very much like I am going to throw everything at this and I am going to find her .

So there was reward , money that was offered , and it was also the case that forced Vermont to form his own state police force , because until then , until her disappearance , there was only ever one state investigator and then they would just pull people in from different areas and they relied mostly on volunteers and things like that to search .

But this case in particular forced Vermont to form its own state police . The search lasted four weeks , but she was never found . Exactly three years after Paula's disappearance , 68-year-old World War I veteran James Tedford disappeared from a moving bus , and this was really strange .

He was visiting friends out of town and then was heading back on the bus to Bennington . 14 passengers confirmed that he had been on the bus and had not gotten off at any stop . He was on the bus until the last stop , which was Bennington , and passengers said that he was there . He had been asleep throughout the entire trip .

But when the bus arrived at Bennington and the driver turned around telling you know , this is the last stop , you need to get off , he wasn't there , but his belongings were there . So his suitcase little travel suitcase was there and his ticket was on his seat . So nobody knows he was never , never seen again . Can you imagine if ?

So to this day , there was still no explanation for his disappearances , unless all 14 eyewitnesses were wrong and that they hadn't seen him or they had . You know , it's gotten off and they . Even . If he had got off , though , he would have just gone home or he would have , yeah , wife or something . Why didn't he take his belongings ?

. Nearly a year later , in October 1950 , eight year old Paul Jepsen went missing . Well , his family had a farm , so they kind of stopped by this farm to tend the pigs and they'd left Paul in the truck just happily playing . And then when she got back from tending the pigs , paul was gone .

A large search was conducted and his father had mentioned to police that in the days before Paul disappeared he'd become obsessed with the Glastonbury Mountains . He's constantly telling his mum and his dad that he wanted to go to the mountains and that he needed to go to the mountains and it was almost like they were like calling to him and luring him there .

Get dogs were sent out and they tracked his scent to an area that was kind of on a stretch of highway , that near the Bennington Triangle , and then he sent just stopped , they tracked it to this area and then that was it . He was never seen , never found . Nobody knows what happened to little Paul Jepsen .

Approximately two weeks later , on October the 28th , frida Lander vanished while on a camping trip in an area of the Bennington Triangle . She'd been out hiking with her cousin when she slipped and fell into just like a little body of water . It wasn't much . There were about a half a mile from their campsite .

So she decided she said to her cousin , you stay here , I'm gonna run back and I'm just gonna change my clothes . But Frida never made it back to her camp and her cousin started to get worried when Frida didn't return and she searched for her and , you know , searched the local area . She went back to the camp and she hadn't been changed or anything .

So she eventually called the police . The area was searched by the police , firemen , the military and volunteers for weeks and there was no sighting of her . Nobody ever found her body until six months later , in the May , when Frida's body was found next to a body of water that had been extensively searched .

During their original search Her body was too badly decomposed for them to get a true cause of her death . But they ruled it as a drowning and that was just because her body was found next to water . But I don't think that kind of . If she'd drowned , how did she end up not in the water but on the side ? You know , you generally found in the water .

But so her death it was a mystery , although it was put down as a drowning . You know how she was found she was found from the water .

So here are some of the practical theories and these are the theories that generally I would go to to figure out some of these things .

So one is that that there was a serial killer on the loose in those five years , which could be plausible , but a lot of people think that it wasn't a serial killer because the ages , the sexes , everything was very different . So , normally you find a pattern with a serial killer and they have a type of a profile that they go for .

Yeah , yeah , a type of MO , but this it was any age , any sex and different means of death as well , so don't know whether it was a serial killer or not . Another explanation has to do with the areas history as a mining town .

The mountain side is said to be littered with unmarked mineshafts , which could cause hikers , if they go off the trail , to plummet into these mineshafts and be lost , and that could explain the missing people and that nobody's were ever found . Yeah , another factor is people are saying that because of the odd wind pattern on the mountains .

What I found is that it says most places have a wind pattern that influences how plants grow , and we don't consciously acknowledge it . But this pattern of growth is how we orientate ourselves outdoors . Yeah , so you might not be aware that you're doing it , but based on how foliage is , you think , oh , that's the right way .

But because it's so scattered on the mountain , people can become very disorientated . And it says that even experienced hikers can become very disorientated due to this random growth . And there's also a theory as well about hypothermia .

So all of the disappearances happened in the last three months of the year , so in winter , and it said that when you experience hypothermia there is something called terminal burrowing and it's a instinctive survival behaviour that drives people to find someplace small and remote to huddle , and it gets people out of the wind and it gets people to an area of safety

and it might provide a little bit of warmth that helps slow the hypothermia down , but it usually kicks in too late and what it actually does it just makes that person harder to find . Yeah , so that's another explanation as to why these people have kind of gone missing .

You're already going to die , yeah , and you might be able to find you , yeah , then it just makes you very difficult to find .

So these other theories now are more supernatural , okay , and so there's a theory around the disappearances , obviously , that it could be UFOs , and , as I mentioned earlier , all of the disappearances happened in the last three months of the year .

They all happened around the same sort of time , around three or four o'clock in the afternoon , okay , and some of the people had been wearing red . So Paula had a red coat on , paul , little Paul Jepsen , he had a little red coat on , and people now , when they actually take that trail to hike , they're actually told not to wear red .

Really , yeah , it's become a thing that if you wear red you're going to disappear . So people just don't .

And then there is the theory of the man eating stone and this , like I mentioned in the beginning of the podcast , that this was made popular by the Native American folklore about these enchanted cans and it's believed that people stand on these stones because they're a higher the elevation .

People stand on the stones to maybe get a better view or maybe try and orientate themselves , and then the stone turns . Yep , it's more that it's not so much that the stone opens up and eats them , is that the stone turns liquid and then people are kind of consumed into this liquid stone type thing . So that's enough theory .

But what I took from it was that it was they couldn't really date it or explain how it got there , but it was prehistoric .

Or I just won't wear red and I won't go in the last three months of the year .

Yeah , it feels like it's been a while since we've had like a weird one . Yeah , I thought so .

I have got a really strange one coming up , which Sarah and I briefly discussed this morning .

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