Hello, It's Richard mcclinsmith here with Unexplained. On a short break for the holiday season, we'll be dipping back into the archive for one more week. In this week's episode, we returned to Bennington, Vermont, where between nineteen forty five and nineteen fifty four people vanished without trace in an area dubbed the Bennington Triangle, so called because of the many strange and weird occurrences said to have taken place there.
In nineteen forty six, eighteen year old Paula gene Weldon became the second of those four people to disappear, in a case one investigator described as the most baffling he'd ever come across. This is Unexplained, Season six, episode eleven,
slide away in southwest Vermont in the United States. It was sometime around three pm on December one, nineteen forty six, when a truck pulled up to the bottom of the long Trail road a few miles east from the town of Bennington, at the edge of the Green Mountains National Forest. A light snow had just begun to fall. As a young woman with dark blonde hair wearing a red Parker jacket,
blue jeans, and white trainers jumped out. She thanked the driver for the lift, then shut the door and continued on foot down the mile and a half stretch of road, leading her deeper and deeper into the forest. On and on she walked, as the snow continued to fall, her hands thrust into the pockets of that red Parker jacket.
From off in the distance, the sound of a car approaching draws nearer and nearer the young woman walking in the red Parker, now just an imperceptible echo from another top time vanishes as the topless swish of the car rushes past. At the wheel is twenty seven year old Robert Singly, a music composition teacher from Bennington College. It is now late September twenty oh eight. Singly parks up at the end of the road and jumps out of the vehicle. He grabs a rucksack from the back packed
with a small lunch for his walk. Then, after taking a deep breath of the wet, pine scented air, he places a wooly hat on his head and sets off into the trees. A few hours later, after eating lunch on the slope of Bald Mountain, roughly two miles from his car. Singly continues on the same path for another mile or so before deciding to head back the way he came. But as he walks, it appears to Singly that something strange has happened. Where before the path was clear,
a fallen now lies strewn across it. Singly turns to examine the path behind him, then looks back to the tree, running his eyes over its soaking, wet, moss covered bark with a sinking realization the path he is on is not the same path he was on before. Trying not to panic, Robert figures he'll find his way eventually if he just keeps heading roughly in the right direction. But after another mile or two of walking, there is still no sign of the long trail road or anything else
that he recognizes. It was as though the entire forest had shifted secretly around him. With no mobile phone, map or GPS, Robert Singly had no choice but to simply press on and hope for the best. Before long, however, dusk descended, bringing with it a thick fog that appeared from out of nowhere, obscuring the path ahead. Just then, Robert looked up to see a large maple tree a little off the trail that seemed to be beckoning him,
taking shelter under its branches. He eventually succeeded in lighting a fire to keep warm, then slumped back against the trunk of the tree and waited for dawn. At first light, Singly set off again in what he assumed to be the direction of his car, but after another few hours, believing he was only a quarter of a mile away, he came across a sign for the Goddard Shelter on Glastonbury Mountain, a place roughly seven miles from where he
thought he was, in a completely different stretch of forest. Fortunately, Robert was eventually discovered by a Vermont State Police search team around a seven thirty that morning, a little tired and cold, but otherwise safe and well. Quite what had happened to him, he couldn't be sure, as he put it to the local Bennington Banner newspaper, either he took a wrong turn, something he was adamant he hadn't done, or something really weird happened out there. For some that
Singly got lost on Glastonbury Mountain was no coincidence. Much of Vermont's Green Mountain's forest is steeped in mythology and mysticism, in particular Glastonbury Mountain, where, according to folk legend, there is even a vast ancient boulder that swallows people whole, taking them from the earth without so much as a
stifled cry. Like much of New England, the area reads like a strange psychogeographic experiment, where place names like Manchester, Sunderland, Somerset and Dover can be found only a stone's throw from each other, all dragged from another world by English settlers and pinned haphazardly onto a strange and unfamiliar landscape, a place that in reality was never for taming, as it continues to this day to wriggle and squirm underneath,
alive with unknowable mystery. And it isn't just the land that visitors and locals alike are told to be cautious of.
In nineteen twenty five, it's claim that famed horror writer Howard Philip's Lovecraft once traveled to Richmond, Vermont, a little further north, on the hunt for a strange winged creature that had been dubbed the Awful by local observers, described as having the tail of a serpent, gray wings, and huge claws, having presumably traveled right over the Green Mountains, it is alleged to have been seen again in Berkshire, Massachusetts, just to the south, where it reportedly swooped down and
grabbed something from the ground. Some claim it was a dog or a lamb, others that it was in fact a small child. Of course, many vast wilderness regions have generated similar myths and legends, no less terrifying, But where the Green Mountain's forest seems to differ is in its
propensity for the genuinely inexplicable. In nineteen ninety two, local resident and folklorist Joseph Citro coined the term Bennington Triangle, which covers a region of the Green Mountains between the towns of Bennington, Woodford, and Somerset, in an effort to encapsulate the area's many strange stories, In particular, a spate of unexplained vanishings that occurred there between nineteen forty five and nineteen fifty all occurred close to the Long Trail,
a two hundred and seventy mile stretch of hiking path that leads straight through the Green Mountains all the way to the Canadian border. The first to disappear was seventy four year old Middy Rivers in nineteen forty five, who vanished while out on a hunting trip with friends. Midy, an experienced hunter who knew the forest well, was last seen close to the Long Trail Road, a short section of road at the southern end of the Long Trail.
In nineteen forty nine, sixty eight year old James Tetford got on a bus in the town of Franklin, about one hundred sixty miles north of Bennington, en route for the Bennington Soldier's home where he lived. Teedford was reportedly seen on the bus after the last stop before Bennington, but when the bus arrived at his final destination, the man had inexplicably vanished, leaving behind his bag and an
open bus timetable on his vacant seat. Then, in nineteen fifty eight, year old Paul Jepson was accompanying his mother to a local dump not far from the Long Trail that she and her husband managed, when he too disappeared. Paul had been left in the family truck while his mother left to complete some chores, but when she returned he was gone. Some believe he simply walked into the forest out of curiosity, then somehow lost his way back.
Others that something came out of the forest and took him, and some say his parents may in fact have been responsible. And then there is Paula Jean Weldon. Weldon, a student at Bennington College, where missing in nineteen forty six after reportedly setting off for a walk on the Long Trail. As one of the detectives tasked with locating her put it it was the most baffling case he'd ever been connected with. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McLean Smith.
When seventeen year old Paula Gene Weldon arrived for her first term at Bennington College in nineteen forty five, she wasn't quite sure what to make of her new roommate, Elizabeth. Both had very different backgrounds, with Paula growing up in the city, the daughter of an industrial designer in Stamford, Connecticut, and Elizabeth hailing from nearby rural Putney, having grown up
on a horse ranch. The pair soon hit it off, however, quickly bonding over their mutual love of the great out and reveled in their new found freedom out on campus, away from their families. They even took a job together in the college canteen, working two hour long shifts each day to help cover their boarding fees. Paula arrived at what was then a female only establishment located a few miles north of the city of Bennington, with her ambitions
firmly set on becoming an artist. During her freshman year, however, exposed to subjects and ideas she'd never encountered before, somewhere
along the line, those ambitions seemed to change. She developed a passion for botany, which dovetailed perfectly with her growing love for long afternoons spent trekking through the surrounding countryside, and ever present by her side was Elizabeth, always ready to set off with her friend on one of their many adventures into the Green Mountains, like the time they hiked up toward Moultae Equinox near Manchester, when the pair were joined by two young men from nearby Williams College.
That afternoon, they hiked until dusk, then, after grabbing dinner together, the four went out to a square dance, but got stuck in a rainstorm on their way back. In the end, thanks to a sympathetic farmer, they were forced to take shelter in a hay barn for the night. Such adventures became a habit for Paula and Elizabeth, who cultivated a lively social life that, for Paula at least, seemed a far cry from her more stilted upbringing and only served
to strengthen her burgeoning independent spirit. Encapsulating this was Paula and Elizabeth's love for hitch hiking. Paula had been nervous to try it at first, but soon realized what a joy it could be, never quite knowing what fun or interesting character might pick you up next. In the holidays, Paula and Elizabeth would visit each other's families, where Elizabeth first got the sense that all was not well with
her roommate. As the oldest of four daughters, there's been speculation that Paula didn't feel quite as loved as her sisters. Though she'd been close to both parents before college, something in the course of her first year had changed. She described her home to Elizabeth as the ice box. It was a term Elizabeth never quite understood, since Paula's parents seemed so attentive, always asking her how she was getting on, while Paula seemed never to want to discuss anything with them.
It seemed to Elizabeth that perhaps Paula felt a little guilty about her new interests but didn't quite have the means to articulate it, or simply didn't want to discuss it, fearing the inevitable argument it would cause. Or perhaps it was the realization she'd come to in that first year of college that she might never live up to her
father's expectations that caused such a frosty relationship. But Thanksgiving in nineteen forty six, while Elizabeth went home and then eighteen year old Paula decided to stay in their room at college. When Elizabeth returned the next day, something seemed to have shifted again in Paula. Later that night, while Elizabeth studied, Paula seemed happy and upbeat as she hung out with other students from their halls Dewey House, staying up late into the night and taking part in an
impromptu wrestling tournament. By the following day, Sunday, December one, however, Elizabeth thought she seemed a little distracted as she strummed listlessly on her guitar, gazing out at the window at the gray skies above Elizabeth suggest test that Paula take a walk to clear her head, since that had always
helped them both in the past. Later that afternoon, it appeared that Paula took her friend's advice when she was seen walking down the long Collige drive toward the main road, dressed in a red Parker jacket, blue jeans, and white trainers. But when Elizabeth returned to their room later in the evening after some studying, Paula was nowhere to be seen. Assuming her roommate was out studying herself, she thought little of it when she got into bed and switched out
the light to sleep. A few miles from the college, it had just gone midnight with a heavy snow now falling when a couple traveling along Route nine stopped to put snow chains on close to the turn off for the long trail road. Stepping out into the silent night with their flashlight, the couple was surprised to find fresh footprints in the snow that appeared to be about a
size five, similar to Paula's. Fearing that someone could be in trouble since there seemed to be no buildings anywhere nearby, the couple followed the Prince for about four hundred yards along the road until they stopped abruptly alongside a set of car tracks that disappeared into the dark. When Elizabeth awoke the next morning, Paula's bed was empty. Elizabeth ran to the canteen to work her breakfast shift and was troubled to find that Paula wasn't there, and neither had
she requested to take the morning off. At the end of the shift, Elizabeth headed straight to the college director of admissions and informed them that she had no idea where Paula was. Later that afternoon, Paula's parents, Jean and William, received a call from the college president at their home in Stamford, asking if Paula had gone back to visit them,
but they too hadn't heard from her. The next day, Tuesday, December third, the story broke in the Bennington Banner that eighteen year old Bennington College student Paula gene Weldon was missing. Ernie Whitman, who worked night watch at the offices of the Bennington Banner, was sweeping the floor in the press room on Wednesday afternoon when he saw the front page of Tuesday's paper with a picture of the missing Paula.
Grabbing a copy, he ran straight to reporter Pete Stephenson to tell him he'd seen the exact same woman only a few days before. Back around four p m. On the afternoon of Sunday, December first, Whitman and three friends were walking back from a camp on Bickford Hollow Road, which branches off from the Long Trail Road, when they were approached by a young woman matching Paula's description. The woman wanted to know if the road went all the
way over the mountains. Confirming it did, The group then watched bemused as she continued heading deeper into the forest, despite the daylight already beginning to fade. Later that Wednesday afternoon, armed with the new information, Paula's father, William arrived in Bennington and immediately set about trying to retrace his daughter's footsteps alongside Pete Stephenson and The Banner's editor Frank Howe,
but the men found no sign of her. The following day, local builder Lewis Knapp contacted police to inform them that he'd been heading home on Route sixty seven a, the main road out of Bennington College, around three pm on the Sunday when he saw a young woman in a red jacket trying to hitch a lift. The woman, who said her name was Paula, to be dropped off as
close to the Long Trail as possible. Knapp claimed to have driven her all the way to Woodford Road, where he lived, where she got out of his truck and proceeded toward the Green Mountains on foot. As per Ernie Whitman's description, NAP's wife confirmed that her husband returned home that day about three point fifteen p m. Meanwhile, as temperatures steadily dropped day by day, reaching below zero at night, a number of search parties were arranged to help find
the missing student. On Thursday, December fifth, roughly five hundred people, led by County Sheriff Clyde Peck, including three hundred students and faculty members from Bennington College, scoured the woods alongside the Long Trail, as well as large swathes of Bald and Glastonbury Mountain, but nothing was found. After news of Paula's disappearance broke in the national press, police were alerted to numerous apparent sightings from all over Connecticut, New York,
and Massachusetts, but all came to nothing. Frustrated by the police's inability to find even a hint of a clue as to his daughter's whereabouts, William Weldon increasingly took it on himself to follow up potential leads, but as one after another led nowhere, In desperation, he turned to local self described psychic Clara Jepson at her home in Pownell, not far from Bennington. Jepson took hold of William's hand
and closed her eyes. She saw a young woman, she said, dressed in a red Parker jacket, walking through a covered bridge across a fast moving river. But William wasn't to worry. The young woman was alive and would be found before long. Sheltering in an old shack close to the river, Wheldon returned immediately to the Long Trail Road and the Wooloomsac River that snaked alongside it, finding the two covered bridges that spanned it, he searched desperately again for any sign
of Paula, but found nothing. About the same time, Vermont state detective Almo Franzoni joined the search, heading straight out to the Long Trail Road where Paula was last seen alive. Franzoni noticed a gully close to the Route nine Highway, about one hundred and twenty five feet from where Lewis Knapp claimed to have dropped Paula off. Searching the area a few moments later, Franzoni caught sight of some soggy material that appeared to have been discarded under a nearby bush.
Moving in for a closer look, he took a pen from his pocket and hooked the material out, then spread it out on the ground to reveal a small pair of pink underpants covered in blood. The item of clothing was later shown to Bennington College Director of Admissions Mary Garrett, who declared confidently that they couldn't possibly have belonged to Paula, and so the lead was quickly discarded with little progress
being made. Thirty five year old detective Robert Brundle and police officer Dorothy Scoville were drafted in to assist in the case. The pair led a renewed effort to interview everyone and anyone who'd known Paula or had for any reason come into contact with her recently. It wasn't long before their efforts coalesced around the Maxwell family, who were determined to be the last people to see Paula alive.
The Maxwells owned a house about two thirds of the way up the Long Trail road, roughly half a mile from where it turned into the forest path. Interviewing them one afternoon in their home, Rundal and Scoville listened carefully to Viola Maxwell and her fifteen year old daughter Mary as they described coming out of their cowbarn sometime around four pm on Sunday, December one, when they saw a young, blondhaired woman wearing a red Parker jacket, blue trousers and
trainers heading up the road toward them. As mother and daughter talked, Alfred Godett, Viola's on and off boyfriend, who sometimes stayed with them, sat listening quietly in the corner. When the pair finished their account, the officers turned to Alfred to ask if he'd also seen the woman in the red Parker, to which he replied no, since he'd been away in New York State for most of that day.
When Rundal and Scoville returned a few days later to interview the family again, Alfred changed his story, telling them he hadn't been in New York State at all, but had in fact gone to Bennington early in the morning
before returning to the house just after midnight. Concerned by the sudden change of story, Rundle and Scoville had each of the Maxwell children four in total, pulled out of school and interviewed separately, though ten year old Preston was confirmed to have been out all day with his grandparents at the time. Mary reiterated that on December first, only she, her mum, and her brother Stanley were at home because Alfred and her brother Clarence had gone to town early
in the morning. Though she couldn't be sure exactly what time they came home, she was adamant they were both back in time for supper in the early evening. Sixteen year old Clarence backed up Mary's statement, telling police also that he and Alfred had left the house in the morning and driven into Bennington, adding curiously, however, that at some point while he stayed in town, Alfred left him
there and drove off somewhere else. Twelve year old Stanley Maxwell agreed that he was at home on the day in question, but only until about two thirty pm, when he left with his uncle to carry out some odd jobs. Stanley was certain that Alfred was also at the house around this time, After further conflicting statements, Rundel and Scoville returned to the Maxwell house for a fourth time, joined by Sheriff Peck, who had also received conflicting statements from
the family. This time, Viola claimed that although Alfred had left the house early in the morning with Clarence, he then returned for lunch again early in the afternoon. Some time later, she and her daughter Mary had left to see a movie, but as they made their way down the Long Trail road, they bumped into Alfred coming the other way in his truck. The pair then traveled back to the house with Alfred, who stayed inside while they
went to the cow barn to complete some chores. It was a short time later that she and Mary saw the young woman in the red jacket walking up the road toward them. Alfred, she was certain was in the house at the time and had not seen the woman. After yet another altered story, the police felt they had no choice but to arrest Alfred and bring him in for questioning, and once again he too changed its story.
Alfred did confirm that he'd met Viola and Mary coming up the Long Trail in his truck and dropped them back off at home. However, her He also added that after parking up his truck, he neglected to head straight back to the house with them when he saw two men sat in a car parked up outside it. Suspecting that one of the men was Viola's new boyfriend, he decided to watch from afar as she and Mary spoke
to them. Then, despite consistently stating otherwise, he told police that he had seen the young woman in the red parker after all walking past while he sat and watched the men in the car. When the men finally drove off, Alfred explained that he then chased after Viola and scolded
her for cheating on him. An argument ensued between them for a good few hours until Viola's parents, who also lived at the property, returned home, at which point, he said, Viola went upstairs to bed, and he left the house in a rage and spent the night at a shack
across the road where he often stayed. After being confronted with Alfred's completely new statement, Fiola once again changed her story to telling police that she'd been lying all along because she was in the middle of applying for a divorce and didn't want it known that she and Alfred were still seeing each other in case it jeopardized anything.
The two men whom Alfred claimed had been parked outside the house were eventually tracked down and seemingly verified his latest version of events, saying also that they too had seen the young woman in the red coat walking. By that day, with little else to go on, Alfred was released from custody about the same time that Alfred Godet was being interrogated by police. One hundred and fifty miles to the north, in the town of South hero Vermont, a missus w Champagne tosses and turns in her sleep.
Through a dark haze of soft and fuzzy light, a haunting image takes shape in her unconscious mind. Paula Jeane Weldon walking along the long trail road, her red jacket wrapped tightly around her, as a black car pulls up with a dark, faceless figure sitting at the wheel. Paula asks the driver for a ride, to which he agrees, but only after he has a cup of tea first. The young woman thanks him, then pulls open the back
door and lets herself in. But now the image is twisting and morphing again and Suddenly the driver is on her, grabbing hard at her neck, as the young woman's arms flail about in a desperate effort to fend him off. And now Paula's body is lifeless in the back seat, as another image swirls into view, a bungle or a shack, the third of three running down from the top end of the long trail road. Then a pair of hands ripping up a linoleum floor and a body being slid
into the gap underneath. Then the linoleum is smoothed down once more and a large black stove slid back into place on top of it. Missus Champagne informed the police of her terrifying dream the next day, and though most were reluctant to give it any credibility, it was soon discovered that the bungalow, lying third in line from the top of the long trail road just so happened to
belong to Alfred Cadet. Detective Almo Franzoni was promptly dispatched to search the area, but he failed to find anything incriminating. A little more than two weeks after Paula's disappearance, a broken William Weldon collected his daughter's belongings from her dorm room and put them in the back of his Buick coupe. Then, without so much as a glance back, he drove away from the campus, vowing only to return if anything significant
came up. But nothing did. On May twenty fourth, nineteen forty seven, with the winter snow having finally thawed, another search party of more than a hundred volunteers combed the long trail for two days, looking for any clues as to Paula's whereabouts, but once again, the forest relinquished nothing.
In the following years, a number of strange reports linked to the case filtered through to the police, including the story of an armed robber arrested in Cambridge, Massachusetts in nineteen forty eight, who was found with an article about Paula in his pocket and a sketch resembling her in his boarding room. He also admitted to once having visited the Glastonbury area, who claimed to know nothing of the
woman's disappearance. In nineteen fifty two, the dying ex girlfriend of a thirty five year old lumberjack claimed that he'd once told her that he had good reason to believe that Paula was buried under a porch in a cellar somewhere close to the Long Trail. That same year, Alfred Godett told friends that he also knew where Paula was buried. Godet was promptly called in again for questioning, but told police he'd simply been joking, fully aware of the suspicion
that had fallen on him at the time. When asked to give another account of his movements on the day of Paula's disappearance, however, his statement changed again. This time, instead of claiming he'd stormed out of the Maxwell property and headed straight to his place across the road, he'd actually got into his truck and driven it up the Long Trail road in the direction that Paula had last
been seen walking. At the time of Alfred's last questioning, the then state's attorney, John Hart was away on National Guard training, leaving Reuben Leven as a temporary state attorney
in his absence. Believing they finally had grounds to properly search two bungalows that belonged to Alfred Cadet, one on the Long Trail and one in Bickford Hollow, Reuben Leven made it one of his last duties before Hart returned to sign off on a search warrant to examine the cellars of the bungalows, But when Hart came back the next day, he immediately canceled the warrant, arguing that there
simply wasn't enough evidence to justify it. As such, to this day, the fate of Paula Jane Weldon remains a mystery. But somewhere it is always to see nineteen forty six on that mile and a half stretch of the long trail road that branches off from Route nine, and there is always a light snow beginning to fall as a young woman dressed in a red Parker jacket makes her
way quietly, steadily towards the forest. And as she goes, never once looking back, she takes the whole world with her as she continues deeper and deeper into the trees. Thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained As an Avy Club production, the podcast created by Richard mclin Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith, unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase
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