{"id":2975,"slug":"bennington-triangle-bennington-vermont","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Bennington Triangle is Vermont's disappearance zone — the southwestern wilderness where five people vanished between 1945 and 1950, the documented cases making the region's name a byword for people who walk into the woods and don't come out.","The file's documented spine is the disappearances' cluster: five people in five years in the same woods — Middie Rivers, Paula Welden, James Tedford, Paul Jepson, Frieda Langer — a record of the vanished that's the Triangle's real substance."]},{"heading":"The vanished","paragraphs":["The lore is documented folklore — the Triangle's reports being the disappearances' residue: a region whose legend is its missing, the vanished being the only ghosts the woods need.","The 1945-50 cases are the file's signature — five disappearances that were never solved, the Triangle's legend being the record of people the woods kept."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Bennington Triangle is the archive's disappearance file — five documented vanishings in five years, the region's legend being the real cases it holds. The documented missing are the record; the Triangle's name is the lore the woods earned.","A wilderness that took five people keeps them — the file's suggestion being that the Triangle's vanished are still in the woods that never gave them back."]}],"name":"Bennington Triangle","aliases":[],"type":"SITE","type_label":"Site","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","LEGEND_SITE","UNEXPLAINED","DISAPPEARANCE"],"groups":["legends"],"desc":"The mountains where five people vanished—1945-1950.","full_desc":"A site in Bennington, Vermont, Bennington Triangle is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The mountains where five people vanished—1945-1950. HauntHunt files it with the unexplained, disappearances and local folklore. The file’s recurring figure goes by a name, not a description: the vanished. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Bennington","county":null,"state":"Vermont","postal":null,"region":"Northeast","lat":42.871243,"lon":-73.180181,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site / park","research_notes":"NE2 batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":2796,"type":"LEGEND","description":"The Triangle’s lore is documented folklore. The lore gives it a name — The vanished — which is what turns a report into a resident. The site in Bennington, Vermont gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. The tale is the site's other archive — oral, embroidered, and outlasting the documents.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"The vanished","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Bennington Triangle","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennington_Triangle","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":2797,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported a presence in the mountains. The reports at Bennington Triangle are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. The reports are anecdotal — consistent enough to record, thin enough to stay unproven. 'Bennington Triangle' carries the account. The apparition is the file's anchor — every other report orbits it.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Bennington Triangle","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennington_Triangle","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The 1945-50 disappearances are documented. Bennington Triangle's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. Sources including 'Bennington Triangle' carry the record. It is the kind of fact the rest of the dossier leans on.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1945","date_end":"1950","confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Bennington Triangle","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennington_Triangle","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"The Triangle’s lore is documented folklore. The site in Bennington, Vermont gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. The report is preserved in sources like 'Bennington Triangle'. The retelling is the record now — the legend metabolized the facts long ago.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Bennington Triangle","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennington_Triangle","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"The vanished","claimed_identity":"The vanished","verified":null,"summary":"The Triangle’s lore is documented folklore. The vanished is what the reports name it. Bennington Triangle in Bennington, Vermont carries the report the way old places do — as part of its identity. Sources including 'Bennington Triangle' keep the claim in circulation. Named presences persist where anonymous reports fade — the file's name here is The vanished.","behavior":"The Triangle’s lore is documented folklore.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Bennington Triangle","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennington_Triangle","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Bennington Triangle","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennington_Triangle","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Bennington Triangle","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennington_Triangle","desc":"Area in the U.S. state of Vermont","extract":"\"Bennington Triangle\" is a phrase coined by American author Joseph A. Citro to denote an area of southwestern Vermont within which a number of people went missing between 1945 and 1950. This was further popularized in two books, including Shadow Child, in which Citro devoted chapters to discussion of these disappearances and various items of folklore surrounding the area. According to Citro, the area shares characteristics with the Bridgewater Triangle in Southeastern Massachusetts and stories of strange happenings had been told about Glastenbury and the surrounding area for many years, the best-known of which is probably that of the disappearance of Paula Jean Welden.\nPrecisely what area is","img":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Paula_Jean_Welden.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","score":89},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}