Triangles

Bundle and safe with Expedia.

You were made to follow your favorite band and from the front row, we were made to quietly save you more.

Expedia, made to travel.

Savings vary and subject to availability, flight inclusive packages are at all protected.

Story 1.

Mysteries of the Bennington Triangle

Tucked away near the borders of Vermont and Massachusetts is a small area of land believed to be the focal point for a wide variety of unexplained and mysterious phenomena.

It is a place of outstanding natural beauty, but also one of great danger.

Join us this week as we take a look at the mysteries of the Bennington Triangle.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie Sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Tires matter.

They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road.

Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack.

Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy.

Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection, convenient installation options, and the best selection of Firestone tires.

Go to TireRack.com to see their Firestone test results, tire ratings, and reviews, and be sure to check out all the special offers.

TireRack.com, the way tire buying should be.

The ghost towns of Somerset and Glastonbury lie within the confines of the Green Mountain National Forest in southern Vermont.

During the late 1800s, both settlements were significant industrial hubs, playing host to the workers of the region's logging and mining communities.

As these trades slowly migrated away from the area at the turn of the 20th century, so too did the people who comprised them, and by the outbreak of the Second World War, Both towns had been unincorporated by the authorities due to the lack of inhabitants.

With a shrinking population, it would be reasonable to assume that life would become much more peaceful for those who had chosen to remain.

Sadly, quite the opposite would be true, with a series of bewildering incidents which resulted in the unexplained disappearances of at least five townsfolk in as many years.

The first of these mystifying events occurred on the evening of the 12th of November 1945.

A group of hunters visiting the region had spent the best part of the day up in the mountains tracking deer, and having failed to locate their quarry, they were making their way back to camp along a path known as the Long Trail.

When the visiting hunters had first arrived in town, they had asked around for a guide to help navigate the unfamiliar terrain, eventually employing a man by the name of Middy Rivers.

Middy was a local resident who had spent most of his 74 years hunting and fishing in the sprawling forests which surrounded the region.

He knew them like the back of his hand.

As the group closed in on their camp, Midi had suddenly and inexplicably increased his pace, disappearing into the undergrowth ahead of them.

The hunters assumed that he had decided to walk on ahead in order to have a fire ready at the camp for when they arrived, but when they eventually reached their tents, there was no fire waiting for them, and no MIDI.

As the minutes turned to hours, it became apparent that something had gone wrong, and so several of the hunters retraced their steps to where they had lost sight of him, but they found nothing.

Extensive searches of the trail, with park rangers and bloodhounds, yielded no clues as to the missing tracker's whereabouts, other than a solitary round of rifle ammunition, which had been left standing upright on a rock next to a small stream.

The locals were bewildered by the disappearance.

Middy Rivers had been one of the most skilled and experienced hunters in the community.

It seemed impossible to them that he could have become lost or disorientated in an environment he knew so well.

They were just beginning to come to terms with this loss when an equally mystifying incident occurred on the same trail, a mere 12 months later.

Paula Weldon was just 18 years old.

a student at Bennington College.

At approximately 4pm on the 1st of December 1946, she decided to go for a walk to clear her head after a shift working in the college canteen.

She went back to her dormitory, donning a thick red parker to protect herself from the cold temperatures, before setting off up the long trail.

Despite the gathering darkness, she passed a surprising number of people on the path.

Several remembered her distinctive red jacket, including a lost hiker who had asked for directions back to town.

On her way, she also encountered an elderly couple who were heading in the same direction, greeting them as she walked past.

The husband and wife watched as the young girl in the red coat and blue jeans disappeared from sight around a bend in the trail, approximately 100 yards ahead of them.

As they rounded the corner themselves a few moments later, They saw that the path opened out around them, but were surprised to discover that the girl was now nowhere in sight.

When Paula did not turn up for college the next day, the alarm was raised.

With the Vermont State Police still very much in its infancy, assistance was sought from law enforcement agencies in neighbouring Massachusetts and New York.

A search involving 600 volunteers and a $5,000 reward for information failed to turn up any evidence.

Paula Weldon had simply vanished without trace.

But as mystifying as the circumstances behind the previous two incidents were, they paled in comparison to the completely inexplicable disappearance of James Tetford, exactly three years to the day after Paula Weldon went missing.

The Bennington resident had served in France during the First World War and now resided in a state of peaceful contentment in the local Veterans Hospital.

On the day in question, the 68-year-old had been to visit relatives in St Albans and was returning home again on the bus.

It was a regular trip for Tetford, who had greeted the driver as he boarded, before settling down with his luggage on the rear seats.

But when the bus eventually pulled into the Bennington depot later that evening, Tetford was nowhere to be seen.

The last time that anyone remembered seeing him had been as the bus departed from Arlington, which was the final stop before Bennington, and yet nobody had observed him getting up from where he was sitting or walking to the front of the bus.

Hauntingly, his suitcase and overcoat were still placed neatly on the seat he had been occupying at the back of the vehicle.

He was neither seen nor heard from again.

On October the 12th the following year, eight-year-old Paul Jepson had clambered up into the family truck to go and help feed the pigs which were kept at the far end of the family property.

After a short drive, his mother exited the vehicle, leaving Paul watching on from the passenger seat as she tended to the animals a short distance away.

When she returned to the pickup several minutes later, she was horrified to find that her son was nowhere to be seen.

As she frantically searched the vicinity in which she had parked, her screams drew other family members who came running to her aid.

Once again, a massive man-hunt was undertaken, and this time, the police were able to uncover something in the way of a lead.

Learning from previous mistakes, a pack of bloodhounds was quickly brought to where the truck had been parked up.

The dogs immediately caught a scent, leading the police in a straight line away from the vehicle towards a nearby crossroads.

Here, the dogs stopped, having lost the trail of whatever it was they had initially detected.

As the searchers began to penetrate the foliage near the crossroads, something suddenly dawned on them.

It took no time at all for those involved to realise that the spot was only a stone's throw away from the same point of the long trail where Paula Weldon had disappeared.

And in another chilling coincidence, the missing child had similarly been wearing a bright red coat at the time he vanished.

The authorities did not get much time to dwell on these coincidences.

as a mere two weeks later, they were once again engaged in a high-profile hunt for a missing person.

A holidaying camper named Frida Langer had gone out for a walk with her cousin, Herbert Elsner, leaving her husband back at their campsite.

After falling into some muddy water, she had asked Elsner to wait for her while she ran back to camp to get changed.

An hour later, an enraged Herbert had stormed back into the campsite, demanding to know why his cousin had left him standing out alone in the forest like an idiot.

When it became clear that Frida had not in fact returned to the camp, the alarm was quickly raised.

A team of 500 volunteers, assisted by helicopters and other search aircraft, spent the next week looking for her,

but in an all-too-familiar manner, no trace of the missing camper could be found.

What sets Frida Langer apart from the other missing victims is that her body was eventually located.

In May of 1951, seven months after she had vanished, her badly decomposed remains were found lying out in the open by the nearby Somerset Reservoir.

No cause of death was ever determined, and no convincing explanation for how her body was found in an area which had been repeatedly searched by officers and sniffer dogs has ever been provided.

If five disappearances in as many years wasn't suspicious enough, There are a number of worrying factors which suggest that a casual link of some kind was present present between the cases.

Perhaps the most obvious of these is the tiny area in which all the vanishings occurred.

Whilst none of the victims appeared to have known each other and varied widely in terms of age and gender, they all went missing during the winter months.

They also disappeared within a few yards of witnesses who should have been able to see what happened to them.

and possibly render assistance.

And with only one exception, they were never found, found, despite extensive efforts by local search parties familiar with the environment.

All of the victims went missing at roughly the same time of day, early evening, and all within close proximity to the Long Trail.

They disappeared from main transport routes, from well-used paths and trails.

They vanished from an area saturated by thousands of visiting hunters and hikers every year, making it all the more inexplicable as to why they were never found.

Explanations for what happened range from the simplistic to the truly inconceivable.

Events that occurred there quite some time before the disappearances and continued thereafter have been used as the basis for both theory and conjecture about the Bennington Triangle and those who have gone missing.

Some believe that the area may be a point where the boundaries between neighbouring realities is weak, allowing people to unknowingly pass between alternate dimensions.

The Native Americans who originally settled the region certainly believed this, refusing to even set foot on Glastonbury Mountain.

They believed the mountain was a cursed place, as it was a point where four wind spirits collided, locked in eternal struggle.

Stories were passed down of warriors who had been seen to disappear into invisible portals, opening up in the ground beneath their feet and swallowing them whole.

It is believed that the Untersbierg region of Austria contains a similar phenomenon, and the fact that James Tetford literally vanished into thin air on a bus full of passengers does seem to lend some credence to the concept.

Another theory is that southern Vermont is a place of specific interest for visiting extraterrestrial entities, like so many other regions of North America, such as the Uinter Basin in Utah or Dulce in New Mexico.

There have been numerous reports of mysterious lights seen in the skies above the triangle, with the witness reporting what he described as a flying silo hovering over the woods near Bennington in 1984.

The Green Mountain National Forest also allegedly comes with its own resident Bigfoot, with a group of travellers during the early 19th century reporting a disturbing encounter.

They had been attempting to get to Glastonbury at the height of a torrential storm, but found the road impassable due to flooding.

As the group dismounted from their stagecoach, trying to turn it around and go back the way they came, something ventured out of the tree line a short distance away.

It was large and covered in fur, with two glowing eyes.

With a deafening roar, it attacked, pushing the carriage over and sending the terrified occupants fleeing down the road on foot.

Reports of such a cryptid have persisted over the years, and as recently as 2003, A motorist named Ray DeFrayne reported having seen a six-foot-tall creature making its its way along the slopes of Glastonbury Mountain.

When he pulled over to get a better look, he could see that it had long arms and was covered in black hair, before it disappeared from view.

Of course, it's entirely conceivable that the creatures described in these encounters were in fact bears, and that they or other predatory animals may have been responsible for some of the missing victims in the stories we have covered.

It is also possible that those people may have gotten lost, wandering a significant distance, before tripping and falling on the uneven terrain and their bodies becoming concealed in the undergrowth over the passage of time.

One final possibility, which is subscribed to by a significant number of commentators, is that there was a serial killer using the secluded wooded area as a hunting ground.

With similarities in terms of the time of year and time of day, and the almost even frequency of the vanishings, some people find it impossible to discount a sinister human element from being behind these disappearances.

In 1892, a local sawmill worker by the name of Henry McDowell was jailed for bludgeoning one of his co-workers to death with a rock.

McDowell had been very drunk at the time, but swore in court that he had heard voices telling him to commit the murder.

He was committed to an asylum for examination, but managed to successfully flee the facility.

There were rumours that the deranged killer had returned to the Bennington area after his escape, and a bloody murder five years later seemed to confirm these suspicions.

A local resident named John Harbour had set out to go hunting in an area called Bickford Hollow, just south of Glastonbury.

When he did not return, a search party later found him dead.

his body concealed in some bushes off the main trail.

It was discovered that someone had managed to incapacitate incapacitate the hunter, killing him with his own rifle.

His body had then been dragged into some bushes, with the murder weapon left lying beside him.

The killer was never identified, but locals were convinced that this was proof that John McDowell was living somewhere nearby, and that Harbour must have encountered him by accident.

Admittedly, McDowell would have been in his 70s at the time of the Bennington Triangle disappearances, but that does not mean that there wasn't another killer silently stalking the long trail.

One who waited patiently for a young female student walking alone, a lost tourist asking for directions back to her campsite, or maybe even a confused eight-year-old boy who had wandered off from his mother.

In previous episodes, we have explored places where a variety of paranormal events all seem to take place in a relatively small and focused area.

From the truly bizarre occurrences witnessed at Skinwalker Ranch, to the mysterious killings of the Superstition Mountains, it is apparent that some truly bizarre places exist on this earth, which may not be limited to simply one aspect of Fortian lore.

What is also clear is that as the number of residents and visitors to the Bennington area has lessened over the years, so too have the number of disappearances.

Whatever vindictive force was responsible for the abduction and presumed murder of the victims appears to have disappeared itself, or possibly achieved whatever sinister goal it nurtured.

Though increasingly unlikely, it is possible that at some point in the future, a clue as to the fate of the four missing victims may be found,

and that advances in science and technology may provide answers to the questions behind their disappearances.

Until then, we can only hope that wherever they came to rest,

they do so

in peace.

Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify.

They have the tools you need to start and grow your business.

From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need.

There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them.

With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into

sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/slash special offer.

Story 2:

Vanishings of the Great Lakes Triangle.

The The seas are a truly dangerous place, and sadly, every year, it is inevitable that a small number of ships and aircraft are lost whilst traversing them.

But there are certain areas of open water that seem to claim more than their fair share of souls, providing no explanation for these disappearances.

This week, we visit one such region: the Great Lakes Triangle.

The wind blowing in from the heart of the bay was icy cold, chilling the sailors as they hastened to ready their ships for departure.

From his elevated position further along the docks, Colonel Roussel watched on as the distant figures hurried across the decks of the vessels, stowing away supplies and equipment in preparation for the long journey that lay ahead of them.

Even with the heavy military-issue greatcoat that he was wearing, he still felt bitterly cold and pitied the men he was observing, who had no such protection from the elements.

Winter on Lake Superior could be unrelentingly harsh, which was potentially one of the reasons why the visitors seemed so eager to depart.

The weather reports for the coming week were particularly ominous, with the meteorologists forecasting severe gales.

Roussel had called the captains of the three ships to his office the previous evening to inform them of this, strongly suggesting that they delay their departure until the danger had passed, but they had stubbornly refused.

The ships were minesweepers, constructed in Fort William for the French Navy, and intended to clear German mines from the English Channel.

They were not pretty, but were of a sturdy design, with steel-framed hulls surrounding watertight compartments.

All three were named after great French victories, Incomen, Sebastopol and Serisoles.

The Canadian officer sighed and pulled his coat a little tighter as the first of the minesweepers moved away from the dark.

He understood how vital these ships were to the war effort and that their crews would be desperate to return home after such a long period away from their loved ones.

But if it had been within his power, he would have refused them permission to leave.

Roussel had been born and raised in Thunder Bay, and like many of the locals, he joked that the icy waters there flowed through his veins.

He had seen the crews of too many ships depart and never return, been to too many funerals where the caskets were weighed down with ballast as there was no body to place inside them.

There was something dark about the great body of water that surrounded Ontario, something malevolent that seemed to wait out of sight, striking when the sailors who were traversing it lowered their guard or made a mistake.

It was dangerous enough travelling these waters for the men who had done so for generations, let alone those of a foreign navy.

The last ship swung free from her berth, signalling a farewell blast with her horn, which the colonel answered with a salute.

Over the coming days, as he went about his duties, he continued to worry about the French vessels and their crews.

And in time, Roussel's worst fears would be confirmed, as neither Incomen nor Cerisoles would ever be seen again.

It is far from unusual for an area in which people regularly disappear without a trace to be referred to as a triangle.

The use of three fixed reference points to define the boundaries of any such region is sadly all too common, and the names of these these mysterious expanses carry with them haunting connotations.

Names such as Bermuda, Alaska and Bennington.

In the case of the Great Lakes Triangle, which also encompasses both the Michigan and Marysburg Vortex triangles, the loose borders of the region are defined by the cities of Winnipeg, Louisville and Burlington.

We have already explored the tragic loss of several ships on the Great Lakes in previous episodes, but in truth, we have barely scratched the surface.

The Michigan Triangle in particular has the highest concentration of unexplained disappearances in the entire region.

The legend of the larger Great Lakes Triangle can be traced back as far as October of 1892, when three vessels were lost that month under mysterious circumstances.

Then, on the 21st of November 1902, the SS Bannockburn was sighted by another ship, entering a fog bank near Isle Royale.

The freighter and the 20 men who had set sail with her were never seen again.

16 years later, a trio of newly constructed French minesweepers were heading towards Sioux Locks on their way to the Atlantic Ocean.

As bad weather set in, the Sebastopol became separated from her sister ships, the Incomen and the Serisoles.

The latter two vessels and the 78 men aboard them never passed through the locks, and the remains of either ship have never been found.

But it is not always the unexplained loss of a ship or aircraft that leads people to wonder if there is something unseen and deadly at play upon the Great Lakes.

Sometimes it is the discovery of a ship and the condition that it has been left in that can raise questions over and beyond its mere disappearance.

The most famous example of this is the Rosabelle, a two-masted schooner which was constructed in the 1860s to transfer goods between Benton Harbour and Milwaukee.

Her crew of 11 sailors had spent most of their working lives travelling back and forth along the same route, but would make their final journey in the winter of 1921.

On the morning of October 31st, she was found floating upside down by a steamer approaching Milwaukee.

When the vessel was recovered and subsequently inspected by the Coast Guard, it was found that there was no trace of the captain or his crew.

It was initially suggested she may have been involved in a collision with a larger ship, but none had been reported in the vicinity at the time, and there was no damage found anywhere on her hull to support this theory.

Another proposal is that she may have sprung a leak and eventually capsized.

Again, a close inspection of her exterior was carried out, and it was found to be in pristine condition, with no apparent flaws or leaks.

The loss of the Rosabelle's crew remains one of the region's most enduring mysteries, as if someone or something simply plucked her from the water and turned her upside down.

An even more perplexing incident would take place 16 years later, involving a ship named the OM McFarland.

On the evening of April 28th, 1937, the freighter was attempting to negotiate the locks leading into Lake Michigan.

There was a significant number of ice flows on the water at the time, and the crew were taking extra care to avoid a potential collision.

The captain of the MacFarland was George Donner, a veteran sailor who was highly respected by his crew.

He had spent several hours on the ship's bridge, refusing to rest until he was certain that any possible danger had passed.

Finally, in the early hours of the morning, he was satisfied that he and his men were now safe and retired to the comfort of his cabin.

As he left the bridge, Donna had asked that the second mate wake him when they neared Port Washington.

Several hours later, the man had made his way to the captain's cabin, but was unable to elicit any response from inside.

More crewmen were called for and the door was forced open, revealing an empty room.

The men were mystified, finding that the door had been secured from inside with a key, despite it being completely vacant.

The captain's bed was still made, showing no sign that he had slept in it, and his pipe lay on a table nearby.

There were no signs of a struggle and no other means of exiting the room besides the single door.

It was as if the officer had simply faded out of existence.

Equally as baffling is the loss of a Douglas DC-4 propliner over Lake Michigan during the summer of 1950.

The aircraft had been designated as Northwest Airlines Flight 2501 and had been carrying 58 people from New York City to Seattle.

At approximately 1.15 in the morning, The pilot had contacted local flight controllers, asking for permission to descend to 2,500 feet due to deteriorating weather conditions.

This was the last radio contact with the plane, which subsequently failed to answer any further transmissions.

A massive land and air search was immediately carried out for the remains of the aircraft and the unfortunate souls who had been on board at the time.

A small number of items were recovered, which were believed to have come from the missing plane, but the wreckage of the aircraft itself has never been found.

The loss of the DC-4 and its crew remains one of the worst air disasters in American history.

Author Clive Kusler, who is famous for his love of nautical mysteries, continues to fund efforts to locate the missing plane.

His team have now searched in excess of 500 square miles of lakebed, locating 10 previously unknown shipwrecks.

but no trace of the missing airliner.

Several witnesses came forward in the days after the incident, stating that they had seen strange lights hovering above the lake, at the same time that contact was lost with Flight 2501.

Perhaps the most disturbing of these came from two local police officers, who followed a mysterious red light which they could not identify, and was travelling at speed, over the water.

Sightings of UFOs have been reported over the Great Lakes for decades, the most notable of which took place in 1994, when local residents flooded the police switchboard to report hundreds of ghostly lights travelling slowly over Lake Michigan.

A UFO is also believed to be responsible for the loss of two Air Force pilots, scrambled to investigate its presence over Lake Superior in 1953.

But some commentators claim that it may be visitors from beneath the lake rather than above it that are being observed by the witnesses involved.

In December of 2018, a father and son from Ohio observed a large cylindrical object hovering over Lake Erie, repeatedly entering and then re-emerging from the waters below.

It is theorised that visitors to our world may have previously established homes underneath the Earth's waters, emerging on occasion to study humanity.

For decades, US submarines have reported contact with fast-moving and highly maneuverable vessels of an unknown origin.

Could it be that the Great Lakes play host to just such a population of otherworldly beings?

Beyond theories of alien visitors, be they from above or below the waves, there are other ideas as to what may be happening to the missing vessels within the Great Lakes triangle.

Some believe that the region occupies a point of weakness between our dimension and a number of neighbouring ones, as do the other notorious triangles found across the globe.

It is theorised that there are places where some degree of leakage takes place, where objects and individuals can unwittingly pass between two realities, sometimes surviving to tell the tale.

The reason there is such a lack of evidence for these disappearances is because the wreckage that investigators seek is not on the lakebed, but instead, in a parallel reality.

Is it possible that the unfortunate victims of these incidents have simply vanished from the face of the Earth, only to reappear in a different reality altogether?

Did the fog bank which the Bannockburn entered somehow transport it to another universe?

Did Captain Donner tragically pass from our reality into another as he entered his cabin?

In 2007, divers discovered a mysterious ring of standing stones located beneath Lake Michigan.

These constructions are laid out in a manner similar to the Stonehenge site, located in England.

It is unknown how they came to be constructed there, as they are not a natural formation, and it is believed they may date back as far as 10,000 years.

Naturally, the inability to explain how these stones came to be placed on the lake bed has attracted all manner of unfounded explanations.

It has been suggested that they may be a time portal or some form of gateway to another reality.

Their presence though is another similarity shared with comparable structures found within the bounds of the Bermuda Triangle.

A more rational explanation can be found in an unusual weather phenomenon which has been observed at certain locations throughout the region.

A microburst is a sudden and localized weather front where precipitation and wind can affect a location as small as a mile in diameter.

With the intense winds in these areas passing 100 miles per hour, significant damage is caused to anything caught in the chaos.

Due to the speed with which a microburst can manifest and end, and the small area affected by it, it is probable that they occur more regularly than we are aware.

Any ship or plane caught in the storm would almost certainly be lost, with either little or no evidence left of its passing, or the remains being moved to a different and unrelated area as the storm travels.

It has been claimed that the number of vehicles lost with no viable explanation within the boundaries of the Great Triangle may run into the hundreds, with thousands of souls vanishing along with them.

In some cases, the wreckage of these missing craft has eventually been found, minus the bodies of those who travelled in them.

For a large percentage of these disappearances, the murderous weather conditions found in the Great Lakes will most likely have been the culprit.

The bulk of these incidents has taken place during stormy weather, and in reality, the sunken vessels will eventually be located, and the mysteries which have surrounded their loss will ultimately be solved.

And yet, the nature of some of these occurrences simply defies conventional explanation.

Much like the previous stories we have examined from the region, There appears to be something intangible and inexplicable associated with these vast bodies of water.

Something harsh and unforgiving, and in some cases, murderous.

We hope that as technology continues to evolve over time, the men and women who have nobly devoted their time to searching the beds of the Great Lakes will be able to answer the questions which remain unanswered, and that the families of the missing can finally obtain the closure they seek.