The mysterious part of the earth where people disappeared into thin air and where never found!

A college sophomore finished her shift at the cafeteria and decided to go for a hike. After getting dressed, she said goodbye to her roommate and hitchhiked to the start of a trail. The 18-year-old met some hikers who were returning and asked them for directions. Although it was getting dark, the student pressed on and was never seen again. Her name was Paula Jean Welden, and she went missing in 1946 while walking along a trail near Bennington, a town in southwestern Vermont.

The next day, her roommate reported her missing, prompting the authorities to quickly organize a search party. Hundreds of people searched the woodlands around the trail for four weeks. The college even shut down temporarily so students and faculty could join the search. Despite their efforts, they came back empty-handed—Paula had vanished without a trace.

Paula didn't pack a bag, nor did she take any extra clothes or money, indicating she didn't plan to be out for more than a few hours. Her father, a well-known industrial engineer, blamed the county sheriff for poorly conducting the investigation. Despite all efforts, Paula remains missing to this day, and her case is still unsolved. Sadly, hers is not the only case of a disappearance in Vermont's forests.

A year earlier, Midi Rivers, a lively 74-year-old man, served as the guide for a group of four hunters. Upon reaching a fork in the road with his son-in-law, Midi mentioned he would walk a short distance down one of the paths, aiming to return in time for lunch at the camp. Unfortunately, that was the last time anyone saw him. The group searched for Midi all afternoon before contacting the police. Despite a more extensive search, no trace of him was found.

Midi, a local and experienced hiker, was well-acquainted with the trail, yet he vanished without a trace. Firefighters, volunteers, and even servicemen participated in the month-long search, but their efforts only yielded a cartridge he had dropped in a nearby stream. The case remains unsolved, and the local authorities have yet to find any answers.

Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Midi Rivers and Paula Jean Welden were just the beginning. In just five years, five people disappeared in this part of Vermont. As the years passed, their unexplained disappearances led to the area being dubbed the "Bennington Triangle," named after the famous Bermuda Triangle, where ships and planes have mysteriously vanished for centuries.

n 1949, the most puzzling disappearance in the Bennington Triangle occurred. A 68-year-old veteran boarded a local bus to return home after visiting relatives in St. Albans. His family saw him off at the bus station, and there were 14 witnesses who confirmed he was still on the bus at the last stop before Bennington. However, he never got off the bus there. His luggage remained on the rack, and an open bus timetable sat on his empty seat. The man had seemingly vanished into thin air while the bus was moving. Adding to the mystery, he disappeared on the same date as the college student who had gone missing three years earlier.

The youngest person to mysteriously vanish was an 8-year-old boy. He was with his mother while she worked on the family farm. She left him alone for an hour to feed the pigs, but when she returned, her son was gone. Locals quickly formed search parties, and the sheriff brought in tracking dogs. The dogs picked up the boy's scent but lost it at a nearby crossroads. The boy was never found again. Notably, he was wearing a bright red jacket, which should have made him more visible to rescuers. Strikingly, Paula, the college sophomore who disappeared four years earlier, was also wearing a red jacket.

The final disappearance happened just 16 days after the boy vanished. A 53-year-old woman was camping with her family in the Green Mountain National Forest. She went for a hike with her cousin but fell into a stream and decided to return to the camp to change clothes. Her cousin continued along the path, expecting her to rejoin him later, but she never did. She never even reached the base camp. For two weeks, 300 searchers scouted the woods, using helicopters, but found no trace of her. In the spring of the following year, searchers discovered her body 3.5 miles from the original campsite, an area they had previously covered. It was impossible to determine what had happened to her.

The only commonalities among these five disappearances are the period and geographic area: 36 square miles of thick woods in southwestern Vermont. This remote part of the Green Mountains wasn't always the happiest place. Bennington and the nearby village of Glastenbury were founded as mining and logging towns with harsh living conditions. Near the end of the 19th century, locals tried to rebrand the area as a tourist destination, but the unstable mountain and a massive flood washed away their dreams. Residents started moving out, and by 2010, only eight people lived in Glastenbury, turning it into a ghost town. The late 1940s brought the area back into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Despite extensive searches and investigations, these disappearances have remained a mystery, leaving many to wonder if there could ever be a reasonable explanation.