The Lost Girls of Glastenbury

September 12, 2025

A campfire story from Vermont

They call it the Bennington Triangle. Between 1945 and 1950, five people vanished in the woods near Glastenbury Mountain. No tracks. No clothing. No bodies. Just gone.

One of them was Paula Welden, an eighteen-year-old Bennington College student. She went for a hike on a Sunday afternoon in 1946. Witnesses saw her start up the trail. She never came back. Search parties combed the woods for weeks. Bloodhounds lost her scent at a crossroads like she’d simply stepped off the earth.

She wasn’t the first. She wasn’t the last.

A veteran hunter disappeared the year before, rifle in hand, never seen again. In 1949, a man named James Tedford boarded a bus and somehow vanished between stops — his belongings left behind on the seat. A little girl, just eight years old, was swallowed by the trees while her mother hung laundry. None of them ever turned up.

Ask the locals and they’ll lower their voices. They’ll tell you the mountain has always been wrong. The trees grow crooked. Moss creeps upward instead of down. Compasses spin. Hunters hear their names whispered in places no one’s standing.

And then there are the girls.

Hikers say if you’re alone long enough, you’ll see them. Three of them. Barefoot. Silent. Dresses white as bone, never stained by mud. Skin too pale, like they’ve been underground. Their eyes don’t blink. They don’t speak—until you try to leave.

No one agrees on what happens next. Some say they follow you, no matter how fast you run. Others say they stop you in your tracks and point deeper into the trees. A few swear the girls lead you to the edge of a ravine and wait, just wait, until you take that final step.

The official records say five people vanished between 1945 and 1950. The unofficial stories say the mountain has taken many more.

If you ever hike Glastenbury, don’t go alone. And if you hear your name whispered, don’t answer.

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Author’s Note: The “Bennington Triangle” refers to a cluster of unexplained disappearances in Vermont’s Green Mountains between 1945 and 1950, including the high-profile case of Paula Welden. While the missing persons are historical fact, the legend of the “three lost girls” is folklore tied to Glastenbury Mountain’s eerie reputation.