What happens in the Bennington Triangle
Vermont's infamous Glastenbury Wilderness
A question that I get asked a lot is whether I’d consider writing about more trails and hiking destinations with true crime stories. For the most part, I don’t do this because the true crime storytelling industry can be pretty lurid and lacking in empathy for the victims of assaults and murders. Furthermore, it can distort the average listener’s perception of how “dangerous” a city or a forest might be, and given the rate of gun ownership and incarceration in America, the last thing I want to instill is paranoia.
That said, there is one genre of hiking horror stories that I enjoy re-visiting, especially when Halloween draws closer—hikes with a phantasmal or cryptozoologic history. These stories are detached enough from lived reality that more people are likely to find them entertaining. Plus, when it comes to wispy ghouls and big, scraggly beasts, there’s not much we can really do about them other than tread lightly in their territory.
So this week, we’re going to visit a literal corner of New England where strange and unexplained things have been happening since the 1940s. The Bennington Triangle.
