Between 1945 and 1950, five unconnected people, from an eight-year-old boy to a 74-year-old woodsman, vanished into the same pocket of southwestern Vermont wilderness. The cluster fueled decades of supernatural legend about a place later dubbed the Bennington Triangle.

This episode separates the real true-crime and missing-persons cases from the folklore that swallowed them, examining how confirmation bias and the desolate terrain of abandoned logging towns turned tragedy into a paranormal myth. Each disappearance, it turns out, has a grounded human explanation.

• How the unincorporation of Glastonbury and Somerset left desolate ghost towns and unforgiving terrain around Glastonbury Mountain
• The cases of expert woodsman Middie Rivers and college student Paula Welldon, whose only common thread was geography
• How the James Tedford bus mystery dissolves once you account for a week-long reporting gap by the soldiers home
• Grounded explanations for the others: a possible hit-and-run, camouflaging clothing, and a seizure disorder in freezing water
• The 2008 survivor case proving the area is rugged and indifferent terrain, not a supernatural vortex