Join me, PW. Perhaps YOU may be able to solve a mystery? Or in the words of the infamous Tourettes Guy: "Find out who gives a shit about Bigfoot". This thread will act as a hub for you to share a variety of matters, from true crime "whodunnits", disappearances/missing person cases, natural/supernatural phenomenon, conspiracy theories, scientific anomalies and much, much more. The caveat here being: whatever you're sharing must of course have no direct answer or confirmation as to why, what or who has caused said event to happen and must also NOT be a work of fiction (no creepypastas, ARG's, etc. etc.). Feel free to simply play a long and posit your theories or hypothesis on anything and everything mentioned below here as well, as strictly adding a new case or incident to the thread is not required for posting. 

If adding a contribution to the thread, all I ask is that you provide a link for your source or source(s) in your post (if available) so that those who wish to delve deeper can do so to further substantiate the story. It is not required but I also encourage providing pictures or even a video (if possible) to your post as well if you can. If you're posting something verbatim please provide quotations. Try and aim for cases/events that are not generally well known to most (Bigfoot, UFO's, Jon Benet Ramsey's disappearance, etc. would qualify as "mainstream" in my eyes) but if you do so, no harm no foul. One of the points of this thread is basically to share an event or crime that may not be very well known to many that you personally believe deserves wider recognition or more attention from the masses. Also, try not to hone in on just one theme here... let's keep this spoopy thread as balanced as humanly possible.

So, with all that out of the way.... CUE THAT CREEPY SYNTH LINE!!!!

SPOILER: Click to show

What if I told you that the Bermuda Triangle wasn't the only triangular area of mysterious circumstance within the North American continent? What if I told you that there is one on the mainland US which has a long history steeped in missing persons cases, Sasquatch encounters, poltergeist activity and various UFO cases? Yeah, this particular case has a little bit of everything to offer. What better one to open up this thread with? I present to you the: "Bennington Triangle". The phrase was first coined by New England author Joseph A. Citro during a public radio broadcast in 1992 to denote an area of southwestern Vermont within which a number of people went missing between 1945 and 1950. The actual area encompassed in this hypothetical "mystery triangle" is not clear, but is purportedly centered on Glastenbury Mountain and includes namely the neighboring towns of Bennington, Woodford, Shaftsbury and Somerset. Both Glastenbury and Somerset have been reduced to basically ghost towns in modern times due to the decline of the logging industry there which had propped the towns up before the turn of the 20th Century. I'll be breaking down the Triangle first by what's made it most famous -- it's disappearances...

"Some suspect a serial killer while others point a finger at the paranormal, but nobody has been able to fully explain the mysterious disappearances from Vermont's Bennington Triangle."

Middie Rivers (1945)
"Between 1945 and 1950, five people disappeared in the Bennington area. The first occurred on November 12, 1945 when 74-year-old Middie Rivers disappeared while out hunting. Rivers was guiding a group of four hunters up the mountains. On the way back, Rivers got ahead of the group, and was never seen again. An extensive search was conducted, but the only evidence discovered was a single rifle cartridge that was found in a stream. The speculation was that Rivers had leaned over and the cartridge had dropped out of his pocket into the water. The disappearance had occurred in the Long Trail Road area and Vermont Route 9. Rivers was an experienced hunter and fisherman and was familiar with the local area."


Paula Welden (1946)
"Paula Jean Welden, 18, disappeared about a year later on December 1, 1946. Welden was a sophomore at Bennington College. She had set out for a hike on the Long Trail. Many saw her go, including Ernest Whitman, a Bennington Banner employee who gave her directions. She was alleged to have been seen on the trail itself by an elderly couple who were about 100 yards (91 m) behind her. According to them, she turned a corner in the trail, and when they reached the same corner, she had disappeared. An extensive search was conducted when Welden didn't return to the college campus, which included the posting of a $5,000 reward and help from the FBI. However, no evidence of her was ever found. Unconfirmed rumors speculated that she had moved to Canada with a boyfriend or that she became a recluse living in the mountains. Welden's disappearance was the inspiration for the 1951 novel Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson."


James Tedford (1949)
"James E. Tedford (also spelled as Teford or Tetford), a veteran, was the third person to disappear. He went missing on December 1, 1949, exactly three years after Paula Welden had disappeared. Tedford was a resident of the Bennington Soldiers' Home. He had been in St. Albans visiting relatives, and was returning home on the local bus when he vanished. According to witnesses, Tedford got on the bus, and was still on the bus at the last stop before arriving in Bennington. Somewhere between the last stop and Bennington, Tedford vanished. His belongings were still in the luggage rack and an open bus timetable was on his vacant seat."


Paul Jephson (1950)
"The fourth person to vanish was eight-year-old Paul Jephson. On October 12, 1950, Jephson had accompanied his mother in a truck. She left her son unattended while she fed some pigs. His mother was gone for about an hour. When she returned, her son was nowhere in sight. Search parties were formed to look for the child. Nothing was ever found, though Jephson was wearing a bright red jacket that should have made him more visible. According to one story, bloodhounds tracked the boy to a local highway, where, according to local legend, four years earlier Paula Welden had disappeared."


Frieda Langer (1950)
"The fifth and last disappearance occurred sixteen days after Jephson had vanished. On October 28, 1950, Frieda Langer, 53, and her cousin, Herbert Elsner, left their family campsite near the Somerset Reservoir to go on a hike. During the hike, Langer slipped and fell into a stream. She told Elsner if he would wait, she would go back to the campsite, change clothes and catch up to him. When she did not return, Elsner made his way back to the campsite and discovered Langer had not returned, and that nobody had seen her since they had left. Over the next two weeks, five searches were conducted, involving aircraft, helicopters, and up to 300 searchers. No trace of Langer was found during the search. On May 12, 1951, her body was found near Somerset Reservoir, in an area that had been extensively searched seven months previously. No cause of death could be determined because of the condition of her remains. Langer was the last person to disappear and the only one whose body was found. No direct connections have been identified that tie these cases together, other than the general geographic area and time period."


"The intriguing mysteries and unexplained events associated with the Bennington Triangle have caused many to speculate wildly about the possibility of nefarious and perhaps paranormal forces at work, a notion bolstered by alleged UFO and Bigfoot sightings in the region. Others believe that the burst of missing persons between 1945 and 1950 may have been the work of a serial killer. But the sheer lack of evidence to back this up as well as the variety in the victims’ ages and genders (defying the usual patterns of serial killers) likely rules out that theory as well.

Others still contend that the disappeared met their demise at the claws of an indigenous mountain cat such as a lynx, bobcat, or catamount. However, bobcat and lynx are not known to be aggressive to humans, and the catamount has not been credibly sighted since before 1940 and has been declared extinct.

All in all, when trying to tie the disappearances together in hopes of discovering a solution to the mysteries, there is little to go on. The only known similarities between the most well-documented cases in the Bennington Triangle are the close proximity of the disappearances, the time of day when most were last seen (between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.), and the time of year when most were last seen (the final three months of the year).

And with little in the way of evidence, paranormal theories concerning the cases have taken hold. For those interested in the paranormal, such theories dovetail with other, more recent odd occurrences in the Bennington Triangle area.
These occurences include terrifying voices allegedly showing up on dead-air radio, sightings of mysterious figures, unexplained navigation mishaps, and planes that mysteriously crashed.
Thus it’s no surprise that the Bennington Triangle attracts those with a penchant for the eerie to this day."

Massachusetts is also home to the nearby and better known "Bridgewater Triangle" which has a somewhat similar history to its Bennington counterpart. Not only that, but it's reportedly been claimed by local Native American inhabitants of this area that this specific area is believed to be "cursed" and apparently they refuse to step foot in these very woods.

Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennington_Triangle
allthatsinteresting.com/bennington-triangle 
www.benningtontriangle.com/

mysterious, solve something here. Explain yourself!

Sorry rad . I meant to reply days ago. This thread is right up my alley. For like 5 years growing up the bulk of my reading material was a mix of sports books, Choose Your Own Adventure books, and books about the mysterious, unsolved, and unexplained. Wanna know about Dorcas Chase? Mompesson and the Demon Drummer? Black Aggie? The Fouke Monster? The Faces on the Floor in Spain? The Devil in Devon? Then I'm your guy. I watched the hell out of Unsolved Mysteries, Sightings, and Strange Universe. The X Files might as well have been created just for me (and shinobimusashi). Talk about the right show at the right time....

Sadly, I live(d) in boring Maryland. Bigfoot sightings were few and far between. Sure, we had the occasional UFO sightings, but our humble sightings paled in comparison to what you might find in other states, particularly out west. And, yeah, we had Chessie, but Chessie was no Champ, let alone an Ogopogo. You would not find a Momo, Skunk Ape, or Mothman in Maryland. Jersey had the devils, and Dover the demons. BUT! We did have....

The Goatman~!



^Alleged Goatman photo from 2016



^Artist rendition.....or is it?

I first learned about The Goatman through a coloring book I got for Halloween when I was about 8 or 9. This was the accompanying description.....

"The Goatman of Maryland attacks parked cars and dogs."

It was a picture of a Goat Man swinging an ax at a car while a frightened dog hid underneath.

The Goatman captured the fancy of my brother and I. Here at last was a mysterious creature in our very own Old Line State! 

We often frequented the woods, as boys were wont to do in the 80s & 90s. Not gonna lie. I always made sure to be especially alert in the hopes of encountering Maryland's mythical Goatman. After years of coming up empty, we decided we'd create our own Goatman. My brother, cousin, and I occasionally got a ride to this place called Loch Raven Reservoir. It was surrounded by woods. So we would play Goatman in these woods   One of us would take off a few minutes before the others and hide in the woods as "The Goatman" while the other two searched. Good times.

Anyway, here is the rather paltry and bad Wikipedia entry on The Goatman....

The Goatman of Maryland is a legendary half-goat half-man creature that has the head and hindquarters of a goat and the body of a human.


According to urban legend, the Goatman is an ax-wielding half-animal, half-man creature that was once a scientist who worked in the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. The tale holds that he was experimenting on goats until one experiment backfired, and he was mutated, becoming goat-like himself. He then began attacking cars with an axe, roaming the back roads of Beltsville, Maryland. A variation of the legend tells of the Goat-man as an old hermit who lives in the woods, seen walking alone at night along Fletchertown Road.


According to University of Maryland folklorist Barry Pearson, the Goatman legends began "long, long, long" ago and were further popularized in 1971 when the death of a dog was blamed on the Goatman by local residents. Pearson says "bored teenagers" keep the Goatman legend alive by repeating the story and suggesting that the creature attacks couples frequenting the local lover's lane, subsequently stirring interest in sites like Fletchertown Road.

I don't feel like looking for my book of Maryland legends to add to The Goatman lore right now. Maybe tomorrow.

One thing all the stories have in common is The Goatman haunts the DC suburbs (Prince George's County) rather than the Baltimore area where I am. This means all those years of keeping my eyes and ears open for the Goatman were a complete waste of time. I'm a good 40 minutes away from ol' Goatie's stomping ground. Sad. 

Here is a Goatman article from 2015 www.washingtonian.com/2015/10/30/the-goatman-or-his-story-at-least-still-haunts-prince-georges-county/

One recent one that is getting talk is just what the fuck happened to Katarzyna Zowada. She was a Polish college student with a history of mental health that went missing in 1998. Jump to 1999. Group of men fishing find something strange and odorous attached to the their boat's propeller with what looks like an ear attached to it. Police examine it and it was found to be Katarzyna skin. She was flayed and her skin from neck to thighs was carefully cut to make a suit from her skin. In 2017 they charged someone for murder but had no evidence to prove he actually did it. The entire situation was classified so no details came out and the person suspected is appealing and likely to be released.

viraltab.news/silence-of-lambs-style-killer-skins-pretty-blonde-woman/

My all time favorite unsolved mystery is who was behind Max Headroom. Nov 22nd, 1987 during a sports segment on the nightly 9 o clock news, WGN-TV was hijacked for 30 seconds with a strange video.



Two hours later during Doctor Who, WTTW's signal was hijacked for a 90 second video.



Whoever did the hacks, had to manipulate two major broadcast centers transmitters in Chicago (WTTW's atop Sears Tower / WGN-TV atop John Hancock Center), have serious specialized knowledge and likely a lot of gear which should have made the subject pool extremely small. But they never found out who was behind this. Like this was a serious amount of work for a prank, involving two unrelated stations.


allthatsinteresting.com/max-headroom-hack

One more thing that really has me wondering what the full story of is Cicada. I do not have the time or the intelligence to detail this all out, but Rolling Stone did a good writeup of it. Theory I believe is this was an Obama era CIA recruitment tool that was phased out when Trump took office and things got restructured.  Timeline fits well for this theory as everything stopped just a couple of weeks before Trump took office, except for a single message saying do not trust anything else that is not verified with the proper code.

www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/cicada-solving-the-webs-deepest-mystery-84394/