A man steps onto a bus in December 1949. Other passengers see him in his seat. When the bus reaches the next stop, he's gone — his belongings still on the rack above, an open bus timetable on the empty seat. He was never seen again.

This is Part Two of the Bennington Triangle.

In Part One we climbed Glastenbury Mountain and traced how one stretch of Vermont wilderness earned its reputation. Now Lee, Josh, and Jen get to the cases that made the legend: the disappearances that came one after another between 1949 and 1950, and the theories people have reached for ever since to explain them.

We cover James Tedford, gone from a moving bus with a full load of witnesses. Eight-year-old Paul "Buddy" Jepson, who vanished in the time it took his mother to finish a chore. And Frieda Langer — the only one of the missing whose body ever came back, found months later in open ground that searchers had already walked, in a condition that made the how of her death impossible to name.

Then we sort the theories, fast and honest — the man-eating stone, the creature in the timber, the "thin place," abduction, a killer working the trail, the pattern in the dates — and ask the question underneath all of it: why do we reach for a triangle at all?

🕯️ New here? You've found your people. We're the Secret Society of Strangers — three friends digging into history's darkest, strangest, and most unexplained cases. Subscribe and stay a while.

⚠️ This episode discusses the disappearance and presumed death of a child, and includes speculative theories. Listener discretion advised.

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 — Cold Open: Gone From a Moving Bus 00:38 — Welcome Back to the Society 03:50 — Where Part One Left Us 05:24 — Three Years of Quiet 07:40 — James Tedford, December 1949 17:52 — Paul "Buddy" Jepson, 1950 27:11 — Frieda Langer — The One Who Came Back 38:30 — What the Mountain Was Already Known For 40:49 — Theory: The Stone 43:20 — Theory: Something in the Trees 46:27 — Theory: A Thin Place 47:45 — Theory: Taken 49:00 — Theory: The Simplest, Darkest Answer 52:00 — Theory: The Trail Itself 54:17 — The Pattern in the Dates 56:36 — Theory: Bad Ground 57:45 — Why a Triangle? 1:00:59 — Questions for the Strangers 1:02:00 — Before You Go Out There 1:04:52 — Wrapping Up

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📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING

Joseph A. Citro — the author who coined "the Bennington Triangle" in 1992 — "Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls & Unsolved Mysteries" (1994) and "Passing Strange" (1996)

Bennington Triangle — overview & case summaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennington_Triangle

Glastenbury Mountain — geography & history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastenbury_Mountain

"The Haunting of Glastenbury Mountain," Vermont Country Magazine (2023): https://vermontcountry.com/2023/10/26/the-haunting-of-glastenbury-mountain/

Glastenbury Wilderness — U.S. Forest Service: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r09/gmfl/recreation/glastenbury-wilderness Full research notes and imagery credits in the episode's Production Media Index.

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ABOUT THE SHOW The Secret Society of Strangers is a true crime and paranormal podcast where three friends investigate history's darkest mysteries, strangest disappearances, and most twisted minds — unsolved murders, impossible vanishings, cults, con artists, and high strangeness. We're building a society of the professionally curious and academically strange.

🕯️ Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

#BenningtonTriangle #TrueCrime #Unsolved

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📌 A Strange Static Media Production. Lee — Writer, Researcher, Editor, Producer. Josh & Jen — Co-Host, Assistant, Creative, Co-Producer.

DISCLAIMER: This episode discusses historical disappearances and the presumed death of a child, and presents speculative theories that are identified as such. Content is offered for storytelling and educational purposes. Folklore and unverified accounts are described as folklore, not established fact.

A man vanishes from a moving bus in December 1949 — his bags still overhead, the other passengers none the wiser until his seat turns up empty. He was never found.

That's where Part Two begins. Lee, Josh, and Jen return to Glastenbury Mountain for the cases that built the legend of the Bennington Triangle: James Tedford, gone from that bus; eight-year-old Buddy Jepson, gone in the length of a single chore; and Frieda Langer, the only one of the missing whose body ever came back — found in ground the searchers had already crossed.

Then we sort the theories, honestly and without a tidy answer: the stone, the creature, the thin place, abduction, a killer on the trail, and the strange pattern hiding in the dates.

This is Part Two of two. If you haven't heard Part One, start there.

⚠️ Contains discussion of a child's disappearance and presumed death, plus speculative theory. Listener discretion advised.

🎧 Subscribe wherever you're listening. Merch at ssos-shop.fourthwall.com (code SSOSPOD, 5% off). Support the show at [BUYMEACOFFEE-URL]. Follow @SSOSPodcast.

Got a high strangeness story? Email us or DM — we're listening.

🕯️ Stay Curious. Stay Strange

🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Podbean · YouTube Hit subscribe so the next one finds you.

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☕ Support the Show: Buy Me a Coffee — every cup helps.

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📧 Got a High Strangeness Story? Somewhere the locals avoid? Somewhere the stories don't quite add up? We want to hear about it. Email at [email protected]  us or slide into the DMs — we're listening.

A Strange Static Media Production.

Sources: Joseph A. Citro, "Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls & Unsolved Mysteries" (1994) & "Passing Strange" (1996); Bennington Triangle and Glastenbury Mountain (Wikipedia); Vermont Country Magazine (2023); U.S. Forest Service.

In the dense woods of Glastenbury Mountain, Vermont, people don't just get lost — they vanish. No bodies. No answers. Just a mountain that's been taking people for as long as anyone can remember.

Some places you can only reach on purpose. The Bennington Triangle isn't one of them — you can see it from a college campus, a gas station, a kitchen window.

In Part One, Lee leads Josh and Jen up the Green Mountain to trace how one stretch of Vermont wilderness earned its name: Abenaki warnings about ground that owes you nothing, compasses that refuse to point north, a man-eating stone, the Bennington Monster, and the first documented disappearances that turned local legend into an unsolved mystery.

The hunter found dead with no wounds. The 74-year-old guide who knew the mountain blind and still walked into the dark and never came back. And the case that forced Vermont to build a state police force from scratch — 18-year-old Bennington College student Paula Jean Welden, who walked up the Long Trail one Sunday afternoon in December 1946 in a red parka and was never seen again.

Part One of two.

⚠️ Covers historical events including Vermont's eugenics program. Listener discretion advised.

🕯️ Ex Tenebris, Peregrini — Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold Open — The Triangle You Can Walk To

01:58 Welcome to the Secret Society of Strangers

05:10 Glastenbury Mountain: 26,000 Acres of Nothing

06:21 The Abenaki and the Living Mountain

10:37 The Settlers, the Land, and a Vanishing Population

13:10 The Compass That Won't Point North

16:02 The Man-Eating Stone

18:20 The Dancing Lights

20:50 The Bennington Monster

23:15 Henry McDowell and the Voices

25:30 The Grand Hotel and the Electric Trolley

30:00 The Freshet

32:43 What Vermont Was Doing in the Same Years

34:35 John Harble, 1897

39:46 Carl Herrick, 1943

45:01 Middie Rivers, 1945

51:44 Paula Jean Welden, 1946

1:04:43 The Darkest Theory

1:09:13 End of Part One

1:09:34 Questions for the Strangers

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📌 CREDITS

A Strange Static Media Production.

Lee — Writer, Researcher, Editor, Producer

Josh & Jen — Co-Host, Assistant, Creative, Co-Producer

DISCLAIMER: This episode discusses historical disappearances, deaths, and documented state programs including eugenics. Content is presented for storytelling and educational purposes. Some accounts described are folklore and circulating local legend, not established fact, and are identified as such.

#BenningtonTriangle #Vermont #MissingPersons #TrueCrime #HighStrangeness #PaulaWelden

Some places you can only reach on purpose. The Bennington Triangle isn't one of them — you can see it from a college campus, a gas station, a kitchen window. And it's been taking people for a very long time. In Part One, Lee leads Josh and Jen up Glastenbury Mountain: the Abenaki who knew it was inhabited, the settlers who couldn't hold it, the town that dissolved off the map, and the first souls to vanish — a hunter moved after death, a guide who knew every trail and walked into the dark anyway, and 18-year-old Paula Jean Welden in her red parka. Part one of two.

🕯️ Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Podbean · YouTube Hit subscribe so the next one finds you.

🛒 Wear the Society: ssos-shop.fourthwall.com — code SSOSPOD takes 5% off.

☕ Support the Show: Buy Me a Coffee — every cup helps.

📱 Follow Us: Instagram · TikTok Clips, extras, and whatever rabbit hole we fell down that week.

📧 Got a High Strangeness Story? Somewhere the locals avoid? Somewhere the stories don't quite add up? We want to hear about it. Email at [email protected]  us or slide into the DMs — we're listening.

She co-founded the order that gave Dracula his name. She was accused of drinking blood, running an alchemy lab, and cutting a deal with the devil. Six hundred years later, Croatian kids still play a schoolyard game named after her.

Her name was Barbara of Cilli — Holy Roman Empress, Queen of Hungary, Bohemia, and Germany, and one of the most powerful women of the 15th century. History turned her into a monster. Tonight we find out who did it, and why.

Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Podbean · YouTube Hit subscribe so the next one finds you.

🛒 Wear the Society: ssos-shop.fourthwall.com — code SSOSPOD takes 5% off.

☕ Support the Show: Buy Me a Coffee — every cup helps.

📱 Follow Us: Instagram · TikTok Clips, extras, and whatever rabbit hole we fell down that week.

📧 Got a High Strangeness Story? Somewhere the locals avoid? Somewhere the stories don't quite add up? We want to hear about it. Email at [email protected]  us or slide into the DMs — we're listening.

🕯️ Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

A Strange Static Media Production.

Lee — Writer, Researcher, Editor, Producer

Josh & Jen — Co-Host, Assistant, Creative, Co-Producer

SOURCES & FACT-CHECK NOTES

Dvořáková, Daniela — Barbara of Cilli (1392–1451) — primary modern biography.

Wikipedia — Barbara of Cilli; Order of the Dragon; Counts of Celje; Veronika of Desenice; Ulrich II, Count of Celje; Carmilla. (Wikipedia confirms Carmilla is ‘likely based on the legendary image of Barbara as a vampire.’)

Journal of Dracula Studies (Kutztown University) — Carmilla / Order of the Dragon academic connection.

Paušek-Baždar, Snježana (2008) — ‘Queen Barbara of Cilli as Alchemist in Samobor’ — supports the alchemy lab.

Secret Zagreb / Love Zagreb — Medvedgrad and Black Queen folklore (flag as folklore, not record).

FACT-CHECK — the €2 coin is 2014 (600th anniversary of her 1414 coronation as Queen of Germany), designed by Matej Ramšak — NOT 2008. Script corrected.

FACT-CHECK — 2022 Konstanz event/exhibition title: ‘Barbara von Cilli – Kaiserin, Alchemistin, Vampir’ (Empress, Alchemist, Vampire). Verified via Wikipedia.

FLAG — devil’s-pact, snake-in-the-tunnels, raven-was-a-cursed-lover, lovers-off-the-battlements: all folklore. Delivered as legend in-script; keep it framed that way.

In 1941, a quiet Denver neighborhood became convinced one house was haunted. Lights switched on in empty rooms. Footsteps echoed behind locked doors. A widow fled her own home; her housekeeper quit, certain the place was cursed. They were all closer to the truth than the police — because something WAS in that house. Not a ghost. A man. This week, Lee leads Josh and Jen through the case of Theodore Coneys, the “Denver Spider Man,” who murdered 73-year-old Philip Peters and then lived in the victim’s attic crawlspace for nine months — freezing, starving, three feet above the people hunting for a phantom. It’s the most famous case of “phrogging” in American history, and the realest ghost story Denver ever told.

Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

CTA + LINKS

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Email: [email protected]  —  or DM us on socials. We're listening.

CREDITS

A Strange Static Media Production.

Lee — Writer, Researcher, Editor, Producer

Josh & Jen — Co-Host, Assistant, Creative, Co-Producer

SOURCES

Primary / Archival

Period News Coverage

Modern Coverage / Secondary

In the summer of 1980, an eleven-year-old boy in Brookfield, Connecticut saw something in an empty bedroom — a withered figure with black eyes and cloven hooves. Over the next seven months, what started as a child's nightmare consumed an entire family, brought Ed and Lorraine Warren to their door, and ended with a nineteen-year-old stabbing his landlord to death outside a dog kennel.

Arne Johnson's defense attorney attempted something unprecedented: a plea of not guilty by reason of demonic possession. But behind the trial that inspired The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It lies a darker story — celebrity demonologists who profited from a family's pain, a mother who may have been secretly drugging her own children, and a brother who spent decades trying to tell the truth.

Join Lee, Josh, and Jen as they follow this case from the bedroom on Oak Grove Road to the courtroom in Danbury — and uncover what the Conjuring franchise doesn't want you to know.

Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube: @SSOSPodcast | Podbean

CREDITS

SOURCES

She inherited a fortune built on a rifle.

The story goes that a medium told her every soul ever killed by that gun was coming for her — and the only way to stay alive was to keep building. Never let the hammers stop. Never let the house be finished.

Sarah Winchester built. For thirty-six years, in a house in San Jose, California, the construction never stopped — until the day she died.

160 rooms. Staircases that climb into ceilings. Doors that open onto open air. The most famous haunted house in America — and the widow who, by some accounts, is still inside it.

But the story they sell at the gate is not the story of who actually lived there.

This week on Secret Society of Strangers, we walk the legend in full. And then we tell you who Sarah Winchester really was. Because they buried her twice — and the second burial is the one we should be angry about.

Hosts: Lee, Josh, Jen

Edited by: William Bertschinger  

Primary historical source

Ignoffo, Mary Jo. Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune. University of Missouri Press, 2010 (rev. 2022). First full-length archival biography. Twenty years of research in Sarah’s personal letters, Winchester financial records, building records, contemporary news coverage.

🕯️  Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

Some people have one strange experience in a lifetime. Samantha Leifker has spent thirty years collecting them.

This week the Strangers sit down with Samantha Leifker, author of Born Awakened: An Otherworldly True Story — a memoir that refuses to stay in any single category. It starts in a childhood home where the dead didn't stay quiet, and it spans decades of UFO contact, out-of-body travel, missing time, interdimensional beings, and a pull toward East Tennessee she still can't fully explain.

We get into all of it: the poltergeist house she grew up in, the cube-shaped craft, the entities she says have been guiding her since before she could understand them, and what it actually feels like to live a life where the paranormal isn't a story you tell — it's a Tuesday.

This is the kind of conversation SSOS was built for. The hauntings, the UFOs, the consciousness work — Samantha doesn't treat them as separate mysteries. She treats them as one. And after this, you might too.

And this is only round one — we're already setting up a second sit-down to go even deeper with Samantha, so consider this your way in.

Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

📖 GUEST — SAMANTHA LEIFKER / BORN AWAKENED

Book — Born Awakened: An Otherworldly True Story (Amazon): https://a.co/d/03y6m5Y0

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🕯️ Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

He called himself a prince. He created a flag, a constitution, a currency. He published a 355-page guidebook to a capital city with an opera house and a cathedral.

And none of it existed.

In the finale of our April Fools series, we tell the story of Gregor MacGregor — the Scottish soldier who invented an entire nation called Poyais, convinced hundreds to invest their life savings, and sent 250 settlers to die in an empty jungle.

Nearly 180 people never came home. And MacGregor? He was never convicted. He died a general, buried with full military honors in a cathedral in Caracas.

The deadliest con in modern history. The man who sold a country.

🕯️ Stay Curious. Stay Strange.

YouTube

THE MAN WHO INVENTED A FAKE COUNTRY AND KILLED 180 PEOPLE | Gregor MacGregor & The Poyais Scheme | SSOS

In this episode, we cover the incredible true story of Gregor MacGregor — the Scottish con artist who invented an entire nation called Poyais in the 1820s, printed fake currency, sold government bonds for a country that didn't exist, and convinced 250 settlers to sail across the Atlantic to a "paradise" that was actually empty jungle.

Nearly 180 of them died. MacGregor was never convicted. He died a hero in Venezuela.

This is the finale of our April Fools con artist series, covering: Frank Abagnale Jr., Anna Delvey, Ann Odelia Diss Debar, and now the deadliest fraud in history.

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           The Secret Society Of Strangers Podcast is a Strange Static MediaTM  production