Taken!by Brad Steiger
(Copyright 2008, Brad Steiger - All Rights Reserved)
The strange disappearance of Rivers had had just enough time to become part of the local legends when Paula Weldon, an eighteen-year-old student at Bennington College, set off on a hike on December 1, 1946. While on her trek, Paula was seen by a number of fellow students, a gas station attendant, a local building contractor, and a janitor of the Bennington Banner Building. Then the teenager turned some cosmic corner and walked into oblivion.
State and local police were soon supplemented in their search for the missing girl by state detectives and the FBI. Hundreds of volunteer searchers assisted in an exhausting exploration of the region. New spapermen tracked down supposed leads that took them to Canada, as far away as to the West Indies, but no one found a single thread from Paula's coat or a single hair from her head.
The third disappearance in Mt Glastenbury occurred on the third anniversary of Paula Weldon's apparent evaporation into nowhere. On December 1, 1949, James E. Tetford vanished in a manner even stranger than the two previous victims.
Tetford had been visiting relatives in South Albans, Vermont, and had decided to return to the Soldiers Home in Bennington. He boarded a bus, found a seat, bade farewell to his relatives--but he never got off the bus and he never returned to the Soldiers Home.
An exhaustive investigation could reveal absolutely no clues to Tetford's strange disappearance. Several people saw him board the vehicle, but no one saw him get off. It would seem impossible to vacate a bus en route to its next station, either voluntarily or involuntarily, without being seen by the other passengers and the driver. Yet, somehow James E. Tetford had managed that impossible feat.
On October 12, 1950, eight-year-old Paul Jepson was left on the seat of a truck while his father stepped a few feet away to perform a small errand. Moments later, when Jepson returned to the cab of the truck, he found that his son had disappeared. As in the previous disappearances, hundreds of volunteers were mobilized to supplement the state and local law enforcement agencies, and well-trained bloodhounds were set on the trail.
The bloodhounds soon lost the scent--but was it only an eerie coincidence that the dogs became confused at the exact spot where Paula Weldon had last been seen? When the hounds came to this precise spot, they could only mill about and bay despairingly.
Two weeks later, an experienced woodswoman and expert gun handler named Frieda Langer disappeared while on a hike in the Glastenbury woods with her cousin, Herbert Elsner. Mrs. Langer was thoroughly familiar with the area, but her knowledge of the woods did not assist her any more than outdoors expertise had aided Middie Rivers in evading the fate of a strange disappearance.
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