November 12, 1945 — Glastenbury Mountain, Vermont. Experienced guide Middie Rivers walked ahead of his hunting party and vanished completely, the first of five unexplained Bennington Triangle disappearances.
1945: November UFO & Entity Sightings Archive
November 1945 carries a single entry, but it’s the founding case of one of New England’s most enduring pieces of high-strangeness folklore. On the 12th, a 74-year-old hunting guide named Middie Rivers walked ahead of his party on a familiar trail on Glastenbury Mountain, Vermont — and vanished completely. He was the first of five people who would disappear from the same small stretch of Vermont wilderness over the next five years, in what writer Joseph A. Citro later named the “Bennington Triangle.” Rivers’s case isn’t a UFO sighting in itself, but Glastenbury Mountain carries its own long-standing reputation for exactly that: recurring reports of unexplained lights and aerial phenomena, alongside a Bigfoot-type cryptid locals call the “Bennington Monster.” This entry, corrected from a previous misdating on this archive’s December page, belongs to November — and opens a case that was never solved.
Date: November 12, 1945
Location: Glastenbury Mountain, Bennington County, Vermont — near Bickford Hollow/Hell Hollow, in the area of the modern Long Trail/Route 9 corridor
Time: Approximately mid-to-late afternoon
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: Middie Rivers, a lifelong area resident and experienced hunting and fishing guide, led a group of four hunters into the wilds of Glastenbury Mountain. The weather was so mild it was hard to believe Thanksgiving was only two weeks away. Rivers was 74, but his excellent health had been confirmed by a recent physical, and he knew the terrain better than anyone in the area. Returning toward camp, Rivers got ahead of his party near Bickford Hollow — a companion reportedly spotted him on a nearby trail, walking in the opposite direction from camp — and was never seen again. A search involving roughly 300 volunteers and soldiers dispatched from Fort Devens, Massachusetts combed the wilderness for eight days. The only clue that ever emerged was a single unexpended rifle cartridge, believed to match Rivers’s own bullet belt, found on the bank of a nearby creek. No trace of Rivers himself, nor any sign of animal attack, foul play, or accident, was ever found. As the search was reluctantly called off, the season’s first snow began to fall. [Full Report]
Source: Regional press coverage (Bennington Banner and other Vermont papers, November-December 1945); Joseph A. Citro, Green Mountains, Dark Tales (1994) and Shadow Child; Legends of America; multiple corroborating Vermont folklore and true-crime compilations Source Status: VERIFIED — named witness, contemporaneous press coverage, documented multi-day organized search involving military personnel.
Editorial note: This entry was previously misdated on this archive’s December page. Every source located for this case — regional press, Citro’s foundational folklore research, and subsequent historical accounts — gives the date as November 12, 1945. Moved and corrected here. It is the first of five disappearances (1945-1950) that gave the area its “Bennington Triangle” name.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
November 1945 — The First of the Bennington Triangle
Middie Rivers’s disappearance stands alone as this archive’s only November 1945 entry, and it stands somewhat apart from the rest of this project’s WWII-and-immediate-postwar record: it isn’t an aerial sighting, a radar contact, or an entity encounter in itself. What it is is the opening case of the Bennington Triangle — a cluster of five vanishings around a single stretch of Vermont wilderness between 1945 and 1950, none of which were ever solved, in an area with an independently documented long-standing reputation for UFO sightings, unexplained lights, and a Bigfoot-type cryptid. Rivers was as experienced a woodsman as the region had; his disappearance without any trace beyond a single unfired cartridge is precisely the kind of anomaly that later folklorists and paranormal researchers would build an entire regional legend around.
This entry was corrected this revision from a prior misdating (it had been filed under December on this archive). No other UFO or entity cases from November 1945 were located despite thorough search — consistent with the broader postwar lull this archive has now confirmed across September, October, and December of the same year.
“In the deepening twilight, as they headed for home, the season’s first snow began to fall.”
From the account of the search party’s final day looking for Middie Rivers, Glastenbury Mountain, Vermont, November-December 1945.
