Case file · High strangeness
Paul Jepson disappears
On 12 October 1950 eight-year-old Paul Jepson vanished from his mother's truck near Bennington, Vermont, while she briefly tended animals. Bloodhounds lost his trail at a road.
1950 CE · 42.89, -73.18 · status: unexplained
The researched reading
A real, sad disappearance of a young boy. Getting lost or being taken by someone explains it; the “triangle” label came decades later.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A known natural phenomenon | 38% | A young child who wanders off near woods can travel surprisingly far, and child disappearances in rugged country are sometimes never solved; bloodhounds losing a trail at a road is common. |
| Undetermined | 19% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 15% | The trail ending at a road fits a child picked up by a vehicle, that is abduction by a person; this deliberate human act is the leading theory in child disappearances of this kind. |
| A cultural story | 13% | Local legend about Glastenbury Mountain (a “cursed” ghost town, wild men) attached itself to an ordinary tragedy. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 10% | The case gained a mystical aura only when Joseph Citro grouped it with other local disappearances as the “Bennington Triangle” in the 1990s. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 3% | A tragic missing-child case with ordinary possibilities. |
| Something in the surroundings | 2% | Nothing in the surroundings affected perception here. |
Official position: Police and large volunteer searches found no trace; the case remains unsolved.