FIELD FILE · BENNINGTON-MONSTERHOMINIDLOCAL LEGEND

Bennington Monster

Also known as Glastenbury Monster, Bennington Bigfoot

Glastenbury Mountain and the Bennington Triangle, southern VermontFIRST REPORTED: Early 1800sWILDMEN & HOMINIDS

A huge, hairy creature said to have overturned a stagecoach on a mountain road near Bennington, Vermont, and still blamed for the woods’ eerie reputation.

The high, densely forested country north and east of Bennington in southern Vermont – Glastenbury Mountain, Woodford and the near-empty towns of Glastenbury and Somerset – has an eerie reputation. Vermont author Joseph A. Citro dubbed it the “Bennington Triangle” in 1992, gathering together old tales of strange lights, sounds and creatures with a real cluster of unsolved disappearances between 1945 and 1950.

The oldest monster story is set on a stage road that, until about the mid-nineteenth century, ran from North Adams, Massachusetts, up along the ridges of Woodford and Glastenbury mountains. As Citro tells it, one rainy night a driver found the road washed out and stopped, only for his horses to panic. Climbing down, he found a line of enormous, widely spaced tracks freshly pressed into the mud. Then something huge slammed into the side of the coach and toppled it. The shaken passengers glimpsed two glowing eyes before the creature roared and vanished into the dark. They went on to Woodford, reluctant to tell anyone what had happened.

Later reports describe the creature as a large, hairy, black, upright animal more than six feet tall – what most people today would call a Bigfoot. In the early 2000s, reports of a big hairy biped near Glastenbury Mountain along Route 7 between Bennington and Manchester made the Bennington Banner and local TV news. Citro observed that strange animal sightings in these mountains have been “business as usual” for centuries.

Some writers link the monster to the area’s famous disappearances – among them hunting guide Middie Rivers in 1945 and Bennington College student Paula Welden in 1946 – though there is no evidence of any connection. The mix of real tragedy, empty mountain towns and old stage-road yarns keeps the Bennington Monster alive in Vermont folklore.

Type: Hominid
Status: Local legend
First reported: Early 1800s
Best-known location: Glastenbury Mountain and the Bennington Triangle, southern Vermont
Also called: Glastenbury Monster, Bennington Bigfoot
Reported in: Vermont

What witnesses describe

A large, upright, hairy creature, black or dark brown, more than six feet tall (some say eight), with glowing eyes, leaving huge, widely spaced footprints. It is said to bellow or roar.

Where and when it’s seen

The remote ridges and forests of Glastenbury and Woodford mountains in the Green Mountain National Forest, northeast of Bennington, Vermont, and the old roads that cross them.

Notable sightings

Before about 1850The overturned stagecoach Stage road over Woodford and Glastenbury mountains
According to legend, a stage driver stopped by a washout found giant tracks before a huge beast knocked the coach on its side and fled into the night, its eyes glowing.
Early 2000sA hairy biped on Route 7 Between Bennington and Manchester, Vermont
Reports of a large hairy creature near Glastenbury Mountain were covered by the Bennington Banner and local TV, as Joseph Citro noted in a 2004 Vermont Public Radio commentary.

What could explain it?

The stagecoach story survives only as a folk tale with no contemporary record; it may be a traveler’s yarn or a confused memory of a bear encounter.
Black bears and moose are common in the Green Mountains and can look huge and upright in poor light.
The “Bennington Triangle” label, coined in 1992, links unrelated mysteries – including real missing-person cases – into a single supernatural narrative.

Legend, culture and tourism

The Bennington Monster is part of Joseph Citro’s Bennington Triangle lore, retold in his books, in documentaries and podcasts, and in countless Vermont ghost-story collections. Glastenbury Mountain, crossed by the Long Trail and Appalachian Trail, draws hikers with a taste for the uncanny.

Where it’s reported

Vermont