Bennington Museum/Tim Wager Colorization – 1898 – The Glastenbury Casino along with the Bennington-Woodford electric RR carrying passengers…. Photo was taken from the balcony of the Glastenbury Hotel…. Resort only operated for one season after flooding destroyed the majority of the rail tracks
Getting the creative incentive to write a story can be a mystery for non-writers. Ideas and stories come in many different forms for everyone. I can get a creative idea from reading an article in a newspaper, having a conversation with a stranger, or just wondering about a group of people traveling together in an airport. The idea for this series of stories comes from a series of real-life events and places. The stories and the characters are all fiction, but the source of the creativeness comes from real life.
My upcoming book, Deadly Inheritance is based on the events that occur when a young woman goes missing in the dark woods of New England. In her place, her cousin inherits the family Inn that has been in the family for generations and passed down from father to son. This unexpected inheritance starts a series of events that will reveal what happened to the missing girl, a second chance at love and a killer who wants them all dead.
The story is based on the legend of The Bennington Triangle, where several people have gone missing without a trace in the region of Bennington, VT. The most famous is the disappearance of Paula Weldon, a student from Bennington College, a small elite liberal arts college. Shirley Jackson wrote of this story in her book, Hangsaman. Ms. Weldon’s disappearance prompted the creation of the VT state police in the 1940’s.
As a kid growing up in the area, and later a student at Bennington College, I have been intrigued with these stories. Every time a skull or a bone is found in the woods of the area, the speculation of what happened to her is resurrected. Over time there have been several other stories in the area, missing persons, and hunters/hikers that get lost and disoriented in the woods. There have been extensive searches of missing people in the area, where multiple searchers look through the same areas, where later the missing person is found dead. The searchers are baffled, as they did not see them during their search, and they would have walked right past. There are Indian legends of swallowing rocks, that gulp whole humans into the earth never to be seen again. Like I said…. what a great place for a murder mystery….
For reference if you are interested, Episode 53: MYSTERY – The Bennington Triangle; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dVmueUgWkw
The Bizarre Disappearances in the Bennington Triangle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXzLVc5wNKg
Glastenbury Mtn & The Bennington Triangle | Exploring A Ghost Town & Mysterious Cairns; Ihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdb-1D_Jc8I
