The Dover Demon

Dover, Massachusetts, is one of the wealthiest towns in New England — a quiet, leafy place of old stone walls, horse farms and large colonial houses, about fifteen miles southwest of Boston. It is not the kind of place where monsters are seen. Or at least, it wasn’t, until the spring of 1977.

Over about twenty-five hours, on two nights in April, four teenagers in three separate places in town reported seeing a creature unlike anything any of them had ever seen. They described it the same way. They drew it the same way. And it has never been seen again.

Farm Street

At about 10:30 on the night of Thursday, April 21, 1977, a seventeen-year-old named Bill Bartlett was driving along Farm Street in Dover with two friends, Mike Mazzocca and Andy Brodie. It was dark, and they were heading north along a winding road lined with old stone walls.

As his headlights swept along the road, Bartlett saw something on top of one of the stone walls.

It was a small creature, perhaps three or four feet tall, crouched on the wall, its long, thin fingers wrapped around the stones. It had a huge, oversized head, shaped like a watermelon, without ears, nose or mouth that he could see. Its body was thin, with spindly arms and legs. Its skin was hairless, and looked rough, like sandpaper, with a peach or tan color. And it had two large, round, glowing eyes, like orange marbles, that stared straight into the headlights.

The creature was in the headlights for only a few seconds. Bartlett’s friends didn’t see it; they were looking elsewhere. But Bartlett was badly shaken. He drove to Mazzocca’s house, then went home, and was so upset that his father later said he’d never seen his son like that.

When he got home, Bartlett sat down and drew what he’d seen. Across the top of the sketch, he wrote that he swore on a stack of Bibles that he saw this creature.

Millers High Road

About two hours later, just after midnight, a fifteen-year-old named John Baxter was walking home from his girlfriend’s house along Millers High Road, about a mile from where Bartlett had his sighting.

He saw a small figure walking toward him on the road. At first he thought it was a kid he knew. He called out. The figure stopped.

When Baxter got closer, he said, he saw that it wasn’t a person at all. The creature turned and scrambled off into the woods, toward a gully, where it stood at the base of a tree, gripping the trunk with its long fingers, and stared back at him. It had a big, figure-eight-shaped head and glowing eyes. Baxter, frightened, backed away and left.

He later drew what he’d seen. His drawing was remarkably similar to Bartlett’s.

Springdale Avenue

The next night, Friday, April 22, a fifteen-year-old girl named Abby Brabham was being driven home by an eighteen-year-old friend, Will Taintor, along Springdale Avenue, when she saw the creature in the headlights, crouched by the side of the road.

She described it as having a large head, a thin body, and eyes that glowed green, not orange. Otherwise, her description matched the others. Taintor said he saw something too, though he only caught a glimpse.

The Demon

The sightings quickly came to the attention of a young researcher named Loren Coleman, who would go on to become one of the best-known cryptozoologists in America. He interviewed all of the witnesses, as well as their parents, teachers and the local police. He concluded that the teenagers were sincere, that they had not coordinated their stories, and that none of them seemed to be playing a prank.

Coleman gave the creature a name: the Dover Demon.

The story spread to the Boston newspapers and then across the country, and later around the world. The Dover Demon has appeared in books, television shows and video games, and has become one of the most famous cryptids — creatures whose existence has never been scientifically proven — in American folklore.

What Was It?

Skeptics have suggested several explanations.

One of the most popular is that the teenagers saw a young moose, a deer fawn, or even a foal — an animal with a large head and thin legs, seen briefly in headlights at night. Another suggestion is that it was a prank by a group of high school students. Some UFO researchers believe the creature was an alien, pointing to its resemblance to the “gray” aliens that became famous in later decades.

But the witnesses held firm. Bill Bartlett, who went on to become an artist, said for decades that he had seen exactly what he described and couldn’t explain it. He said in interviews that he wished people would believe him, and that he was tired of people assuming he was lying.

The Strangest Part

What I find strangest about the Dover Demon is how brief it was.

Most legendary creatures — Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil, the Mothman — have long histories of sightings, waves of reports over years or decades. The Dover Demon appeared on two nights in April 1977, was seen by four teenagers, and then vanished completely. No one in Dover has credibly reported seeing it since.

Whatever was crouching on that stone wall on Farm Street, it seems to have come from nowhere, and gone back there.