Dover Demon

1977 Dover Massachusetts USA: On April 21 and 22 there were sightings of a strange creature that could not be easily explained or likened to any other known animal in the Massachusetts region.

The first sighting occurred after dark and a creature was seen by 3 teenaged boys. The trio of seventeen-year-olds was driving near Dover, Massachusetts, when the headlights of their car shone on something animal-like. At first guess, the animal might have been a dog or cat, but as the youngsters gazed longer, the animal seemed to have an unfamiliar shape and appeared to be crawling on a stone wall, along Farm Street.

Bill Bartlett was the teen who was driving the car on this night, and he later said the animal had a watermelon-shaped head, orange eyes that were like glassy marbles.

Other sightings were reported soon after the three teens saw the creature.

Unfortunately, reports of the creature deemed Dover Demon have been largely discredited because the witnesses of this strange form have all been teenagers.

Not long after Bartlett allegedly saw the creature, another teen had a brief encounter with it, right on the same night. Technically the sighting occurred on April 22, because a youth, John Baxter saw the creature at half past midnight.

Baxter had been visiting his girlfriend on the evening of April 21. The 15-year old was going home when a small figure approached from some distance away. Assuming that the figure was a friend of his who was of short stature, young John Baxter called out the friend's name, but received no verbal response. The two continued to get closer to each other, but then the unknown figure stopped, so Baxter also stood still. After a moment, Baxter choose to investigate and get a better look at whoever this was exhibiting sort of secretive behavior, and he started to walk again, toward the figure. At this, the creature bolted, ran down into a gully, then back up onto the other side of the bank of the gully, but it stopped on this other side and stood still.

Baxter observed these actions and continued to peer into the shadows where the figure had paused. Baxter tried to get a better look at the figure that had just fled, and he concluded that from what he could see, that he'd never heard of or seen anything like this creature before. The creature remained in the shadows at a distance of about 30 feet away and its feet seemed molded around the rock on which it stood, while its hands were molded around the trunk of a tree. The fingers appeared greatly elongated. Baxter left the area and returned home.

The rest of Baxter's description of the creature matched the details that Bill Bartlett reported, but it appears that Baxter's experience with the creature may have been of longer duration than Bartlett's. Baxter was on foot and actually remained paused for a while in attempting to see what the unknown figure was in the dark outdoors. Bartlett had been in a moving vehicle earlier in the evening when he saw the creature.

When William Bartlett was contacted and interviewed by Boston Globe correspondent, Mark Sullivan (2006), Bartlett maintained that what he saw 29 years earlier was no hoax and that he didn't fabricate the incident.

In fact, Bartlett said that the whole event had become somewhat of an embarrassment in his life - and event that followed him around and brought people forth from time to time, only to question his credibility.

Read the Boston Globe Interview with Bill Bartlett, 2006:

Decades Later, The Dover Demon Still Haunts

In this 2006 interview, Bartlett recounts that, although he never saw the creature dubbed as the "Dover Demon" again, a strange thing happened to him one year after his initial sighting of this creature.

Bartlett says that about a year after seeing the Dover Demon, he was with his girlfriend in his car. They were parked on Farm Street and suddenly heard a thump on the car. He looked outward and saw some small figure leaving the area. He found he couldn't explain this and never figured out who or what had banged on the car that night. He just wondered if he had been visited by the Dover Demon once more.

One of the most high-profile individuals to investigate accounts involving the elusive "Dover Demon" is a man named Loren Coleman.

Mr. Coleman is not just an avid fan of unexplained events and creature sightings. He is trained in an impressive list of educational fields, including study of zoology and anthropology (through the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Illinois), psychiatric social work (schooled in Boston), and sociological studies at the University of New Hampshire. Additionally, he undertook more training in the field of anthropology at Brandeis University in Waltham Massachusetts. He was a teacher (in New England) for over two decades, starting in the early 1980s, but is now retired from the teaching profession. He is still an active writer, lecturer, and consultant.

An excerpt of a book written by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark and more information about Coleman can be found through following the link below:

Link: Cryptozoology A-Z by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark

Loren Coleman is the editor of a magazine called Skeptical Inquirer which can be viewed at the following link: The Skeptical Inquirer homepage

The Skeptical Inquirer is called one of the few "antifruitcake" journals by author of The Straight Dope, Mr. Cecil Adams. If you're interested in accessing the Straight Dope online, it can be found here: The Straight Dope

Coleman still writes on the topics of folklore and popular culture, animal mysteries, cryptozoology, and on various Fortean (supernatural, occult, paranormal, psychic) subjects.

Loren and other investigators said, after doing interviews and investigations, that the Dover Demon accounts may have been - but were UNLIKELY TO HAVE BEEN products of a hoax.

That is - they couldn't rule out a hoax entirely - but felt that the teenagers who offered their stories seemed to be telling the truth and were unlikely to have been able to perform an elaborate hoax of the sort that would produce the effects of and accounts of The Dover Demon that were recorded.

This means that the mystery of The Dover Demon (what it was, how and why it showed itself) is unsolved to this day.