The Dover Demon

Dover, Massachusetts, is a wealthy suburb of about 5,000 people, roughly 15 miles southwest of Boston. In April 1977 the schools were on spring break. The night before it all began, someone in nearby Medfield reported a UFO.

Thursday, April 21, 1977. About 10:30 p.m. Bill Bartlett, 17, was driving north on Farm Street with two friends. Something was on the low stone wall to the left. "I wasn't sure if it was a cat or a dog," he said.

It was neither. "It looked like a baby's body with long arms and legs. It had a big head about the same size as the body, it was sort of melon shaped." It turned its head and looked at him with eyes that glowed orange, like glass marbles. No nose, mouth or ears.

It lasted seconds. His passengers had not been looking. That night Bartlett drew the creature and wrote on the sketch: "I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature."

About two hours later, John Baxter, 15, was walking home on Miller Hill Road when a small figure came toward him. He took it for an acquaintance, then saw it was far too small, the size of a child of 4 or 5, with an oversized head. "It just ran so fast into the woods on my left." It crossed a stream and stopped on a rock, leaning against a tree and staring back, and Baxter backed away because he felt it might spring.

Friday, around midnight, Will Taintor, 18, was driving on Springdale Avenue with Abby Brabham, 15. At the edge of a bridge, something crouched by the road. "It had bright green eyes and the eyes just glowed like, they were just looking exactly at me." It had a tan, hairless body the size of a goat, though Taintor saw only a brief tan shape. "Lock the doors, let's get out of here, hurry up."

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman interviewed all three witnesses within a week. He brought in Joseph Nyman, Ed Fogg and Walter N. Webb, assistant director of the Hayden Planetarium. They measured the sites, staged reenactments and found that the three sites fell in a straight line on a map. Coleman named the creature the Dover Demon and said, "We have a credible case, over 25 hours, by individuals who saw something." MUFON is also listed as having investigated.

Police Chief Carl Sheridan called them "reliable kids." A police search found nothing, and the police called it "probably nothing more than a school vacation hoax." On May 16, 1977, the story reached the Boston Globe.

Coleman ruled out a foal or a moose calf. In 2023 Joe Nickell argued in the Skeptical Inquirer for a snowy owl, lit by headlights. Benjamin Radford pointed to Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Brian Dunning of Skeptoid rejected the owl: "the illusion never fooled anyone, ever, before or since." He concluded that lying was "the only one of the possible explanations that has no weaknesses."

Bartlett became a fine-art painter and in 2006 still said, "I definitely know I saw something." No confirmed sightings followed. The creature lives on in Lost Tapes, in comics, and at the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. In fall 2025 the Dover Historical Society opened an exhibit. Board member Liz Fallon: "Some people say alien, some people say cryptid, some people say it was a hoax. We say it's up to you to figure out."