Dover Demon remains a mystery unsolved
For two nights in April 1977, some teen-agers in the town of Dover, Mass. reportedly saw something that would defy explanation, even among paranormal investigators. More than 30 years later, researchers still argue about what is called the Dover Demon.
The unknown entity with an enormous head was first sighted at around 10:30 p.m. on April 21. Bill Bartlett, 17, of Dover, and two other friends, also 17, were driving through town at around 40 to 45 miles per hour. While traveling on Farm Street, the car’s headlights illuminated something weird crawling along a nearby stone wall. Bartlett, who was the driver, later reported that he saw what he thought at first was a dog or a cat, but upon closer inspection realized that it was a strange, unearthly-looking creature crawling along the stone wall, according to a Web site.
Bartlett continued to watch the creature. He later reported it had a disproportionately large, watermelon-shaped head and glowing orange eyes. It had long, thin arms and legs with slender tentacle-like fingers, which it used to grasp onto the pavement. The creature had no hair and had rough, flesh-toned skin, which Bartlett described as tan and sandpaper-like. The creature reportedly had no nose or ears and no mouth could be seen.
When he saw it, Bartlett yelled at his friends “Did you see that?” Neither one of his buddies saw the weird creature because they were looking elsewhere at that moment. But they later stated that Bartlett was “genuinely frightened” by what he had seen.
The creature was sighted later that night by John Baxter, 15, as he was walking home sometime after midnight. He was walking on Millers Hill Road when he supposedly saw the silhouette of someone approaching him on his side of the road. He said it walked on two legs and ended up running into a gully and standing next to a tree. Baxter later said the dark figure looked like a monkey except for its large “figure-eight” head. The creature’s long toes could be seen curled around a rock and its long fingers were wrapped around the tree. After staring at the creature for a few minutes, Baxter said he got scared about the situation and quickly got out of there.
The next night, Abby Brabham, 15, and Will Taintor, 18, were traveling down Springdale Avenue in Dover when Brabham saw something weird along the side of the road. Her description matched Bartlett’s and Baxter’s descriptions, only this time the creature had glowing green eyes. She said it was “about the size of a goat.”
Bartlett, Baxter, Brabham, and Traintor all drew sketches of the weird creature shortly after their sightings and their sketches matched each other. On the piece of paper that includes Bartlett’s sketch, he wrote “I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature.” It is also interesting to note that these teens did not know about each other’s sightings at the time they occurred. They did not talk to each other before they were interviewed by investigators, according to a Web site.
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman was the first one to check out what they had seen. He interviewed the eyewitnesses within a week of the sightings and he named the creature the Dover Demon. The press picked up on that name and it has been called that ever since. Coleman found all four to be credible witnesses and believed that they were sincere in what they reported, according to his book “Mysterious America.”
At first, some paranormal investigators thought it could be an alien being from another world but Coleman wasn’t so sure about that. He thought this creature might be some kind of unknown animal. One skeptic said it was really a newborn moose. But all the descriptions of the Dover Demon clearly state that it had fingers, while moose have only hooves. Coleman pointed out that there are no records of moose living in eastern Massachusetts at that time.
Others theorize that it was really a being from another dimension, accidentally transferred into our world through some kind of dimensional warp.
So to this day, no one really knows what these teens in Dover, Mass. saw on those spring nights in 1977.
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