Dover Demon
A small creature with glowing eyes that teenagers reported in Dover, Massachusetts, on two nights in April 1977.
Meaning
At about 10:30 p.m. on 21 April 1977, 17-year-old Bill Bartlett was driving down Farm Street in Dover with two friends when he saw something on the stone wall in his headlights. About two hours later 15-year-old John Baxter, walking home about a mile away on Miller Hill Road, reported a creature too (WBSM; GBH). The next night 15-year-old Abby Brabham, driven home by Will Taintor along Springdale Avenue, saw a creature crouched on all fours in the headlights (Milford Daily News).
Origin and history
Bartlett drew what he saw, and wrote on the sketch: "I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature." That drawing became the image of the Dover Demon (WBSM).
Loren Coleman, a cryptozoologist then living in neighbouring Needham, heard about the sketch at the Dover Country Store on 28 April and interviewed all four witnesses within a week (Milford Daily News). Coleman named the creature the Dover Demon, and the town has come to identify with it: the Dover Historical Society sold T-shirts with a cartoon of Bartlett's drawing, asking "Dover Demon, do you believe?" (GBH).
What the witnesses described
Bartlett told Coleman of a creature whose head was as big as the rest of its body, with two large, round, glassy, lidless eyes "like two orange marbles", long fingers, and peach-coloured skin like sandpaper (WBSM). Baxter saw it standing upright against a tree, its long fingers round the trunk (WBSM). Brabham described a thin, hairless, tan body with no nose, ears or mouth, and insisted its eyes glowed green, even after investigators told her Bartlett had said orange (Milford Daily News).
Hoax, mistake or unexplained?
Police told the Associated Press in 1977 that the reports were "nothing more than a school vacation hoax" (Skeptical Inquirer). The UFO investigators who joined Coleman found nothing in the teenagers' backgrounds to suggest they were pranksters, and thought it virtually impossible that anyone had staged a lifelike "demon" (Milford Daily News).
Benjamin Radford has since argued that the creature as drawn could not have existed, its thin neck unable to hold so large a head, and judged a prank by or on bored teenagers about as likely as a mistaken animal (Skeptical Inquirer, 2023). Joe Nickell proposed a snowy owl, whose partly opened wings could pass for spindly arms, and noted that Taintor had already heard of Bartlett's sighting before the one he shared with Brabham (Skeptical Inquirer, 2023). Others suggested a foal or a young moose (WBSM). Bartlett has kept to his story: "it wasn't any animal I had ever seen" (WBSM). It has not been reported again (WBSM; GBH).
Read next
- Next in Cryptids and folklore creaturesFresno nightcrawlerA pair of white, legs-only figures seen walking across a Fresno home security video in 2007, now an internet legend.
- The same shape in Adinkra symbolsBese SakaBese Saka, a bunch of kola nuts, is the adinkra symbol of affluence, abundance and unity.
See also
Kraken, Sea serpent, Loch Ness Monster, Champ (Lake Champlain monster), Bigfoot (Sasquatch), Yeti (Abominable Snowman).
Sources
- 'Dover Demon' Still Mystifies Massachusetts 45 Years Later (WBSM), WBSM, New Bedford, WBSM
- Nearly half a century later, 'Dover Demon' mystery still puzzles enthusiasts (GBH), GBH News, 29 April 2024, GBH
- What exactly was the 'Dover Demon?' (Milford Daily News), Milford Daily News, 8 May 2005, Milford Daily News
- Deconstructing the Dover Demon (Skeptical Inquirer, 2023), Benjamin Radford, Skeptical Inquirer 47.1, January 2023, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
- Identifying the Enigmatic ‘Dover Demon’ (Skeptical Inquirer, 2023), Joe Nickell, Skeptical Inquirer 47.4, July 2023, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 3, 2026. How we research
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