The Dover Demon is a small, big-headed creature reported by four teenagers in the wealthy town of Dover, Massachusetts, on two nights in April 1977. Their descriptions of a thin, hairless figure with a huge, watermelon-shaped head and glowing eyes are strikingly similar, and the case was investigated within days by experienced researchers who judged the witnesses honest. No one else ever saw it again. Nearly fifty years later the Dover Demon is still one of the most debated “high strangeness” cases in New England, with explanations ranging from an alien to an owl to a teenage prank.[1][2]
| Location | Dover, Massachusetts (Farm Street, Miller Hill Road, Springdale Avenue) |
|---|---|
| Dates | 21–22 April 1977 |
| Witnesses | Bill Bartlett (17), John Baxter (15), Abby Brabham (15), Will Taintor (18) |
| Typical description | About 3½–4 ft tall, thin limbs, large hands and feet, hairless skin, huge oval head, large glowing eyes, no visible nose or mouth |
| First investigator | Loren Coleman, from 28 April 1977 |
| Physical evidence | None |
| Leading explanations | Misidentified animal (owl, foal, moose calf); hoax; unknown |
Night one: Bill Bartlett on Farm Street
At about 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, 21 April 1977, seventeen-year-old Bill Bartlett was driving north on Farm Street with two friends, Mike Mazzocca and Andy Brodie. As the car passed a low wall of loose stones, Bartlett saw something moving on top of it. At first he thought it was a dog or a cat. Then it turned its head toward his headlights.[2]
He described two large, round, lidless eyes shining like “orange marbles,” set in an enormous, oval head on a thin neck. The body was small, about three and a half to four feet tall, with long, spindly arms and legs and large hands and feet whose fingers curled around the stones. The skin was hairless and peach-colored, with a rough texture. The sighting lasted only a few seconds. His friends did not see it.[1][2][3]
Badly shaken, Bartlett drove home and drew the creature. Across the top of his sketch he wrote that he swore “on a stack of Bibles” that he had seen it.[1]
Night one: John Baxter on Miller Hill Road
About two hours later, fifteen-year-old John Baxter was walking home from his girlfriend’s house along Miller Hill Road. He saw a short figure coming toward him and assumed it was someone he knew. When he called out, it did not answer; it ran off the road and down into a wooded gully. Baxter followed to the edge and saw it about thirty feet away, standing on a rock and holding onto a tree. He described a monkey-like body and a dark, figure-eight-shaped head with two lighter spots for eyes. Uneasy, he backed away and walked quickly to Farm Street, where a passing couple gave him a ride home.[2][3]
Baxter said he had not heard about Bartlett’s sighting, yet his drawing closely resembled Bartlett’s.[3]
Night two: Abby Brabham and Will Taintor
At about midnight the next night, eighteen-year-old Will Taintor was driving fifteen-year-old Abby Brabham home along Springdale Avenue when Brabham saw a thin, hairless, monkey-like creature crouched at the roadside, facing the car. She described a large, oblong head with no visible nose, ears or mouth, tan or beige skin and glowing eyes, which she insisted were green rather than orange. Taintor caught only a brief glimpse.[2][3]
Taintor, who knew about Bartlett’s sighting, later tested Brabham by asking leading questions about details he knew to be wrong. She did not change her story, and she held to the green eyes even when investigators told her that Bartlett had reported orange.[2][3]
The investigation
None of the teenagers went to the police or the press; the story spread by word of mouth. On 28 April, the cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, who lived nearby, heard about it at the Dover Country Store, where an employee gave him copies of Bartlett’s sketch. Coleman interviewed Bartlett the next day, Baxter and Brabham on 3 May and Taintor on 5 May. He then brought in three experienced UFO investigators: Walter Webb of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, Joseph Nyman of the Mutual UFO Network and Ed Fogg of the New England UFO Study Group.[2]
The investigators also spoke with the witnesses’ parents, the high school principal and a science teacher. None of the adults believed the teenagers had invented the story, none of the witnesses appeared to have been drinking or using drugs, and the investigators judged a hoax possible but unlikely. Webb noted how difficult it would have been to build a convincing “demon” and stage it for three separate sightings.[2]
The police were less impressed. The Dover police chief told the Associated Press in May 1977 that the reports were probably nothing more than a school vacation hoax.[1][4]
Explanations
- A snowy owl. In 2023 the investigator Joe Nickell proposed that the creature was a male snowy owl. A white owl perched on a wall would reflect car headlights, its round head and large eyes fit the descriptions, and partly spread wings could look like long, thin arms.[1][5]
- A foal or moose calf. Others, including the writer Martin Kottmeyer and later Benjamin Radford, suggested a young horse or moose seen briefly in the dark. Critics point out that neither animal looks much like what the witnesses drew.[1][2][6]
- Popular culture. Radford noted that 1977 was the year of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, whose aliens resemble the Dover Demon. Brian Dunning of Skeptoid pointed out that Close Encounters was released eight months after the sightings, so it cannot have inspired them.[1][7]
- A hoax. Dunning concluded in 2024 that a hoax by the teenagers is the only explanation without a major weakness: an animal would have had to fool four people in two nights and then never be seen again. He was careful to say he was not accusing them of lying, only that the story is almost certainly not literally true.[7]
- Something unknown. Coleman compared the Dover Demon with the “little men” of the 1955 Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter in Kentucky, and UFO researchers have linked it to the large-headed “grey” aliens of later decades.[1]
The witnesses today
Bill Bartlett became a professional artist. According to the folklorist Jeff Belanger, who interviewed him, Bartlett’s account has never wavered, although he has grown tired of retelling it and often declines interview requests around Halloween and the April anniversary.[7][8]
The Demon in Dover
The town has made its peace with its monster. The Dover Historical Society sells T-shirts with a cartoon of Bartlett’s drawing and the question “Dover Demon, do you believe?”[8] The creature has also appeared in comics, the TV series Lost Tapes and the Japanese manga and anime Dandadan.[1]
For another small, glowing-eyed visitor from the 1950s, see the Flatwoods Monster, and for other New England legends, the Gloucester Sea Serpent.
References
- “Dover Demon,” Wikipedia.
- “What exactly was the ‘Dover Demon?’”, Milford Daily News (8 May 2005), reprinted by Anomaly Archives.
- “The Dover Demon,” qsl.net, citing Jerome Clark, Unexplained! (1993), pp. 105–107.
- “Teeners report ‘creature’,” Associated Press, Bangor Daily News (16 May 1977).
- Joe Nickell, “Identifying the Enigmatic ‘Dover Demon’,” Skeptical Inquirer (July 2023).
- Benjamin Radford, “Deconstructing the Dover Demon,” Skeptical Inquirer (January 2023).
- Brian Dunning, “The Legend of the Dover Demon,” Skeptoid episode 965 (3 December 2024).
- Iván López, “Nearly half a century later, ‘Dover Demon’ mystery still puzzles enthusiasts,” GBH (29 April 2024).
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from the original investigation reports and later analyses, replacing an earlier general description. The illustration above is an artistic impression based on the witnesses’ descriptions.