Dover Demon

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title: "Dover Demon" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1977-in-massachusetts", "alleged-extraterrestrial-beings", "american-legendary-creatures", "american-urban-legends", "dover,-massachusetts", "history-of-norfolk-county,-massachusetts", "folklore-of-massachusetts", "supernatural-urban-legends"] description: "Alleged creature sighted in Dover, Massachusetts, USA" topic_path: "technology/web" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Demon" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Alleged creature sighted in Dover, Massachusetts, USA ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Dover_Demon_sketch_by_Bill_Bartlett,_1977.jpg" caption="Bill Bartlett's original sketch of the Dover Demon"] ::

The Dover Demon is a creature reportedly sighted on April 21–22, 1977, in Dover, Massachusetts, a town about 15 mi southwest of downtown Boston.

Sightings

17-year-old William "Bill" Bartlett claimed that while driving on April 21, 1977, he saw a creature "about 4 feet tall with glowing orange eyes and no nose or mouth in a watermelon-shaped head" on top of a broken stone wall on Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts. 15-year-old John Baxter reported seeing a similar creature on Miller Hill Road the same evening. Another 15-year-old, Abby Brabham, claimed to have seen the creature the following night on Springdale Avenue.

The teenagers all drew sketches of the alleged creature. Bartlett wrote on his sketch, "I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature." The sightings were not made public until the first half of May. At that time, a local "investigator of unexplained phenomenon" noted similarities to creatures in the Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter of 1955.

Possible explanations

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/SnowyOwlAmericanBlackDuck.jpg" caption="A [[snowy owl]], carrying prey"] ::

It has been suggested that the creature may have been a foal or a moose calf.

Skeptic Joe Nickell believes the creature was likely a snowy owl, based on size and plumage, which would have reflected in the yellow headlights of older cars as the peach color described by Bartlett. In addition, the "long spindly arms" and fingers of the supposed creature could be the partially opened wings and the splayed feathers at the wingtips of a snowy owl.

Police told the Associated Press that creatures reported by the teenagers "were probably nothing more than a school vacation hoax." Skeptic Ben Radford has suggested the sighting may have been influenced by the pop culture of the time, as 1977 was the year Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind were released.

In popular culture

In 2009, the Dover Demon was featured in an episode of the American horror television series Lost Tapes, which aired on Animal Planet.

The Dover Demon appears as a character in the American comic book series Proof, which features various other creatures. In the comic, it is a creature able to see into the future. It appears in another similar comic book series called The Perhapanauts. The Dover Demon also made brief appearances in the comic books The Pound: Ghouls Night Out and Hack/Slash: Entry Wound. A Dover Demon also appears in the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court.

The manga and anime series Dandadan features an alien character called a Dover Demon. Its appearance is significantly different from the original sightings, being a bipedal crustacean-like alien with the ability to transform into a stronger form resembling a mantis shrimp.

Notes

References

References

1. Sullivan, Mark. (29 October 2006). "Decades later, the Dover Demon still haunts". [[The Boston Globe]].
2. (May 16, 1977). "‘Creature’ reports worry Dover police chief". [[Holyoke Transcript-Telegram]].
3. (May 8, 2005). "What exactly was the 'Dover Demon?'".
4. Nickell, Joe. (July 2023). "Identifying the Enigmatic 'Dover Demon'". [[Center for Inquiry]].
5. (16 May 1977). "Teeners report 'creature'". [[Bangor Daily News]].
6. ""Lost Tapes" Dover Demon (TV Episode 2009)".
7. ''The Perhapanauts'' #1, (April 1, 2008)
8. ''The Perhapanauts: Second Chances'' #3, 4 (December 1, 2006-January 1, 2007)
9. "Dover Demon (Character)".
10. "Chapter 83: Page 4".
11. ''Dandadan'' Volume 4

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::