In 1977, several teenagers saw something that they could not explain in Dover, Massachusetts. On the night of April 21, 17-year-old Bill Bartlett was driving home with friends from a party they were attending. As Bill maneuvered the vehicle, his headlights illuminated a strange creature crawling on a rock wall near the road. The teenager had about a six-second view of the creature. He described it as humanoid. Its head was nearly as large as the rest of its body and disproportionate to its slim figure. Standing between three and a half to four feet tall, the figure looked to have skin that was “like wet sandpaper.” Its arms and legs were thin with large hands and feet. As the car’s headlights lit the creature, its eyes reflected “like two orange marbles.” According to his account, Bartlett told his friends who were not paying attention. They turned the car around to have another look, but the creature was gone. Later, when Bill arrived home, he drew the creature on a piece of paper.

Around midnight that same night, John Baxter was walking home from his girlfriend’s home. After about a mile, something approached him from the opposite direction. He assumed it was a person. However, after getting closer, the figure that had been approaching ran into the woods and down a decline. Baxter heard its footsteps through the leaves and followed it a short distance. That was when he saw it about thirty feet away. The details that he described were similar to Bill Bartlett’s description, but John apparently did not have the advantage of artificial light to better view the creature. As the two stared at each other, John became uncomfortable and slowly backed away. He flagged down a car for a ride home.

A third teenager saw the creature the following night. Around midnight on April 22, Abby Brabham was driving home with her boyfriend. In the same general area, but on a different road from the other teenagers’ sightings, Abby saw a humanoid figure standing next to a tree. The creature was similar in appearance to what Bill Bartlett and John Baxter saw the previous night.

No other sightings were reported of the mysterious creature dubbed the Dover Demon. The creature has been explained away as being a calf moose, although the timing of the sightings did not correspond with typical moose growth in the area, and a moose would not be on top of a rock wall. Were all three of the teenagers inebriated at the time of their sightings? Did they orchestrate a hoax on their community? Perhaps. However, Bill Bartlett wrote in his sketch, “I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bible’s [sic] that I saw this creature.” Maybe there was something. Unfortunately, sightings of humanoids seemed to die down after the 1970s, which leaves us in our usual position of deciding for ourselves whether we believe something happened or not.