PARANORMAL PONDERINGS: The Dover Demon

Did an alien stalk a town in Massachussetts for 25 hours in 1977 or, as some investigators think, was it a newborn moose? Although it didn’t attack anyone and ran when human approached it, it remains to this day one of the best known subjects of cryptozoology which has never been satisfactorily explained by anyone.

The Dover Demon, as it was called, was seen on three occasions by three sets of different people who all sketched the creature (above). All three had not previously met or spoke beforehand yet all drew the same creature. And it all took place in the town of Dover.

It all began on April 21st, 1977 when one Bill Bartlett was driving along Farm Street at night with friends when he saw in his headlights what he took to be a dog or a cat walking along a wall. However it soon became apparent to him that this was like no animal he had previously encountered.

He described it as hairless with rough sandpaper-like skin. It had a large melon-like head with no nose, mouth or ears that he could see. He watched it for several minutes and said its four limbs were slender and ended in fingers. It was approximately three to four feet tall. The eyes glowed orange when it looked towards his headlights. It hurried off and Bartlett was left stunned at what he had just witnessed.

The creature was then spotted an hour later by two teenagers, John Baxter and Pete Mitchell, 13 and 15 years old respectively. They gave a similar description of the creature, except this time they described the eyes as green and it ran on two legs and hid behind a tree. Again they said it was hairless with a chalky grey texture to the skin. And they heard it too, describing it as a cross between the hiss of a snake and the screech of a bird of prey. There were no more reports that day, but on the 22nd, 15-year-old Abby Brabham and 18-year-old Will Traintor were driving along Springdale Avenue. Again they described the same creature and added that it seemed the size of a goat and had orange eyes. There were also no obvious sexual organs.

All three witnesses reported what they had seen and skeptical police officers couldn’t break any of their stories which they tried to do by pointing out the difference in reported eye colour, however they were met by defiant insistence. And when all four drew what they had seen there was no difference in any of their depictions. Bartlett had drawn his for his father when he arrived home shaken by the encounter. And he had no knowledge of the other experiences by his neighbours.

So what was it they saw, that one minute walked on all fours then on two legs? Zoologists dismiss it as a new born moose but that wouldn’t explain the usage of two legs or the fact it was walking on a wall. And I’m pretty sure that these townspeople would know what moose look like given they lived there all their lives. When you see something that is unknown to your sphere of existence, it sticks in your mind. These witnesses were not stupid or careless in their stories.they all told and drew exactly what the others had seen. They had never seen anything like it before and it certainly impacted their lives. This adds credibility to their stories as they stood to gain nothing from it and the experience frightened them. Why risk public ridicule in a small town if they weren’t telling the truth? They saw something that was outside their experience and they were afraid for their homes and the lives of others in the town. Who knew if this thing had already killed someone or was about to? They had no way of knowing this, so this, to me, adds to their credibility.

Ufologists have made the claim it was an alien but to this day nothing has been uncovered to substantiate either side’s claims. But no matter what happened in those 25 hours, one thing is certain, something unknown entered the lives of the townspeople and has never been forgotten.