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Seventeen-year-old William "Bill" Bartlett claimed that, while driving on April 21, 1977, he saw an alien-like creature with "tendril-like fingers" and glowing eyes perched on top of a broken stone wall on Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts. On the same evening, 15-year-old John Baxter reported encountering a similar entity on Miller Hill Road. The following night, another 15-year-old, Abby Brabham, asserted she witnessed the creature on Springdale Avenue.
All three teenagers created sketches of the alleged creature. Bartlett inscribed on his drawing, "I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature." A local news report highlighted that the locations of these sightings, when plotted on a map, formed a straight line over the course of 2 miles. The accounts of these sightings did not become public until the first half of May. At that time, a local "investigator of unexplained phenomena" noted the resemblances between the creature described by the teens and those encountered during the infamous 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville incident.
The 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, also known as the Hopkinsville Goblins Case, involved residents of a rural Kentucky farmhouse who claimed they were terrorized by small, goblin-like creatures with claw-like hands, large eyes, and pointed ears. The event lasted several hours and included reports of gunfire from the residents attempting to defend themselves from the perceived threat. Despite a thorough investigation, no concrete evidence was found to explain the mysterious sightings, making the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter one of the more enigmatic and enduring cases in cryptids/UFO lore.
Recently, GBH News' All Things Considered host Arun Rath spoke about the Dover Demon with Jeff Belanger, a folklore expert and host of the “New England Legends” podcast. Click here to read the transcript.