September 5, 2025 • 54 mins
In April 1977, four teenagers in the quiet town of Dover, Massachusetts encountered something that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Over the course of just 26 hours, multiple witnesses independently reported seeing a bizarre creature with glowing eyes, a massive watermelon-shaped head, and long, tendril-like fingers crawling along the town's ancient stone walls.
This isn't a legend from centuries past or a story passed down through generations—this happened within living memory, to credible witnesses whose testimonies have never wavered. Join us as we explore the terrifying encounters that began with seventeen-year-old Bill Bartlett's late-night drive down Farm Street and ended with Abby Brabham's screams of terror on Springdale Avenue.
We'll examine the immediate investigation led by renowned cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, the theories that have attempted to explain these sightings, and the lasting impact on a community that learned that monsters might be more than just stories. From Dover's dark colonial history of devil sightings in the 1600s to its proximity to Massachusetts' paranormal hotspot known as the Bridgewater Triangle, we'll place these encounters in the broader context of New England's tradition of the unexplained.
Through detailed witness accounts, investigator interviews, and expert analysis, we reconstruct those two terrifying nights when something impossible crawled out of the darkness and into the headlines.The Dover Demon has never been explained, never been debunked, and never been seen again—at least, not officially. But on quiet nights in Dover, when the moon is thin and the shadows grow long, locals still drive a little faster past those old stone walls, knowing that some mysteries are better left unsolved.
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This isn't a legend from centuries past or a story passed down through generations—this happened within living memory, to credible witnesses whose testimonies have never wavered. Join us as we explore the terrifying encounters that began with seventeen-year-old Bill Bartlett's late-night drive down Farm Street and ended with Abby Brabham's screams of terror on Springdale Avenue.
We'll examine the immediate investigation led by renowned cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, the theories that have attempted to explain these sightings, and the lasting impact on a community that learned that monsters might be more than just stories. From Dover's dark colonial history of devil sightings in the 1600s to its proximity to Massachusetts' paranormal hotspot known as the Bridgewater Triangle, we'll place these encounters in the broader context of New England's tradition of the unexplained.
Through detailed witness accounts, investigator interviews, and expert analysis, we reconstruct those two terrifying nights when something impossible crawled out of the darkness and into the headlines.The Dover Demon has never been explained, never been debunked, and never been seen again—at least, not officially. But on quiet nights in Dover, when the moon is thin and the shadows grow long, locals still drive a little faster past those old stone walls, knowing that some mysteries are better left unsolved.
Get Our FREE Newsletter
Get Brian's Books
Leave Us A Voicemail
Visit Our Website
Support Our Sponsors
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,
(00:22):
dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods. If you dare.
What I'm about to tell you isn't a story passed
down through generations. It's not a folk tale whispered around
(01:08):
campfires or a legend from centuries past. This happened in
nineteen seventy seven in a quiet Massachusetts town, just fifteen
miles from Boston. There are people alive today who saw
it with their own eyes, people who still wake up
in cold sweats remembering those glowing orange eyes staring at
them through the darkness. Picture this. You're seventeen years old,
(01:32):
driving through the winding roads of Dover, Massachusetts, on a
Thursday night in April. The radio is playing softly, maybe
led Zeppelin or Fleetwood Mac. Your friends are chatting in
the back seat about weekend plans, about beer they hope
to find, about normal teenage things. The headlights of your
Volkswagen cut through the darkness ahead, illuminating the ancient stone
(01:55):
walls that line farm street walls built by colonial settlers
three hundred year years ago. Then you see it. At first,
your brain tries to make sense of what's crawling along
that stone wall, a dog, a cat, But as your
headlights sweep across it, the creature turns its head toward you,
and in that moment, your entire understanding of the world shatters.
(02:18):
Those eyes they glow like orange marbles in the light,
set in a head, the size and shape of a watermelon.
No nose, no mouth, just those terrible luminous eyes staring
directly into your soul. Your foot hits the brake. Your
friends haven't seen it yet. They're still talking oblivious, but
(02:39):
you've locked eyes with something that shouldn't exist, something that
makes every hair on your body stand on end, and
then just as quickly as it appeared, it scurries away
on impossibly long spinly limbs, its tendril like fingers grasping
at the stones as it disappears into the night. This
is exactly what happened to Bill Bartlett on April twenty first,
(03:01):
nineteen seventy seven, at ten thirty two pm. And he
wasn't the only one. Bill Bartlett was a good kid.
Ask anyone in Dover who knew him back in nineteen
seventy seven, and they'd tell you the same thing. Seventeen
years old, an aspiring artist with a photographic memory, the
kind of teenager who'd rather spend his time sketching than
(03:21):
causing trouble. His art teacher would later describe him as reliable, trustworthy,
not the type to make up stories for attention. But
on that Thursday night in April, Bill Bartlett's life would
change forever. He was driving his Volkswagen north on Farm
Street with two friends, Mike Mazaka and Andy Brody. They'd
(03:42):
been out looking for parties, maybe hoping to find some beer,
but had come up empty. Now they were just cruising
the familiar roads of their small town, the ones they'd
driven hundreds of times before. Farm Street was particularly well
known to locals. A narrow, winding road bordered by those
distinctive New England stone walls, some of which dated back
(04:03):
to the sixteen hundreds, the area had always felt a
bit off to locals. This was the same stretch of
road where, according to town legend, people had reported seeing
the Devil himself on horseback back in the sixteen hundreds.
Stories of buried pirate treasure and strange lights in the
woods had persisted for generations, but Bill didn't know about
(04:23):
any of that. As he drove at about thirty five
to forty miles per hour that night, I saw movement
on the wall to my left, Bill would later tell investigators.
At first I thought it was a dog or a cat,
But as his head lights illuminated the creature fully, Bill's
blood ran cold. The thing on the wall was like
nothing he'd ever seen or imagined. It stood about three
(04:44):
and a half to four feet tall, with a body
that seemed almost infantile in its proportions except for that
massive head. The head was easily the size of the
rest of its body, shaped like a watermelon or an egg,
completely hairless and covered in what looked like like rough
tan skin with the texture of sandpaper or shark skin.
But it was the eyes that would haunt Bill for
(05:06):
the rest of his life. Two large, round, glassy, lidless
eyes shining brightly like two orange marbles. He would later
describe to cryptozoologist Lauren Coleman. The eyes had no pupils
that he could see, just that horrible orange glow as
they caught the light from his head lights. The creature
had no discernible nose, no mouth, no ears, just that
(05:29):
massive head with those glowing eyes. Its body was thin,
almost emaciated, with long, spinly arms and legs that seemed
too delicate to support even its slight frame. The fingers, god,
the fingers were long and tendril like, wrapped around the
stones of the wall, as if the creature was carefully
feeling its way along. Bill could see each digit clearly
(05:52):
as they grasped the ancient stones. The creature turned its
massive head and looked directly at Bill for six second,
though it felt like an eternity, they stared at each other.
Bill's hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles
went white. His foot came off the gas pedal, the
car slowing as he tried to process what he was seeing.
(06:14):
What's wrong, Mike asked from the passenger seat, but Bill
couldn't speak. He couldn't even point. He just stared as
the creature began to move along the wall, its long
limbs moving in a way that seemed both delicate and
deeply wrong, like a spider made of skin and bone.
Then it was gone, scurrying over the wall and disappearing
(06:34):
into the darkness beyond. Bill slammed on the brakes about
a quarter mile down the road, his whole body shaking.
Did you see that? He gasped. His friends hadn't seen anything.
They'd been talking, not paying attention to the walls beside
the road. Bill tried to explain what he'd witnessed, his
words tumbling over each other. A creature on the wall,
(06:57):
huge head, orange eyes, no face. Let's go back, Andy suggested,
though his voice betrayed his nervousness. They argued for fifteen
minutes before finally turning around. Bill drove slowly, this time,
his high beams on all three teenagers scanning the walls
and woods, but the creature was gone, no trace of
(07:20):
it remained, except the image burned into Bill's memory. When
Bill got home that night, he immediately went to his
room and drew what he'd seen. His artistic skills and
photographic memory allowed him to capture every detail, the oval head,
the spindly limbs, those terrible eyes. At the bottom of
his sketch, he wrote, I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a
(07:42):
stack of bibles that I saw this creature. He had
no idea that two hours later someone else would see
it too. John Baxter was only fifteen years old, and
he'd just spent a pleasant evening at his girlfriend, Kathy
Cronin's house at the south end of Miller Hill Road.
It was after midnight, now about twelve thirty am on
April twenty second, and John was walking home. His parents
(08:05):
didn't know he was out this late, and he was
hoping to sneak back in without waking anyone. Miller Hill
Road was dark and quiet, about a mile from where
Bill Bartlett had seen the creature just two hours earlier. Dover,
despite being close to Boston, was surprisingly rural, with thick
forests pressing close to the winding roads. There were no
(08:25):
street lights here and with only a thin crescent moon
in the sky. John could barely see ten feet ahead
of him. He'd been walking for about half an hour,
had covered about a mile when he noticed a figure
approaching him on the road ahead. It was small, maybe
four feet tall, and John's first thought was that it
might be MG. Bouchard, a local kid who lived on
(08:46):
the street. Bouchard had a deformed head from a childhood illness,
and John knew he sometimes walked around at night. MG,
Is that you? John called out. The figure didn't respond,
but kept moving to ward him. They were about one
hundred and fifty feet apart. Now, Hey, MG, John called again,
louder this time, still no response. The figure kept approaching,
(09:10):
and something about the way it moved made John's skin crawl.
It wasn't walking quite right. The gate was off somehow, mechanical, jerky,
not quite human. When they were about fifteen feet apart,
the figure suddenly stopped. John stopped too, squinting in the darkness,
trying to make out details. He could see it was
(09:31):
definitely small, child sized, but the proportions were all wrong.
The head was too big, the limbs too long. Who
is that? John asked, his voice cracking slightly. The figure
stood perfectly still, and John could feel it watching him.
The darkness was so complete he couldn't make out any features,
just that disturbing silhouette. His heart began to pound. Every
(09:55):
instinct screamed at him to run, but he was frozen
in place. His courage, John took one step forward. The creature,
for John now knew with terrible certainty that this was
no human child, suddenly darted to the left. Moving within
human speed, It scrambled down the shallow wooded gully beside
the road and up the opposite bank. John could hear
(10:17):
its footsteps on the dry leaves, a rapid scuttling sound
that made his blood run cold. Despite his terror, or
perhaps because of it, John followed. He moved to the
edge of the gulley and looked down. There, about thirty
feet away, silhouetted against the slightly lighter sky, he saw
it clearly. The creature was standing upright next to a tree,
(10:40):
its impossibly long fingers wrapped around the trunk. Its head
was massive, shaped like a figure eight, with two lighter
spots in the middle that John realized with horror were
its eyes. They seemed to glow faintly watching him. The
thing's body looked like a monkey's, but wrong, too thin,
too elongated, with feet that had long toes that seemed
(11:02):
to grip the rocks beneath it like fingers. I just
stared at it for another few minutes, John would later
tell investigators, and then I just got all these thoughts
that maybe it was something really strange, because you know,
nothing ever happened to me like this before, so I
didn't know what to think. I finally got the thought
that maybe it wasn't as safe as it looked, because
the way it was staring at me. The creature and
(11:24):
John remained frozen, watching each other across the gully. The
silence was absolute, no insects, no wind, nothing but the
sound of John's rapid breathing and pounding heart. The creature's
eyes never blinked, never moved from John's face. Then, very slowly,
the creature shifted its weight. It was a small movement,
(11:46):
but it broke the spell. John's paralysis shattered, and he
backed away carefully, not daring to turn his back on
the thing. Once he reached the road, he turned and ran, or,
as he would later describe it, walked very fast to
the intersection with farm street. He'd only gone a few
hundred yards when a car's headlights appeared. John frantically waved
(12:07):
it down, and the couple inside, seeing a terrified teenager
alone on the road after midnight, immediately stopped and gave
him a ride home. John burst into his house, waking
his parents. He was shaking, nearly in tears, trying to
explain what he'd seen. His parents, alarmed by their son's
obvious terror, stayed up with him as he drew a
(12:28):
sketch of the creature. The drawing showed a humanoid figure
with an enormous head, long limbs, and large eyes, remarkably
similar to the sketch Bill Bartlett had drawn just hours earlier,
though John had no idea Bill had seen anything. Friday night,
April twenty second, nineteen seventy seven, Abby Brabham, fifteen years old,
(12:50):
was being driven home by her eighteen year old boyfriend,
Will Tayner. It was around midnight, almost exactly twenty four
hours after Bill Bartlett's initial sighting. They were driving along
Springdale Avenue, another rural road in Dover that intersected with
Farm Street. Abby and Will had been out on a date,
probably seeing a movie or just driving around, enjoying the
(13:12):
spring evening. The radio was playing softly and they were
comfortable with each other, not talking much, just enjoying the ride.
Will was concentrating on the road. Springdale Avenue could be
tricky at night with its curves and narrow bridges. They
were passing by the bridge where the road crossed over
a small waterway when Abbey saw it. At first, I
(13:33):
thought it was an ape, she would later tell investigators.
And then I looked at the head, and the head
was very big, and it was a very weird head.
The creature was sitting upright by the left side of
the road, near the edge of the bridge. In the
brief moment that the car's headlights swept across it, Abbey
got a clear view. The thing had a watermelon shaped head,
(13:54):
completely hairless, with a tan body that looked smooth rather
than furry. Its body was small, about the size of
a goat, but those proportions were all wrong for any animal,
she knew. And then she saw its eyes. It had
bright green eyes, and the eyes just glowed like they
were just looking exactly at me. Abby would insist to
(14:15):
investigators this detail would prove controversial. Both Bill and John
had described orange eyes, but Abby was adamant the eyes
she saw were green, glowing green, like emeralds in the headlights.
Investigators would try to shake her story, suggesting she was mistaken,
that she must have seen orange like the others, but
(14:35):
Abby never wavered. Those eyes were green. Will barely caught
a glimpse of it, just a flash of something tan
with a large head crouched by the road, but Abby's
reaction told him everything he needed to know. Lock the doors,
Abby screamed, get out of here, hurry up. She was
pressing herself back against the seat, her face white with terror.
(14:57):
Will floored it, the car's engine roaring as they sped
away from the bridge. Stay tuned for more Backwoods bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. Abby was nearly hysterical,
begging him not to go back, not to turn around.
Did you see it? She kept asking, did you see
that thing? Will had seen something, though not clearly enough
(15:21):
to know what, but Abbie's terror was real and infectious.
He drove her straight home, where she ran inside and
immediately told her parents what she'd seen. Like John Baxter's
parents the night before, the Brabhams were alarmed by their
daughter's obvious distress. Abby drew a sketch of what she'd seen,
and again, despite having no knowledge of the other sightings,
(15:43):
her drawing matched the essential details, the huge head, the
hairless body, the long limbs, the glowing eyes. The only
difference was the eye color, a detail she would never change.
By Saturday, April twenty third, word was starting to spread
through Over's teenage community. Bill Bartlett had made photocopies of
(16:03):
his drawing and was showing them around, trying to find
out if anyone else had seen the creature. At a
party that night, he ran into John Baxter and they
compared their experiences. The similarities were undeniable. When I saw
John's drawing, Bill would later say, I knew I wasn't crazy.
We'd seen the same thing. Will Tainter was also at
(16:24):
the party, and when he saw Bill's drawing, he immediately
thought of Abby's terrified reaction the night before. The three
boys compared notes, and slowly the realization dawned on them.
Something truly extraordinary had happened in Dover over the past
two days. Word of the sightings reached the Dover Country Store,
where someone had posted one of Bill's photocopy drawings. That's
(16:47):
where it caught the attention of Lauren Coleman, a cryptozoologist
who happened to be in the area. Coleman, who had
been investigating unusual creature sightings throughout New England, immediately recognized
the significance of what he was seeing. Multiple witnesses seeing
the same creature independently, with no chance for collaboration. This
(17:07):
was exactly the kind of case investigator's dream of, Coleman
would later write. Coleman quickly assembled a team of investigators,
Joseph Nyman, Ed Fogg, and Walter Webb. Webb was particularly notable.
He was the assistant director of the Hayden Planetarium at
Boston Science Museum, a serious scientist with impeccable credentials. If
(17:29):
anyone could debunk these sightings, it would be Web. The
team conducted extensive interviews with all four teenagers who had
seen the creature. They interviewed them separately, looking for inconsistencies,
signs of collaboration, any indication that this might be a hoax.
They also interviewed the teenager's parents, teachers, friends, and other
(17:50):
community members. The investigators were struck by several things. First,
the witnesses were all credible. These weren't troublemakers or attention
and seekers. Bill Bartlett in particular impressed them. Dover Police
Chief Carl Sheridan would go on record calling him an
outstanding artist and reliable witness. His science teacher gave him
(18:12):
high recommendations and was convinced of his truthfulness. Second, the
witnesses didn't know each other well. Bill and John only
knew each other slightly before the sightings. None of them
were part of the same social circle. The chance of
them collaborating on a hoax was minimal. Third, the details
matched in ways that suggested they'd seen the same creature,
(18:33):
but different in ways that actually added credibility. If it
were a hoax, wouldn't they have coordinated their stories better.
Why would Abbey insist on green eyes when the others
saw orange. Fourth, the locations of the sightings, when plotted
on a map, formed a straight line over about two miles.
All were near water sources, streams, ponds, or wetlands. This
(18:57):
pattern suggested the creature might have been following a specific
root through the area. Dover police initially treated the reports
as a possible hoax, school vacation prank some officers suggested,
but as the investigation continued, even the skeptics had to
admit something strange had happened. The teenagers were clearly traumatized
(19:17):
by what they'd seen. This wasn't the behavior of pranksters
enjoying their joke. The media got wind of the story
in early May. The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and
numerous local papers ran articles about the sightings. Coleman, who
had been calling the creature various names in his notes,
finally settled on Dover Demon, a catchy, alliterative name that
(19:38):
would stick. The name choice would prove controversial. None of
the witnesses felt the creature was demonic or evil, just
strange and frightening. But Dover Demon captured the public imagination
in a way that Dover Creature or Dover Unknown never
would have. As news of the Dover Demon spread, theories
about what the teenagers had seen began to proliferate. Skeptics
(20:02):
and believers alike offered explanations, some mundane, some extraordinary. The
most common skeptical explanation was that the witnesses had seen
a known animal under unusual conditions. A baby moose was suggested,
despite the fact that moose were essentially extinct in Massachusetts
by nineteen seventy seven, and even a newborn moose would
(20:24):
be much larger than the creature described. Besides, April was
the wrong season for newborn moose. Others suggested a foal
a baby horse. Dover in nineteen seventy seven had a
large equestrian community, with more horses than people according to
some estimates, but no folds were reported missing, and horses,
(20:45):
even newborn ones, don't have the body proportions described by
the witnesses. They certainly don't have glowing eyes or climb
walls with tendril like fingers. Skeptic Joe Nickel proposed that
the creature might have been a snowy owl. Was about right,
and snowy owls do have large, round eyes that can
appear to glow in headlights. The long, spindly arms could
(21:08):
have been partially opened wings with splayed feathers, but this
theory had problems too. Owls have distinctive beaked faces, not
the blank, featureless visage described by the witnesses, and why
would an owl be crawling along a wall or standing
upright against a tree. Some suggested the witnesses had seen
an escaped monkey or ape from one of the primate
(21:30):
research facilities near Boston, but monkeys have tails, which none
of the witnesses reported. Apes don't have tails, but have
much different body proportions than what was described, and no
research facilities reported any missing primates. More exotic theories emerged
as well. UFO researchers noted the creature's resemblance to the
(21:50):
gray aliens reported by alleged abduction victims. The large head,
huge eyes, and small body were all consistent, but none
of the dome He witnesses reported seeing any unusual lights
or craft in the sky. Some researchers pointed out similarities
to other cryptid sidings. The Kelley Hopkinsville encounter of nineteen
(22:11):
fifty five in Kentucky involved small, large headed creatures with
glowing eyes. The Momo Missouri monster sightings of the early
nineteen seventies described a similar creature, though larger and harrier.
Coleman himself noted that Dover and the surrounding area had
a long history of strange sidings. The Native Americans who
(22:32):
originally inhabited the region had legends of bizarre creatures in
the forests and swamps. Colonial settlers reported seeing the devil
on horseback in the sixteen hundreds. In nineteen seventy two,
five years before the Dover Demon sightings, a resident named
Mark Sennett claimed he and friends had seen a small
figure at Channing Pond on Springdale Avenue, the same road
(22:54):
where Abbey Brabham would have her encounter. I don't know
if we really saw something, Sennate would later tell the
Ballston Globe. We thought we did. We saw a small
figure deep in the woods, moving at the edge of
the pond. To understand the Dover Demon, we need to
understand the broader context of paranormal activity in Massachusetts. The state,
(23:15):
particularly the southeastern region, has long been considered a hot
bed of unusual phenomena. Just thirty miles from Dover lies
the infamous Bridgewater Triangle, a two hundred square mile area
that cryptozoologist Lauren Coleman himself named in the late nineteen seventies.
This region, with points in Abington, Rehoboth, and Freetown, has
(23:36):
been the site of countless reports of UFOs, bigfoot sidings,
ghostly apparitions, and other unexplained phenomena. At the heart of
the Bridgewater triangle is the Hockomock Swamp, a six thousand
acre wetland that the Wampanoagu people called the Place where
Spirits dwell. The swamp was a major battlefield during King
(23:57):
Philip's War in sixteen seventy five to seve six, one
of the bloodiest conflicts in American history relative to population.
The Wampanoag and other tribes made their last stand here
against the English colonists, and the slaughter was horrific. Legend
says that the area is cursed because a sacred wampum
belt belonging to the Wampanoagu chief Metacomet known as King Philip,
(24:21):
was lost during the war. The curse supposedly manifests as
the various paranormal phenomena reported in the region. The creatures
reported in and around the Bridgewater Triangle include pukwoodgies, small
humanoid creatures from Wampanoague folklore, described as two to three
feet tall with smooth gray skin. They're said to be
(24:42):
able to appear and disappear at will, and to use
magic to harm humans. The similarities to the dover demon
are obvious. Thunderbirds, massive birds with wingspans up to twelve feet,
have been reported throughout the region. In nineteen seventy one,
Norton Police sergeant Thomas Dan reported seeing such a creature, Bigfoot.
(25:03):
Multiple sightings of large, hairy, bipedal creatures have been reported
in the forests of southeastern Massachusetts. In nineteen seventy, a
seven foot tall creature was reportedly seen by multiple witnesses
in Bridgewater. Giant snakes serpents of impossible size have been
reported in the swamps and forests. Some witnesses described them
as being as thick as tree trunks and over twenty
(25:26):
feet long. The first recorded UFO siding in the world
supposedly occurred over the Bridgewater Triangle in seventeen sixty when
witnesses reported a sphere of fire in the sky. UFO
sidings have continued regularly since then, with major waves in
nineteen oh eight, nineteen sixty eight, and throughout the nineteen seventies,
(25:46):
the same decade as the Dover Demon sightings. Given this context,
some researchers have suggested that the Dover Demon might be
connected to the broader paranormal activity in the region. Perhaps
certain areas act as windows, areas, places where the barrier
between our world and somewhere else is thinner. Dover, with
its proximity to the Bridgewater Triangle and its own history
(26:10):
of strange sightings, might be one such window area. While
investigators and theorists debated what the Dover Demon might be,
the four teenagers who saw it had to live with
the aftermath of their encounters. The experience affected each of
them differently, but none escaped unchanged. Bill Bartlett, the first witness,
found himself thrust into an unwonted spotlight as the artist
(26:33):
whose drawing became the iconic image of the Dover Demon.
He was interviewed countless times over the years. Journalists, investigators,
and curiosity seekers all wanted to hear his story. In
a lot of ways. It's kind of embarrassing to me,
Bartlett would tell an interviewer years later. I definitely saw something.
It was definitely weird. I didn't make it up. Sometimes
(26:56):
I wish I had. The irony wasn't lost on it here.
He was an accomplished artist, and the piece of art
he was most famous for was a sketch he'd drawn
on notebook paper when he was seventeen. The Dover Demon
drawing would follow him for the rest of his life,
overshadowing his other work. But Bartlett never changed his story,
(27:16):
despite the pressure, despite the skeptics, despite the embarrassment, he
maintained that what he saw that night was real. His
friends Mike Mazaka and Andy Brody, who were in the
car but didn't see the creature, stood by him. They'd
seen his genuine terror that night, and they knew Bill
wasn't the type to make things up. John Baxter struggled
(27:38):
with the fear for months after his encounter. He couldn't
walk alone at night. The image of that thing standing
by the tree, watching him with those unblinking eyes haunted
his dreams. His parents reported that he would wake up
screaming some nights reliving the encounter. The fact that others
had seen the same creature was both a comfort and
a terror. On one hand, it meant he wasn't crazy.
(28:01):
On the other hand, it meant the thing was real
and it was out there somewhere. Abby Brabham faced unique
challenges as the only female witness and the youngest. Some
investigators seemed to give her account less weight, particularly when
she insisted on the green eyes rather than orange, But
Abby never wavered. She knew what she had seen, and
(28:22):
no amount of pressure would make her change her story.
The terror she felt that night stayed with her for years.
She couldn't drive past that spot on Springdale Avenue without
feeling a chill. Even decades later, she would take alternate
roots to avoid it when possible. Will Taintor, who had
only caught a glimpse of the creature, found himself in
the position of supporting witness. He couldn't provide many details,
(28:46):
but he could confirm that something had been there, and
he could testify to Abbey's genuine terror. The way she
had screamed, the way she had pressed herself back against
the seat that wasn't acting, That was real fear. All
four teenagers faced skepticism and ridicule from some quarters. Classmates
made jokes, some adults dismissed them as attention seekers or
(29:09):
suggested they'd been drinking or using drugs, But those who
knew them well, parents, teachers, close friends believed them. These
were good kids, not troublemakers. They had nothing to gain
from making up such a story. The Dover police, initially skeptical,
came to believe that the teenagers had seen something, even
if they couldn't explain what police Chief Carl Sheridan's public
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endorsement of Bill Bartlett's credibility carried significant weight in the
small community. The Dover Demon quickly entered the pantheon of
American cryptids, taking its place alongside Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil,
and Mothman. But unlike many cryptid sightings that fade from memory,
the Dover Demon has shown remarkable staying power in popular culture.
(29:54):
Part of its endurance comes from the quality of the
witnesses and the investigation. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. This wasn't a case
of a single person claiming to see something strange with
no corroboration. Four teenagers interviewed separately by serious investigators, including
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a planetary scientist, all described essentially the same creature. The
case had what many cryptid sightings lack, multiple credible witnesses
and immediate thorough documentation. The creature's unique appearance also contributed
to its fame. The Dover Demon didn't look like any
known animal, nor did it fit neatly into existing cryptid categories.
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It wasn't a hairy hominid like Bigfoot, nor a lake
monster like NeSSI. Its appearance, that massive head, those glowing eyes,
the tendril like fingers was genuinely alien and disturbing. Books,
television shows, and documentaries have featured the Dover Demon. It
appeared in Lauren Coleman's influential Mysterious Amounts, cementing its place
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in cryptozoological literature. The creature has been featured on shows
like Monsters and Mysteries in America, Lost Tapes, and numerous
paranormal investigation programs. The Dover Demon has appeared in comic books,
including Proof and The Perhappenauts. It's been featured in video
games and trading card games. Japanese toy companies have even
(31:24):
produced Dover Demon figurines, testament to the creature's international appeal.
The town of Dover itself has had a complex relationship
with its famous cryptid. Some residents embrace it. The Dover
Historical Society once sold t shirts featuring Bill Bartlett's drawing
with the caption Dover Demon. Do you believe? Others wish
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the whole thing would go away, feeling it brings the
wrong kind of attention to their quiet New England town.
But the Dover Demon has become part of Dover's identity,
whether residents like it or not, Tourists still come to
drive down Farm Street, to walk along Miller Hill Road,
to stand on the bridge on Springdale Avenue. They come
hoping to catch a glimpse of glowing eyes in the darkness,
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to experience their own encounter with the unknown. Although the
original Dover Demon sightings occurred over just two nights in
nineteen seventy seven, reports of similar creatures have continued sporadically
over the decades. Most of these reports come from the
broader Massachusetts area, particularly from regions near the Bridgewater Triangle.
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In two thousand and four, a man calling himself Greg
he wished to remain anonymous, claimed to have seen the
Dover Demon while driving on Farm Street, the same road
where Bill Bartlett had his encounter. Greg described a small,
pale creature with large eyes that darted across the road
in front of his car. The sighting lasted only seconds,
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but Greg was familiar with the Dover Demon legend and
was convinced he'd seen the same creature. Other reports have
been less definitive. Drivers report glimpsing something on the roads
around Dover, a pale figure, a pair of glowing eyes,
a shape that doesn't quite make sense. Most of these
witnesses don't come forward publicly, not wanting to face the
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scrutiny and potential ridicule that the original witness is endured.
Modern paranormal investigators have used new technology to search for
evidence of the Dover Demon. Thermal imaging cameras, night vision equipment,
and motion activated trail cameras have been deployed in the
areas where the creature was sighted. So far, no definitive
evidence has been captured, but investigators note that the absence
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of evidence is not evidence of absence. Some researchers have
noted interesting patterns in the original sightings that weren't apparent
at the time. All three sidings occurred near water streams, ponds,
or wetlands. The locations, when connected, form an almost straight
line across the landscape, suggesting the creature might have been
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following a specific route. Some have speculated that the Dover
Demon might have been migrating, perhaps returning to water after
a period on land. The timing is also interesting. Late
April is spring in Massachusetts, a time when many animals
are most active after the winter months. If the Dover
Demon is a flesh and blood creature, it might be
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most likely to be seen during this period of increased activity.
Environmental changes in Dover since nineteen seventy seven might also
explain why sightings have been so rare. The town has
seen significant development, with new houses and roads fragmenting the
forests and wetlands. If the Dover Demon requires a specific habitat,
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that habitat might no longer exist in sufficient quantity to
support it. The Dover Demon case has attracted attention not
just from cryptozoologists, but from psychologists and sociologists interested in
how communities process unusual events. Some psychologists have suggested that
the Dover Demon sidings might be explained by a combination
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of misidentification and social contagion. The theory goes like this.
Bill Bartlett saw something, perhaps an ordinary animal, under unusual conditions,
and his brain, trying to make sense of incomplete information
and darkness, constructed the image of a creature. His obvious
distress and his drawing then influenced John Baxter, who had
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his own ambiguous encounter and interpreted it through the lens
of Bill's description. But this theory has problems. John Baxter
had his encounter before he knew about Bill's siding. The
two boys didn't compare notes until after both encounters had occurred,
and Abby Brabham's siding, with its distinct detail of green
rather than orange eyes, suggests she wasn't simply seeing what
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she expected to see based on others accounts. Sociologists have
noted how the Dover demon sightings fit into the broader
cultural context of the nineteen seventies. This was a period
of high interest in the paranormal, UFOs and cryptids. Close
Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars would both
be released in nineteen seventy seven, the same year as
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the Dover Demon sightings. The zeitgeist was right for such
an encounter to capture public imagination, but the witnesses themselves
don't fit the profile of UFO enthusiasts or paranormal believers.
They were ordinary teenagers not particularly interested in the paranormal
before their encounters. Bill Bartlett has specifically stated that he
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doesn't think the creature was extraterrestrial. He believes it was
something earthly, just something unknown. The case has also been
studied as an example of how modern folklore develops unlike
traditional folklore, which develops over generations through oral tradition. The
Dover Demon became a legend almost instantly. Its story spread
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through mass media. Within weeks of the sightings, people around
the world knew about the Dover Demon. Decades have passed
since those terrifying nights in April nineteen seventy seven. The
teenage witnesses are now in their sixties, having lived full
lives in the shadow of their brief encounters with the unknown.
Bill Bartlett still lives in Massachusetts and has continued his
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career as an artist. He rarely gives interviews about the
Dover Demon anymore, tired of repeating the same story, tired
of the skeptics and the believers alike. But when pressed,
he maintains that what he saw was real. I know
what I saw, he said in one of his last
public interviews. It wasn't a moose, it wasn't an owl.
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It wasn't my imagination. I saw something that shouldn't exist,
but it did. It was there. The experience has given
him a different perspective on the world. He knows that
there are things out there that science can't explain, things
that exist in the margins and shadows. It's both a
burden and a gift this knowledge. John Baxter has been
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more private about his experience. He's rarely spoken publicly about
that night on Miller Hill Road, preferring to leave the
past in the past, but those who know him say
he's never forgotten what he saw. Sometimes on dark nights,
he still thinks about those eyes watching him from beside
the tree. Abby Brabham has occasionally participated in documentaries and
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interviews about the Dover Demon. She remains adamant about what
she saw, particularly about those green eyes. The fact that
her detail differs from the others doesn't bother her. She
knows what she saw. People ask me if I wish
I hadn't seen it, she said in a recent interview.
Sometimes I do. It would be easier to live in
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a world where everything makes sense, where everything fits into
neat categories. But I did see it, and I can't
pretend I didn't. Will Tanter has largely stayed out of
the public eye regarding the Dover Demon. His glimpse was brief,
and he's always been more of a supporting witness than
a primary one, but he's never doubted Abbey's account. The
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terror he saw in her that night was real, and
that's all he needs to know. So what was the
Dover Demon? After more than four decades, we're no closer
to an answer than we were in nineteen seventy seven.
Every theory has its problems, Every explanation falls short in
some way. If it was a known animal, why has
no one been able to definitively identify it? Thousands of
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people have looked at Bill Bartlett's drawing, including zoologists and
wildlife experts. None have been able to say, yes, that's
definitely an insert animal here under unusual conditions. If it
was an unknown animal, where did it come from and
where did it go? How could a population of such
creatures exist in Massachusetts without leaving more evidence? No bones,
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no corpses, no clear photographs, just four teenagers, testimonies and drawings.
If it was something paranormal, an alien, an interdimensional being,
a creature from folklore come to life, why did it
appear just for those two nights? What was its purpose?
Why Dover? Why then why those particular witnesses. The skeptics
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have their explanations, but none are fully satisfying. The believers
have their theories, but none can be proven. The Dover
Demon remains what Walter Webb called it a true enigma,
an animate anomaly that intersected the lives of four credible
young people that lonely week in April nineteen seventy seven.
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Perhaps that's why the Dover Demon continues to fascinate us.
In an age where we've mapped the human genome, sent
rovers to Mars, and built computers that can beat grand
masters at chess, the Dover Demon reminds us that there
are still mysteries. There are still things that go bump
in the night that we can't explain away. If you
find yourself driving through Dover, Massachusetts on a dark April night,
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you might feel tempted to slow down on Farm Street
to peer at the old stone walls in your headlights.
You might walk down Miller Hill Road, hoping to see
a small figure approaching in the darkness. You might pause
on the bridge on Springdale Avenue, scanning the roadside for
a pair of glowing eyes. But be careful what you
wish for, because the Dover Demon, whatever it was or is,
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left a mark on everyone who saw it. It changed
them fundamentally and forever. Once you've looked into those glowing eyes,
once you've seen something that shouldn't exist but does. You
can never go back to the world you knew before,
the comfortable certainties of everyday life, that we know what's
out there, that science has explained the natural world, that
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monsters exist only in stories. All of that crumbles when
you come face to face with the impossible. The four
teenagers who saw the Dover Demon in nineteen seventy seven
learned this lesson. They went out on ordinary April nights
thinking about ordinary teenage things, and came back having glimpsed
something extraordinary and terrible. They've carried that knowledge with them
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ever since, a wait and a wonder that never quite
goes away. To truly understand the significance of the Dover Demon,
we need to place it in the broader context of
American cryptid sightings and paranormal experiences. The late nineteen seventies
was a particularly active period for such encounters across the
United States. In West Virginia, mothman sightings had terrorized Point
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Pleasant a decade earlier, culminating in the tragic collapse of
the Silver Bridge in nineteen sixty seven. The creature, described
as a large, winged humanoid with glowing red eyes, shared
some characteristics with the Dover Demon, particularly those hypnotic glowing eyes.
The Pacific Northwest was in the midst of a bigfoot
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siding wave, with the famous Patterson Gimlin film from nineteen
sixty seven still being hotly debated. Multiple witnesses were reporting
encounters with large, hairy hominids in the forests of Washington, Oregon,
and northern California. In New Jersey, the Jersey Devil, a
creature with a history dating back to the seventeen hundreds,
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was experiencing a resurgence of sightings. This winged, horse headed
creature was reportedly seen by multiple witnesses throughout the pine barrens.
But the Dover Demon stood apart from these other cryptids
in several important ways. First, its appearance was unique. It
didn't fit into any existing cryptid category. It wasn't a
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hairy hominid, a winged creature, or a lake monster. It
was something entirely other. Second, the quality of the witnesses
was exceptional. These weren't adults with questionable motives or histories
of tall tales. They were teenagers with good reputations, independently
corroborated by friends, family, and authority. Figures. Third, the compressed
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time frame of the sightings was unusual. Many cryptids are
seen sporadically over years or decades. The Dover Demon appeared
for just over twenty four hours and then vanished, never
to be conclusively seen again. This pattern has led some
researchers to propose that the Dover Demon might represent a
different type of phenomenon altogether, not a creature that lives
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in our world, but something that briefly visited it, whether
from another dimension, another planet, or another state of reality entirely.
The Dover Demon might have been just passing through. While
many scientists dismiss cryptid sightings out of hand, some have
taken a more nuanced view of the Dover Demon case.
The quality of the witnesses and the immediate thorough investigation
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make it harder to dismiss than many other cryptid encounters.
From a biological perspective, the Dover Demon as described presents
several problems. Its body proportions, particularly the massive head relative
to body size, would be unusual for any Earth creature.
The brain size implied by such a large head would
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require significant caloric intake to maintain, Yet the creature's thin
body doesn't suggest an efficient hunter or forager. The glowing
eyes present another puzzle. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. Many animals have a
tapatum lucitum, a reflective layer behind the retina that causes
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eye shine in darkness, but this reflection requires an external
light source. The witnesses describe the eyes as glowing, not
just reflecting. True bioluminescence in land vertebrates is virtually unknown.
Some scientists have suggested that if the Dover Demon is real,
it might represent a relic population of some prehistoric creature,
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a survivor from an earlier epoch, but the fossil record
shows no creatures matching the Dover Demon's description. Others have
proposed that the creature might be an undiscovered primate, perhaps
a species that evolved for a nocturnal, partially aquatic lifestyle.
The long fingers could be adaptations for catching fish or
aquatic invertebrates. The large eyes would help with night vision.
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The hairless skin might be an adaptation for a semi
aquatic lifestyle, but this theory has problems too. No primate
fossils have been found in North America from any period
recent enough for a population to have survived to the present,
and how could a population of such distinctive creatures remain
hidden in relatively populated Massachusetts. The interdimensional hypothesis, while unscientific
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by conventional standards, has been seriously proposed by some researchers.
Perhaps certain locations act as thin points between parallel dimensions,
and occasionally creatures from these other realities slip through. Dover,
with its history of strange sidings, might be one such location. Today,
if you drive down Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts, you'll
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see a quiet suburban road lined with expensive homes and
well maintained yards. The old stone walls are still there,
carefully preserved as historical artifacts. The forests have been pushed back, tamed,
made safe. On a sunny afternoon, it's hard to imagine
that anything strange ever happened here. Children ride bicycles down
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the street, dogs bark behind invisible fences. Landscapers tend to
perfect lawns. It's a picture of New England prosperity and normalcy.
But when darkness falls, when the moon is just a
sliver in the sky, Farm Street transforms, The shadows deepen
between the trees, the stone walls become ancient and mysterious again,
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and those who know the story, those who remember, drive
a little faster past the spot where Bill Bartlett saw
something impossible. The Dover Demon has become more than just
a cryptid siding. It's become a reminder that our world,
for all our scientific knowledge and technological advancement, still holds mysteries.
In an age where every square foot of Earth has
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been photographed from space, where we've decoded the human genome
and split the atom, the Dover Demon tells us that
there are still things we don't understand. Perhaps that's why
the story endures, not because people necessarily believe that a
strange creature with glowing eyes haunted Dover for two nights
in nineteen seventy seven, but because they want to believe
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that such things are possible. In a world that often
feels too known, too mapped, too explained, the Dover Demon
represents the unknown, the mysterious, the inexplicable. The four teenagers
who saw it, now adults with children and grandchildren of
their own, carry with them the knowledge that the world
is stranger than most people imagine. They've seen behind the
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veil of normalcy. Glimpsed something that shouldn't exist but did.
Late at night, when they can't sleep, they might still
think about those glowing eyes in the darkness. They might
wonder where the creature came from, where it went, and
whether it might return. They might wonder if anyone else
has seen it, if other people have had encounters they've
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been too afraid to report. Because the Dover Demon, whatever
it was, wherever it came from, left more than just
eyewitness accounts and sketches. It left questions, questions that may
never be answered, mysteries that may never be solved. And
perhaps that's as it should be. In a world that
sometimes feels too small, too known, too predictable, we need
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our mysteries. We need to know that there are still
dark corners where impossible things might lurk, still shadows that
hide more than just darkness. The Dover Demon serves as
a reminder that no matter how much we think we know,
no matter how confident we are in our understanding of
the world, there's always the possibility that, on some dark night,
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on some quiet road, we might encounter something that shatters
all our certainties, something with glowing eyes and tendril fingers,
something that watches from the darkness something that shouldn't exist
but does, something like the Dover Demon. So the next
time you find yourself driving down on a dark road
late at night, when your headlights sweep across an old
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stone wall or illuminate the edge of a forest, remember
the story of four teenagers in Dover, Massachusetts. Remember how
their ordinary night became extraordinary, how their normal lives were
forever changed by a brief encounter with the impossible. And
keep your eyes open, because the Dover Demon or something
like it, might still be out there, waiting in the darkness,
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ready to shatter another person's comfortable certainties about what is
and isn't possible in this strange world of ours. The
Dover Demon reminds us that there are still mysteries worth pursuing,
still questions worth asking, still darkness worth exploring. It reminds
us that the world is larger and stranger than we
often allow ourselves to believe, and that perhaps is the
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Dover Demon's greatest gift to us, not the answer to
what it was, but the question of what it might
have been, and the knowledge that such question still exist
in our modern world. The mystery endures the questions remain,
and somewhere, perhaps in the darkness between the known and
the unknown, the dover Demon Wait still didn't do
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,
(00:22):
dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods. If you dare.
What I'm about to tell you isn't a story passed
down through generations. It's not a folk tale whispered around
(01:08):
campfires or a legend from centuries past. This happened in
nineteen seventy seven in a quiet Massachusetts town, just fifteen
miles from Boston. There are people alive today who saw
it with their own eyes, people who still wake up
in cold sweats remembering those glowing orange eyes staring at
them through the darkness. Picture this. You're seventeen years old,
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driving through the winding roads of Dover, Massachusetts, on a
Thursday night in April. The radio is playing softly, maybe
led Zeppelin or Fleetwood Mac. Your friends are chatting in
the back seat about weekend plans, about beer they hope
to find, about normal teenage things. The headlights of your
Volkswagen cut through the darkness ahead, illuminating the ancient stone
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walls that line farm street walls built by colonial settlers
three hundred year years ago. Then you see it. At first,
your brain tries to make sense of what's crawling along
that stone wall, a dog, a cat, But as your
headlights sweep across it, the creature turns its head toward you,
and in that moment, your entire understanding of the world shatters.
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Those eyes they glow like orange marbles in the light,
set in a head, the size and shape of a watermelon.
No nose, no mouth, just those terrible luminous eyes staring
directly into your soul. Your foot hits the brake. Your
friends haven't seen it yet. They're still talking oblivious, but
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you've locked eyes with something that shouldn't exist, something that
makes every hair on your body stand on end, and
then just as quickly as it appeared, it scurries away
on impossibly long spinly limbs, its tendril like fingers grasping
at the stones as it disappears into the night. This
is exactly what happened to Bill Bartlett on April twenty first,
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nineteen seventy seven, at ten thirty two pm. And he
wasn't the only one. Bill Bartlett was a good kid.
Ask anyone in Dover who knew him back in nineteen
seventy seven, and they'd tell you the same thing. Seventeen
years old, an aspiring artist with a photographic memory, the
kind of teenager who'd rather spend his time sketching than
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causing trouble. His art teacher would later describe him as reliable, trustworthy,
not the type to make up stories for attention. But
on that Thursday night in April, Bill Bartlett's life would
change forever. He was driving his Volkswagen north on Farm
Street with two friends, Mike Mazaka and Andy Brody. They'd
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been out looking for parties, maybe hoping to find some beer,
but had come up empty. Now they were just cruising
the familiar roads of their small town, the ones they'd
driven hundreds of times before. Farm Street was particularly well
known to locals. A narrow, winding road bordered by those
distinctive New England stone walls, some of which dated back
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to the sixteen hundreds, the area had always felt a
bit off to locals. This was the same stretch of
road where, according to town legend, people had reported seeing
the Devil himself on horseback back in the sixteen hundreds.
Stories of buried pirate treasure and strange lights in the
woods had persisted for generations, but Bill didn't know about
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any of that. As he drove at about thirty five
to forty miles per hour that night, I saw movement
on the wall to my left, Bill would later tell investigators.
At first I thought it was a dog or a cat,
But as his head lights illuminated the creature fully, Bill's
blood ran cold. The thing on the wall was like
nothing he'd ever seen or imagined. It stood about three
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and a half to four feet tall, with a body
that seemed almost infantile in its proportions except for that
massive head. The head was easily the size of the
rest of its body, shaped like a watermelon or an egg,
completely hairless and covered in what looked like like rough
tan skin with the texture of sandpaper or shark skin.
But it was the eyes that would haunt Bill for
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the rest of his life. Two large, round, glassy, lidless
eyes shining brightly like two orange marbles. He would later
describe to cryptozoologist Lauren Coleman. The eyes had no pupils
that he could see, just that horrible orange glow as
they caught the light from his head lights. The creature
had no discernible nose, no mouth, no ears, just that
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massive head with those glowing eyes. Its body was thin,
almost emaciated, with long, spinly arms and legs that seemed
too delicate to support even its slight frame. The fingers, god,
the fingers were long and tendril like, wrapped around the
stones of the wall, as if the creature was carefully
feeling its way along. Bill could see each digit clearly
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as they grasped the ancient stones. The creature turned its
massive head and looked directly at Bill for six second,
though it felt like an eternity, they stared at each other.
Bill's hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles
went white. His foot came off the gas pedal, the
car slowing as he tried to process what he was seeing.
(06:14):
What's wrong, Mike asked from the passenger seat, but Bill
couldn't speak. He couldn't even point. He just stared as
the creature began to move along the wall, its long
limbs moving in a way that seemed both delicate and
deeply wrong, like a spider made of skin and bone.
Then it was gone, scurrying over the wall and disappearing
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into the darkness beyond. Bill slammed on the brakes about
a quarter mile down the road, his whole body shaking.
Did you see that? He gasped. His friends hadn't seen anything.
They'd been talking, not paying attention to the walls beside
the road. Bill tried to explain what he'd witnessed, his
words tumbling over each other. A creature on the wall,
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huge head, orange eyes, no face. Let's go back, Andy suggested,
though his voice betrayed his nervousness. They argued for fifteen
minutes before finally turning around. Bill drove slowly, this time,
his high beams on all three teenagers scanning the walls
and woods, but the creature was gone, no trace of
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it remained, except the image burned into Bill's memory. When
Bill got home that night, he immediately went to his
room and drew what he'd seen. His artistic skills and
photographic memory allowed him to capture every detail, the oval head,
the spindly limbs, those terrible eyes. At the bottom of
his sketch, he wrote, I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a
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stack of bibles that I saw this creature. He had
no idea that two hours later someone else would see
it too. John Baxter was only fifteen years old, and
he'd just spent a pleasant evening at his girlfriend, Kathy
Cronin's house at the south end of Miller Hill Road.
It was after midnight, now about twelve thirty am on
April twenty second, and John was walking home. His parents
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didn't know he was out this late, and he was
hoping to sneak back in without waking anyone. Miller Hill
Road was dark and quiet, about a mile from where
Bill Bartlett had seen the creature just two hours earlier. Dover,
despite being close to Boston, was surprisingly rural, with thick
forests pressing close to the winding roads. There were no
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street lights here and with only a thin crescent moon
in the sky. John could barely see ten feet ahead
of him. He'd been walking for about half an hour,
had covered about a mile when he noticed a figure
approaching him on the road ahead. It was small, maybe
four feet tall, and John's first thought was that it
might be MG. Bouchard, a local kid who lived on
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the street. Bouchard had a deformed head from a childhood illness,
and John knew he sometimes walked around at night. MG,
Is that you? John called out. The figure didn't respond,
but kept moving to ward him. They were about one
hundred and fifty feet apart. Now, Hey, MG, John called again,
louder this time, still no response. The figure kept approaching,
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and something about the way it moved made John's skin crawl.
It wasn't walking quite right. The gate was off somehow, mechanical, jerky,
not quite human. When they were about fifteen feet apart,
the figure suddenly stopped. John stopped too, squinting in the darkness,
trying to make out details. He could see it was
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definitely small, child sized, but the proportions were all wrong.
The head was too big, the limbs too long. Who
is that? John asked, his voice cracking slightly. The figure
stood perfectly still, and John could feel it watching him.
The darkness was so complete he couldn't make out any features,
just that disturbing silhouette. His heart began to pound. Every
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instinct screamed at him to run, but he was frozen
in place. His courage, John took one step forward. The creature,
for John now knew with terrible certainty that this was
no human child, suddenly darted to the left. Moving within
human speed, It scrambled down the shallow wooded gully beside
the road and up the opposite bank. John could hear
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its footsteps on the dry leaves, a rapid scuttling sound
that made his blood run cold. Despite his terror, or
perhaps because of it, John followed. He moved to the
edge of the gulley and looked down. There, about thirty
feet away, silhouetted against the slightly lighter sky, he saw
it clearly. The creature was standing upright next to a tree,
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its impossibly long fingers wrapped around the trunk. Its head
was massive, shaped like a figure eight, with two lighter
spots in the middle that John realized with horror were
its eyes. They seemed to glow faintly watching him. The
thing's body looked like a monkey's, but wrong, too thin,
too elongated, with feet that had long toes that seemed
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to grip the rocks beneath it like fingers. I just
stared at it for another few minutes, John would later
tell investigators, and then I just got all these thoughts
that maybe it was something really strange, because you know,
nothing ever happened to me like this before, so I
didn't know what to think. I finally got the thought
that maybe it wasn't as safe as it looked, because
the way it was staring at me. The creature and
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John remained frozen, watching each other across the gully. The
silence was absolute, no insects, no wind, nothing but the
sound of John's rapid breathing and pounding heart. The creature's
eyes never blinked, never moved from John's face. Then, very slowly,
the creature shifted its weight. It was a small movement,
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but it broke the spell. John's paralysis shattered, and he
backed away carefully, not daring to turn his back on
the thing. Once he reached the road, he turned and ran, or,
as he would later describe it, walked very fast to
the intersection with farm street. He'd only gone a few
hundred yards when a car's headlights appeared. John frantically waved
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it down, and the couple inside, seeing a terrified teenager
alone on the road after midnight, immediately stopped and gave
him a ride home. John burst into his house, waking
his parents. He was shaking, nearly in tears, trying to
explain what he'd seen. His parents, alarmed by their son's
obvious terror, stayed up with him as he drew a
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sketch of the creature. The drawing showed a humanoid figure
with an enormous head, long limbs, and large eyes, remarkably
similar to the sketch Bill Bartlett had drawn just hours earlier,
though John had no idea Bill had seen anything. Friday night,
April twenty second, nineteen seventy seven, Abby Brabham, fifteen years old,
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was being driven home by her eighteen year old boyfriend,
Will Tayner. It was around midnight, almost exactly twenty four
hours after Bill Bartlett's initial sighting. They were driving along
Springdale Avenue, another rural road in Dover that intersected with
Farm Street. Abby and Will had been out on a date,
probably seeing a movie or just driving around, enjoying the
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spring evening. The radio was playing softly and they were
comfortable with each other, not talking much, just enjoying the ride.
Will was concentrating on the road. Springdale Avenue could be
tricky at night with its curves and narrow bridges. They
were passing by the bridge where the road crossed over
a small waterway when Abbey saw it. At first, I
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thought it was an ape, she would later tell investigators.
And then I looked at the head, and the head
was very big, and it was a very weird head.
The creature was sitting upright by the left side of
the road, near the edge of the bridge. In the
brief moment that the car's headlights swept across it, Abbey
got a clear view. The thing had a watermelon shaped head,
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completely hairless, with a tan body that looked smooth rather
than furry. Its body was small, about the size of
a goat, but those proportions were all wrong for any animal,
she knew. And then she saw its eyes. It had
bright green eyes, and the eyes just glowed like they
were just looking exactly at me. Abby would insist to
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investigators this detail would prove controversial. Both Bill and John
had described orange eyes, but Abby was adamant the eyes
she saw were green, glowing green, like emeralds in the headlights.
Investigators would try to shake her story, suggesting she was mistaken,
that she must have seen orange like the others, but
(14:35):
Abby never wavered. Those eyes were green. Will barely caught
a glimpse of it, just a flash of something tan
with a large head crouched by the road, but Abby's
reaction told him everything he needed to know. Lock the doors,
Abby screamed, get out of here, hurry up. She was
pressing herself back against the seat, her face white with terror.
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Will floored it, the car's engine roaring as they sped
away from the bridge. Stay tuned for more Backwoods bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. Abby was nearly hysterical,
begging him not to go back, not to turn around.
Did you see it? She kept asking, did you see
that thing? Will had seen something, though not clearly enough
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to know what, but Abbie's terror was real and infectious.
He drove her straight home, where she ran inside and
immediately told her parents what she'd seen. Like John Baxter's
parents the night before, the Brabhams were alarmed by their
daughter's obvious distress. Abby drew a sketch of what she'd seen,
and again, despite having no knowledge of the other sightings,
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her drawing matched the essential details, the huge head, the
hairless body, the long limbs, the glowing eyes. The only
difference was the eye color, a detail she would never change.
By Saturday, April twenty third, word was starting to spread
through Over's teenage community. Bill Bartlett had made photocopies of
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his drawing and was showing them around, trying to find
out if anyone else had seen the creature. At a
party that night, he ran into John Baxter and they
compared their experiences. The similarities were undeniable. When I saw
John's drawing, Bill would later say, I knew I wasn't crazy.
We'd seen the same thing. Will Tainter was also at
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the party, and when he saw Bill's drawing, he immediately
thought of Abby's terrified reaction the night before. The three
boys compared notes, and slowly the realization dawned on them.
Something truly extraordinary had happened in Dover over the past
two days. Word of the sightings reached the Dover Country Store,
where someone had posted one of Bill's photocopy drawings. That's
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where it caught the attention of Lauren Coleman, a cryptozoologist
who happened to be in the area. Coleman, who had
been investigating unusual creature sightings throughout New England, immediately recognized
the significance of what he was seeing. Multiple witnesses seeing
the same creature independently, with no chance for collaboration. This
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was exactly the kind of case investigator's dream of, Coleman
would later write. Coleman quickly assembled a team of investigators,
Joseph Nyman, Ed Fogg, and Walter Webb. Webb was particularly notable.
He was the assistant director of the Hayden Planetarium at
Boston Science Museum, a serious scientist with impeccable credentials. If
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anyone could debunk these sightings, it would be Web. The
team conducted extensive interviews with all four teenagers who had
seen the creature. They interviewed them separately, looking for inconsistencies,
signs of collaboration, any indication that this might be a hoax.
They also interviewed the teenager's parents, teachers, friends, and other
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community members. The investigators were struck by several things. First,
the witnesses were all credible. These weren't troublemakers or attention
and seekers. Bill Bartlett in particular impressed them. Dover Police
Chief Carl Sheridan would go on record calling him an
outstanding artist and reliable witness. His science teacher gave him
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high recommendations and was convinced of his truthfulness. Second, the
witnesses didn't know each other well. Bill and John only
knew each other slightly before the sightings. None of them
were part of the same social circle. The chance of
them collaborating on a hoax was minimal. Third, the details
matched in ways that suggested they'd seen the same creature,
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but different in ways that actually added credibility. If it
were a hoax, wouldn't they have coordinated their stories better.
Why would Abbey insist on green eyes when the others
saw orange. Fourth, the locations of the sightings, when plotted
on a map, formed a straight line over about two miles.
All were near water sources, streams, ponds, or wetlands. This
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pattern suggested the creature might have been following a specific
root through the area. Dover police initially treated the reports
as a possible hoax, school vacation prank some officers suggested,
but as the investigation continued, even the skeptics had to
admit something strange had happened. The teenagers were clearly traumatized
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by what they'd seen. This wasn't the behavior of pranksters
enjoying their joke. The media got wind of the story
in early May. The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and
numerous local papers ran articles about the sightings. Coleman, who
had been calling the creature various names in his notes,
finally settled on Dover Demon, a catchy, alliterative name that
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would stick. The name choice would prove controversial. None of
the witnesses felt the creature was demonic or evil, just
strange and frightening. But Dover Demon captured the public imagination
in a way that Dover Creature or Dover Unknown never
would have. As news of the Dover Demon spread, theories
about what the teenagers had seen began to proliferate. Skeptics
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and believers alike offered explanations, some mundane, some extraordinary. The
most common skeptical explanation was that the witnesses had seen
a known animal under unusual conditions. A baby moose was suggested,
despite the fact that moose were essentially extinct in Massachusetts
by nineteen seventy seven, and even a newborn moose would
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be much larger than the creature described. Besides, April was
the wrong season for newborn moose. Others suggested a foal
a baby horse. Dover in nineteen seventy seven had a
large equestrian community, with more horses than people according to
some estimates, but no folds were reported missing, and horses,
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even newborn ones, don't have the body proportions described by
the witnesses. They certainly don't have glowing eyes or climb
walls with tendril like fingers. Skeptic Joe Nickel proposed that
the creature might have been a snowy owl. Was about right,
and snowy owls do have large, round eyes that can
appear to glow in headlights. The long, spindly arms could
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have been partially opened wings with splayed feathers, but this
theory had problems too. Owls have distinctive beaked faces, not
the blank, featureless visage described by the witnesses, and why
would an owl be crawling along a wall or standing
upright against a tree. Some suggested the witnesses had seen
an escaped monkey or ape from one of the primate
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research facilities near Boston, but monkeys have tails, which none
of the witnesses reported. Apes don't have tails, but have
much different body proportions than what was described, and no
research facilities reported any missing primates. More exotic theories emerged
as well. UFO researchers noted the creature's resemblance to the
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gray aliens reported by alleged abduction victims. The large head,
huge eyes, and small body were all consistent, but none
of the dome He witnesses reported seeing any unusual lights
or craft in the sky. Some researchers pointed out similarities
to other cryptid sidings. The Kelley Hopkinsville encounter of nineteen
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fifty five in Kentucky involved small, large headed creatures with
glowing eyes. The Momo Missouri monster sightings of the early
nineteen seventies described a similar creature, though larger and harrier.
Coleman himself noted that Dover and the surrounding area had
a long history of strange sidings. The Native Americans who
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originally inhabited the region had legends of bizarre creatures in
the forests and swamps. Colonial settlers reported seeing the devil
on horseback in the sixteen hundreds. In nineteen seventy two,
five years before the Dover Demon sightings, a resident named
Mark Sennett claimed he and friends had seen a small
figure at Channing Pond on Springdale Avenue, the same road
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where Abbey Brabham would have her encounter. I don't know
if we really saw something, Sennate would later tell the
Ballston Globe. We thought we did. We saw a small
figure deep in the woods, moving at the edge of
the pond. To understand the Dover Demon, we need to
understand the broader context of paranormal activity in Massachusetts. The state,
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particularly the southeastern region, has long been considered a hot
bed of unusual phenomena. Just thirty miles from Dover lies
the infamous Bridgewater Triangle, a two hundred square mile area
that cryptozoologist Lauren Coleman himself named in the late nineteen seventies.
This region, with points in Abington, Rehoboth, and Freetown, has
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been the site of countless reports of UFOs, bigfoot sidings,
ghostly apparitions, and other unexplained phenomena. At the heart of
the Bridgewater triangle is the Hockomock Swamp, a six thousand
acre wetland that the Wampanoagu people called the Place where
Spirits dwell. The swamp was a major battlefield during King
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Philip's War in sixteen seventy five to seve six, one
of the bloodiest conflicts in American history relative to population.
The Wampanoag and other tribes made their last stand here
against the English colonists, and the slaughter was horrific. Legend
says that the area is cursed because a sacred wampum
belt belonging to the Wampanoagu chief Metacomet known as King Philip,
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was lost during the war. The curse supposedly manifests as
the various paranormal phenomena reported in the region. The creatures
reported in and around the Bridgewater Triangle include pukwoodgies, small
humanoid creatures from Wampanoague folklore, described as two to three
feet tall with smooth gray skin. They're said to be
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able to appear and disappear at will, and to use
magic to harm humans. The similarities to the dover demon
are obvious. Thunderbirds, massive birds with wingspans up to twelve feet,
have been reported throughout the region. In nineteen seventy one,
Norton Police sergeant Thomas Dan reported seeing such a creature, Bigfoot.
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Multiple sightings of large, hairy, bipedal creatures have been reported
in the forests of southeastern Massachusetts. In nineteen seventy, a
seven foot tall creature was reportedly seen by multiple witnesses
in Bridgewater. Giant snakes serpents of impossible size have been
reported in the swamps and forests. Some witnesses described them
as being as thick as tree trunks and over twenty
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feet long. The first recorded UFO siding in the world
supposedly occurred over the Bridgewater Triangle in seventeen sixty when
witnesses reported a sphere of fire in the sky. UFO
sidings have continued regularly since then, with major waves in
nineteen oh eight, nineteen sixty eight, and throughout the nineteen seventies,
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the same decade as the Dover Demon sightings. Given this context,
some researchers have suggested that the Dover Demon might be
connected to the broader paranormal activity in the region. Perhaps
certain areas act as windows, areas, places where the barrier
between our world and somewhere else is thinner. Dover, with
its proximity to the Bridgewater Triangle and its own history
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of strange sightings, might be one such window area. While
investigators and theorists debated what the Dover Demon might be,
the four teenagers who saw it had to live with
the aftermath of their encounters. The experience affected each of
them differently, but none escaped unchanged. Bill Bartlett, the first witness,
found himself thrust into an unwonted spotlight as the artist
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whose drawing became the iconic image of the Dover Demon.
He was interviewed countless times over the years. Journalists, investigators,
and curiosity seekers all wanted to hear his story. In
a lot of ways. It's kind of embarrassing to me,
Bartlett would tell an interviewer years later. I definitely saw something.
It was definitely weird. I didn't make it up. Sometimes
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I wish I had. The irony wasn't lost on it here.
He was an accomplished artist, and the piece of art
he was most famous for was a sketch he'd drawn
on notebook paper when he was seventeen. The Dover Demon
drawing would follow him for the rest of his life,
overshadowing his other work. But Bartlett never changed his story,
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despite the pressure, despite the skeptics, despite the embarrassment, he
maintained that what he saw that night was real. His
friends Mike Mazaka and Andy Brody, who were in the
car but didn't see the creature, stood by him. They'd
seen his genuine terror that night, and they knew Bill
wasn't the type to make things up. John Baxter struggled
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with the fear for months after his encounter. He couldn't
walk alone at night. The image of that thing standing
by the tree, watching him with those unblinking eyes haunted
his dreams. His parents reported that he would wake up
screaming some nights reliving the encounter. The fact that others
had seen the same creature was both a comfort and
a terror. On one hand, it meant he wasn't crazy.
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On the other hand, it meant the thing was real
and it was out there somewhere. Abby Brabham faced unique
challenges as the only female witness and the youngest. Some
investigators seemed to give her account less weight, particularly when
she insisted on the green eyes rather than orange, But
Abby never wavered. She knew what she had seen, and
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no amount of pressure would make her change her story.
The terror she felt that night stayed with her for years.
She couldn't drive past that spot on Springdale Avenue without
feeling a chill. Even decades later, she would take alternate
roots to avoid it when possible. Will Taintor, who had
only caught a glimpse of the creature, found himself in
the position of supporting witness. He couldn't provide many details,
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but he could confirm that something had been there, and
he could testify to Abbey's genuine terror. The way she
had screamed, the way she had pressed herself back against
the seat that wasn't acting, That was real fear. All
four teenagers faced skepticism and ridicule from some quarters. Classmates
made jokes, some adults dismissed them as attention seekers or
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suggested they'd been drinking or using drugs, But those who
knew them well, parents, teachers, close friends believed them. These
were good kids, not troublemakers. They had nothing to gain
from making up such a story. The Dover police, initially skeptical,
came to believe that the teenagers had seen something, even
if they couldn't explain what police Chief Carl Sheridan's public
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endorsement of Bill Bartlett's credibility carried significant weight in the
small community. The Dover Demon quickly entered the pantheon of
American cryptids, taking its place alongside Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil,
and Mothman. But unlike many cryptid sightings that fade from memory,
the Dover Demon has shown remarkable staying power in popular culture.
(29:54):
Part of its endurance comes from the quality of the
witnesses and the investigation. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. This wasn't a case
of a single person claiming to see something strange with
no corroboration. Four teenagers interviewed separately by serious investigators, including
(30:16):
a planetary scientist, all described essentially the same creature. The
case had what many cryptid sightings lack, multiple credible witnesses
and immediate thorough documentation. The creature's unique appearance also contributed
to its fame. The Dover Demon didn't look like any
known animal, nor did it fit neatly into existing cryptid categories.
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It wasn't a hairy hominid like Bigfoot, nor a lake
monster like NeSSI. Its appearance, that massive head, those glowing eyes,
the tendril like fingers was genuinely alien and disturbing. Books,
television shows, and documentaries have featured the Dover Demon. It
appeared in Lauren Coleman's influential Mysterious Amounts, cementing its place
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in cryptozoological literature. The creature has been featured on shows
like Monsters and Mysteries in America, Lost Tapes, and numerous
paranormal investigation programs. The Dover Demon has appeared in comic books,
including Proof and The Perhappenauts. It's been featured in video
games and trading card games. Japanese toy companies have even
(31:24):
produced Dover Demon figurines, testament to the creature's international appeal.
The town of Dover itself has had a complex relationship
with its famous cryptid. Some residents embrace it. The Dover
Historical Society once sold t shirts featuring Bill Bartlett's drawing
with the caption Dover Demon. Do you believe? Others wish
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the whole thing would go away, feeling it brings the
wrong kind of attention to their quiet New England town.
But the Dover Demon has become part of Dover's identity,
whether residents like it or not, Tourists still come to
drive down Farm Street, to walk along Miller Hill Road,
to stand on the bridge on Springdale Avenue. They come
hoping to catch a glimpse of glowing eyes in the darkness,
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to experience their own encounter with the unknown. Although the
original Dover Demon sightings occurred over just two nights in
nineteen seventy seven, reports of similar creatures have continued sporadically
over the decades. Most of these reports come from the
broader Massachusetts area, particularly from regions near the Bridgewater Triangle.
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In two thousand and four, a man calling himself Greg
he wished to remain anonymous, claimed to have seen the
Dover Demon while driving on Farm Street, the same road
where Bill Bartlett had his encounter. Greg described a small,
pale creature with large eyes that darted across the road
in front of his car. The sighting lasted only seconds,
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but Greg was familiar with the Dover Demon legend and
was convinced he'd seen the same creature. Other reports have
been less definitive. Drivers report glimpsing something on the roads
around Dover, a pale figure, a pair of glowing eyes,
a shape that doesn't quite make sense. Most of these
witnesses don't come forward publicly, not wanting to face the
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scrutiny and potential ridicule that the original witness is endured.
Modern paranormal investigators have used new technology to search for
evidence of the Dover Demon. Thermal imaging cameras, night vision equipment,
and motion activated trail cameras have been deployed in the
areas where the creature was sighted. So far, no definitive
evidence has been captured, but investigators note that the absence
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of evidence is not evidence of absence. Some researchers have
noted interesting patterns in the original sightings that weren't apparent
at the time. All three sidings occurred near water streams, ponds,
or wetlands. The locations, when connected, form an almost straight
line across the landscape, suggesting the creature might have been
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following a specific route. Some have speculated that the Dover
Demon might have been migrating, perhaps returning to water after
a period on land. The timing is also interesting. Late
April is spring in Massachusetts, a time when many animals
are most active after the winter months. If the Dover
Demon is a flesh and blood creature, it might be
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most likely to be seen during this period of increased activity.
Environmental changes in Dover since nineteen seventy seven might also
explain why sightings have been so rare. The town has
seen significant development, with new houses and roads fragmenting the
forests and wetlands. If the Dover Demon requires a specific habitat,
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that habitat might no longer exist in sufficient quantity to
support it. The Dover Demon case has attracted attention not
just from cryptozoologists, but from psychologists and sociologists interested in
how communities process unusual events. Some psychologists have suggested that
the Dover Demon sidings might be explained by a combination
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of misidentification and social contagion. The theory goes like this.
Bill Bartlett saw something, perhaps an ordinary animal, under unusual conditions,
and his brain, trying to make sense of incomplete information
and darkness, constructed the image of a creature. His obvious
distress and his drawing then influenced John Baxter, who had
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his own ambiguous encounter and interpreted it through the lens
of Bill's description. But this theory has problems. John Baxter
had his encounter before he knew about Bill's siding. The
two boys didn't compare notes until after both encounters had occurred,
and Abby Brabham's siding, with its distinct detail of green
rather than orange eyes, suggests she wasn't simply seeing what
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she expected to see based on others accounts. Sociologists have
noted how the Dover demon sightings fit into the broader
cultural context of the nineteen seventies. This was a period
of high interest in the paranormal, UFOs and cryptids. Close
Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars would both
be released in nineteen seventy seven, the same year as
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the Dover Demon sightings. The zeitgeist was right for such
an encounter to capture public imagination, but the witnesses themselves
don't fit the profile of UFO enthusiasts or paranormal believers.
They were ordinary teenagers not particularly interested in the paranormal
before their encounters. Bill Bartlett has specifically stated that he
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doesn't think the creature was extraterrestrial. He believes it was
something earthly, just something unknown. The case has also been
studied as an example of how modern folklore develops unlike
traditional folklore, which develops over generations through oral tradition. The
Dover Demon became a legend almost instantly. Its story spread
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through mass media. Within weeks of the sightings, people around
the world knew about the Dover Demon. Decades have passed
since those terrifying nights in April nineteen seventy seven. The
teenage witnesses are now in their sixties, having lived full
lives in the shadow of their brief encounters with the unknown.
Bill Bartlett still lives in Massachusetts and has continued his
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career as an artist. He rarely gives interviews about the
Dover Demon anymore, tired of repeating the same story, tired
of the skeptics and the believers alike. But when pressed,
he maintains that what he saw was real. I know
what I saw, he said in one of his last
public interviews. It wasn't a moose, it wasn't an owl.
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It wasn't my imagination. I saw something that shouldn't exist,
but it did. It was there. The experience has given
him a different perspective on the world. He knows that
there are things out there that science can't explain, things
that exist in the margins and shadows. It's both a
burden and a gift this knowledge. John Baxter has been
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more private about his experience. He's rarely spoken publicly about
that night on Miller Hill Road, preferring to leave the
past in the past, but those who know him say
he's never forgotten what he saw. Sometimes on dark nights,
he still thinks about those eyes watching him from beside
the tree. Abby Brabham has occasionally participated in documentaries and
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interviews about the Dover Demon. She remains adamant about what
she saw, particularly about those green eyes. The fact that
her detail differs from the others doesn't bother her. She
knows what she saw. People ask me if I wish
I hadn't seen it, she said in a recent interview.
Sometimes I do. It would be easier to live in
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a world where everything makes sense, where everything fits into
neat categories. But I did see it, and I can't
pretend I didn't. Will Tanter has largely stayed out of
the public eye regarding the Dover Demon. His glimpse was brief,
and he's always been more of a supporting witness than
a primary one, but he's never doubted Abbey's account. The
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terror he saw in her that night was real, and
that's all he needs to know. So what was the
Dover Demon? After more than four decades, we're no closer
to an answer than we were in nineteen seventy seven.
Every theory has its problems, Every explanation falls short in
some way. If it was a known animal, why has
no one been able to definitively identify it? Thousands of
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people have looked at Bill Bartlett's drawing, including zoologists and
wildlife experts. None have been able to say, yes, that's
definitely an insert animal here under unusual conditions. If it
was an unknown animal, where did it come from and
where did it go? How could a population of such
creatures exist in Massachusetts without leaving more evidence? No bones,
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no corpses, no clear photographs, just four teenagers, testimonies and drawings.
If it was something paranormal, an alien, an interdimensional being,
a creature from folklore come to life, why did it
appear just for those two nights? What was its purpose?
Why Dover? Why then why those particular witnesses. The skeptics
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have their explanations, but none are fully satisfying. The believers
have their theories, but none can be proven. The Dover
Demon remains what Walter Webb called it a true enigma,
an animate anomaly that intersected the lives of four credible
young people that lonely week in April nineteen seventy seven.
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Perhaps that's why the Dover Demon continues to fascinate us.
In an age where we've mapped the human genome, sent
rovers to Mars, and built computers that can beat grand
masters at chess, the Dover Demon reminds us that there
are still mysteries. There are still things that go bump
in the night that we can't explain away. If you
find yourself driving through Dover, Massachusetts on a dark April night,
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you might feel tempted to slow down on Farm Street
to peer at the old stone walls in your headlights.
You might walk down Miller Hill Road, hoping to see
a small figure approaching in the darkness. You might pause
on the bridge on Springdale Avenue, scanning the roadside for
a pair of glowing eyes. But be careful what you
wish for, because the Dover Demon, whatever it was or is,
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left a mark on everyone who saw it. It changed
them fundamentally and forever. Once you've looked into those glowing eyes,
once you've seen something that shouldn't exist but does. You
can never go back to the world you knew before,
the comfortable certainties of everyday life, that we know what's
out there, that science has explained the natural world, that
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monsters exist only in stories. All of that crumbles when
you come face to face with the impossible. The four
teenagers who saw the Dover Demon in nineteen seventy seven
learned this lesson. They went out on ordinary April nights
thinking about ordinary teenage things, and came back having glimpsed
something extraordinary and terrible. They've carried that knowledge with them
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ever since, a wait and a wonder that never quite
goes away. To truly understand the significance of the Dover Demon,
we need to place it in the broader context of
American cryptid sightings and paranormal experiences. The late nineteen seventies
was a particularly active period for such encounters across the
United States. In West Virginia, mothman sightings had terrorized Point
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Pleasant a decade earlier, culminating in the tragic collapse of
the Silver Bridge in nineteen sixty seven. The creature, described
as a large, winged humanoid with glowing red eyes, shared
some characteristics with the Dover Demon, particularly those hypnotic glowing eyes.
The Pacific Northwest was in the midst of a bigfoot
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siding wave, with the famous Patterson Gimlin film from nineteen
sixty seven still being hotly debated. Multiple witnesses were reporting
encounters with large, hairy hominids in the forests of Washington, Oregon,
and northern California. In New Jersey, the Jersey Devil, a
creature with a history dating back to the seventeen hundreds,
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was experiencing a resurgence of sightings. This winged, horse headed
creature was reportedly seen by multiple witnesses throughout the pine barrens.
But the Dover Demon stood apart from these other cryptids
in several important ways. First, its appearance was unique. It
didn't fit into any existing cryptid category. It wasn't a
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hairy hominid, a winged creature, or a lake monster. It
was something entirely other. Second, the quality of the witnesses
was exceptional. These weren't adults with questionable motives or histories
of tall tales. They were teenagers with good reputations, independently
corroborated by friends, family, and authority. Figures. Third, the compressed
(43:43):
time frame of the sightings was unusual. Many cryptids are
seen sporadically over years or decades. The Dover Demon appeared
for just over twenty four hours and then vanished, never
to be conclusively seen again. This pattern has led some
researchers to propose that the Dover Demon might represent a
different type of phenomenon altogether, not a creature that lives
(44:05):
in our world, but something that briefly visited it, whether
from another dimension, another planet, or another state of reality entirely.
The Dover Demon might have been just passing through. While
many scientists dismiss cryptid sightings out of hand, some have
taken a more nuanced view of the Dover Demon case.
The quality of the witnesses and the immediate thorough investigation
(44:28):
make it harder to dismiss than many other cryptid encounters.
From a biological perspective, the Dover Demon as described presents
several problems. Its body proportions, particularly the massive head relative
to body size, would be unusual for any Earth creature.
The brain size implied by such a large head would
(44:48):
require significant caloric intake to maintain, Yet the creature's thin
body doesn't suggest an efficient hunter or forager. The glowing
eyes present another puzzle. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. Many animals have a
tapatum lucitum, a reflective layer behind the retina that causes
(45:11):
eye shine in darkness, but this reflection requires an external
light source. The witnesses describe the eyes as glowing, not
just reflecting. True bioluminescence in land vertebrates is virtually unknown.
Some scientists have suggested that if the Dover Demon is real,
it might represent a relic population of some prehistoric creature,
(45:33):
a survivor from an earlier epoch, but the fossil record
shows no creatures matching the Dover Demon's description. Others have
proposed that the creature might be an undiscovered primate, perhaps
a species that evolved for a nocturnal, partially aquatic lifestyle.
The long fingers could be adaptations for catching fish or
aquatic invertebrates. The large eyes would help with night vision.
(45:58):
The hairless skin might be an adaptation for a semi
aquatic lifestyle, but this theory has problems too. No primate
fossils have been found in North America from any period
recent enough for a population to have survived to the present,
and how could a population of such distinctive creatures remain
hidden in relatively populated Massachusetts. The interdimensional hypothesis, while unscientific
(46:22):
by conventional standards, has been seriously proposed by some researchers.
Perhaps certain locations act as thin points between parallel dimensions,
and occasionally creatures from these other realities slip through. Dover,
with its history of strange sidings, might be one such location. Today,
if you drive down Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts, you'll
(46:45):
see a quiet suburban road lined with expensive homes and
well maintained yards. The old stone walls are still there,
carefully preserved as historical artifacts. The forests have been pushed back, tamed,
made safe. On a sunny afternoon, it's hard to imagine
that anything strange ever happened here. Children ride bicycles down
(47:06):
the street, dogs bark behind invisible fences. Landscapers tend to
perfect lawns. It's a picture of New England prosperity and normalcy.
But when darkness falls, when the moon is just a
sliver in the sky, Farm Street transforms, The shadows deepen
between the trees, the stone walls become ancient and mysterious again,
(47:29):
and those who know the story, those who remember, drive
a little faster past the spot where Bill Bartlett saw
something impossible. The Dover Demon has become more than just
a cryptid siding. It's become a reminder that our world,
for all our scientific knowledge and technological advancement, still holds mysteries.
In an age where every square foot of Earth has
(47:51):
been photographed from space, where we've decoded the human genome
and split the atom, the Dover Demon tells us that
there are still things we don't understand. Perhaps that's why
the story endures, not because people necessarily believe that a
strange creature with glowing eyes haunted Dover for two nights
in nineteen seventy seven, but because they want to believe
(48:13):
that such things are possible. In a world that often
feels too known, too mapped, too explained, the Dover Demon
represents the unknown, the mysterious, the inexplicable. The four teenagers
who saw it, now adults with children and grandchildren of
their own, carry with them the knowledge that the world
is stranger than most people imagine. They've seen behind the
(48:36):
veil of normalcy. Glimpsed something that shouldn't exist but did.
Late at night, when they can't sleep, they might still
think about those glowing eyes in the darkness. They might
wonder where the creature came from, where it went, and
whether it might return. They might wonder if anyone else
has seen it, if other people have had encounters they've
(48:57):
been too afraid to report. Because the Dover Demon, whatever
it was, wherever it came from, left more than just
eyewitness accounts and sketches. It left questions, questions that may
never be answered, mysteries that may never be solved. And
perhaps that's as it should be. In a world that
sometimes feels too small, too known, too predictable, we need
(49:21):
our mysteries. We need to know that there are still
dark corners where impossible things might lurk, still shadows that
hide more than just darkness. The Dover Demon serves as
a reminder that no matter how much we think we know,
no matter how confident we are in our understanding of
the world, there's always the possibility that, on some dark night,
(49:42):
on some quiet road, we might encounter something that shatters
all our certainties, something with glowing eyes and tendril fingers,
something that watches from the darkness something that shouldn't exist
but does, something like the Dover Demon. So the next
time you find yourself driving down on a dark road
late at night, when your headlights sweep across an old
(50:03):
stone wall or illuminate the edge of a forest, remember
the story of four teenagers in Dover, Massachusetts. Remember how
their ordinary night became extraordinary, how their normal lives were
forever changed by a brief encounter with the impossible. And
keep your eyes open, because the Dover Demon or something
like it, might still be out there, waiting in the darkness,
(50:27):
ready to shatter another person's comfortable certainties about what is
and isn't possible in this strange world of ours. The
Dover Demon reminds us that there are still mysteries worth pursuing,
still questions worth asking, still darkness worth exploring. It reminds
us that the world is larger and stranger than we
often allow ourselves to believe, and that perhaps is the
(50:51):
Dover Demon's greatest gift to us, not the answer to
what it was, but the question of what it might
have been, and the knowledge that such question still exist
in our modern world. The mystery endures the questions remain,
and somewhere, perhaps in the darkness between the known and
the unknown, the dover Demon Wait still didn't do
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