There are places in this world where the unexplained seems to take up residence. Dover, Massachusetts is one of those places. In 1977, a creature, later called the Dover Demon, was seen and has never been seen again.
On the night of April 21st, a teenager named Bill Bartlett saw a creature crawling along a stone fence. He described the creature as having "long thin fingers" and "an egg-shaped head" with glowing eyes. Another boy named John Baxter claimed he saw the creature in the woods that same night.
The next day, a girl named Abby Brabham claimed that she say the creature sitting upright not too far from the sightings the night before.
The two boys made sketches of what they saw.
Fair warning, these pictures might send a chill down your spine.
If you notice on the first drawing, you can see the words "I, Bill, Bartlett swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature."
There are many questions to be asked, but the biggest one to me is if the children knew each other? I haven't been able to find the answer to that question, but in a town of roughly 5,000 people at the time, who knows? According to the police, the children were honest, respectable kids.
Since then, there have been no documented sightings of the Dover Demon. A year after the incident, Bill Bartlett was parked with a girl when there was a thump on the car and he saw a creature scurrying away. As it was dark, he couldn't say if it was the same creature. Was someone playing a prank on Bartlett or did the creature seek him out?
Later on, a case of three boys who saw a creature by a pond in 1972 was discovered. "A small figure, deep in the woods, moving at the edge of the pond." was how they described it. Could this have been the first sighting of the Dover Demon? This encounter wasn't wildly reported, it seems, so it should cast no doubt on the 1977 encounters.
An interesting thing to note is that all of these cases took place by water. I know the importance of limestone and water in other parts of the unknown, but the importance of water here is slightly lost on me.
The story of the Dover Demon is unyielding. According to an article in The Boston Globe in 2006, the town and the residents, especially those involved, are still haunted by the encounters. But the town isn't home to just the Dover Demon. According to locals, the town is also home to buried treasure and the Devil on horseback.
Is Dover, Massachusetts a hot spot of otherworldly activity? It seems that might be the case, albeit infrequently. Much of New England is steeped in the supernatural, especially Massachusetts. But that's another story for another time.
Who knows what they saw?
ReplyDelete