Encounter Atlas
On the night of April 21, 1977, a 17-year-old driving along Farm Street in Dover, a town about 15 miles southwest of Boston, said his headlights picked out a strange figure on a broken stone wall. He described it as about 4 feet tall, with a large head shaped like a watermelon, glowing orange eyes and no visible nose or mouth. Later that night a 15-year-old said he saw a similar creature on Miller Hill Road, and the next night another 15-year-old reported one on Springdale Avenue.
Each teenager made a sketch, and the first witness signed his with a statement that he would swear on a stack of Bibles to what he saw. Plotted on a map, the three sightings fell along a line about two miles long. No UFO was reported, but UFO groups and cryptozoologist Loren Coleman investigated, and the story reached the press in May 1977.
Local police told the Associated Press the reports were probably nothing more than a school vacation hoax, though none of the witnesses ever admitted one. Skeptic Joe Nickell proposed a snowy owl, its partly spread wings looking like spindly arms; others suggested a young moose or foal. Skeptic Brian Dunning doubted the owl idea but still favoured an ordinary explanation. Dunning has said he is not calling the teenagers liars, but regards the story as almost certainly not literally true.
The Dover Demon became one of New England's best-known modern monsters, appearing in TV shows such as Lost Tapes, in several comic books and as a character in the manga and anime Dandadan.