The Dover Demon

The Dover demon is a small humanoid reported from Massachusetts. It was the subject of an intensive scare during the 1970s, when multiple witnesses came forward with their sightings.

Appearance:

 The Dover demon is described as looking sort of like the "gray" variety of alien, except that it has skin of a rosy orange instead of sickly gray. The Dover demon has a large head on a small, stick-like body. It can be bipedal, but it often travels on all fours or switches back and forth between the two modes of locomotion. It has eyes that glow, sometimes orange, sometimes green. It does not seem to wear any clothing, unless the clothing fits tightly and is the same color as its body. Unlike the grays, the Dover demon does not seem to be associated with UFOs. It just wanders around on its own.

Cryptozoologists seldom show interest in the Dover demon. First of all, mainstream cryptozoologists are rarely willing to seriously investigate humanoids other than hairy humanoids. Also, it seems that sightings only happened during a short time period, with most claiming that sightings have now ceased, so the Dover demon does not seem to be a pressing matter.

The Dover demon is, however, a preoccupation of fringe cryptozoologists. Believers are likely to try to classify it in the same alien/angel/fairy complex that is a popular destination for all unexplained extra-weird non-hairy humanoids

Chronology:

Seventeen-year-old William Bartlett claimed that while driving on April 21, 1977, he saw a large-eyed creature "with tendril-like fingers" and glowing eyes on top of a broken stone wall on Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts. Fifteen-year-old John Baxter reported seeing a similar creature in heavily wooded area on Miller Hill Road the same evening. Another 15-year-old, Abby Brabham, claimed to have seen the creature the following night sitting upright on Springdale Avenue. The teenagers all drew sketches of the alleged creature. Bartlett wrote on his sketch, "I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature." According to The Boston Globe, "the locations of the sightings, plotted on a map, lay in a straight line over 2 miles".

Bartlett's Sketch

 When he returned home that night he drew a picture of the monster, later to be dubbed the Dover Demon by a local newspaper, when his father noticed that he was rather upset. Over the course of the night two more sightings occurred before the thing ambled back into the mystery from whence it came. A 15-year-old named John Baxter sighted the Dover Demon while walking home from his girlfriend's house, at first mistaking it for a very short friend of his (accounts state that the creature was less than 4 feet tall). Baxter, being braver than I, got a good look at it (I would have run screaming into the night) for a few minutes. It had long toes and fingers that it wrapped around a tree trunk and rocks as it stood, perhaps observing Baxter in return. Despite seeing it for a longer period of time, it was late at night, and his best sighting was of the creature momentarily silhouetted against a field.

Baxter's Sketch which look like Bartlett's Sketch

The next night a young man, Will Taintor, was driving a friend of his home when she spotted the creature. The girl, Abby Brabham, described it as being down on all fours, hairless, and having glowing green eyes. The witness stuck to her guns even after it became known Bartlett had described the eyes as orange.

Brabham's Sketch

Explanation:

Skeptics usually claim that the Dover Demon was simply a lost baby moose glimpsed under unusual conditions that made it seem like a bizarre humanoid that sometimes went on four legs. People who don't believe that explanation point out that all sightings happened during the wrong time of year for a moose that small to exist, and they also point out that Massachusetts is far from normal moose habitat. Even if such an orphan moose had been wandering around so close to populated areas, it seems as if it would have been easily captured. If the explanatory power of the baby moose explanation appeals to you, then you could get around the worst objection by substituting a creature that does actually exist in the area and can be born any time of year: a baby calf. An orange-furred orphan calf would be a more likely candidate for such a proposal than a baby moose. Other suggested explanations include a monkey, a dog, an alien, mutation, or simply a hoax. this creature is 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall, shaped like a baby's body with long arms and legs.