Over a roughly twenty-five-hour period spanning the night of April 21 and the early morning of April 22, 1977, four teenagers in the small town of Dover, Massachusetts — about fifteen miles southwest of Boston — independently reported seeing one of the most distinctive cryptid figures in New England history. The first sighting came shortly after 10:30 PM on Farm Street, when seventeen-year-old Bill Bartlett was driving two friends home. In his headlights, he saw a small creature perched on a low stone wall along the roadside. He described it as roughly three and a half to four feet tall, with a bulbous, oversized, watermelon-shaped head, enormous glowing orange eyes, long spindly limbs, and pale, peach-colored hairless skin resembling 'wet sandpaper.' The figure turned its head to face him as he passed. Bartlett, shaken, drove home, sketched the creature from memory, and labelled the drawing 'I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature.'
Roughly two hours later, and unaware of Bartlett's experience, fifteen-year-old John Baxter was walking home from his girlfriend's house near Miller High Road when he encountered the same figure crouched on a rock wall near a small creek. His description matched Bartlett's in every detail, including the oversized head and long fingers gripping the rock.
The following evening, on April 22, fifteen-year-old Abby Brabham and her eighteen-year-old boyfriend Will Taintor saw the same creature standing in the headlights of his car on Springdale Avenue. It turned toward them, and they sped away. All four teenagers produced independent sketches.
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman investigated the case within days and found the witnesses credible. No subsequent sightings have ever been confirmed, and the creature has never been seen again. The 'Dover Demon,' as Coleman named it, remains one of the most precisely located, witness-consistent single-event cryptid cases in North American folklore.