Dover Demon is a bizarre humanoid Entity of Massachusetts.
Etymology:
Name given by Loren Coleman and picked up by local newspapers.
Physical description:
Height, 3 feet 6 inches–4 feet. Hairless, peach-coloured, sandpapery skin. Large, watermelon-shaped head. Eyes, orange or green, shining, round, and lidless. No nose,ears, or mouth. Thin neck. Spindly arms and legs. Long fingers and hands.
Behavior:
Bipedal.
Distribution:
Dover, Massachusetts.
Significant sightings:
At 10:30 p.m. on April 21, 1977, Bill Bartlett was driving through Dover, Massachusetts, with two friends when he saw a strange, thin creature with glowing eyes and a large head crawling along some rocks on the far side of the road. It was visible only for a few seconds, but it terrified Bartlett. Over the next twenty-four hours, there were two other sightings by local teens: About two hours later, John Baxter saw a humanoid creature run away from him down a wooded gully, and Will Taintor and Abby Brabham spotted an orange-eyed, monkeylike apparition crouching on all fours on the night of April 22.
Possible explanations:
(1) A hoax by the teenagers, though the initial investigators (Loren Coleman and Walter Webb) thought the youngsters were sincere.
(2) An escaped laboratory monkey, though none was reported lost.
(3) A Red fox (Vulpes fulva) that had lost its hair due to sarcoptic mange.
(4) A newborn horse.
(5) A yearling Moose (Alces alces), suggested by Martin Kottmeyer. There is a permanent breeding population of 200–300 moose in Massachusetts, mostly west of the Connecticut River, though some have wandered close to Boston.
In 1996, a young moose cow crashed through some fences around row houses near Boston College. A calf would make an unexpected sight in the darkness; however, some of the characteristics do not match, and moose were not as populous in 1977 as they are now.
(6) A Merbeing, according to Mark A. Hall, though it was seen in the woods.
(7) A paranormal apparition or unidentified flying object (UFO) entity.
FURTHER READING:
- Jerome Clark, “The Dover Humanoid,” Fate 31 (March 1978): 50–55;
- Joseph A. Citro, Passing Strange (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), pp. 136–147;
- Martin Kottmeyer, “Demon Moose,” The Anomalist 6 (1998): 104–110;
- Loren Coleman, Mysterious America, rev. ed. (New York: Paraview Press, 2001), pp. 42–61.
SOURCE:
Mysterious Creatures – A Guide to Cryptozoology – By George M. Eberhart
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