WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.839 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.320 it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because 8 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 9 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and 10 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 11 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 12 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:02.679 --> 00:01:05.519 On the night of April twenty first, nineteen seventy seven, 14 00:01:05.840 --> 00:01:08.879 a seventeen year old kid named Bill Bartlett was driving 15 00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:12.560 north on Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts in a Volkswagon 16 00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:15.560 with two of his friends. It was around ten thirty. 17 00:01:16.159 --> 00:01:18.599 The road out there is narrow and dark, the kind 18 00:01:18.640 --> 00:01:20.719 of old New England lane that has been following the 19 00:01:20.760 --> 00:01:24.719 same path since colonial farmers first laid stones along its edges. 20 00:01:25.599 --> 00:01:28.840 Those stone walls still run beside the pavement today, low 21 00:01:28.879 --> 00:01:31.920 and gray and half swallowed by brush. And they mattered 22 00:01:31.959 --> 00:01:34.920 to this story because what Bill Bartlett saw that night 23 00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:38.519 was climbing on one of them. His headlights swept across 24 00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:40.760 the wall on the left side of the road, and 25 00:01:40.840 --> 00:01:43.840 something was there. At first, his brain did what every 26 00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:47.040 witness's brain does in the first half second and filed 27 00:01:47.079 --> 00:01:51.040 it under something ordinary, a dog or a cat or 28 00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:53.840 some animal picking its way along the top of the stones. 29 00:01:54.719 --> 00:01:57.560 Then the detail started landing, and none of them fit 30 00:01:57.640 --> 00:02:01.799 anything he had ever seen. The head enormous. Bartlet would 31 00:02:01.879 --> 00:02:04.560 later compare it to a watermelon, and every sketch he 32 00:02:04.599 --> 00:02:08.680 ever drew shows the same thing, a huge, oversized skull 33 00:02:08.759 --> 00:02:11.080 ballooning out of a body that looked too frail to 34 00:02:11.159 --> 00:02:14.840 carry it. The eyes glowed orange in the headlights, two 35 00:02:14.919 --> 00:02:17.879 lit coals set into that big smooth head, and there 36 00:02:17.919 --> 00:02:20.759 was nothing else on the face. There was no nose 37 00:02:20.800 --> 00:02:24.680 that he could see, no mouth, no ears, nothing on 38 00:02:24.719 --> 00:02:28.520 that big smooth face but the eyes. The body was 39 00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:31.120 maybe three and a half to four feet tall, and 40 00:02:31.159 --> 00:02:34.319 thin in a way that went past skinny into something else. 41 00:02:35.159 --> 00:02:37.639 The arms and legs were long and spindly, and the 42 00:02:37.680 --> 00:02:40.639 fingers were long, too, wrapped around the rocks of the 43 00:02:40.639 --> 00:02:43.800 wall the way a climber grips a hold. The skin 44 00:02:43.919 --> 00:02:47.759 was hairless, a pale peach or tan color, and Bartlet 45 00:02:47.759 --> 00:02:51.840 said the texture looked rough, like wet sand paper. It 46 00:02:51.879 --> 00:02:54.360 was not walking along the wall so much as creeping 47 00:02:54.400 --> 00:02:59.599 along it carefully, deliberately, its long fingers curling over the stones. 48 00:03:00.479 --> 00:03:03.599 The whole sighting lasted just a few seconds. That's how 49 00:03:03.599 --> 00:03:07.000 these things almost always go. People who've never taken a 50 00:03:07.039 --> 00:03:09.360 witness statement tend to think a few seconds as nothing, 51 00:03:10.120 --> 00:03:12.240 But I can tell you that a few seconds under 52 00:03:12.280 --> 00:03:14.800 headlights at close range is plenty of time for a 53 00:03:14.840 --> 00:03:19.759 person to register size, shape, color, posture, and movement. A 54 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:22.000 person can pull a lot of detail out of a 55 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:25.240 two second event, especially when the thing they're looking at 56 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:29.680 scares them, and Bartlett was definitely scared. He kept driving. 57 00:03:30.280 --> 00:03:33.800 His friends, Mike Mazaka and Andy Brody, had been talking 58 00:03:33.840 --> 00:03:37.560 and looking elsewhere and never saw it. When Bill started 59 00:03:37.560 --> 00:03:39.599 telling them about what had just been on the wall, 60 00:03:40.039 --> 00:03:42.719 they thought he was joking, and when they realized he 61 00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:46.599 wasn't joking, they turned around and drove back. The wall 62 00:03:46.680 --> 00:03:49.360 was empty. Whatever had been there, was gone into the 63 00:03:49.439 --> 00:03:52.719 dark trees behind it. Here's the part of the story 64 00:03:52.719 --> 00:03:56.280 that has always stuck with me. Bartlett drove home shaken, 65 00:03:56.639 --> 00:03:58.719 and his father saw his face when he walked in. 66 00:03:59.479 --> 00:04:01.800 This wasn't a kid running into the house yelling about 67 00:04:01.800 --> 00:04:05.240 a monster to get attention. His dad described him as 68 00:04:05.319 --> 00:04:10.800 visibly upset, pale, rattled, and Bill Bartlett sat down that 69 00:04:10.879 --> 00:04:14.439 same night while it was fresh, and drew what he'd seen. 70 00:04:15.319 --> 00:04:18.000 He was a talented artist even then, and he'd go 71 00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:20.639 on to become a professional painter whose work hangs in 72 00:04:20.720 --> 00:04:25.399 serious galleries. The sketch he made that night survives in 73 00:04:25.480 --> 00:04:27.680 the margin. He wrote a sentence that I think about 74 00:04:27.720 --> 00:04:31.000 a lot because of how young and earnest and defensive 75 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:33.720 it is. He wrote that he swore on a stack 76 00:04:33.759 --> 00:04:37.000 of bibles that he saw that creature. He was seventeen 77 00:04:37.079 --> 00:04:40.879 years old, with no camera, no physical evidence, and no 78 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:43.439 backup from his friends who'd been looking the wrong way, 79 00:04:44.040 --> 00:04:46.519 And all he had to offer the world was a drawing, 80 00:04:47.160 --> 00:04:50.199 a shaken face his father never forgot, and a sentence 81 00:04:50.240 --> 00:04:53.759 begging somebody to believe him. If the story ended there, 82 00:04:53.800 --> 00:04:57.439 it would be a curiosity. One teenager on one dark road, 83 00:04:57.480 --> 00:05:00.639 seeing one weird shape on a wall. But it didn't 84 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:03.160 end there, because a couple of hours later, and about 85 00:05:03.199 --> 00:05:06.160 a mile away, a fifteen year old boy walking home 86 00:05:06.199 --> 00:05:09.399 from his girlfriend's house met the same thing face to face, 87 00:05:10.199 --> 00:05:13.240 and the following night, on a different road, a girl 88 00:05:13.279 --> 00:05:15.879 who'd never spoken to either of those boys saw it 89 00:05:15.920 --> 00:05:20.319 crouched by a bridge. Three sidings across two nights, all 90 00:05:20.360 --> 00:05:24.240 inside roughly two square miles of one of the wealthiest, quietest, 91 00:05:24.319 --> 00:05:28.600 most heavily wooded towns in eastern Massachusetts. That's the case 92 00:05:28.600 --> 00:05:30.800 that came to be called the Dover Demon, and it 93 00:05:30.800 --> 00:05:34.160 has never been explained. Welcome back to the road trip. 94 00:05:34.560 --> 00:05:37.639 This has stopped number twenty one, and we've crossed into Massachusetts, 95 00:05:38.160 --> 00:05:41.079 a state most people don't associate with monsters at all. 96 00:05:41.839 --> 00:05:45.920 They think of Boston, Harvard, the Red Sox, Plymouth, Rock, 97 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:50.319 maybe the Witch Hysteria and Salem. What they don't realize 98 00:05:50.360 --> 00:05:52.879 is that Massachusetts is one of the most densely folk 99 00:05:52.920 --> 00:05:56.040 lord patches of ground in America, and that beneath the 100 00:05:56.079 --> 00:05:59.240 college towns and the commuter rail lines, this state is 101 00:05:59.279 --> 00:06:02.879 still shockingly wooded, still full of swamps and glacial hills 102 00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:06.519 and forgotten hollows and still producing reports of things that 103 00:06:06.560 --> 00:06:10.839 shouldn't exist. Massachusetts is going to give us two stories tonight, 104 00:06:11.079 --> 00:06:13.480 and the shape of this episode is worth laying out 105 00:06:13.519 --> 00:06:16.759 before we get rolling. The first half belongs to the 106 00:06:16.800 --> 00:06:19.439 Dover Demon, which I consider one of the five or 107 00:06:19.519 --> 00:06:23.240 six strongest short window cryptid cases in American history, and 108 00:06:23.319 --> 00:06:26.920 I'll explain exactly why I rank it that high. The 109 00:06:26.959 --> 00:06:29.240 second half is going to take us south and west 110 00:06:29.319 --> 00:06:33.040 into the swamps, because Massachusetts has a sasquatch problem that 111 00:06:33.079 --> 00:06:36.680 almost nobody outside New England talks about. Centered on a 112 00:06:36.759 --> 00:06:40.279 five thousand acre wetland. The Wampanoag people named the place 113 00:06:40.560 --> 00:06:44.480 where the spirits dwell. Locals call it the Hockamock, and 114 00:06:44.519 --> 00:06:46.759 it sits at the heart of a region researchers have 115 00:06:46.800 --> 00:06:50.920 been calling the Bridgewater Triangle for almost fifty years, one 116 00:06:50.959 --> 00:06:55.480 state with two very different monsters and one investigator, a 117 00:06:55.480 --> 00:06:59.040 young researcher named Lauren Coleman, who ended up naming both 118 00:06:59.079 --> 00:07:03.120 the Dover Demon and the Bridgewater Triangle. Dover comes first, 119 00:07:03.319 --> 00:07:06.720 and then we head to the swamp. Dover, Massachusetts sits 120 00:07:06.759 --> 00:07:10.879 about fifteen miles southwest of Boston, and in nineteen seventy seven, 121 00:07:11.160 --> 00:07:13.560 it was what it still is today, one of the 122 00:07:13.639 --> 00:07:16.600 richest small towns in the state, a place of horse 123 00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:20.160 farms and stone walls and old money houses set back 124 00:07:20.199 --> 00:07:24.319 behind trees. The population then was around five thousand people, 125 00:07:24.839 --> 00:07:27.680 and the town was so quiet that the police department's 126 00:07:27.720 --> 00:07:31.240 overnight log mostly consisted of loose dogs and cars parked 127 00:07:31.240 --> 00:07:34.759 where they shouldn't be. That matters for two reasons. The 128 00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:37.519 first is that Dover isn't a place with a monster tradition. 129 00:07:38.399 --> 00:07:41.560 Nobody in Dover was primed to see anything. There was 130 00:07:41.600 --> 00:07:45.000 no legend circulating, no local beast. The kids grew up 131 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:48.279 hearing about no cultural template, waiting for a sighting to 132 00:07:48.319 --> 00:07:51.360 fill it. When the Dover demon showed up, it showed 133 00:07:51.439 --> 00:07:55.399 up in a vacuum, which is unusual. Most cryptid flaps 134 00:07:55.439 --> 00:07:58.319 happen in places that already have a story running, and 135 00:07:58.399 --> 00:08:03.199 skeptics rightly point out that expectation shapes perception. Dover had 136 00:08:03.240 --> 00:08:07.560 no expectation. These kids weren't looking for anything. The second 137 00:08:07.560 --> 00:08:11.639 reason it matters is the terrain. People hear eastern Massachusetts 138 00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:15.079 and picture suburbs, but Dover in the seventies was and 139 00:08:15.199 --> 00:08:18.720 largely still is a town of deep woods, wetlands, and 140 00:08:18.879 --> 00:08:22.360 huge undeveloped parcels cut through by the Charles River and 141 00:08:22.439 --> 00:08:25.560 dotted with places like noah n A woodlands six hundred 142 00:08:25.639 --> 00:08:29.199 acres of forest and old mill ponds. There's more cover 143 00:08:29.279 --> 00:08:31.600 in that town than in plenty of places out west 144 00:08:31.759 --> 00:08:35.919 where nobody would blink at a strange animal report. Whatever 145 00:08:35.960 --> 00:08:39.039 moved through Dover on those two April nights had somewhere 146 00:08:39.039 --> 00:08:42.240 to come from and somewhere to go. So let's go 147 00:08:42.320 --> 00:08:45.440 back to that first night, because Bill Bartlett was only 148 00:08:45.480 --> 00:08:49.559 the beginning. John Baxter was fifteen years old and around midnight, 149 00:08:49.799 --> 00:08:52.000 an hour and a half or so after Bartlett's siding, 150 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:55.639 he was walking home from his girlfriend's house. Her name 151 00:08:55.720 --> 00:08:58.320 was Kathy Cronin, and she lived down at the south 152 00:08:58.440 --> 00:09:01.120 end of Miller's Hill Road, which is about a mile 153 00:09:01.159 --> 00:09:04.360 from where Bartlett saw the creature on the wall. Baxter 154 00:09:04.440 --> 00:09:07.120 had no car, so he was doing what teenagers did 155 00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:10.759 in nineteen seventy seven, hoofing it home alone in the 156 00:09:10.840 --> 00:09:13.759 dark through one of the most wooded stretches of town. 157 00:09:14.639 --> 00:09:16.360 He was walking up the road when he saw a 158 00:09:16.399 --> 00:09:19.759 figure coming toward him. It was short and in the dark. 159 00:09:19.799 --> 00:09:22.519 He assumed it was a kid he knew from the neighborhood, 160 00:09:23.120 --> 00:09:26.200 a boy who was small for his age. Baxter did 161 00:09:26.200 --> 00:09:29.240 the normal thing. He called out to it. He said 162 00:09:29.240 --> 00:09:31.399 the kid's name and asked what he was doing out 163 00:09:31.399 --> 00:09:35.960 this late the figure stopped. Baxter kept walking toward it, 164 00:09:36.279 --> 00:09:39.200 and it stood there in the dark and didn't answer him, 165 00:09:39.240 --> 00:09:42.080 and the distance closed until they were maybe fifteen or 166 00:09:42.120 --> 00:09:46.240 twenty feet apart. Baxter stopped too. He said later that 167 00:09:46.279 --> 00:09:48.720 he couldn't make out a face, just the shape of 168 00:09:48.759 --> 00:09:52.120 it standing in the road, and something about the proportions 169 00:09:52.159 --> 00:09:54.639 of that shape had started ringing alarm bells in the 170 00:09:54.679 --> 00:09:57.440 back of his skull. He asked who it was and 171 00:09:57.480 --> 00:10:00.480 got nothing back but the shape standing there, And when 172 00:10:00.519 --> 00:10:03.240 he took one more step toward it, the figure bolted. 173 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:07.320 It went left off the road down a shallow gully 174 00:10:07.320 --> 00:10:11.440 into the trees, moving fast. And here's where John Baxter 175 00:10:11.519 --> 00:10:14.279 did the thing that separates teenage boys from every other 176 00:10:14.320 --> 00:10:18.399 category of witness in the historical record. He followed it. 177 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:21.480 He scrambled down the slope into the gully after it 178 00:10:21.879 --> 00:10:24.919 crossed the low, wet ground at the bottom, and stopped, 179 00:10:25.399 --> 00:10:27.720 And when he looked up the far slope. The thing 180 00:10:27.840 --> 00:10:30.480 was standing about thirty feet away next to a tree, 181 00:10:30.919 --> 00:10:33.440 and it was looking back at him. The moon gave 182 00:10:33.519 --> 00:10:36.240 him enough light to see the silhouette clearly, and what 183 00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:40.879 he described matches Bartlett's creature in every meaningful particular, even 184 00:10:40.919 --> 00:10:43.840 though Baxter knew nothing about Bartlett and wouldn't hear about 185 00:10:43.840 --> 00:10:47.559 the farm street sighting for days. A large head shaped, 186 00:10:47.679 --> 00:10:51.039 in his words, like a figure eight, the big skull 187 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:55.600 ballooning above a narrow neck, A thin body with long limbs, 188 00:10:56.039 --> 00:10:58.759 long fingers wrapped around the trunk of the tree, and 189 00:10:58.879 --> 00:11:02.279 long toes. And this is the detail that has always 190 00:11:02.279 --> 00:11:05.480 made the hair on my arms stand up, because it's 191 00:11:05.519 --> 00:11:08.000 exactly the kind of thing a hoaxer would never invent, 192 00:11:08.440 --> 00:11:12.240 and a scared kid would never think to add, Baxter said. 193 00:11:12.279 --> 00:11:14.480 Its feet were molded around the top of a rock. 194 00:11:14.960 --> 00:11:17.279 The toes curled over the stone the way your fingers 195 00:11:17.320 --> 00:11:20.480 curl over a railing. The thing gripped the rock with 196 00:11:20.559 --> 00:11:23.159 its feet while it stood there on the slope, holding 197 00:11:23.200 --> 00:11:27.639 the tree, watching him. Baxter stared at it, it stared 198 00:11:27.679 --> 00:11:30.759 at him, and then the fifteen year old Bravado ran 199 00:11:30.799 --> 00:11:33.360 out all at once, and he backed up the gully 200 00:11:33.360 --> 00:11:36.720 with his heart slamming, got to the road and walked fast, 201 00:11:37.360 --> 00:11:40.960 in his words, feeling very uneasy, until a car came along. 202 00:11:41.879 --> 00:11:44.679 A couple driving pass saw a teenager flagging them down 203 00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:47.759 at midnight, looking like he'd seen a ghost, and they 204 00:11:47.799 --> 00:11:49.679 picked him up and drove him the rest of the 205 00:11:49.720 --> 00:11:53.399 way home. That made two sightings in one night, a 206 00:11:53.440 --> 00:11:56.639 mile apart from two teenage boys who hadn't spoken to 207 00:11:56.679 --> 00:12:01.200 each other describing the same impossible animal. And the next 208 00:12:01.279 --> 00:12:06.480 night it happened again. April twenty second, nineteen seventy seven, 209 00:12:06.720 --> 00:12:11.279 a little after midnight, Abby Brabham, fifteen years old, was 210 00:12:11.360 --> 00:12:14.440 riding in a car driven by Will Tainter, who was eighteen. 211 00:12:15.320 --> 00:12:18.080 They were on Springdale Avenue, a couple of miles from 212 00:12:18.120 --> 00:12:22.559 the first two sidings, heading toward Abbey's house. Springdale runs 213 00:12:22.600 --> 00:12:25.480 through low wet ground out there, and it crosses a 214 00:12:25.519 --> 00:12:28.320 little bridge over a brook, and as the headlights came 215 00:12:28.399 --> 00:12:31.120 up on that bridge, Abby saw something crouched on the 216 00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:34.039 left side of the road. It was down on all fours, 217 00:12:34.480 --> 00:12:36.480 low to the pavement at the edge of the bridge, 218 00:12:36.759 --> 00:12:40.679 and her first thought, like Bartlet's, reached for something normal. 219 00:12:41.360 --> 00:12:44.919 Her mind offered up a large dog maybe, or some 220 00:12:45.120 --> 00:12:48.440 animal hunched over. Then the headlights hit it square and 221 00:12:48.480 --> 00:12:52.519 the normal explanations died. The body was thin and hairless, 222 00:12:52.960 --> 00:12:57.600 tan colored, with that same oversized head, no tail, and 223 00:12:57.639 --> 00:13:00.639 she was specific about that because Aille would have given 224 00:13:00.639 --> 00:13:02.919 her somewhere to put the thing in her mental catalog 225 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:05.840 of animals. And there was no tale to be found, 226 00:13:06.679 --> 00:13:10.639 and the eyes glowed. But where Bill Bartlett had seen orange, 227 00:13:10.879 --> 00:13:14.679 Abby Brabham saw green, two bright green points of light 228 00:13:14.759 --> 00:13:17.919 in the headlights, and the thing didn't run. It just 229 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:20.720 crouched there by the bridge as the car passed, and 230 00:13:20.759 --> 00:13:23.840 she watched it until it slid out of view behind them. 231 00:13:24.080 --> 00:13:26.320 She was frightened enough that she was still upset when 232 00:13:26.360 --> 00:13:30.000 she got home. Will caught only a glimpse, a fraction 233 00:13:30.120 --> 00:13:32.919 of a second of something tan and crouched with a 234 00:13:32.919 --> 00:13:35.960 big head. But what little he did see matched what 235 00:13:36.039 --> 00:13:39.720 Abby described. Skeptics have tried to point to that eye 236 00:13:39.720 --> 00:13:44.799 colored discrepancy as evidence against the case, but honestly, I 237 00:13:44.840 --> 00:13:47.279 think it does the opposite of what they wanted to do. 238 00:13:48.200 --> 00:13:52.799 When investigators later interviewed these witnesses separately without letting them 239 00:13:52.840 --> 00:13:56.120 compare notes, somebody told Abby Brabham that the boy who 240 00:13:56.120 --> 00:13:59.720 saw it the night before described orange eyes. This is 241 00:13:59.759 --> 00:14:03.480 a classic interview pressure point. A witness who is making 242 00:14:03.519 --> 00:14:06.799 it up or a witness who is unconsciously conforming her 243 00:14:06.840 --> 00:14:12.360 story to someone else's folds right there. She says something like, well, 244 00:14:12.679 --> 00:14:16.440 I mean maybe they were orange. It was dark. I 245 00:14:16.559 --> 00:14:20.720 was scared I could be wrong. I've watched that exact 246 00:14:20.759 --> 00:14:23.440 thing happen across an interview table more times than I 247 00:14:23.480 --> 00:14:29.279 can count. People want their stories to match. Agreement feels safe. 248 00:14:29.399 --> 00:14:33.360 Abby Brabham didn't fold. She dug in. She said the 249 00:14:33.399 --> 00:14:36.240 eyes she saw were green, and she held that line 250 00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:39.159 under direct challenge and she never budged on it for 251 00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:42.639 the rest of her life. That isn't what fabrication looks like. 252 00:14:43.080 --> 00:14:48.320 Fabrication converges. Honest witnesses diverge on the small stuff because 253 00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:51.879 they're each reporting their own imperfect slice of a real event, 254 00:14:52.360 --> 00:14:57.480 filtered through different angles, different light, different headlights, different frightened 255 00:14:57.480 --> 00:15:01.799 teenage nervous systems stay tuned from more back woods bigfoot stories. 256 00:15:02.120 --> 00:15:06.679 We'll be back after these messages. A pair of glowing 257 00:15:06.720 --> 00:15:09.559 eyes can read differently depending on the angle of reflection 258 00:15:09.960 --> 00:15:12.960 and the light source hitting them, and anyone who's caught 259 00:15:13.039 --> 00:15:16.279 animal eyeshine on a trail camera knows the same animal 260 00:15:16.320 --> 00:15:20.080 can throw back orange, green, or white, depending on the geometry. 261 00:15:20.840 --> 00:15:23.960 Four witnesses and three sightings, twenty five and a half 262 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:27.679 hours from start to finish, and then nothing. The Dover 263 00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:30.519 Demon appeared on the night of April twenty first, was 264 00:15:30.559 --> 00:15:34.480 seen twice more, and was never credibly reported again, at 265 00:15:34.559 --> 00:15:37.279 least not on the record. It came out of nowhere, 266 00:15:37.679 --> 00:15:40.679 crossed the paths of four teenagers in one small patch 267 00:15:40.720 --> 00:15:43.519 of one small town, and vanished off the face of 268 00:15:43.519 --> 00:15:46.919 the earth. Now here's where this case separates itself from 269 00:15:47.039 --> 00:15:49.759 ninety percent of the stories we cover on this road trip, 270 00:15:50.159 --> 00:15:54.320 because the Dover Demon got investigated fast by serious people 271 00:15:54.679 --> 00:15:57.879 while the trail was still warm. Word of the sighting 272 00:15:57.919 --> 00:16:01.200 spread through the town's teenagers first, and within days it 273 00:16:01.240 --> 00:16:04.759 reached a then young researcher named Lauren Coleman, who happened 274 00:16:04.759 --> 00:16:07.360 to be living in the area. Coleman would go on 275 00:16:07.480 --> 00:16:11.480 to become probably the most famous cryptozoologist in America, the 276 00:16:11.519 --> 00:16:16.200 man who founded the International Cryptozoology Museum up in Portland, Maine. 277 00:16:16.240 --> 00:16:19.080 But in nineteen seventy seven, He was a young investigator 278 00:16:19.120 --> 00:16:23.200 with a background in social work and psychiatric research, which meant, 279 00:16:23.360 --> 00:16:25.879 whatever you think of his conclusions, that he knew how 280 00:16:25.879 --> 00:16:31.279 to interview people. Coleman pulled in help two experienced investigators 281 00:16:31.320 --> 00:16:35.039 from the UFO research world, Joseph Nyman and Ed Fogg, 282 00:16:35.440 --> 00:16:38.240 and Walter Webb, who was the assistant director of the 283 00:16:38.279 --> 00:16:42.799 Hayden Planetarium in Boston, a hard nosed scientific type who'd 284 00:16:42.799 --> 00:16:47.559 spent years politely dismantling flying saucer reports. This wasn't a 285 00:16:47.600 --> 00:16:50.600 team of true believers looking for a monster. This was 286 00:16:50.639 --> 00:16:55.320 a team that included professional debunkers. They interviewed the witnesses separately. 287 00:16:55.879 --> 00:16:58.960 They had them draw the creature independently. They talked to 288 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:01.840 the parents, the teacher, there's the police, and the file 289 00:17:01.919 --> 00:17:04.559 they assembled is the reason this case still stands up 290 00:17:04.640 --> 00:17:09.880 half a century later. The independent drawings matched big, bulbous head, 291 00:17:10.240 --> 00:17:15.279 thin neck, spindly limbs, long digits, no facial features except 292 00:17:15.279 --> 00:17:19.880 the eyes. Kids who hadn't compared notes produced the same anatomy. 293 00:17:20.440 --> 00:17:23.839 The character references were unanimous, and I mean unanimous in 294 00:17:23.880 --> 00:17:27.599 a way you almost never get. The Dover police chief, 295 00:17:27.839 --> 00:17:31.640 a man named Carl Sheridan, knew Bill Bartlett personally and 296 00:17:31.680 --> 00:17:34.759 called him a reliable witness, a good kid from a 297 00:17:34.799 --> 00:17:38.440 solid family. Teachers at the high school vouched for Baxter 298 00:17:38.519 --> 00:17:42.759 and Brabham. Bartlett's own father, a respected member of the community, 299 00:17:43.039 --> 00:17:46.640 put his credibility behind his son's story and never wavered. 300 00:17:47.519 --> 00:17:50.519 In a town that's small and that wealthy, where reputation 301 00:17:50.680 --> 00:17:54.839 was currency, four teenagers stapled their names to a monster siding, 302 00:17:55.119 --> 00:17:58.799 and their whole adult community stood behind their honesty, even 303 00:17:58.839 --> 00:18:01.680 while scratching their head about what they saw and the 304 00:18:01.720 --> 00:18:07.720 timeline held. Investigators walked the locations, checked, the distances checked, 305 00:18:07.720 --> 00:18:11.559 the sight lines, checked, the light conditions. Nothing in the 306 00:18:11.599 --> 00:18:16.240 physical geography contradicted any of the accounts. The gully Baxter 307 00:18:16.359 --> 00:18:19.119 described as real and where he said it was. The 308 00:18:19.160 --> 00:18:22.160 wall on Farm Street is real, The bridge on Springdale 309 00:18:22.200 --> 00:18:26.200 Avenue is real. Coleman gave the thing its name, borrowing 310 00:18:26.240 --> 00:18:28.799 the demon from a note a police officer had scribbled, 311 00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:32.160 and the Dover Demon entered the record. The Boston Papers 312 00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:35.279 picked it up, then the wire services, and for a 313 00:18:35.279 --> 00:18:38.200 few weeks in the spring of nineteen seventy seven, a 314 00:18:38.240 --> 00:18:41.839 town that prided itself on nothing ever happening was fielding 315 00:18:41.880 --> 00:18:45.680 calls from reporters around the world. Then the noise died 316 00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:49.079 down and the witnesses went on with their lives, and 317 00:18:49.119 --> 00:18:52.680 not one of them ever cashed in. Bill Bartlett became 318 00:18:52.720 --> 00:18:56.720 a successful professional artist, his paintings sell and real galleries 319 00:18:56.759 --> 00:19:00.640 for real money. For decades, interviewers have tracked down every 320 00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:03.720 few years to ask about the creature, and his answer 321 00:19:03.759 --> 00:19:06.119 has stayed the same, and his tone has stayed the same. 322 00:19:06.920 --> 00:19:09.279 He saw it, he can't tell you what it was. 323 00:19:10.039 --> 00:19:12.160 He's a little tired of being the Dover Demon guy 324 00:19:12.200 --> 00:19:14.400 when he'd rather be known for his art. And he 325 00:19:14.480 --> 00:19:16.119 said more than once that if he could take that 326 00:19:16.240 --> 00:19:19.440 night back and just be a painter, he might. That 327 00:19:19.559 --> 00:19:23.240 isn't the posture of a man protecting a profitable lie. 328 00:19:23.279 --> 00:19:26.279 There was never a book, never a movie deal, never 329 00:19:26.319 --> 00:19:29.359 a Dover Demon festival. With Bartlett selling autographs at a 330 00:19:29.359 --> 00:19:35.039 folding table. Four witnesses across fifty years collected exactly zero dollars. 331 00:19:35.759 --> 00:19:41.079 People lie for reasons, and the big four are money, attention, status, 332 00:19:41.200 --> 00:19:45.119 and escape. Strip All four away. Watch the story stay 333 00:19:45.200 --> 00:19:48.839 stable across five decades and four separate mouths, and what 334 00:19:48.880 --> 00:19:52.920 you're left with is the most uncomfortable conclusion available, which 335 00:19:53.000 --> 00:19:56.519 is that these kids told the truth about what they experienced. 336 00:19:57.319 --> 00:20:00.519 So the honest question isn't whether they saw something. The 337 00:20:00.559 --> 00:20:03.720 honest question is what they saw and the answer to 338 00:20:03.759 --> 00:20:07.880 that question is that nobody knows. After fifty years of 339 00:20:07.880 --> 00:20:10.799 people trying to file this thing under known animals and 340 00:20:10.839 --> 00:20:14.079 teenage pranks, none of it has ever stuck to the case, 341 00:20:14.640 --> 00:20:17.039 and I'm not going to waste your time relitigating it. 342 00:20:17.519 --> 00:20:21.119 The witnesses were solid, the investigation was solid, and the 343 00:20:21.160 --> 00:20:25.799 creature fits nothing in the catalog. That's the file. I'd 344 00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:28.599 rather spend our remaining time in Dover on what happened after, 345 00:20:29.079 --> 00:20:31.640 because the afterlife of this case is a story all 346 00:20:31.680 --> 00:20:36.480 by itself. The papers came first, the local coverage went regional, 347 00:20:36.880 --> 00:20:39.920 The regional coverage hit the wire services, and within weeks, 348 00:20:40.160 --> 00:20:42.839 a town of five thousand people that prided itself on 349 00:20:42.920 --> 00:20:46.880 nothing ever happening was fielding calls from reporters on other continents. 350 00:20:47.519 --> 00:20:51.160 The town mostly hated it. Dover was and is a 351 00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:54.759 place of old money and quiet reputations, and having your 352 00:20:54.799 --> 00:20:57.599 zip code attached to a monster was not the kind 353 00:20:57.599 --> 00:21:02.759 of press anybody there wanted. Officials answered questions. Politely, residents 354 00:21:02.799 --> 00:21:05.680 rolled their eyes for the cameras, and everyone waited for 355 00:21:05.720 --> 00:21:09.200 it to blow over. It never blew over, It just 356 00:21:09.319 --> 00:21:13.519 changed shape. The dover demon settled into the town's bloodstream, 357 00:21:13.559 --> 00:21:16.920 the way these things do, half embarrassment and half mascot. 358 00:21:17.799 --> 00:21:19.960 The high school senior started painting it on the big 359 00:21:20.079 --> 00:21:23.839 rock in town, and the tradition stuck for years. Kids 360 00:21:23.920 --> 00:21:26.960 dared each other to walk Farm Street at night out 361 00:21:27.000 --> 00:21:30.920 of town. Cousins made spooky noises at Thanksgiving. Every round 362 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:34.799 numbered anniversary, a Boston reporter would drive out, take a 363 00:21:34.799 --> 00:21:37.519 picture of the stone wall and track down the witnesses 364 00:21:37.599 --> 00:21:40.440 to ask if they still stood by it, And every 365 00:21:40.519 --> 00:21:44.440 round numbered anniversary, the answer came back the same. They 366 00:21:44.440 --> 00:21:48.519 stood by it. Baxter stood by it. Brabham held her 367 00:21:48.559 --> 00:21:52.599 green eyes to the end. Bartlett, the reluctant one, kept 368 00:21:52.599 --> 00:21:55.559 telling interviewers the same two things in the same tired tone, 369 00:21:56.160 --> 00:21:58.759 that he saw exactly what he said he saw, and 370 00:21:58.799 --> 00:22:01.640 that he'd be perfectly happy never talking about it again. 371 00:22:02.400 --> 00:22:05.400 And then the case did something almost no American cryptid 372 00:22:05.440 --> 00:22:09.400 has ever done. It went international, and I mean genuinely 373 00:22:09.440 --> 00:22:14.279 international in the strangest possible direction. The Dover Demon became 374 00:22:14.359 --> 00:22:18.400 famous in Japan. I'm not entirely sure anyone can explain why, 375 00:22:18.920 --> 00:22:22.839 but somewhere in the eighties and nineties, Japanese paranormal publishing 376 00:22:22.920 --> 00:22:25.680 fell in love with this case, and the creature started 377 00:22:25.680 --> 00:22:30.640 showing up in their monster encyclopedias alongside their own homegrown spirits, 378 00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:33.680 and toy companies made figures of it, and it worked 379 00:22:33.680 --> 00:22:36.640 its way into manga and video games, and to this 380 00:22:36.839 --> 00:22:38.839 day there are people on the other side of the 381 00:22:38.839 --> 00:22:41.480 planet who know the name of a stone wall in 382 00:22:41.519 --> 00:22:44.720 a small Massachusetts town because of what a seventeen year 383 00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:48.240 old said he saw there one April night. Bartlett has 384 00:22:48.279 --> 00:22:51.119 talked about opening mail from Japanese fans with a kind 385 00:22:51.119 --> 00:22:54.680 of baffled resignation. A painter in New England whose most 386 00:22:54.720 --> 00:22:56.960 famous image is a pencil sketch he made at his 387 00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:00.640 parents' kitchen table while his hands were still shaking. That 388 00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:04.559 sketch survived, by the way the original drawings from that 389 00:23:04.599 --> 00:23:07.880 week ended up preserved through Lorn Coleman, and material from 390 00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:12.200 the case sits today in his International Cryptozoology Museum up 391 00:23:12.200 --> 00:23:15.119 in Portland, Maine, where the Dover Demon holds a place 392 00:23:15.119 --> 00:23:17.559 of honor. As one of the crown jewels of the 393 00:23:17.559 --> 00:23:22.079 whole field. Coleman has investigated strange reports for sixty years 394 00:23:22.079 --> 00:23:25.000 on every continent that produces them, and when he ranks 395 00:23:25.039 --> 00:23:27.920 his own career, this little twenty six hour case from 396 00:23:27.920 --> 00:23:30.960 a wealthy Boston suburb sits at or near the top 397 00:23:31.039 --> 00:23:34.160 of the list of things he can't explain. He interviewed 398 00:23:34.160 --> 00:23:38.240 those kids himself days after it happened, with professional skeptics 399 00:23:38.240 --> 00:23:41.200 beside him, and he walked away convinced, and he has 400 00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:44.680 stayed convinced for half a century. Here's the part I 401 00:23:44.720 --> 00:23:48.480