In April of 1977, several teens witness a strange creature in the woods around the small town of Dover, Massachusetts.

It was not a dog or a cat. It had no tail. It had an egg-shaped head. It looked like a baby’s body with long arms and legs. It had a big head about the same size as the body, it was sort of melon shaped.

Despite being seen by fewer than ten people over the course of one evening, the so-called Dover Demon has become one of the best known Cryptids in all of New England. Heck, I wrote about it on the 40th anniversary of the sightings… (and though I see I never finished my comments… oh dear)

The reason for the “Demon’s” celebrity in no small part can be traced to the cryptozoologist Loren Coleman who investigated the case at the time and has written about it several times since. He was even the person who coined the name of the creature. His investigation of the creature, along with a team of UFO investigators, generated much of the publicity that sustained the thing’s reputations decades later. It is even on the cover of his book Massachusetts Monsters. Few monsters have ever had a better de facto press agent.

Many have offered explanations for the thing – alien, fairy, demon, an Mannegishi or other Native American legend of “little people”, or even a Melon Head moved over a state.

I have my own theory, but it isn’t as exciting as demons or goblins.