17-year-old William “Bill” Bartlett claimed that while driving on April 21, 1977, he saw an alien-like creature “with tendril-like fingers” and glowing eyes on top of a broken stone wall on Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts. 15-year-old John Baxter reported seeing a similar creature on Miller Hill Road the same evening. Another 15-year-old, Abby Brabham, claimed to have seen the creature the following night 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 a local news report, “the locations of the sightings, plotted on a map, lay in a straight line over 2 miles [3.2 km]”. The sightings were not made public until the first half of May. At that time, a local “investigator of unexplained phenomenon” noted similarities to creatures in the Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter of 1955. While no witness reported seeing a UFO, the sightings were also investigated by the Mutual UFO Network and associated groups, given the descriptions of the creature.