August 21–22, 1955 — Hopkinsville, KY
About 7:00 p.m. Billy Ray Taylor goes into the backyard of the Elmer “Lucky” Sutton farmhouse 7 miles north of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and sees a bright object come from the south-southwest, pass over, and descend into a gully about 500 feet north and about 35-40 feet lower elevation. Glennie Lankford and 6 other adults (Elmer Sutton, Vera Sutton, John Charley Sutton, Alene Sutton, June Taylor, O. P. Baker) plus 3 children (Charlton, Lonnie, and Mary Lankford), see several gremlin-like creatures float down from trees and approach the house from the dark. They are about 3 feet high with roundish heads, elephantine ears, slit-like mouths extending ear to ear, huge and wide-set eyes, no visible necks, and long arms ending in clawed hands. They wear glowing silver clothing. When they run, they drop on all fours. When one of them approaches the house, Sutton and Taylor fire shotguns through the window screen, scoring a direct hit. The creature is knocked over, but gets up and scuttles off. Taylor walks out the door and one of the creatures grabs at his head. This activity continues the greater part of the night and includes heavy gunfire at times. Sutton fires point blank at it, knocking it from the roof, but it just “floats down.” At about 11:00 p.m. they run out of ammunition, and the entire group flees in terror in two cars and drives at high speed into Hopkinsville to report the incident to the police. A state patrolman leaves the Shady Oaks restaurant 3 miles north of Hopkinsville in a car to respond to the call and sees several meteor-like objects streaking over him sounding like artillery fire. He sees two in a series looking like meteors coming from the southwest, headed towards Kelly from the direction of Fort Campbell, a US Army installation. City, county, state, and military police and reporters drive out to the Sutton farm to investigate from 11:30 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. The UFO entities return at about 2:30 a.m. Glennie Lankford is trying to get to sleep when she sees one outside her window stretching its claw-like hands up to the screen. Elmer Sutton again shoots at them without effect. The last one is seen at about 5:15 a.m. Clark writes that investigations by “police, Air Force officers from nearby Fort Campbell, and civilian ufologists found no evidence of a hoax”; however, Brian Dunning reports that “the claim that Air Force investigators showed up the next day at Mrs. Lankford’s house has been published a number of times by later authors, but I could find no corroborating evidence of this.” Dunning also observes that “the four military police who accompanied the police officers on the night of the event were from an Army base, not an Air Force base.” Skeptic Joe Nickell notes that the family could have misidentified great horned owls, which are nocturnal, fly silently, have yellow eyes, and aggressively defend their nests. He thinks Taylor and Sutton were drinking heavily. Meteor sightings also occurred at the time that could explain Billy Ray Taylor’s claim that he saw “a bright light streak across the sky and disappear beyond a tree line some distance from the house.” [Eberhart]
Sketches/Illustrations:
Ledwith Report/Sketches:
Sources:
“Story of Space-ship, 12 Little Men Probed Today,” Kentucky New Era, August 22, 1955, p. 1;
“Little Green Men Harass Kentucky Farm Family,” Waco (Tex.) News-Tribune, August 23, 1955, pp. 1, 8;
“The Controversial Little Green Men and the Tingling Facts,” CRIFO Orbit 2, no. 6 (September 2, 1955): 3–4;
Leonard H. Stringfield, Inside Saucer Post…3–0 Blue, CRIFO, 1957, pp. 63–69;
J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 172–178;
“The Close Encounter of the Third Kind at Kelly Re-examined,” IUR 3, no. 5 (May 1978): 4–6;
Ronald Story, The Encyclopedia of UFOs, pp. 190–192;
Kim Hansen, “UFO Casebook,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 53–56;
Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1955 July–September 15th, The Author, 1992, pp. 54–75;
John W Coates, “News and Views: Kelly Case Reconsidered,” MUFON UFO Journal 299 (March 1993): 15–16;
Patrick Huyghe and Dennis Stacy, The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials, pp. 84-85;
Kevin Randle and Russ Estes, Faces of the Visitors, pp. 30-36;
Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1955 July–September 15th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2002, pp. 18–36;
https://sohp.us/collections/ufos-a-history/pdf/GROSS-1955-July-Sept-15-SN.pdf
Michele Carlton, “Children of Kelly witness firmly believe their father shot at entities,” MUFON UFO Journal (February 2003): 9-10;
Joe Nickell, “Siege of ‘Little Green Men’: The 1955 Kelly, Kentucky, Incident,” Skeptical Inquirer 30, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 2006);
Brad Sparks, Blue Book Unknowns Catalogue, Case 1145, p. 230;
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 3rd Ed., pp. 642–643;
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 4th Ed., pp. 717–719;
Greg Eghigian, After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon. Oxford University, 2024, pp. 150–155;
Wikipedia, “Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter”;
Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher, Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of 1955, CUFOS, 1978;
Brian Dunning, “The Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter,” Skeptoid podcast no. 331, October 9, 2012;
Patrick Gross, “The Kelly-Hopkinsville Case, 1955”;
“The Kelly-Hopkinsville Incident - An Historical Review” by Karal Ayn Barnett, 1998.
Jacqueline Sanders, “Panic in Kentucky,” in Gray Barker ed., The Saucerian Review, Gray Barker, 1956, pp. 19–23; [Missing 18-19, but doesn’t seem to be missing anything starting on page 20]
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/casefiles/matthewriot/TheSaucerianReviewGrayBarker.pdf#page=18
“The Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter | Documentary,” Fire of Learning YouTube channel, October 20, 2020;
Project Blue Book episode “Hopkinsville”, Aired February 11, 2020:
Charles Fort Institute Forums, “Kelly / Hopkinsville (Kentucky) ‘Goblins’ Incident (1955)”;
Rodney Schmaltz and Scott O. Lilienfeld, “Hauntings, Homeopathy, and the Hopkinsville Goblins: Using Pseudoscience to Teach Scientific Thinking,” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014): 336ff.; doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00336
Robert Bartholomew Ph.D, “Australian Family Suffer Bizarre Shared Delusion,” Psychology Today.
