The Kelly–Hopkinsville Encounter
Eleven people at a farmhouse said small silver creatures with huge ears and glowing eyes besieged them for hours, floating and shrugging off gunfire. Police found a terrified family and shot-out screens, and nothing else.
- Date
- 21–22 August 1955
- Place
- Kelly, near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, USA
- Witnesses
- The Sutton family and guests, eleven people
- Status
- Disputed
What happened
Around seven in the evening, Billy Ray Taylor, a visitor at the Sutton farmhouse, went out to the well and came back saying he had seen a bright object land in a gully. An hour later a small glowing creature approached the house and the men opened fire. Over the next hours, the family said, the creatures appeared at windows, on the roof and in trees, always retreating when shot and always returning. One was knocked off the roof and floated to the ground. At about eleven the whole household drove to Hopkinsville police station.
Police, state troopers and military police searched the property and found nothing but the damage from the family's own shooting. After they left, the creatures were said to return until dawn.
The beings
Around three and a half feet tall, thin, with large heads, huge pointed ears, glowing yellow eyes, long arms with clawed hands and silvery skin that seemed lit from within. They floated rather than walked and made a metallic sound when hit. The description has no parallel in the literature, and the case's creature is catalogued here as the Hopkinsville Goblin.
Aftermath
Local and national newspapers covered the story within days; one headline's 'little green men' entered the language. The Suttons were mocked and never sought money. Project Blue Book marked the case a hoax without visiting. Civilian investigators interviewed the witnesses over the following years and found them consistent. Kelly holds a Little Green Men Days festival each August.
Explanations
Joe Nickell's 2006 analysis proposes great horned owls: large, territorial, active at night, with prominent ear tufts, reflective eyes and a habit of attacking when defending a nest, seen by excited people in lamplight who may have been drinking. The floating and the resistance to shotgun blasts are harder to fit, and the family always rejected the owl theory.
