Hopkinsville GoblinThe Kelly Visitors
On the night of 21 August 1955, eleven people at a farmhouse near Kelly, Kentucky, reported a hours-long siege by small, silver, large-eared creatures that floated, climbed the roof and shrugged off shotgun blasts. The case gave American English the phrase 'little green men' and remains one of the most detailed multi-witness reports on record.
At a glance
- Home system
- Unknown
- Avg. height
- 2′6″ – 3′6″
- Appearance
- Small, silver-grey, huge ears, glowing eyes, long arms
- Reported lifespan
- Unknown
- Social structure
- Unknown
- Technology
- Unknown
- Primary traits
- Curious, agile, seemingly unharmed by gunfire
- Relationship to Earth
- One night's siege of a Kentucky farmhouse in 1955
Physical profile
The Sutton family and their guests described creatures about three and a half feet tall with oversized heads, huge pointed ears, glowing yellow eyes set wide apart, thin bodies, long arms ending in clawed hands, and a silver or metallic sheen to the skin, which some said looked like it was lit from within. The creatures floated rather than walked, drifting to the ground when hit by shotgun blasts and then rising again unharmed, and made a sound the witnesses compared to bullets hitting a metal bucket.
Reported origin
Nothing is known or claimed. A bright object was seen descending into a gully earlier that evening by one of the witnesses, and that is the only origin the case offers.
Culture
The creatures appeared curious rather than aggressive: peering through windows, climbing onto the roof, reaching down from the eaves. They never entered the house and never harmed anyone.
Technology
None described beyond the object seen landing.
Craft
A bright, silent object that Billy Ray Taylor said he watched land in a gully near the farm around seven in the evening.
Communication
None. The creatures made no sound except the metallic noise when shot.
Earth encounters
On the night of 21 August 1955, near the hamlet of Kelly outside Hopkinsville, Kentucky, the Sutton family, their relatives and a visiting couple, eleven people in all, said the creatures besieged their farmhouse for several hours. The men fired shotguns and a rifle at them repeatedly. Around eleven the family drove to the Hopkinsville police station, and more than twenty officers, state troopers and military police searched the farm. They found no creatures, but reported that the family was genuinely terrified and noted the shot-out window screens. The creatures were said to return after the police left, before dawn.
The case was investigated by the Air Force's Project Blue Book, which filed it as a hoax without interviewing the witnesses, and later by civilian researchers who interviewed them extensively. The witnesses never sought money and stuck to their accounts for life. The sceptical explanation, proposed in detail by the researcher Joe Nickell in 2006, is a pair of great horned owls, which are large, aggressive when defending nests, have glowing eyes in lamplight and prominent ear tufts, seen by people who had, by some accounts, been drinking.
Lore & history
A newspaper headline about the case referred to 'little green men', although the witnesses said silver, and the phrase entered the language. Kelly holds an annual festival. XenoAtlas lists the Hopkinsville Goblin as reported and folkloric: a detailed, multi-witness, unresolved account.
Encounters on record
Source notes
- Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter · encyclopedic summary
XenoAtlas documents extraterrestrial concepts appearing in mythology, contactee literature, popular culture, speculative accounts, and related sources. Inclusion does not constitute scientific verification.
Related species
See every type in the Types of Aliens guide.