What happened
Around 7 pm on a hot Sunday, visitor Billy Ray Taylor came in from the well at the Sutton family's rural farmhouse near Kelly, Kentucky, saying he had seen a shining craft with a rainbow-coloured exhaust drop into a gully. The family laughed. An hour later the dog's barking drew Taylor and Lucky Sutton to the door, where they said a small glowing figure, about three and a half feet tall, with a huge round head, long arms, talon-like hands and large yellow eyes, came toward the house with its hands raised. They shot at it with a shotgun and a .22; it flipped over and scurried away. For hours, they said, similar silvery creatures appeared at windows, on the roof and in a tree, seemingly unhurt by gunfire. At about 11 pm the whole household fled to the Hopkinsville police station. Police chief Russell Greenwell said they were genuinely terrified, and one man's pulse was measured at 140. Officers, state troopers and military police from Fort Campbell searched the farm.
The official explanation
The search found broken windows and holes in screens consistent with the gunfire, but nothing else. Investigator Joe Nickell and writer Brian Dunning argue the family most likely fought off great horned owls, which are about two feet tall, have yellow eyes, fly silently and defend nests aggressively; meteor activity could explain Taylor's light. Psychologists Rodney Schmaltz and Scott Lilienfeld use the case to teach critical thinking. The Air Force file classified it as a fabrication without explanation.
The anomalous case
Eleven or so people, adults and children, told a consistent story that night and stuck to it. Police chief Russell Greenwell, as quoted by History.com, said these were not people who ran to the police for help; they reached for their guns, yet they arrived terrified. Contemporary reports said officials agreed no drinking was involved. Ufologist Jerome Clark notes a luminous patch on a fence where a figure was shot, and an unexplained green light in the woods. Isabel Davis's detailed 1950s investigation recorded Glennie Lankford's description of a shimmering metallic figure. Ufologist Allan Hendry noted the case stands out for its duration and number of witnesses. No one ever profited, and the family left the farm rather than seek publicity. Blue Book never published an investigation to support its label.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- Project BLUE BOOK records (National Archives, microfilm T-1206) official, archives.gov
Sources
- Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter Wikipedia
- The 'Little Green Men' Craze Began With a Bizarre 1955 Encounter (Volker Janssen) History.com, A&E Television Networks
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.