#unexplainedhistory

On the night of August 21st 1955 Sheriff Russell Greenwell was working in the police department for the tiny town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky when the night took a sharp turn into bizarre territory. Multiple adults and children stormed into the building highly distressed and saying they needed Greenwell’s help. One of the adults, Billy Ray Taylor, had a racing pulse twice the normal resting rate and the children were completely hysterical. All of them were known in town as very level-headed people. There was no trace of alcohol on anyone and they were a family who took care of themselves, preferring to involve their shotguns rather than the police. What they told Greenwell was that they had spent the last several hours defending their home from attackers, but these attackers were not of this world.

The Sutton Farm was located in nearby Kelly, Kentucky and was the home of  Glennie Lankford, her young children Lonnie, Charlton, and Mary, her older sons Elmer "Lucky" Sutton and John Charley "J.C." Sutton, Lucky’s wife Vera, J.C.’s wife Arlene, and Arlene’s brother. Lucky Sutton was home with his family after his last stint with a traveling carnival and his friends Billy Ray Taylor and his wife took the opportunity to stop in and visit everyone. It was a hot Sunday night and at approximately 7pm Billy Ray went to get some water from the well in the backyard when he saw something he could not explain. When he returned to the house he told everyone that he just witnessed a large silver object smoothly traveling through the sky before it went over the house and dropped silently to the ground somewhere in the distance. He was laughed at and the night continued on.

Location of Kelly, Kentucky. Image via wikipedia.org.

The calm did not last long. One hour after Billy Ray’s sighting the Sutton’s dog began to bark incessantly at the back door. When Lucky and Billy Ray went to go see what was going on in the yard they found themselves staring at a glowing light hovering around a three and a half foot tall creature that shimmered like metal with an “oversized head…almost perfectly round, [its] arms extended almost to the ground, [its] hands had talons…and [its oversized] eyes glowed with a yellowish light.”

Frantic and terrified, Billy Ray and Lucky grabbed their shotguns and prepared to  fire on the creatures with Glennie and the children watching in bewilderment. Glennie had lived on the property for decades without incident but the commotion coming from the two men concerned her and she sent her younger children to bed before they could get too upset over the outlandish claims coming from Billy Ray and Lucky. Was it a prank? She pressed the two for an explanation but there wasn’t time for any answers. A small glowing figure began to approach the house and for the first time that night shots rang out. The creature raised its arms and did a “flip” before disappearing into the darkness. It was only the beginning of their night.

According to the Sutton family and friends, over the next few hours they found themselves under attack from the little creatures that they could not explain. While hiding inside the home one pressed its face against a window and again flipped out of sight totally unfazed when bullets took out the screen. In a later interview Glennie recalled hiding in a hallway with Billy Ray when they saw one of the beings approaching the back door. She was overcome with shock and fell backwards before her sons carried her into a bedroom. She later stated that “It looked like a five-gallon gasoline can with a head on top and small legs. It was a shimmering bright metal like on my refrigerator.”  At one point during the night Billy Ray stepped outside onto a porch where his head was covered by a small overhanging roof. By now the entire family was on alert and they were horrified to see what they described as a claw-like hand reaching down from the roof to grab Billy Ray’s hair from above. The screams cut through the night and Billy Ray was pulled back inside while Lucky ran out and began shooting toward the roof. More than one person reported seeing another small glowing creature jump down and charge into the woods.

Newspaper article showing the roof where one of the creatures reached for Billy Ray Taylor. Image via https://www.kentuckynewera.com/

For several hours the entire group remained huddled in the house listening to something scratching on the roof and waiting for the unimaginable. Finally, at approximately 11pm they all ran outside, leapt into their cars, and raced to the Hopkinsville police department.

As outlandish as their story sounded, Sheriff Greenwell could not ignore what he was hearing and he decided to go investigate. But, he was not going alone. When the team arrived back at the Sutton farm it included Greenwell, the state police, members of the military police from nearby Fort Campbell, and a photographer from the Kentucky New Era. While searching the premises they found casings from Billy Ray and Lucky’s guns but absolutely no other evidence to suggest anything had happened on the farm that night. Each family member was interviewed individually but all the stories were consistent. With nothing to go on they finally left the site with the family hesitantly returning inside the house. They were not inside long. Before dawn they were all back in their cars, fleeing the house after the creatures came back, appearing in Glennie’s bedroom window and clawing at the screen.

Newspaper article from the Nevada State Journal. Image via Skeptic.com.

When the Suttons returned to their farmhouse they arrived to a chaotic scene. The news of their encounter was spread all over the nation by radio hosts telling their stories and newspapers printing their words alongside shocking illustrations of the “little men” that came out of the sky that night. Curiosity seekers flocked to the farmhouse to investigate the scene for themselves and, in some cases, to take souvenirs.  Unfortunately, some also arrived armed with accusations, claiming the family completely fabricated the entire encounter for publicity. The Suttons denied the claims but they did not help their case when they took down their “No Trespassing” signs and replaced them with a price list for admission to the property, information, and photographs. The adult members of the family were again interviewed separately by local radio personality and professional sketch artist Andrew "Bud" Ledwith and every account was the same. They all swore that they were attacked by creatures that stood just under three feet tall, glowed a shimmering metallic green, floated above the ground, and had pointed ears and claws. Tired of being harassed and spied on the family quickly stopped speaking to the media, left the property, and attempted to move on with their lives. Some reports state that after living in the country her entire life Glennie moved into an apartment building to be surrounded by people, she no longer felt safe in isolation.

Illustration of the creatures as described by Billy Ray Taylor. Image via history.com.

Illustration of the creatures as described by Lucky Sutton. Image via history.com.

With no concrete answers as to what haunted the Sutton family and their friends that night the floor was open for theories to fly. Despite Glennie and her sons insisting alcohol was not allowed in the house many said the entire incident was nothing more than a drunken hallucination. Others believed these little silver men were actually a pack of great horned owls which were known to act aggressively toward people. Some even claimed the creatures were monkeys that Lucky and Billy Ray brought home with them from their stint in the carnival.

Great horned owl at night. Image via Youtube.com.

In 1956 ufologist Isabel Davis began an investigation into what became known as the “Kelly–Hopkinsville Encounter”, an investigation that would result in a nearly 200 page report for the Center for UFO Studies. It was far from alone, as the years moved on many other ufologists became fascinated with the event and their varied explanation and opinions did little to pinpoint what happened that August night. The Air Force UFO-investigation program Project Blue Book was aware of the case but no documentation indicates that they officially pursued it. Project Blue Book’s civil investigator (and founder of the Center for UFO Studies) Dr. J. Allen Hynek called the ordeal "preposterous" and offensive to "common sense.” Ufologist Jerome Clark writes about the possible logical explanations, but also admits there was no evidence of a hoax. Some adopted the tale as solid truth, others became staunch supporters of the owl theory, but with every theory and re-visitation the Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter grew in notoriety. With newspapers focusing on the green metallic glow the world was given a term still familiar today, “little green men.”

In 2005 a commemorative event was held to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter and there was a very special guest in attendance. Geraldine Stith, the granddaughter of Glennie Lankford and daughter of Lucky Sutton was there to answer the questions and dispel the rumors. She stated “I thought, I heard it from the horse's mouth, if people want to hear the story, let's get it right.” In 2010 when the town of Kelly was looking for fundraising opportunities they focused on the alleged alien encounter and created an annual event, the Little Green Men Days Festival that still takes place every August. Stith is a guest every year, telling the tale of her family’s terrifying night of the unknown and listening to stories from others. Despite the festive atmosphere structured around the encounter, Stith does not want what her family endured to be lost stating “My family went through something, whether it be paranormal or extraterrestrial, that changed their lives forever. I just want people to realize the terror they went through that night.”

A scene from Little Green Men Days Festival. Image via wkms.org.

Despite countless studies, theories, books, interviews, and experiences, the answer to what haunted the Sutton family and friends that night in August has never been found.

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Sources:

“How the 'Little Green Men' Phenomenon Began on a Kentucky Farm” https://www.history.com/news/little-green-men-origins-aliens-hopkinsville-kelly

“The Eerie Story Behind the Small Town Everyone Is Flocking to for the Eclipse This Summer“ https://www.countryliving.com/life/a44064/eclipseville-hopkinsville-ky-history/

“Steven Spielberg, Some Green Men, and Hopkinsville“ https://kyforky.com/blogs/journal/steven-spielberg-some-green-men-and-hopkinsville

Neurologist George Miller Beard had seen a lot of things in his just under forty years on Earth. He was a Civil War veteran, a Yale graduate, a prominent name in sweeping progressive change in the fields of neuroscience and psychiatry, and he was a vocal advocate for the treatment of mental illness and the protection of the mentally ill. Now, his storied career was bringing him to the remote wilderness to observe a group of French-Canadian lumberjacks.

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Read the rest of the story in Hushed Up History Volume I, available now through Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com!

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