The Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter

One evening in August 1955, a family living in southwestern Kentucky arrived at the local police station. The story that they told was one that would serve as one of the inspirations for later tales of little green men from outer space. This is the Kelly Hopkinsville encounter.

The Sutton farmhouse was an unpainted three-room house without running water, a telephone, a radio, a TV, or even books that was surrounded by maple trees and tobacco fields. Completely unremarkable if not for the events that supposedly took place on the 21st of August 1955. On the night in question, the farmhouse was occupied by 50-year-old widow and matriarch Glenny Langford, her children Lonnie, Charlton, and Mary, ages 12, 10, and 7.

C. P. Baker.

And finally, the last two people were 21-year-old Billy Ray Taylor and his 18-year-old wife, June. Taylor used to work with Lucky Sutton on a traveling carnival, and on that night in August he and his wife had come from Pennsylvania to visit the family. In total, there were 11 people in the house that night.

m. when Billy Ray went outside to get water from the backyard well. When he was near the well, he suddenly noticed a silvery object in the sky that he would later describe as real bright with an exhaust of all the colors of the rainbow.

He watched this object moving silently towards the house, then passing over it before it suddenly stopped in mid-air. It would then drop straight to the ground, and he could no longer see it. For getting over the water, Billy Ray ran inside to tell the others what he had just seen, but they thought he was just joking, so they just laughed off his claims.

But that wasn't the end of it. Roughly an hour later, the family's dogs started barking wildly, which prompted Billy Ray and Lucky to head outside to investigate what all the noise was about. Stepping out of the back door, they spotted a strange glow in which they could see a humanoid figure.

This figure looked about 3 to 4 feet tall, with a round head, large pointed ears, glowing yellow eyes, long arms with claw-like hands, and spindly legs. The skin of this creature looked metallic and was a silvery color. As they watched, this creature would approach the house from a nearby gully.

The dogs were still barking like crazy, and the two men then went to grab their guns, which was a 20 gauge shotgun and a 22 rifle, and they immediately opened fire at whatever this creature was. To their surprise, the bullets did not seem to have any effect on this creature at all. It kept on approaching the kitchen door with its hands up, before the bullets finally made it stop.

They then quickly flipped around and then ran back into the woods. Billy Ray and Lucky remained on the spot and just looked at the area where the creature had been, before they eventually decided to head back to the house. It was then quiet again.

The dogs had stopped barking, but this only lasted for a few minutes. Then because suddenly they would hear a strange noise on their roof, the men would once again grab their weapons and rushed outside. When outside, they looked at the roof and would spot another one of the creatures perched on an overhang.

Once again, the men would shoot at this creature, which seemed to cause it to lose its balance and it fell to the ground, but it quickly got up and then ran away. Looking around, they would also see more of the creatures in the trees and on the ground around the house. The creatures were very fast and agile, almost as if they were floating or flying rather than walking or running.

They also made very high pitched sounds as they moved around the house. The men would head back inside and remain inside for a few minutes more, then Taylor decided to step outside again to look around and see if maybe the creatures had left. When he was standing under a small overhanging roof, he suddenly felt a claw-like hand touching his hair.

Then other members of the family were right behind him and as soon as they saw this hand, they would grab Taylor and yank him back into the house while Lucky started shooting into the overhang. He would also shoot at another creature that was perched in a nearby tree. Like before, the creature floated to the ground before it rushed into the nearby woods.

By this point, the family decided to barricade themselves in the house. For the next few hours, the family found themselves besieged by the strange creatures, fighting off repeated attempts to enter the house. The creatures would repeatedly pop up at the doorways or appear in the windows and every time they appeared, the family would shoot at them.

The bullets had no effect beyond making the creatures briefly retreat and of course causing damage to the house. It then became quiet again and the family would spend a few more hours listening for movements. Things would calm down to the point where the only sounds that they heard was the occasional scratching on the roof but they could not tell if this was the creatures or any other animal.

As it seemed like it was perfectly calm again, two of the women in the house would run outside, hop into a car and drove to the Hopkinsville police station. They were soon followed by the rest of the family. By the time they were at the police station to tell the police what had happened, they were panicked and near hysterical.

The police were skeptical of the family story but they were concerned that this could possibly have been a gun battle between local citizens. So with this concern in mind, four city police officers, five state troopers, three deputy sheriffs and four military police officers from the nearby United States Army Fort Campbell all drove to the Sutton farmhouse to investigate. They would arrive around midnight and immediately started conducting a search of the area.

They did not find any evidence of any creature but they did find evidence of gunfire and damage to the house, such as bullet holes in the window screens and door frames and spent shells on the ground. Importantly they would also find some bloodstains on one of the window sills but this is unclear. The police then began suspecting that maybe alcohol may have been involved in this incident.

So even though no one in the family seemed to be intoxicated, the police started looking for proof that the family had been drinking. They would find nothing and when she was later asked, Mrs. Langford would say that they were a very religious family and alcohol was not allowed in the house.

After conducting their search, the police found nothing and they eventually left, which meant that the family could return to the farmhouse. But that was not the end of it. Later Mrs.

Langford would report that she had seen a small silver shining object peering in at her from her bedroom window with his hands on the screen and she would call for her sons who proceeded to shoot at the creature causing it to live again. The police actually returned to the farmhouse the following morning to see if there was anything that they had missed in the previous search. They would search for evidence of a saucer landing, footprints, blood trails or scratch marks on the roof but once again they found nothing beyond the bullet holes and the spent shells on the ground.

When the police arrived, the Sutton family was no longer at the farmhouse. The police would ask some of the neighbors where they were. According to the neighbors, the family had packed up and left during the early hours of the morning after claiming that the creatures had returned.

The family's claims would receive widespread coverage in both local and national press, radio stations and newspapers such as the New York Times would report on this incident and the story quickly took on a life of its own, with many either believing or disbelieving the family's claims. As the story spread, the number of creatures that the family would fight off either increased or decreased depending on who was telling the story. This also led hundreds of curious people traveling to the farm to just see it for themselves.

But many of these people would also go there to ridicule the family, calling them drunks, scam artists or both. The ridicule or harassment actually got so bad that the family put up no trespassing signs all around the property, but these were useless. People kept coming, stepping onto the property and some even entered the house without permission.

The family then decided to charge admission, 50 cents for entering the grounds, 1 dollar for information and 10 dollars if they wanted to take pictures. Reportedly, this was an attempt to keep people away as the family had grown really tired of the constant strangers on their property, so they figured that if people had to pay to come and visit, they wouldn't bother. Obviously, this also led to more voices calling the family liars and opportunists, which is an opinion that many hold to this day, and the fact that both Lucky and Billy Ray used to work for a traveling circus didn't exactly help the claims of a hoax either.

But it should be noted that aside from this admission fee, the family never asked for any money. However, there were and are many people who do believe that this happened, and those who argued against this being a hoax would point to the family matriarch. For instance, ufologist Isabel Davis put together one of the most thorough investigations of this incident in 1956, which is called Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of 1955.

This report would include maps, drawings, documentary records, summaries of similar accounts around the world, and interviews with several southern family members and even police investigators. Davis noted in the report that Mrs. Lankford appeared to be a no-nonsense and intensely private woman, and the Sutton family were not known for making outlandish claims.

To her, it did not seem likely that Mrs. Lankford would allow anything that would put her family under such scrutiny, or that the family who had no history of making outlandish claims would just make something up like this. In fact, the family would stick to their story for years after the incident.

Some of them would even claim that government agents had gone to visit them in the years after the incident, either to silence them or to discredit their story. And some in the Sutton family would also suffer from nightmares, anxiety, and continued ridicule in the years following the encounter. Like so many other alleged UFO sightings, many have tried to find a possible explanation for the whole thing.

These explanations include a secret military experiment, there are at least two bases in the nearby area, Fort Knox to the northeast, and the much closer Fort Campbell, and that base is a rabbit hole all on its own. Another explanation is that this was a psychological phenomenon, such as mass hysteria, where someone in the family would mistake something for a strange creature, and then the family would feed off each other's fear, causing them all to become increasingly worked up. And the third explanation that is very common is that this was simply a misidentification of a natural phenomena.

For instance, skeptics have stated that this initial sighting by Billy Ray Taylor, where he saw a silvery object in the sky that was real bright with an exhaust all the colors of the rainbow, was nothing more than a meteor or a comet. Allegedly, a police officer would hear several meteors coming from the southwest accompanied by loud noises that same day just after 11pm. Billy Ray would have his sighting sometime after 7pm.

Though it's also been suggested that this sighting that the police officer had, as well as the one that Taylor had, was a misidentification of jet planes that were flying overhead. There were reportedly other witnesses that were living in the vicinity of Kelly that reportedly saw a meteor in the sky on the night in question. For instance, a Mr.

30pm. And this fireball would also be seen by soldiers that were stationed at Fort Campbell. And then another proposed explanation for the strange glow that the family saw is that it was either a bioluminescent fungus which is common in woodlands or swamp gas.

And then we have the creatures themselves. The most common explanation for them is that it was an owl. To be precise, a great horned owl, which are nocturnal, fly silently, have golden eyes and are known to violently defend their nests.

They also have very long wings that could be mistaken for arms, talons that could be mistaken for a clawed hand, large round heads, they are also about the right size for the smallest creatures that the family claimed to have seen. According to skeptics, the creatures being owls would also explain the lack of footprints, the fact that they seemed to be floating and the sounds that were made by the creatures. And then there are those who say that this event didn't happen at all.

These two men just got drunk and started shooting up the place and then they blamed their own strange creatures. Or they all just got together and made it up. However, despite the criticism and skepticism, there are many who have argued that this incident was a genuine encounter with something.

And many more have tried to find evidence to support this claim. One question that the believers ask is what owl is immune to bullets? Especially those from a 20 gauge shotgun and a 22 rifle.

And why weren't there any blood if they had been shooting at an owl? And some people who believe this story also pointed out that the creatures that the family saw didn't really seem to be aggressive, which also works against the theory that it was an owl who are violently aggressive when they tried to defend their nests. Instead from the story, the creatures actually seemed to be curious about the family and the family seemed to be the aggressors, as they were the ones who immediately attacked the creatures.

Many of them have also said that it seems odd that an aggressive advanced alien race would be deterred by some human firing at them with a shotgun or a rifle. But if they were just curious and not aggressive, the humans shooting at them might make them back off a bit. To Kelly Hopkinsville is one of the most famous alleged alien encounter stories out there and it has fascinated people for decades.

Depending on who you ask, the case is either one of the best documented cases of alien contact or one of the most ridiculous cases of human error. I mentioned in the beginning of the video that the case served as inspiration for tales of little green men from outer space. This is technically true though the term little green men predates this case by a lot.

For instance, the 12th century story of the green children of Woolpit does reference little green people from strange lands, so the term and the belief in little green people is at least hundreds of years old. But the Kelly Hopkinsville encounter is very famous and as such has inspired many other fictional creations. For instance Steven Spielberg would use the case as the basis for an unproduced science fiction horror film called Night Skies in the late 1970s.

In 1986 a film called Critters which was loosely based on the event was released. Today the city of Kelly, Kentucky has a yearly festival called Kelly Little Green Men Days to commemorate the encounter. Thank you so much for watching.

I'll see you in the next one.