A hot night in rural Kentucky – all the dogs are barking.
Something steps out of the night – small – maybe 3 or 4 feet tall.
This “thing” has an unnaturally large head – pointed ears – arms WAY too long for its body. The “things” eyes reflect the light from the porch.
That’s how the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter started.
In a small farmhouse between Kelly and Hopkinsville in Christian County Kentucky on August 21, 1955 eleven people were playing cards and hanging out on a hot summer night. Inside were:
Adults
- Glennie Lankford (the mother / homeowner)
- Elmer “Lucky” Sutton (her grown son)
- Vera Sutton (Lucky’s wife)
- John Charley “J.C.” Sutton (her other grown son)
- Alene Sutton (J.C.’s wife)
- O. P. Baker (Alene’s brother)
- Billy Ray Taylor (visitor / friend)
- June Taylor (Billy Ray’s wife)
Children
- Lonnie Lankford (Glennie’s minor child)
- Charlton Lankford (Glennie’s minor child)
- Mary Lankford (Glennie’s minor child)
Here’s the accepted location of the incident via Google Maps:
Around 8 PM, Billy Ray steps outside and sees something bright cut across the sky – metallic with colored lights. The object looks to drop into a gully near the house. He comes back in and tells everyone and they all think it was just a shooting star but Billy Ray isn’t so sure.
A little later the dogs start barking wildly outside so Lucky and Billy Ray walk outside to see what’s going on. What they see sends them running for their guns.
There’s a small figure near the back of the house between three and four feet tall and silvery looking like its wearing a bodysuit of some sort. The “thing” moves in a floating/swaying sort of motion – looking like someone wading through water.
They open fire on the creature. The “thing” staggers but doesn’t drop the way a person should when shot. A few of the witnesses later said the shots sounded like hitting a metal bucket.
Almost immediately more of these “things” show up – on the roof, at the windows. Billy Ray even reported that a clawed hand reached down from above the door and grabbed at his hair!
Everyone gets inside and continues shooting at these creatures. They reported shooting for several hours and a dozen (maybe more) of these “things” kept coming at the small house. A little after 11 PM the group decided they needed help from the police.
After eleven they all pile into cars and drive to the Hopkinsville police station. By now they were all scared and the children were understandably horrified. Apparently there was one police officer on duty and he called in the Chief, Russell Greenwell. Greenwell listened to their stories and quickly saw that they weren’t drunk (which is always the standard for any strange encounter reports it seems). More importantly, they were scared out of their minds and their stories were all consistent.
Greenwell then organized the large response consisting of more Hopkinsville police officers, Kentucky State Police and even military police from nearby Fort Campbell. He felt like those eleven folks who visited the police station were frightened by something “beyond reason.”
Greenwell came in, listened to their story, observed that they showed no signs of intoxication, and noted that their accounts were consistent with one another.
He is the one who organized the large response that night (city officers, Kentucky State Police, deputies, and military police from Fort Campbell) and later publicly stated that the witnesses appeared to have been frightened by something “beyond reason.”
When they all got to the farmhouse what the saw backed up their story – at least on the surface. There were bullet holes in doors and windows. Window screens torn like something was clawing them. Spent shells were everywhere. BUT – no “things” and no tracks – no physical evidence of anything to account for all the damage and all the shooting. So all the police and military officers left.
The family says the creatures came back around 3:30 in the morning. By the next day the house was empty and the families were reported by their neighbors as packing up and leaving.
This is where it gets messy.
Since the military was involved with the MPs from Fort Campbell responding and there was a report of some sort of flying object the report got routed to the Air Force’s UFO channels and Project Blue Book got involved. Project Blue Book later entered the case into its files and officially classified it as a hoax. The project left almost no detailed commentary or investigation notes beyond that single classification. Some later accounts claim Air Force investigators from Fort Campbell or Blue Book itself visited the farm the next day, but reliable sources note there is little solid contemporary evidence of a formal Blue Book field investigation. The case appears to have been logged and dismissed rather than actively pursued in depth.
Hoax? That’s hard to believe based on the reports of the damage and the shell casings. Something happened at that farmhouse. They were shooting at something.
Skeptics say a meteor could explain the light in the sky that Billy Ray saw. Since no landing traces, burn marks, impressions in the ground, debris, exhaust residue, or any other physical evidence that a craft had touched down were found, that is a strong possibility. Anecdotal reports about a luminous patch of ground were later reported but there are no mentions of any such thing in any of the official records of this incident.
Great horned owls are a common explanation for the “things” (later to be known as the Hopkinsville Goblins). They are around the right size when they perch or hop and these owls have very reflective eyes. Great horned owls are also silent fliers and are known to be aggressive under the right circumstances. They certainly could look very weird on a hot humid summer night in rural Kentucky. Author and skeptical researcher Joe Nickell (Senior Research Fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) and longtime columnist and contributor to their magazine Skeptical Inquirer) advanced this great horned owl/meteor theory. If you combine those types of events with some sort of mass hysteria you do arrive at a somewhat plausible explanation for this event.
While plausible, this explanation doesn’t fully explain what those 11 people reports and what the scant evidence reveals. Would folks be afraid of owls for hours? Do owls get shot and recover? Would owls grab hair (as Billy Ray reported) and tear window screens? Metallic sounds when they were shot?
We’ll never have these answers but it is safe to say that the case of the Hopkinsville Goblins still fascinates us to this day some seventy years later.
The case helped lock “little green men” into the culture, even though most witnesses described them as silvery or metallic. Steven Spielberg later pointed to it as one of the stories that fed into Close Encounters and E.T.
Hopkinsville still marks the anniversary. Family members still tell their version. Small Town Monsters recently looked into the Hopkinsville incident and interviewed some family members. Great stuff (video below). If you don’t already subscribe to the Small Town Monsters YouTube channel – really informative and entertaining.
Here at Scary Earth HQ I am really wishy-washy on the Hopkinsville Goblins. Most of the time the owl/meteor theory feels right – my brain tells me this is what happened when you strip away the hysteria. But then I think about that clawed hand and all the shell casings and the fact that eleven people stayed scared for hours…
Whatever it was, something turned an ordinary farm evening into a multi-hour event that keeps everyone still talking seventy years later.