The term "high strangeness," frequently tossed around in
current UFOspeak, aptly applies to a Kentucky CE-III (close
encounter of the third kind) incident more than 30 years
old. This is the one often referred to as the "Hopkinsville
Case," although it took place seven miles to the north at a
wide-spot-in-the-road called Kelly.
Because of outlandish exaggeration and derisive
treatment in the press, the story was generally disbelieved
at the time, but careful investigation by responsible
researchers has turned up no evidence of hoax or deceit on
the part of the witnesses. That they were uneducated
"hillbillies" seems to have been most people's reason for
doubting their word.
We return now to the hot, clear evening of August 21,
1955, one of the wilder nights in UFO history…
Pennsylvanians Billy Ray and June Taylor were visiting
the Cecil Sutton family at a tenant house in western
Kentucky. Sutton's 50-year-old mother, Glennie Lankford,
lived with the family, and some kinfolks were over, making
a crowd of eight adults and three children at the
farmhouse.
Around 7 p.m. Taylor went to fetch water from the
backyard well and came back excited, saying he'd seen a
brilliant flying saucer come whizzing in from the southwest
and drop into a gully not far from the house. The others
dismissed the sightings as a falling star, but within the
hour, the violent barking of Sutton's dog brought the men
out in time to see the animal hide under the house.
Approaching from the fields was a luminous shape - a
humanoid figure three and a half feet tall, shining all
over as if "nickel-plated." Large, pointed ears extended
from its oversized head, and its eyes, set more laterally
than human eyes, glowed with yellow light. Its thin arms
reached almost to the ground, displaying big, webbed hands
with talons at the ends of the fingers.
Apparently, the creature had seen its share of cowboy
movies - it raised its hands high over its head in an
attitude of surrender. Ignoring Mrs. Lankford's pleas not
to shoot at it, her son and Taylor opened fire on the
intruder with a shotgun and a .22. To their astonishment,
it flipped over, righted itself and ran off into the
darkness.
Presently, it - or a second one like it - appeared
looking in at a window. Sutton's younger brother J.C.
discharged the shotgun through the window-screen, knocking
the being out of sight.
Certain it had been hit, Taylor, followed by Cecil
Sutton (nicknamed "Lucky") started outside to find it. As
he hesitated beneath an overhanging roof, those in the
house began to scream at the sight of a claw-like hand
reaching down to touch his hair. He was quickly pulled back
inside, and Lucky Sutton, leaping out into the yard,
blasted the creature off the roof with the shotgun. Taylor
spotted another being, and both men shot it out of the
maple tree in which it was perched. It floated, rather than
fell to the ground and scurried away on slender, inflexible
legs that seemed to move from the hip only.
Just then, another entity (possibly the one that had
been on the roof) appeared around the corner of the house
near Sutton. His shotgun pellets struck it point-blank with
a sound like that of a metal bucket. Nonetheless, it jumped
up and ran away unhurt.
Several more times the aliens advanced on the house,
never making any sound nor behaving with any overt
hostility and each time they were repelled by a hail of
gunfire. At last, the unnerved defenders fled from the
farmhouse in two cars and raced for the Hopkinsville police
station where, in a state of near-hysteria, they told their
bizarre story.
By 12:30 the still-frightened family was back on the
scene, accompanied by state and local police, a deputy
sheriff, a newspaper photographer, and two military police
from Ft. Campbell. A thorough search of the house and
grounds turned up a lot of spent shotgun shells and a hole
blasted through a screen, but no glowing little men. A
luminous patch of grass was observed where one of the
creatures was shot off a fence, but no cause for it could
be determined. Apparently, no samples were collected.
Chief of Police Russel Greenwell stated that he and the
other investigators admitted sensing a "weird feeling" that
permeated the entire area that night. Although he couldn't
find any evidence of what, exactly, happened, "Something
scared those people," he said. "Something beyond reason -
nothing ordinary."
With the excitement over and nothing more to do,
everyone but those occupying the farmhouse left around 2
a.m. The exhausted Sutton family retired, but by 3:30, the
little metallic guys were peeking in the windows again.
Lucky Sutton blew one more hole in a screen, to no effect.
The inquisitive visitors persisted in their forays until
just before dawn.
Morning brought various investigators who conducted an
extensive, but fruitless, daylight examination of the farm.
It also brought a hoard of news reporters, and after their
stories - some of them blatantly sensationalistic and
erroneous - went out, the curiosity seekers arrived. Fed up
with harassment and ridicule, the witnesses soon refused to
talk about the incident and, within 48 hours, packed up and
left the area.
Fortunately, one of the first persons to interview the
percipients was Andrew "Bud" Ledwith of radio station WHOP,
a man with artistic ability and a broad-minded attitude
toward UFOs. Before the issue was clouded by the "chaff" of
so many careless reports, Ledwith obtained firsthand most
of the informational "wheat" from which today's researchers
can put together the closest-to-complete account of what
really went on at Kelly. He also made drawings based on
witness descriptions and received signed statements of
their testimony.
Almost a year later, Isabel Davis managed to locate and
interview Glennie Lankford and J.C. Sutton's wife, Alene,
as well as Chief Greenwell. The 196-page report of her
investigation, "Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of
1955," co-authored by Ted Bloecher, is available from CUFOS
(the Center for UFO Studies).
Far from the preposterous tall tale of "gun-toting
hillbillies shooting it out with a dozen or so green
monsters," that the press of that day put out, the
Kelly-Hopkinsville Standoff has gone down in serious UFO
literature as one of the more credible, although highly
unusual, close encounters of the century.
