The Story of the Hopkinsville Goblins

     Kelly Kentucky.... the name does not likely conjure up images of fantastic paranormal activity unless you are a UFO researcher.  But, this sleepy little town was the proverbial birthplace of modern ufology.  The events that unfolded at a rural farmhouse one evening in 1955 would eventually set the stage for researchers and become the standard that all other encounters would be based.  While this story has been told many times, I still find it interesting and pertinent being a resident of Kentucky myself.

Hopkinsville Kentucky

On the evening of August 21, 1955 the Sutton family were entertaining friend Billy Ray Taylor at their small farm near Kelly Kentucky.  The number of individuals at the farm that day included a total of eleven people, five children and six adults.  The group had enjoyed a normal evening having dinner and playing cards, but what would happen later that night would change their lives forever.  

The Sutton's were well known in the area for being honest, hardworking, and religious people, not the type who would make up tales, or who would have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol.  It was even stated by police and researchers who were on the scene following the events that there is little doubt about the fear the family displayed, and that something had scared these people in a serious kind of way. 

Around 7:00PM, house guest Billy Ray Taylor had gone outside to fetch water from a pump in the yard.  He witnessed a strange series of lights streaking across the sky and landing in the family's field some distance from the house.  Taylor described the lights as looking like a "large saucer, glowing with all the colors of the rainbow."  He was startled by the sight and ran quickly back to the farmhouse to tell everyone what he had seen. 

The Sutton family laughed at Taylor's story thinking he was playing a prank; they reassured him saying it was likely a shooting star.  All was quiet until around 8:00PM, when the family dogs began to bark hysterically outside.  The individuals in the house soon began to hear strange noises, much like something walking on the roof and scratching on the windows.  The family patriarch Elmer "Lucky" Sutton and Billy Ray Taylor grabbed firearms and went outside to investigate the disturbance.

Artists rendition of the showdown.

Several minutes passed as Sutton and Taylor scoured the property from the front porch.  The pair soon saw what was reported as a "little man" emerge from the trees that surrounded the farm.  The two men watched as the creature made its way closer to them and described its appearance as slightly glowing, and being silver or metallic in appearance.  They also claimed the creature had large pointy ears, round eyes, long thin arms with "talon" like hands, and oddly that its legs were very spindly; almost atrophied.  This creature also appeared to defy gravity; it reportedly hovered slightly above the ground, and could move rather quickly with a strange swishing motion of its hips.

The creature came to within 20 feet of the men, at which time a 20 gauge shotgun and a .22 rifle were both repeatedly fired at the creature with no apparent damage being inflicted.  Both Taylor and Sutton claimed that when each round was fired, a sound like "shooting into a metal wash tub” could be heard and the bullets appeared to do no damage whatsoever.  The creature then flipped over, and darted off into the shadow of the woods.  Positive they had wounded the invader, Taylor and Sutton decided to go find it.  Upon stepping off the porch, the men spotted the creature perched on the roof just above where they had been standing.  The two men again opened fire and continued to hear the odd metallic sound when the bullets struck the target; still doing no damage, but they did claim the creature was knocked from the roof.

Elmer's brother J.C Sutton had remained inside the house with the terrified women and children who were hiding with the chaos erupting outside.  J.C had also armed himself with a shotgun by the time Billy Ray and Elmer burst through the front door yelling at everyone to get down and be quiet.  While the two men recounted the events that had unfolded outside, J.C. spotted the creature peeping through a window.  He fired his weapon, breaking the glass and sending the creature flipping backwards.

Three witnesses to the event.  Elmer "Lucky" Sutton is in the center.

Over the next few hours, at least two of the entities had been spotted at once and the family claimed there could have been as many as fifteen.  The creatures made several assaults on the house, popping up at windows and doorways and scurrying across the rooftop.  Many of the children and women that were hiding had never actually seen the attackers, but of the eleven people in the house, seven of them had visual contact with the creatures. 

The family matriarch Ms. Lankford then advised everyone to stop the hostilities, claiming "They haven't hurt anyone, or come in the house." and after several minutes of debate, the family gathered the courage to flee to their automobiles and drove madly for thirty minutes to the sheriff’s office in Hopkinsville Kentucky.  The story gets more efficiently documented beyond this point with numerous reports being filed from different agencies and newspapers. 

At 11pm that evening an unidentified Kentucky State Trooper on patrol near Kelly had reported seeing strange lights hovering in the sky, as well as the sound of what he described as "artillery fire" coming directly from it.  Numerous other civilian reports of unidentified lights and noises were also made to officials that night in the same area.  

PFC Hodson's Sketches

Back at the sheriff’s office, upon hearing the Sutton family's wild story and evaluating that they were sober and sane, a group of twenty deputies followed them back to the farm where an investigation was conducted.  Deputies verified that over one hundred rounds of ammunition had been fired on the property and they had no doubts that something unusual had happened to these people.  At this time, the media and military officials at Fort Campbell were contacted.  The deputies documented a glowing patch along a fence where one of the creatures had been shot and also noted an odd unidentifiable green light in the woods behind the house.  They were able to photograph the suspected "bloodstain", but a sample was never able to be recovered.  The stain had mysteriously disappeared by noon the following day.

Project Blue Book File

Officials questioned neighboring farm owners and many of the people described seeing strange lights, hearing noises, and verified the gun battle at the Sutton's farm.  The following morning, M.P.s and investigators including Pfc. Gary F. Hodson arrived from Fort Campbell, the military took statements, and made sketches of the creatures using descriptions from the family.  The U.S. Government's Project Blue Book, which is known to be very critical, and has debunked many UFO cases throughout the years also took an interest in the story and opened a case file a short time later.  But after investigating at the Sutton farm, they were also unable to determine what really happened to the family on that night.  To this day the Kelly Kentucky case is listed as open and unidentified with the United States Air Force and Project Blue Book, and has never been explained.

To further lend believability to their story, the Sutton's moved away from the farm the following year, and never attempted to profit or exploit the popularity that followed the story in any way.  Below is a lengthy video that dramatizes the events that took place that night.

  

 Sources:
Hendry, Allan (1980), "The Encyclopedia of UFOs"
socyberty.com
www.ufoevidence.org
ufos.about.com
www.nicap.org
ufologie.net
www.kentuckynewera.com
www.ufocasebook.com
www.mysterious-america.ne

  

   

Solar UFO Sightings Point to Possible NASA Cover-up!

     New pictures have emerged from NASA, again showing an unidentified object hovering close to the Sun.  The release of this image was closely preceded by the $700 billion space viewing device (SOHO) that shot the footage being taken off-line.  UFO researchers are touting this as solid proof that NASA is trying to cover up the incident, and are pushing for an explanation. 

 This story originally began on April 24, when reports surfaced on the internet showing photographs of a large UFO hovering near our Sun.  The images were captured by NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) .  The sophisticated (SOHO) device is used according to NASA “- to study the internal structure of the Sun, its extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind…)  Although, the project does not fall completely under the NASA umbrella of control. (SOHO) was co-designed, funded, and is partially operated by various European scientists and the European Space Agency.

According to FOX News, officials for the United States Naval Research Laboratory dismissed the object in the first (SOHO) photograph shown below as an anomaly on the camera equipment.  Nathan Rich, the lead engineer for the NRL’s solar physics division, claims this is caused by streaks left from cosmic rays; charged particles that disrupt the cameras sensors.  But more interestingly, he states "these artifacts do not persist from image to image..."

 Rich's last statement is so interesting because more than a week later, images of a similar UFO are again captured by (SOHO) and exposed on YouTube by an amateur follower of the space observatory.  The video's creator alleges that NASA took (SOHO) off-line to prevent anyone else from seeing the UFO just one day after this video began to make its rounds across the internet. He states, “It’s too much of a coincidence I find this on the 3rd of May 2012, and they break their telescope the following day.”  More information can be found at Gather.com. 

NASA released the following statement on the shut down:

"SOHO went into 'Emergency Sun Reacquisition' mode on Friday May 4, 2012, caused by a false trigger of the Coarse Sun Pointing Attitude Anomaly Detector. We are working on the recovery of the spacecraft to normal mode."

Even more curious is the fact the live web cams connected to (SOHO) were down for some of the biggest solar storms of the century according to MSNBC, and then went down again on May 08, for Emergency Sun Reacquisition.  All of this solar activity, combined with possible footage of UFO's hovering around the sun, leads one to believe that even if the UFO's can be explained away that something unusual is still going on with our sun that NASA may not want the public to see. 

Triangle UFO Sightings On the Rise?

Over the years, we have continually heard reports trickling out of the mainstream media about sightings of triangular shaped UFO's plaguing the airspace above cities all over the world.  The US government has struggled to spin these reports away as flares or swamp gas, but high level officials like former Arizona governor Fife Symington are coming clean and admitting publicly that what people are witnessing is truly unidentifiable. 

Large sightings like the "Phoenix Lights"  which occurred in March 1997 and included over 10,000 eyewitness reports, have made their way into pop culture with movies, books, and merchandise promoting the event.  But, sightings of these lights have not been confined to the American southwest. Hundreds of reports have come in over the past thirty years from all over the earth, and so far the spring of 2012 is not letting us down.

On April 26, 2012 the video above was captured by a passenger on an airplane over England.  The individual reported seeing a large triangular shaped formation of lights outside the cabin of their plane.  This video shows actual footage of a craft that has been repeatedly reported by passengers and pilots on commercial aircraft for years.

A few days later on April 28, in the small town of Independence Mo. an eyewitness reported seeing a triangular craft moving slowly across the sky according to Examiner.com.  The witness claimed, “It was very odd -- a triangular-shaped flying object that had two blinking lights in the rear only.  There were no other lights on the craft like you would see on a plane."  Unfortunately, there were no video or photographs available to document the sighting.

The following video was shot recently on May 02, 2012 and shows a triangular craft caught on tape that was also reported at Gather.com.   According to the witness, it occurred in broad daylight over Sydney Australia and lasted over four minutes!

The facts are that the US government and others around the world test and produce top secret aircraft. The possibility of these triangular UFO’s being misidentified is surely a possibility, but the sheer size and silence of the proposed craft, as well as the frequency of the sightings leads one to believe that the public may not be getting the full story either way.

    
Are all of these sightings mere coincidence?  What are the odds that military flares are the cause of these events like the US military has proposed?  Are they extraterrestrial?  No one seems able or willing to identify these sightings with any certainty, and the explanations given by officials is less than underwhelming.  There are no clear answers, and even fewer individuals in the government willing to come forward, so it appears that for the time being, these unusual craft and lights will continue to be a mystery.