During a family gathering at the Elmer "Lucky" Sutton farm, a young man and friend of Lucky's named Billy Ray Taylor decided to wet his whistle at the well located behind the small house. As he was filling the bucket with water, Taylor noticed a bright disc-shaped, cylindrical object fly overhead and land in a small gully near another farm owned by Gaither McGhee. "It had all the colors of the rainbow in it," Taylor observed as he related the story to a rather large group of friends gathered at the house.

At first, no one believed Taylor's story and even refused to go outside to check the adjacent field where the encounter had occurred. Lucky himself believed that Taylor had sighted nothing more than a "shooting star" which were common at this time since the Perseid Meteor storm was visible in that part of the country on this particular evening. But meteors could not account for the bizarre events that would soon transpire at the farmhouse.

Around 8:00 p.m. Lucky's dogs began barking aggressively at something outside the house. Upon peering out the window, Lucky and Billy Ray saw a strange glow in the distance moving towards the rear of the house. Taking no chances, the men grabbed their shotguns and took their positions on the porch as they now could clearly see what appeared to be a "small man no bigger than three to three and a half feet tall."

Others inside the farmhouse including Glennie Lankford (Lucky's mother), also saw the creature's approach and froze with fear as Lucky and Billy Ray trained their rifles on this unknown adversary.

As the "little man" floated closer to the porch, the men got a clearer perspective of its features. In addition to being small, they noticed the creature had an oversized head that was almost perfectly round, including arms that nearly extended to the ground; the huge hands possessed talons at the end of the fingers. Its eyes were much bigger than human eyes, and glowed with a yellowish light, directed neither to the front nor to the side, but about midway between. Other features of the head were its rather large pointed ears giving it a "goblin-like" appearance. Even stranger was the fact that the alien was seemingly made of "silver metal" that gave off an eerie light in the darkness, like the light from the "radium dial of a wristwatch."

When the creature had moved to within 20 feet of the back door, both men fired. Amazingly, the small being somersaulted backwards - "did a flip," as the men put it--scrambled hastily upright, and scurried away into the darkness at the side of the house.

Lucky and Billy Ray waited a few minutes, then went into the living room, where the women were. Another creature appeared at the side window; the men fired at it through the screen. Again they apparently hit it, and again it "flipped" and disappeared.

When Lucky and Billy Ray decided to go outdoors to see whether they had actually hit the creature, one of the most terrifying events transpired. Taylor apparently walked through the doorway first. Rifle in hand, the man looked nervously towards the backyard but was momentarily unable to see anything. Suddenly, from above the overhanging roof, those behind him saw a claw-like hand reach down and grab for his hair. They screamed at him, and Alene Sutton seized him to pull him back into the house. Lucky, close behind Taylor, pushed past him into the yard, turned the .12 gauge shotgun up towards the creature on the overhang, fired, and knocked it over the roof.

Moments afterward, Billy Ray spotted another creature (or possibly the same one) sitting on the limb of an adjacent maple tree. Both men again fired their weapons at the little man, apparently making a direct hit. But they were both astounded to see the creature "float" down towards the grass and scurry off into the dark weeds surrounding the house. Needless to say, both men and the rest of the family members were frightened beyond belief at these incredible occurrences.

New York UFO researcher and writer Isabel Davis (who went to Hopkinsville several months later) noted that the "swiftness of these reappearances could easily have given the impression that there were many of these creatures;" but the figures given in the newspapers--10 or 12 or 15--are almost certainly exaggerated; the episodes just described seem to be the only time when two were seen simultaneously. "When I interviewed her, Mrs. Lankford, in fact, I did not have an opportunity to ask her about the incident described above," Isabel wrote in her report, "Close Encounter At Kelly".

Shots had now been fired at the creatures at least four times: first, from the back door as the creature approached the house; second, the double shot from rifle and shotgun through the living room window; third, Lucky's shot from the front yard at the creature trying to touch Taylor's hair; and fourth, the double shot at the creature in the tree. Now, as the creature came around the corner of the house, Lucky brought the shotgun down to bear on it and fired at point-blank range. It sounded as if the shots had hit a "metal bucket" according the witnesses. The thing "flipped over," got up, and ran off into the darkness seemingly unhurt.

When a direct blast from a .12 gauge shotgun had no effect, Lucky and Billy Ray made an obvious decision; they would leave the things alone. The men went back into the house and conversed with the family trying to try to think what to do next.

Isabel Davis went on to write that at some point, "the lights over the front and back doors were turned on, and then someone noticed that whenever the creatures approached the house, they came from a dark part of the yard." Was this an attempt at concealment? The rest of their behavior makes it unlikely. It seems more probable that they disliked light. According to sketches made by radio engineer Bud Ledwith, the eyes were large and had neither pupil nor eyelid; that is, no method of accomodating to changes in the amount of light.

According to eyewitnesses, the creatures made no noise at any time; the "mouth" if such it was, never opened, and they made no sound when moving, although the weeds and bushes rustled when the creatures fled into them. The only noise associated with them was a slight scraping sound on the metal roof, as if the points of the talons were dragging lightly across it; this noise was also described as a tapping.

The weird beings never "exhibited any behavior that could be described as hostile. They made no attempt to retaliate for the shooting. In actuality, the creatures never really made an effort to enter the house either; they simply came up to the doors and windows and peered inside perhaps out of curiosity.

Around 11o'clock, the activities of the unknown little men seemed to have stopped. Seizing the opportunity, the families fled the house cautiously, rifles poised as if waiting for some kind of attack from the creatures but it never came. Piling into two cars, the group drove like crazy to the Hopkinsville Police Station and reported their bizarre encounter with the aliens.   Next Page