The Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter or the encounter with Kentucky Goblins occurred on August 21, 1955, at the Sutton family’s farmhouse, which was located between Kelly and Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Elmer Sutton and John Charley Sutton hosted visitors that night, along with their wives and children.
The Kentucky Goblins were a scary sight standing just 4 feet tall with arms extending down to their ankles. Many residents claim to have seen these small, terrifying creatures peeping in through bedroom windows and stealing their dogs from the backyard before returning to their caves.
Although green was not mentioned in the original interviews, this incident’s coverage led to the term “little green men” as a generic descriptor for aliens.
The Sighting of the Kentucky Goblins
The reported encounter occurred on the Suttons’ farm near Kelly, Kentucky, where the family resided in an unpainted three-room house with no running water, phone, radio, TV, or literature. One fact is undeniable in their account, despite the UFO landing and the sight of small alien creatures.
Five adults and a few children arrived at the Hopkinsville police station on August 21, 1955, alleging that miniature alien creatures (Kentucky Goblins) from a spaceship were attacking their farmhouse and that they had been fending them off with gunfire “for nearly four hours.”
Elmer Sutton and Billy Ray Taylor, two adults, claimed they were shooting at “twelve to fifteen” short, dark individuals who showed up at the doorway or peered through the windows.
Concerned about a possible gun conflict between local residents, four municipal police officers, five state troopers, three deputy sheriffs, and four military police officers from adjacent US Army Fort Campbell drove to the Sutton farmhouse in Christian County.
They discovered no traces or markings outside the house, the only evidence of gunshots fired from within. Another cop reported observing a meteor shower but no flying saucers in the area. The bizarre rumor of the “Kentucky Goblins” circulated swiftly through the media.
The Description of the Kentucky Goblins
Eyewitness Billy Ray Taylor described the alien goblin as follows:
These humanoid-like entities slinked toward the men, their curiously thin too long limbs dragging and swaying as they approached, their blazing yellow eyes practically glazed over, paying little heed to the men via vision as their bulbous heads bobbled under their own weight.
The Aftermath of the Incident
After radio stations and newspapers publicized the occurrence, hundreds of curious visitors arrived on the property, many mocking the Suttons as ignorant or fake. When “No Trespassing” signs failed to deter them, the family attempted charging admission: 50 cents to visit the grounds, $1 for information, and $10 to take pictures. Skeptics labeled them as fortune-seeking fabulists after that.
The Kelly story took on a life of its own as it spread worldwide. The number of little green men, often known as Kentucky goblins, increased to a dozen or more. A few years later, the little green men were combined with an Eastern Kentucky woman’s story of a flying saucer and a 6 foot tall green man, assisting in spreading the myth of little green men.
While the occurrence later drew the notice of the Air Force’s UFO-investigating program Project Blue Book, documents indicate that its crew never officially pursued the matter—beyond checking in with their Fort Campbell counterparts who had been briefly on the site the initial night.
The Center for UFO Studies, created by astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Project Blue Book’s civilian investigator, published one of the most extensive analyses of the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter in 1956.
Her 200-page study, which she co-wrote with Ted Bloecher, contains extensive maps, documentation records, summaries of similar claims from around the world, and interviews with many Sutton family members and police investigators.
The Kelly-Hopkinsville incident is credited with popularizing the terms “little green men” and “Kentucky goblins.” The next day, however, local reporters began to refer to the creatures as “little green men” or “Kentucky goblins,” and the words were quickly copied in many publications, quoted on the radio, and translated into other languages.
Other Sightings of Kentucky Goblins After the Kelly–Hopkinsville Encounter
Local and national media coverage of the goblins sparked a wave of imitators in the area. A group of Evansville teens spotted ten of the creatures on Lincoln High School’s athletic field. After the youngsters began throwing rocks at them, the creatures “lopped off into the darkness,” they claimed.
Darwin Johnson had previously reported being seized and pulled underwater by a “Lizard Man” while swimming in the Ohio River near Dogtown on August 14, in an attack that bore striking similarities to a sequence from the year-old film Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Following the sightings of the little green men in Hopkinsville, Johnson changed his tale, claiming that she and other group members had seen a flying saucer just before swimming while failing to mention it in previous interviews. She now claims that his assailant was one of the same creatures who terrified families on their trip to the Bluegrass State in Hopkinsville.
Is Kelly–Hopkinsville Encounter an Authentic Story
Even years later, the eyewitness testimonies corroborated remarkably under individual inquiry, while speculation among the eyewitnesses regarding the aliens’ objectives ranged from a field study on their part to the creatures acting out of plain curiosity or even pure malevolence.
The two families involved were acknowledged locally as not being the types to fabricate a hoax; the families had neither financial gain nor considerable recognition from the incident and fled the area after the incident became known locally, and they were flooded with trespassers asking to see the site.
Possible explanations for the observations include great horned owls and meteors. Some speculate that the family mistook “eagle owls” for great horned owls, which are nocturnal, fly silently, have golden eyes, and violently defend their nests.
Conclusion
Are they creatures from another planet? Or are these underground creatures emerging from Kentucky’s over 130 recognized caves? From a 1955 encounter on the Sutton farm, where the Sutton family and numerous neighbors witnessed nightly attacks by dozens of “little green men,” to more recent sightings of goblin-like creatures, what are the Kentucky goblins, and why have they selected this region for their claimed invasion.
Some believe these creatures are aliens from another planet arriving in Kentucky and harassing rural areas. However, because sightings frequently occur near Kentucky’s numerous cave systems, some believe the goblins are not extraterrestrial visitors.
Some say they are a humanoid subspecies that evolved over thousands of years in Kentucky’s enormous, mostly unknown cave networks. But Kentucky Goblins are still a mystery as of now.
References
Several News Paper Archives
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