The story of the “Kentucky Goblins” has grown from a curious newspaper report into something much larger. In 2019 the independently produced paranormal investigation series Hellier begins with the idea that the creatures allegedly seen in Kelly, Kentucky in 1955 might still be here, using caves as a concealed network to travel throughout the state. In 2020 the TV series Project Blue Book used the case as the basis for episode four of their second season. The story has inspired creators of video games, movies, art, and of course hours and hours of podcasts. In the more than half-century since the events of 1955, there have developed numerous myths about the root cause of that night’s strangeness.
I’ve been researching the case for more than seven years and would like to share some of my findings, but for those who have never heard of this story I need to give you a summary of the events of that night. I will make this as brief as I can, but it is entirely because of the “drive-by judgements” that don’t look into the details of such cases that this story has continued to entertain my curiosity. You would need many paragraphs to recount all the details we do have about this case, and while there were newspaper reports at the time it’s largely the work of two UFO investigators that provide us with the best record of what went on that night. We’ll get to that.
The most detailed reporting we have of this event was the write-up from Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher. Davis went to Hopkinsville in 1956 to meet with as many of the witnesses as would agree to talk with her. Ted Bloecher was an avid UFO researcher as well, and he gives a tremendous amount of context to the case in the introduction to the field work that Davis performed. The combined work was published as a single volume in 1978 under the title Close Encounters at Kelly and Others of 1955. This was produced by the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), and while many skeptics will be dismissive of work produced by a UFO research group, the work is extraordinary citizen journalism. Any serious researcher into this case must read this book. It is available as a free PDF and a new edition is available online in softcover. This volume has some of the most detailed recollections of the witnesses and goes into much more detail than the original newspaper reports, which – unsurprisingly – largely considered the story as a novelty of nonsense and not a serious story (little has changed in how major media outlets cover this kind of stuff.) I will be quoting from this book quite a bit so I wanted to give context for the source.
The Story of the Encounter
A fireball shot through the sky on the night of August 21, 1955 above the rural community of Kelly, Kentucky. Kelly wasn’t a town, just a collection of farms about 8 miles north of the larger city of Hopkinsville. For this reason, the case is often called the “Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter.” One of the farms was housing quite a few people that eventful night.
The matriarch of the farm was Mrs. Glennie Lankford (age 50) and her sons Elmer “Lucky” Sutton, John “J.C.” Sutton, and their friend Billy Ray Taylor. Glennie had three children by her second husband who were staying at the farm that night, aged 12, 10 and 7. J.C. Sutton’s wife and brother-in-law were present. Lucky’s wife was there, and Lucky’s friend, Billy Ray Taylor and his wife June were present. The farm was not usually quite this crowded.
This was not a wealthy farm. It was a rental, and success depended on growing enough crops to sell at profit to cover the rent. Glennie’s adult sons and their friend Billy Ray were working on a carnival in nearby Evansville, Indiana – about 70 miles north of Kelly. This is important, as we’ll discuss, because something had happened there just prior to these events that may have strongly influenced the witnesses in the little farmhouse.
Of all the people in the house that night, Billy Ray Taylor was noted for being an unreliable raconteur and teller of tall tales, so when he came back into the house just after dark and said he’d seen a spaceship land in a gully nearby, nobody took him seriously. They didn’t even bother to go look. (see part two of this article for more about this)
The sun set around 7:30 pm. The moon was waxing crescent, with about 15% – 20% visibility. The sources of light that we know about were a hanging incandescent bulb on a small porch, and some flashlights. I mention the lighting because when you consider what happened next, please don’t imagine a big fancy farm with exterior lighting like you’d get in a Spielberg movie. Instead, picture a lonely little grey farmhouse with no TV, one exterior bulb, and surrounded by dark fields and a few shadowy trees. The windows were open and covered with metal screens to keep out insects.
The dog began to bark and eventually crawled under the house with its tail tucked. It would not come out until the next day. What happens next is worth quoting Davis in full.
Approaching from the fields was a strange glow. As it came nearer, they could make out what seemed to be a small “man” — though a man not much like any they had ever seen before. He was about three and a half feet tall, with an oversized head that was almost perfectly round, and arms that extended almost to the ground; the huge hands had talons at the end of the fingers. The eyes were much bigger than human eyes, and glowed with a yellowish light; they were directed neither to the front nor to the side, but about midway between. The whole creature was seemingly made of silver metal that gave off an eerie light in the darkness, like the light from the radium dial on a watch.
Davis, 1978
The creature’s hands were raised now, ‘as if someone had told him he was about to be robbed.’ He was approaching the house slowly, moving toward the back door.
This was the beginning of a three hour encounter with what has been described as an “army of little men”, but stories can be deceiving and there were never more than two of the creatures seen together at any point. What happened next is what you might expect to happen in rural America when weird creatures show up after someone’s claimed a spaceship landed nearby: the men went for their guns.
When the creature was about 20 feet from the house, Lucky and Billy Ray shot at the thing and they said it went backwards – “did a flip” and then scurried off into the night. They moved to the living room where the ladies were, and they saw one of the creatures through the window and fired through the screen. They said they hit it again, and again it “flipped and disappeared”. (Davis, 1978)
What was it like that night? When the gunfire began – even though country people would be used to occasional use of guns against varmins and for hunting, this was perceived as self-defense of the farm and the kids were sent to hide as the men fired into the darkness at the creatures. This is a part of the story with disagreeing accounts – raising the question of exactly how extensive was the gun-play? Some neighbors reported hearing a few gunshots. Some heard nothing. Some people in the house talked about a lot of shooting, but there was little physical evidence of a massive gunfight. But there was certainly gunfire, from a 20 gauge shotgun and a .22 rifle and a 12 gauge shotgun. The 12 gauge shotgun was not fired through the screen, which is why I omit it in my experiments below.
The apparent immunity of the creatures to gunfire, their eerie glow, and their weird eyes was bad enough, but then the creatures proceeded to float and glide from tree to roof and other locations. They got on the roof and were said to have reached down towards Billy Ray’s head from the little overhang/porch. The things walked weirdly with legs that didn’t seem to bend right. There was an accumulation of weirder and weirder observations that thoroughly convinced everyone that they were being attacked by little spacemen. The “assaults” on the farm were sporadic and the men felt multiple times that their gunfire had scared the creatures away – only for them to show up again.
The fear in the household intensified, the gunfire continued sporadically, and by around 11 pm they couldn’t take the stress anymore and they quickly piled into two cars and raced the 8 miles south to Hopkinsville’s police station.
One of the confusing details in this story is who came to investigate and why. It’s often reported that the military had representatives there, which sounds ominous and akin to a conspiracy or X-files style mystery narrative. But let us resist the urge to turn this into a cinematic moment of the authorities rolling in to fend off invaders from space. Some military police did join the local city police in their investigation, but we’ll look into why they were there in a bit.
From 11 pm to 2 am the farm was hectic with investigators. These included local police, KY State police, and MPs from the nearby Fort Campbell base of the US Army. They scoured the area around the farmhouse, and searched the interior. The family waited outside until they were firmly assured no little creatures were lurking inside.
One notable moment that night involved a cat. In Davis’ account, this was called “an anonymous cat” but other reports mentioned the cat being chased (presumably to round it up and get it out of the way?) by a little girl. Based on the known children there that night, this would have probably been Mary Lankford (age 7 at the time). At one point during this busy and confusing search, one of the investigators stepped on the tail of this cat, which then yowled in pain. “You never saw so many pistols unholstered so fast in your life,” said Hopkinsville police chief Greenwell.
Notably, the police found a patch of luminous grass around the area where the men had been shooting at the little intruders. They also found shotgun shells and a squarish hole in the screened window. (Much more on that later, but even that night the investigators were joking about it – presumably because they assumed a shotgun would not make a small square hole when fired through a metal screen.)
The police left. Keep in mind that the farmers had no running water and few appliances. Billy Ray had been going to the well to get water when the original “space ship” sighting took place. So when the little creatures showed up again after the authorities left, the family just stood their ground and did not drive all the way back and try to get further help. I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if a single patrol car had stayed around until dawn. Without the lights and noise of many men searching the property, might the authorities also have managed to see what the source of this invasion truly was?
Just before dawn, the creatures stopped their assault and were never seen on the farm again by the family. By the time Isabel Davis made it to Hopkinsville in 1956 to do her investigation, the family had vacated the farm and were quite reticent to talk with anyone. In the absence of definitive proof that the night’s assault was real, the town heaped scorn on the family and it took a lot of coaxing to get the matriarch to open up about that night’s events.
In part two of this overview, we will look at what happened after the strange events at the Kentucky farm and how this humble incident has grown to loom large in UFO history.
