The Siege
On the evening of August 21, 1955, at a farmhouse near Kelly, Kentucky, outside Hopkinsville, Billy Ray Taylor went to the well and came back saying he had seen a bright object land in a gully. An hour later, the eleven people in the Sutton family home said small creatures, about three feet tall, with large pointed ears, glowing eyes, long arms, and a silvery skin that seemed to glow, began appearing at windows and on the roof. The men fired shotguns and a .22 at them; the creatures floated back or scampered away unhurt and returned.
After several hours the family fled to the Hopkinsville police station. More than twenty officers, state police, and military police from Fort Campbell searched the property and found nothing but shattered windows and shell casings.
The Investigation
Police found no creatures, no craft, and no sign of a hoax; the family was frightened and had no motive that anyone identified, and they later resented the attention. Project Blue Book did not formally investigate. Ufologists Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher produced the most detailed study in 1978, and the case has stayed in the literature as one of the strangest occupant reports on record.
The Owl Explanation
The explanation most skeptics favor, argued in detail by French researcher Renaud Leclet, is a pair of great horned owls: large-eyed, long-eared, silent, territorial, prone to flying at people who disturb a nest, and, in a farm family's lamplight after an evening of drinking, easily magnified into goblins. The floating, the glowing, and the immunity to shotgun fire fit birds in the dark better than anything else proposed.
Little Green Men and Pop Culture
Newspaper accounts of the Kelly creatures spread the phrase "little green men" across America, though the witnesses had described them as silver. The case inspired Steven Spielberg's unproduced Night Skies, which became E.T., and the 1986 film Critters, and Kelly holds an annual "Little Green Men Days" festival. It is the origin of the cartoon alien as much as any single event.
Frequently asked questions
What happened at Kelly, Kentucky in 1955?
On August 21, 1955, members of the Sutton family said small glowing creatures with large ears and eyes surrounded their farmhouse near Hopkinsville for hours, unharmed by shotgun fire. Police found no evidence of the creatures.
What is the explanation for the Hopkinsville goblins?
The leading one is great horned owls, aggressive near a nest and easily magnified in the dark. No physical evidence supports the creatures and no hoax was ever proven; the family stood by the story.
Is Kelly–Hopkinsville where "little green men" comes from?
It is the case that spread the phrase in the American press in 1955, even though the witnesses described silver, not green, beings.