Siege of 'Little Green Men': the 1955 Kelly, Kentucky, incident

On the night of August 21, 1955, I during the heyday of flying-saucer reports, a western Kentucky family encountered--well, that is the question: what were the humanoid-like creatures that terrified a family at their farmhouse? What actually happened at Kelly, Kentucky, that evening?

For the fiftieth anniversary of the incident, I was invited to give a talk at a Little Green Men Festival in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, staged by its Chamber of Commerce. I determined to investigate the story that had caught the attention of the U.S. Air Force's "Project Blue Book" (which investigated 12,000 UFO reports from 1952 to 1969) and that also inspired a novel (Karyl 2004), a video documentary ("Monsters" 2005), and even an X-Files comic book ("Crop" 1997).

My investigation included visiting the site in the company of UFOlogist and fellow invited speaker Peter Davenport. (We were each given a key to the city by Hopkinsville mayor Richard G. Liebe and chauffeured in his car on research jaunts by Rob Dollar.) I also obtained copies of original newspaper clippings at the Hopkinsville Public Library, conducted further research at the local museum, talked with witnesses to the events, studied detailed reports on the case, and much more. I even attended a Holiness Church tent revival, just down the road from the site of the Kelly incident, held in response to the Little Green Men Festival. Many of the congregation wore green T-shirts with the slogan "Son of Man Is Coming Back." Pastor Wendell "Birdie" McCord (2005) told me, "I don't know whether the green men is [sic] coming back, but I know the Son of Man is coming back."

Background

On the evening of Sunday, August 21, 1955, present at the Sutton farmhouse at Kelly were eleven people: widowed family matriarch Glennie Lankford (50); her children, Lonnie (12), Charlton (10), and Mary (7); two sons from her previous marriage, Elmer "Lucky" Sutton (25) and John Charley "J.C." Sutton (21), and their respective wives, Vera (29) and Alene (27); Alene's brother, O.P. Baker (30 or 35); and a Pennsylvania couple, Billy Ray Taylor (21) and June Taylor (18). The Taylors, along with "Lucky" and Vera Sutton, had been visiting for a while, being occasional carnival workers.

Not all of the eleven were eyewitnesses to the most significant events. One of the women, apparently June Taylor, had been "too frightened to look" (Davis and Bloecher 1978, 14), and Lonnie Lankford (2005), speaking to me at age 62, said that, during the fracas, his mother had hidden him and his brother and sister under a bed.

About seven o'clock, Billy Ray Taylor was drawing water from the well when he saw a bright light streak across the sky and disappear beyond a tree line some distance from the house. According to researcher Isabel Davis, who investigated the case in 1956 (Davis and Bloecher 1978, 15), Billy Ray Taylor was different from the other eyewitnesses:

   He had looked at the creatures with
   extravagant success. He was the only
   member of the group who appeared to
   arouse immediate doubt in everyone
   who talked to him.... Even among
   the family he had a low standing; when
   he first came into the house and
   reported a "spaceship," they paid him
   no attention. Later, during the investigations,
   he basked in the limelight of
   publicity. He elaborated and embroidered
   his description of the creatures
   (though not his description of the
   "spaceship") and eventually produced
   the most imaginative and least credible
   of the little-men sketches. Several
   skeptics who labeled the story a hoax
   referred to him as the probable originator.
   His behavior was in sharp contrast
   to that of the other witnesses,
   none of whom aroused such prompt
   suspicion in the investigators.

About an hour after Taylor reported his "flying saucer" sighting, a barking dog attracted him and "Lucky" Sutton outside. Spotting a creature, they darted into the house for a .22 rifle and shotgun, thus beginning a series of encounters that spanned the next three hours. Sometimes, the men fired at a scary face that appeared at a window; sometimes, they went outside, whereupon, on one occasion, Taylor's hair was grabbed by a huge, clawlike hand. Once, the pair shot at a little creature that was on the roof and at another "in a nearby tree" that then "floated" to the ground. Either the creatures were impervious to gun blasts or the men's aim was poor, since no creature was killed.

After a lull in the "battle," everyone piled into their cars and drove eight miles south to Hopkinsville's police headquarters. Soon, more than a dozen officers--from city, county, and state law-enforcement agencies--had con verged on the site. Their search yielded nothing, apart from a hole in a window screen. There were "no tracks of 'little men,' nor was there any mark indicating anything had landed at the described spot behind the house." By the following day, reportedly, the U.S. Air Force was involved ([Dorris] 1955) but ultimately listed the case as "unidentified" (Clark 1998).