- Here's a free chapter from my book "5000 Years of
UFO's" thought everyone might enjoy it... Jim
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- Little Green Men and Flying Saucers?
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- I had someone ask me the other day "seen any Flying
Saucers or Little Green Men lately?" Of course I answered they are
all grays these days! With that question I realized that the somehow the
general public seems to think of all aliens as Little Green Men from Mars
in Flying Saucers. We all know that is not what is being seen in our skies.
We have traditionally seen flying disks, cigars, triangles, airships, even
flying wings. but no flying saucers until 1947.
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- I wondered where the expressions got started and was
there any truth to the idea of "LGM's"? I did some research into
it and the first mention of LGM's comes from an article in the newspaper
The Kentucky New Era from Aug. 22, 1955.
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- August 21, 1955 Hopkinsville, KY (Christian County) -
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- A family is terrified by small, glowing humanoids which
surrounded their rural farmhouse. The father takes several point-blank
shots at the humanoids with a shotgun, and the force of the blast only
seems to harmlessly repel the creatures several feet backward. The family
flees the residence and alerts the Sheriff's department, where through
later investigations, find indications of the struggle.
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- From the Kentucky New Era -
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- Aug. 22, 1955: Story Of Space-Ship, 12 Little Men Probed
Today (Editor's Note: One of the more curious incidents to occur in recent
Christian County history is the celebrated 1955 invasion of Kelly by "little
green men." Staff Writer Joe Dorris was on the scene the night of
the incident and the following morning and filed this story -- the first
in the nation. Dorris later noted that it was two or three days later that
the national media injected the green color into the description -- a color
never mentioned by those claiming to have seen the invaders.)
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- Story of Space-Ship, 12 Little Men Probed Today Kelly
Farmhouse Scene Of Alleged Raid By Strange Crew Last Night; Reports Say
Bullets Failed To Affect Visitors
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- All kinds of investigations were going on today in connection
with the bizarre story of how a space-ship carrying 12 to 15 little men
landed in the Kelly community early last night and battled occupants of
a farmhouse. Most official of the probes was reportedly being staged by
the air force.
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- More than a dozen state, county, and city officers from
Christian and Hopkins counties went to the scene between 11 p.m. and midnight
and remained until after 2 a.m. without seeing anything either to prove
or disprove the story about the ship and its occupants.
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- The farmhouse is located on the Old Madisonville Road
about eight miles north of Hopkinsville. The property is occupied by Cecil
(Lucky) Sutton, one of those who reported experiencing last night's phenomena.
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- There were some 10 or 12 persons at the house, including
several children, but investigating officers were not able to determine
exactly how many of those present actually clamed to have seen any of the
little men from the space ship.
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- Only other person who officers quoted directly was identified
as Billy Ray Taylor. One account said Taylor is a visitor from Pennsylvania,
which recently had a similar report of a space ship. Neither Sutton nor
Taylor was at home when officers returned to the scene this morning.
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- The story broke around 11 o'clock last night when two
cars, one bearing a Pennsylvania license drove up to Hopkinsville's police
headquarters. Officers then at the station said the two autos contained
at least five adults and several children. All appeared highly excited.
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- Spokesmen for the crowd told of how something resembling
a space ship or flying saucer had landed at the back of their house near
Kelly and 12 or 15 men, who appeared to be about 4 feet tall, had got out
of ship and come up to the house and done battle with the occupants.
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- "We need help," one of the men said, "we've
been fighting them for nearly four hours." Four city police, Chief
Russell Greenwell, T.C. Gross, Dorris Francis, and Gray Salter, drove to
the scene to see about the "little men". By radio, contact was
made with State Troopers R.N. Ferguson Jr. and G.W. Riley and Deputy Sheriff
George Batts, all of whom joined the motorcade to Kelly in their own vehicles.
Four MP's also went.
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- The radio discussions also brought two Hopkins County
deputy sheriffs and at least three state troopers from the station at Madisonville.
First arrivers found the scene deserted. The two cars which had brought
the report to Hopkinsville did not return to the Kelly farm until after
officers had arrived and looked the situation over.
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- Officers reported they found no tracks of "little
men," nor was there any mark indicating anything had landed at the
described sport behind the house. There was a hole in the screen at the
window through which occupants said a shot had been fired at one of the
strange little men.
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- Both Chief Greenwell and Deputy Sheriff Batts said they
got approximately this story from the still-terrified and excited Sutton
and Taylor families: About 7 p.m. one of the men went out of the house
to get a bucket of water.
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- He saw what looked like a flying saucer come over the
trees and land in a field at a point about a city block behind the house.
There was no explosion, only a semi-hissing sound, and the watcher returned
to the house with the bucket of water.
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- A short time later somebody reported some little men
with big heads and long arms were approaching the house. The men were described
as having huge eyes and hands out of proportion to their small bodies.
The visitors were wearing what looked to be metal plate.
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- The men got their guns, a shotgun for Sutton and a .22
caliber target pistol for Taylor. By and by, one of the little men pressed
his face against the window and the shotgun was fired through the window.
The face disappeared.
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- The men decided to go outside and see if the visitor
had been hit. Taylor was in front and when he emerged from the front door,
a huge hand reached down from the low roof above the door and grabbed him
by the hair. He pulled away and the two men went on out of the house.
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- One of the strange little men was in a nearby tree, another
on top of the house. A blast from Sutton's shotgun knocked another one
of the men down but he did not appear hurt. He disappeared in the darkness.
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- Taylor reportedly opened fire on other member of the
invading party, also with little effect. The battle went on for some time.
When the occupants of the house saw their chance, they jumped into their
cars and drove to Hopkinsville for help.
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- Deputy Sheriff Batts said the men told him that in all
they fired up about four boxes of .22 pistol shells. The officer quoted
a neighbor saying he heard shooting at the Suttons but distinguished only
about four shots and mistook them for fire-crackers.
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- Most of the officers remained at the site for more than
two hours. During that period, there were approximately 25 person at the
scene.
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- Only excitement during the period the officers were there
came when an MP happened to step on a cat's tail while walking in the darkness
near the house. The cat let out a squawl and for a few seconds there was
much activity and scurrying around on the part of those present.
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- Two officers who returned to the Kelly area early this
morning reported hearing that the "little men" had reappeared
around the Sutton home about 3:30 a.m.
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- Other investigators who went to Kelly later during the
morning said they were told Sutton and Taylor had gone to Evansville today.
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- Officers who visited the scene during last night's excitement
were reluctant to express any opinion today in regard to the reported invasion
of Kelly. All officials appeared to agree that there was no drinking involved.
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- Only outspoken comment came from Frank Dudas, city police
desk sergeant, who was not on duty last night and has not visited the scene
so far. He said, "I think the whole story is entirely possible."
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- Sergeant Dudas was one of two city policemen who reported
seeing three flying saucers early one morning last summer. He said, "I
know I saw them. If I saw them, the Kelly story certainly could be true."
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- Drawing of the Kelly aliens
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- Next I wanted to present a report from Annie MacFie who's
website: http://www.angelfire.com/ky/ufohome/bbfile9.html carries this
report:
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- KENTUCKY CLASSICS The CRITTER "INVASION" of
KELLY-HOPKINSVILLE by Annie MacFie
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- The term "high strangeness," frequently tossed
around in current UFOspeak, aptly applies to a Kentucky CE-III (close encounter
of the third kind) incident more than 30 years old. This is the one often
referred to as the "Hopkinsville Case," although it took place
seven miles to the north at a wide-spot-in-the-road called Kelly.
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- Because of outlandish exaggeration and derisive treatment
in the press, the story was generally disbelieved at the time, but careful
investigation by responsible researchers has turned up no evidence of hoax
or deceit on the part of the witnesses. That they were uneducated "hillbillies"
seems to have been most people's reason for doubting their word.
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- We return now to the hot, clear evening of August 21,
1955, one of the wilder nights in UFO history.
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- Pennsylvanians Billy Ray and June Taylor were visiting
the Cecil Sutton family at a tenant house in western Kentucky. Sutton's
50-year-old mother, Glennie Lankford, lived with the family, and some kinfolks
were over, making a crowd of eight adults and three children at the farmhouse.
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- Around 7 p.m. Taylor went to fetch water from the backyard
well and came back excited, saying he'd seen a brilliant flying saucer
come whizzing in from the southwest and drop into a gully not far from
the house. The others dismissed the sightings as a falling star, but within
the hour, the violent barking of Sutton's dog brought the men out in time
to see the animal hide under the house.
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- Approaching from the fields was a luminous shape - a
humanoid figure three and a half feet tall, shining all over as if "nickel-plated."
Large, pointed ears extended from its oversized head, and its eyes, set
more laterally than human eyes, glowed with yellow light. Its thin arms
reached almost to the ground, displaying big, webbed hands with talons
at the ends of the fingers.
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- Apparently, the creature had seen its share of cowboy
movies - it raised its hands high over its head in an attitude of surrender.
Ignoring Mrs. Lankford's pleas not to shoot at it, her son and Taylor opened
fire on the intruder with a shotgun and a .22. To their astonishment, it
flipped over, righted itself and ran off into the darkness.
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- Presently, it - or a second one like it - appeared looking
in at a window. Sutton's younger brother J.C. discharged the shotgun through
the window-screen, knocking the being out of sight.
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- Certain it had been hit, Taylor, followed by Cecil Sutton
(nicknamed "Lucky") started outside to find it. As he hesitated
beneath an overhanging roof, those in the house began to scream at the
sight of a claw-like hand reaching down to touch his hair. He was quickly
pulled back inside, and Lucky Sutton, leaping out into the yard, blasted
the creature off the roof with the shotgun. Taylor spotted another being,
and both men shot it out of the maple tree in which it was perched. It
floated, rather than fell to the ground and scurried away on slender, inflexible
legs that seemed to move from the hip only.
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- Just then, another entity (possibly the one that had
been on the roof) appeared around the corner of the house near Sutton.
His shotgun pellets struck it point-blank with a sound like that of a metal
bucket. Nonetheless, it jumped up and ran away unhurt.
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- Several more times the aliens advanced on the house,
never making any sound nor behaving with any overt hostility and each time
they were repelled by a hail of gunfire.
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- At last, the unnerved defenders fled from the farmhouse
in two cars and raced for the Hopkinsville police station where, in a state
of near-hysteria, they told their bizarre story.
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- By 12:30 the still-frightened family was back on the
scene, accompanied by state and local police, a deputy sheriff, a newspaper
photographer, and two military police from Ft. Campbell. A thorough search
of the house and grounds turned up a lot of spent shotgun shells and a
hole blasted through a screen, but no glowing little men. A luminous patch
of grass was observed where one of the creatures was shot off a fence,
but no cause for it could be determined. Apparently, no samples were collected.
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- Chief of Police Russel Greenwell stated that he and the
other investigators admitted sensing a "weird feeling" that permeated
the entire area that night. Although he couldn't find any evidence of what,
exactly, happened, "Something scared those people," he said.
"Something beyond reason - nothing ordinary."
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- With the excitement over and nothing more to do, everyone
but those occupying the farmhouse left around 2 a.m. The exhausted Sutton
family retired, but by 3:30, the little metallic guys were peeking in the
windows again. Lucky Sutton blew one more hole in a screen, to no effect.
The inquisitive visitors persisted in their forays until just before dawn.
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- Morning brought various investigators who conducted an
extensive, but fruitless, daylight examination of the farm. It also brought
a hoard of news reporters, and after their stories - some of them blatantly
sensationalistic and erroneous - went out, the curiosity seekers arrived.
Fed up with harassment and ridicule, the witnesses soon refused to talk
about the incident and, within 48 hours, packed up and left the area.
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- Fortunately, one of the first persons to interview the
percipients was Andrew "Bud" Ledwith of radio station WHOP, a
man with artistic ability and a broad-minded attitude toward UFOs. Before
the issue was clouded by the "chaff" of so many careless reports,
Ledwith obtained firsthand most of the informational "wheat"
from which today's researchers can put together the closest-to-complete
account of what really went on at Kelly. He also made drawings based on
witness descriptions and received signed statements of their testimony.
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- Almost a year later, Isabel Davis managed to locate and
interview Glennie Lankford and J.C. Sutton's wife, Alene, as well as Chief
Greenwell. The 196-page report of her investigation, "Close Encounter
at Kelly and Others of 1955," co-authored by Ted Bloecher, is available
from CUFOS (the Center for UFO Studies).
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- Far from the preposterous tall tale of "gun-toting
hillbillies shooting it out with a dozen or so green monsters," that
the press of that day put out, the Kelly-Hopkinsville Standoff has gone
down in serious UFO literature as one of the more credible, although highly
unusual, close encounters of the century. Flying Saucers?
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- Kenneth Arnold is usually credited with coining the phrase
"Flying Saucer" but a little research shows us that the media
was once again involved in this one.
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- From The REALL News Volume 1, Number 4 -- May 1993
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- Oddly enough, we got flying saucers because of a journalist's
error. 1947 was an exciting time in aviation history. New advances and
innovations were turning up regularly and speed records were being broken
as pilots aimed to break the sound barrier. Chuck Yeager would win that
prize on October 14, 1947. Four months earlier, on June 24, 1947, Kenneth
Arnold surprised the world by reporting nine objects flying by Mount Ranier
at the incredible speed of 1,200 miles per hour. It was an incredible mystery
and was such a sensation that it made front page news across the nation.
Soon everyone was looking for these new aircraft which according to the
papers were saucer-like in shape. Within weeks hundreds of reports of these
flying saucers were made across the nation. While people presumably thought
they were seeing the same things that Kenneth Arnold saw, there was a major
irony that nobody at the time realized.
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- Kenneth Arnold hadn't reported seeing flying saucers.
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- In a memoir of the incident for the First International
UFO Congress in 1977 Arnold revealed the flying saucer label arose because
of a "great deal of misunderstanding" on the part of the reporter
who wrote the story up for the United Press. Bill Bequette asked him how
the objects flew and Arnold answered that, "Well, they flew erratic,
like a saucer if you skip it across the water." The intent of the
metaphor was to describe the motion of the objects not their shape. Arnold
stated the objects "were not circular."
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- A look at the drawing he did for his report to the Air
Force shortly after the incident confirms the truth of that statement.
It is hard to describe in a word or two; beetle- shaped is the best I can
come up with. However you describe it, one thing is clear. It is not the
elegant alien geometric perfection we have come to know and mystify ourselves
over.
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- Now we know the truth about LGM's and Flying Saucers.
Next time you're asked you will have an answer. No, their has never been
a report of a Flying Saucer or Little Green Men, the Media made them up!.
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- Jim Hickman, Author- "5000 Years of UFO's"
http://www.thehickmanreport.com
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