Before there was Men in Black, or even UFOs, there were little green men.
It all began in the evening of August 21, 1955.
It all started when the Sutton family, who lived on a farm near Kelly Station, now just known as Kelly, some nine miles north of Hopkinsville, claimed that a space ship with a dozen or more “little men” landed on their property and battled the occupants of the farmhouse. The adults and children of the family of Cecil “Lucky” Sutton came to the Hopkinsville Police Department, highly excited, with their tale.
Officers from Hopkinsville, Christian County and the Kentucky State police converged on the farm. Even a carload of military police from the nearby Army base showed up.
When the officers came to the house, a number of people were present, with stories that were, for the most part, consistent. First arriving officers noticed two flashes in the sky. The three young men of the Billy Ray Taylor, age 20, Sutton, age 26 and John Sutton, age 27, their wives, and Mrs. Glennie Langford, the mother of the two Sutton men, and O.T. Baker, the brother of one of the wives, along with four children, were present.
The witnesses stated that about about 7:20 p.m., they noticed an object that was “all lighted up” glide into one of the fields. They estimated it was about a quarter-mile away, and that it appeared from that distance to be about the size of a No. 2 washtub and egg shaped. (For reference, a No, 2 washtub hold 15 gallons, is about 10 inches high and has a diameter of 22 inches.) A little more than a half hour later, thought, several “shiny little men” appeared, walked to the rear of their house. Within moments, the house was surrounded with the small creatures “all over the place,” in the yard, the trees and even perched on the roof. Taylor emerged from teh house and one of the creatures grabbed at him. Lucky Sutton, armed with a single-barrel, 12 gauge shotgun, shot the little man from the roof. He was knocked down but not apparently harmed, and the entire group fled. But … they came back.
Over the course of about three hours, the “strange fellows” appeared some six times and each time, were run off by the shotgun and John Sutton’s .22 pistol. The latter claimed to have gone through four boxes, 200 rounds, of ammunition, but the shots had no effect, simply ricocheting off the little men like they would off steel plate. They described the men as 3 to 4 feet tall, shiny “like chrome, with arms to the ground, oversize hands, slick bald heads with big eyes and pointed ears. The skin on their faces was stretched. Mrs. Langford, present, got only a glimpse before she fainted and Mrs. Taylor hid in the house and never saw them at all. They finally piled into the car for the short trip to Hopkinsville.
Despite the claimed gun battle, there were only two spent cartridges in the area, and a shot through the window fired by Sutton through the screen. Although the Sutton women, and all of the men, returned to the home with the officers, the other women and the children chose to stay in town.
Law enforcement and military, and doubtless many locals, scoured the area for the little men, who had morphed into the little green men (although their color was not mentioned originally), to no avail. The only reported excitement occurred when a MP stepped on a family cat’s tail, and its indignant squawk sent everyone scurrying until they realized what had happened. Everyone agreed, however, that no drinking was involved. The law enforcement agencies, the military and astronomy professors never specifically said they were real, none totally denied it, either. One theory put forth was that what the family saw were monkeys that had escaped from a nearby circus train, but … they were likely not wearing little space suits at the time ….
The situation evolved when an Evansville, Indiana woman decided that one of the little green men had grabbed her leg while she was swimming in the Ohio River about the same time. She claimed a “hairy paw” had snagged her leg, which fit the description given that the little men were about three feet tall, with “eyes like saucers, hands like claws and glowing all over.” The woman claimed that she and her friend saw something shiny in the sky from the Kentucky side just minutes earlier
Needless to say, newspapers had the proverbial “field day” with the story, referring to the Suttons as the “earth people.”In due course, the Sutton family went commercial. They returned to the farm, installed a no trespassing sign, and began to charge admission -50 cents a look – to take advantage of the string of curiosity seekers. The town still does so, with an annual Little Green Men festival every August.
As reported in the Lexington Herald, “So, unless something for definite is established, the space ship story is still up in the air.”
Kentucky Cop Stories 