(Originally published in Fringe! A Good Ol’ Fashioned Alien Shootout)

There it was again, a silvery flash by the window. Footsteps thump across the rooftop like echoes of reindeer. Only it was August, and last you checked, reindeer didn’t have bulging yellow eyes. A tap on the glass behind you from the living room, and you heard one of the children scream. You rushed to the window and flipped on the porch light just in time to catch the thing as it retreated from the glow.

“Sweet lord in heaven!” You hear one of your family exclaim. In horror, you see another pair of those terrible eyes light up in the dark at the edge of the light. Then another, and you wonder just how many more watched from the woods around you? You are a member of the Sutton family from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and after tonight, your life will never be the same.

~

It had been hot that day on August 21, 1955. Like many others in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, Glennie Lankford sat down with her family for Sunday dinner. She was surrounded by her brood, including her son Elmer “Lucky” Sutton and his family, as well as a friend, O.P Baker. All totaled 11 people had gathered in that tiny house; at that time, not many in the area of rural Kentucky had TV or even a phone, so family gatherings were often a highlight of entertainment.

Just as things were starting to get into swing and the sun started to set, young Billy Taylor decided to step outside and get a cool drink of water from the well. The afternoon sky lit up, and he saw a bathtub-shaped craft fly in from the south. Behind it, like the tail of a comet, trailed a rainbow. It appeared to touch down somewhere to the north of the house in a nearby field.

Billy raced back inside to tell everyone but was met with laughter. Then, the dog started to go wild outside on its chain. It barked and thrashed, tugged hard on the lead. Something was in the woods behind the house, in the direction of that field.

Lucky and Billy stepped out to investigate as a light appeared between the trees. The dog broke free and ran in terror. The light continued to advance on them, and a creature came into focus. The description varies slightly from account to account, but most of the defining features are the same. The creatures were silver from head to toe, think dipped in chrome. They had large, bat-like ears and enormous, unsettling eyes. Frog-like and bulging, the eyes were a constant source of distress for members of the family when they would describe what came to be known as the Hopkinsville Goblins.

The creatures had no neck to speak of, and their arms were much too long. They nearly dragged the ground, making their movements somewhat ape-like. They stood around four feet tall and had sharp claws. When the being came too close for comfort, Lucky and Billy did what any well-armed citizen of the time would do when faced with a possible spaceman.

They opened fire.

A single-barrel shotgun and a .22 riffle struck the goblin at close range—some accounts put it as close as 50 feet—and knocked the creature over backward. Before the two could even process what had happened, the thing stood up and lumbered back to the dark woods. The women and children retreated deeper into the house, with the kids hiding under the bed. What followed was four hours of terror.

The creatures would take turns peeking into the windows. The first time Lucky saw one press against the window screen, he shot it at point-blank range. The creature was once again blown back but swiftly got up on its feet, seemingly unharmed. They would run along the roof, but other than their footfalls, the entities were completely silent.

Every time one would come to a window, the men would unload on it, but their bullets did nothing to deter the pint-sized invaders. In fact, as the night went on, the people began to get a feeling that the Goblins were toying with them. Making their frantic shootout into a game. The men noticed that whenever they shot one of them, it made a metallic “plink.” One would go on to say that it sounded like they were shooting tin cans.

Having grown tired of the back and forth, Billy Ray decided to take the fight to them. He stepped outside, and one of the creatures took a swap at him from above. Terrified, he spun around to find one of the Goblin’s hanging off the roof. The men rushed to aid Billy Ray at his scream and shot down the creature.

More eyes advanced, and the family opened fire as they fell back into the house. Lucky was the last inside, and before he made it back up on the porch, one of those things quickly came up to him. It stopped a few feet away, and the two stared at each other. The being raised both its arms up over its head, a possible attempt at communication. Whatever the reason, Lucky responded by planting a bullet right in the creature's chest. It simply rolled away and joined the others in the trees. Lucky huddled up with his family and braced for another round with the creatures.

Glennie pointed out that this siege had gone on for some time, but the Goblins had not once tried to enter the home. Also, other than reaching out for Billy Ray, the things had been, for the most part, peaceful. They decided to try and make a break for the cars. The whole family spilled out of that house at full sprint and made it safely to their vehicles.

Once at the police station, some parts of what would come to be called the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter began to break down. Descriptions of the creatures varied a bit from person to person, as did the number of entities, but by and large, the family stuck to their story. The cops didn’t know what to make of this whole mess, but one thing was sure: shots had been fired at something that night.

Over a dozen police officers from as far as the next town over responded, as well as some military police who happened to be stationed nearby. In addition, an enterprising reporter had managed to hear about the encounter that night from someone at the station, so he tagged along as well to the Sutton home.

Where they found nothing.

Other than evidence of a shootout, dozens of spent shell casings on the ground, there was no evidence that anything out of the ordinary happened that night. The police spent hours looking over the home and surrounding grounds before they left, with the intention of returning in the morning. The family, exhausted and confused, decided to try and get some sleep. The police presence had settled them somewhat, reassured them that at least the creatures were gone. That calm was shattered by Glennie’s frantic cries.

One of the Goblins was back.

Lucky rushed into his mother’s room and saw one of the bug-eyed entities pressed against the glass of her window. Having fought the things off for most of the night, Lucky’s temper had reached a boiling point. He vowed, “Momma, I’m gonna shoot that little man,” before he took aim and fired. All this did was break his mother’s window; the creature was unphased and continued to terrorize the family until sun up. Then, as mysteriously as they came, the Hopkinsville Goblins disappeared.

That reporter who accompanied the police had been busy. After his story ran, dozens of other papers descended on the little house in Kentucky. Here, the story morphed and changed several times, especially in relation to the number of creatures. Some papers, such as the Waco News-Tribune, would run headlines like “Little Green Men Harass Kentucky Farm Family” and gave the number of creatures in the dozens.

Press and onlookers trespassed on the property at all hours of the day and night. Some would even enter the home uninvited or camp out on the lawn in hopes of seeing the creatures. As one could imagine, this drove the Sutton family crazy. While a few members, Glennie most notably, tried to drive them away, Lucky had a more enterprising idea. He began to charge admission. This attempt to make a little something off all the headache the press was causing the family soured many on the encounter.

The Suttons started to be seen as money-hungry, and their skeptics grew. In the end, it was never determined just what happened that August night, and no one in the family made a huge payday from the story. The Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter became one of two things, depending on which side of the coin you fall on. For some, it is one of the most famous alien encounters in UFO history; to others, it is a fine example of how the media can help make even the most unbelievable hoax credible. No matter what you choose to believe, theories and explanations abound.

There had been a meteor shower that Sunday night. One of the officers claimed to have seen two while responding to the Sutton home. Could it have been a meteor Billy Taylor saw and not a spacecraft? Great Horned owls are common in the area, and many have put forward that the Suttons had simply mistaken the Goblins for owls. On the surface, this could fit as a good explanation. Horned owls do have large, luminous yellow eyes, as well as sharp talons. Their key feature, the feathers on their face that give them a horned look, might actually explain the ears of the Goblins as well.

However, the Sutton family were native Kentuckians. The idea that eleven people, born and bred in those woods, couldn’t identify an owl after seeing it for four hours is just laughable. Unless, as some suspect, they weren’t exactly sober. The police did go on to say that they saw no evidence of alcohol, but who knows how hard they looked for that as well.

Was what happened to the Sutton’s evidence of contact from beyond our world, or had it all been a reflection from that famous Kentucky moonshine?

Sources
[Completely Kentucky wiki (Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter); Youtube: Think Anomalous; Various anonymous sources]

A Good Ol’ Fashioned Alien Shootout

Come away, O human child

Ghost Flesh: The first chapter