The Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter That Coined The Term ‘Little Green Men’
J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO StudiesAn illustration of a “Hopkinsville Goblin,” one of the alleged extraterrestrials that terrorized the Sutton farm.
On Aug. 21, 1955, Billy Ray Taylor of Pennsylvania was visiting his friend Elmer “Lucky” Sutton at his farmhouse in the small town of Kelly, Kentucky. Taylor stepped outside to gather water from the well when he saw something “real bright, with an exhaust all the colors of the rainbow” hovering in the sky above him.
He ran back inside to tell the others, including his wife and Sutton’s family, that he had just seen a UFO. At first, the others laughed it off — but then the dogs started barking. Someone, or something, was coming toward the house.
The terrified group gathered in the farmhouse and looked outside to find what they described as small, goblin-like creatures with round “oversized” heads and long arms with talons that nearly touched the ground. They said the creatures’ eyes “glowed with a yellowish light,” and their bodies shined like “silver metal.”
The “little silver men,” as they came to be known, continued to approach the farmhouse — and that’s when the men inside started shooting.
After a battle that lasted hours, the Suttons and the Taylors fled the property and made their way to the police station in nearby Hopkinsville. They seemed genuinely frightened when they arrived. One member of the group even had a pulse of 140 beats per minute. As police chief Russell Greenwell noted at the time, “These aren’t the kind of people who normally run to the police for help.”
Investigators never found any evidence of aliens, though. Soon enough, the story spread throughout the small town — and the Suttons were ostracized from the community and forced to abandon their home to escape the ridicule.
Although they were described at the time as little silver men, the term “little green men” was the one that stuck, and it came as a result of the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter.
