By Charles Lear (Halloween re-post)
On August 21, 1955, there was an incident that took place on a farm located in the town of Kelly, 7 miles north of Hopkinsville, Kentucky that reads like it was straight out of a ‘50s sci-fi comic book. The story has been recounted in many books and all over the internet but, because of its comic book nature, that it involved real people who were deeply affected and real people who did earnest and laudable investigations tends to be overlooked.
In an old farmhouse on a tobacco farm along the east side of Old Madisonville Road, a two lane gravel turnpike, eleven people, eight adults and three children were relaxing as evening set in. The house and farm were owned by Glennie Lankford, a 50 year-old widow with children from two marriages. Full time residents of the house were: Glennie, her three children from her second husband ages 7-12, her 21 year-old son from her first marriage, J.C (John Charley) Sutton and his 27 year-old wife, Alene. Glennie’s 25 year-old son, Elmer “Lucky” Sutton, his 29 year-old wife, Vera, and their friends, 21 year-old Billy Ray Taylor and his 18 year-old wife June, had been staying at the house for a couple of months. Alene’s brother, O.P. Baker, also in the house that night was in his 30’s and stayed overnight on a regular basis as it was a convenient place for him to be picked up and driven to work. The Taylor and Sutton couples were on a break from their work with a traveling carnival.
According to the witnesses, around 7:00 PM, Billy Ray Taylor went out to the well in the back of the house to get some water. The people in the house were relaxing in the living room, which had two beds in it, one of which was Glennie’s. The men had been playing cards and when Taylor returned he excitedly told everyone that he’d seen a silver, flying saucer with a multi-colored exhaust fly silently overhead from the southwest, stop and then descend into a gulley at the end of a neighboring farm field. Taylor was not taken seriously and made fun of by several in the house. Around 8:00 PM, the family dog began to bark which prompted Lucky Sutton and Billy Ray Taylor to go out the back door (from the bedroom across a hallway) and investigate. As they came out, the dog went under the house and wouldn’t be seen again until the next day. A glow came towards Taylor and Sutton from the field and, as it approached, they saw what seemed to be a small man. When it was closer, they then saw what was described as a silver, metallic creature approximately 3 feet tall, with a large, round head, large, pointed, leathery ears, large, glowing, yellow eyes midway between the front and side, a small trunk with short, spindly legs and no discernable knee joints, and arms long enough to nearly touch the ground with large hands that had talons on the fingers.
The creature slowly approached with its arms raised and bent slightly at the elbows. Sutton and Taylor withdrew into the house and, armed with a 20-gauge shotgun and .22 rifle respectively, prepared to defend their friends and families. When the creature was within 20 feet of the house, Sutton and Taylor fired, which caused the creature to flip over backwards and then move off into the dark. The men went across the hall to the living room. There they saw another creature come up to a side window and both men fired through the screen. This creature also flipped over and moved out of sight. Sutton and Taylor went out the front door, which was at the west end of the hallway, to see if they’d hit the creature. Taylor went out first and a clawed hand was seen to come down from the small roof over the door towards the top of Taylor’s head and then touch his hair. The people watching alerted him and Alene Sutton grabbed him to pull him back inside. Lucky Sutton pushed past, turned and shot at a creature he saw on the roof. The creature was seemingly knocked over the roof to the other side. Taylor spotted a creature on a limb of a maple tree, alerted Sutton and both men fired. This creature floated to the ground, they fired again and the creature moved off out of sight. A creature came around the corner of the house in front of Sutton and he shot at it at close range. He described a sound that was as if he had hit a metal bucket and that this creature flipped over and moved off like the others. The movement of the creatures was described as extremely rapid and they seemed to propel themselves with their arms while using their legs for balance. Glennie Lankford stated that no one had seen more than one creature at a time. Because of the reported ability to move rapidly, researcher, Isabel Davis speculated that this might have caused the perception that many creatures were being seen while only one or a few were actually present.
Lucky Sutton would later state that the creatures approached the house six times. During a quiet interval at around 11p.m., everyone in the house piled into two cars, with one child carried screaming in fear, and they sped towards the Hopkinsville police station. All of them entered the station and related the night’s events to the desk sergeant who was impressed enough by what he considered their genuine fear, that he called Chief of Police, Russell Greenwell. Greenwell was at home in bed when he answered and was convinced to come to the station. The State Police in Madisonville were called and they called officers in cars and at home and instructed them to meet at the station in Hopkinsville. From there, many officers in many cars would leave for the Sutton farm. In addition, the Christian County Sherriff’s Office, in the same building as the city police, sent a Deputy Sherriff and alerted a staff photographer of the Kentucky New Era. With the Suttons, Taylors, and Lankfords leading the way, the police, four MP’s from nearby Fort Campbell, a reporter from Madisonville, the photographer with his wife, and some interested onlookers all headed for the farm.
Once there, the families refused to enter the house until it was thoroughly searched. As the investigators went through the house and yard, they kept a lookout for liquor bottles. None were found and Glennie Lankford, known to be a religious churchgoer, would later state in an interview taped for radio broadcast that she didn’t allow liquor in the house. The investigators tramped all over the yard, located shotgun shells, noted the damage to the screens and shotgun pellets lodged in the window frame but failed to find any concrete evidence of the creatures. Chief Greenwell and several men did see a luminous spot in the grass where one of the creatures was reportedly shot but it was only visible from a certain angle and not detectable when viewed at close range. The investigation was, by all accounts, highly disorganized and, at one point, an officer stepped on a cat’s tail prompting a yowl and several officers to draw their guns. At around 2:00 a.m. the police and others left, promising to return and do a daylight search.
As the families attempted to get some sleep, the creatures returned and the cycles of sightings and shootings continued until the last creature was seen at around 4:45, half an hour before sunrise. It was now Monday and the families were up early having had little or no sleep. Lucky and J.C. Sutton, along with O.P. Baker drove to Evansville, Indiana on an errand while Billy Ray Taylor went hunting with a neighbor leaving the women and children alone. The story was first broadcast over radio station WHOP at 7:15 a.m. and repeated throughout the day. The publicity from the broadcasts and then, newspaper stories caused hundreds of curiosity seekers to descend on the farm and, by the time the men returned from Indiana (where they were found and had their picture taken by the Evansville Press), they were forced to park far away from the property. People were all over the yard and in the house, some of them reportedly taking items with them as souvenirs, and, in the midst of this, investigators and reporters were peppering the witnesses with questions, some hoping to catch them in a lie. The crowds showed up on a daily basis and the police were called several times to clear them off but they kept returning. Lucky, in what Davis speculated was an attempt at crowd control, made up a sign saying they were charging admission, interview and photo fees ranging from 50 cents for admission, one dollar for information, to 10 dollars for a picture. They had tried “No Trespassing” signs, which proved ineffectual and the sign with the fees initially proved to be as well. The trauma experienced by the families during the human onslaught was reported to be comparable to the trauma experienced during the onslaught of the strange creatures.
The fact that they had a sign announcing they were charging fees caused many to believe that the story was a hoax and the fact that the Taylor and Sutton couples were carnival workers was brought up to support this theory. As doubts grew, the crowds shrank and, it could be said that the sign had served its purpose, though it cost the witnesses their reputations. The witnesses became bitter and reclusive and Glennie sold the farm and moved the family to Hopkinsville. J.C. Sutton would lose several jobs because of his association with the story and he eventually refused to talk about it. A lot of details would have been lost forever were it not for two investigators who were able to interview members of the family and people on the periphery of the event.