08/21/2025
THE HOPKINSVILLE GOBLINS
On the evening of August 21, 1955, five adults and seven children came into the Hopkinsville, Kentucky, police station with a very strange story. They claimed they had been attacked a group of what the papers would call “little green men” from a UFO that had landed near the farmhouse where they were staying the night.
Billy Ray Taylor, who had been staying with the Sutton family at the house, was the first witness to the unusual events. He had gone out to fetch some water from the well but came running back into the house moments later, yelling that he had seen a flying saucer skid into a gulley a short distance away.
The Suttons laughed at him – but not for long. An hour later, the frenzied barking of their dogs alerted them to the presence of a “glowing goblin” approaching the house. The Suttons then did what any self-respecting Kentucky hill family would do when confronted with a threat – they ran out into the yard with shotguns and pistols and opened fire. John Sutton stated that one of his bullets struck the creature, and it did a backflip and ran away.
The “goblin” soon returned – and he brought a friend. They began peering into the windows, terrifying the adults and children barricaded inside the house. The creatures had large, domed heads with two short antennae, pointed chins, large, pointed ears, bulging yellow eyes, thick noses, no lips to speak of, and no necks. They were approximately three-feet-tall, and their spindly arms and legs were contradicted by powerful chests. Their arms were nearly twice as long as their legs, and their feet were like suction cups. At one point, when Billy Ray came outside to look for the creatures, one of the goblins reached down with four-clawed, webbed fingers and grabbed a handful of his hair.
John and Billy Ray claimed to have fought off the little men for hours, watching them flip and float, but never die after being shot. Finally, the frightened group piled into their cars and fled to the Hopkinsville police station, seven miles away. Chief Russell Greenwell, not knowing what to make of their story, but recognizing their genuine terror, gathered some deputies and went out to the farm to investigate.
When they arrived at the Sutton farm, they saw no sign of the creatures. There were no tracks or markings outside of the home, only the evidence of gunshots fired from inside. Another officer reported seeing a meteor shower in the area, but no flying saucer. According to the Suttons, though, once the police left, the goblins returned and continued to look in the windows until near sunrise. After that, they vanished.
The news quickly spread of the “Hopkinsville Goblins” and reporting about the incident helped to popularize the term “little green men” as a nickname for aliens, even though the group never described the creatures as green. The story spreads like wildfire among UFO enthusiasts and researchers of the strange.
But, of course, not everyone believed the attackers were real, even though investigations by the police, reporters, Air Force officers, and civilian ufologists found no evidence of a hoax. Initially, some skeptics claimed the witnesses were drunk, but Chief Greenwell testified that they were not. The chief also later added that it was evident something “beyond reason, not ordinary,” had happened to Billy Ray and the Suttons.
Since then – with the luxury of hindsight – alternative explanations have emerged, like the idea the creatures were test flight monkeys used in rocket experiments that had crashed in the area. Others refuse to consider that it was anything other than a hoax, or perhaps, more charitably, that the group, shocked by the meteor shower and in a state of panic and likely intoxicated, confused a pair of aggressive Great Horned Owls as an extraterrestrial menace.
Sure. If that’s what makes you sleep better at night to think it was two owls, please stick with that idea. For the rest of us, this incident remains eerily unsolved.
