Ep 81: The Kelly–Hopkinsville Encounter Part 3

Detail from Tim Bertelink's Artist Impression of the Kelly-Hopkinsville "goblin." Image used under CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

Tim Bertelink's Artist Impression of the Kelly-Hopkinsville "goblin."  Image used under CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

Copy of Copy of Kelly

Kelly Community entrance sign.

Copy of Copy of Park

Sign at community park.

Copy of Copy of South-facing view of homesite. Treeline in background is gully.

Copy of Copy of Homesite

Tree in center of picture is said to be the site of the well Billy Ray Taylor was drawing water from when he first saw the object in the woods.

Copy of Copy of Homesite

Northeast view of Kelly Homesite

Copy of Copy of Homesite

East facing view of Kelly Homesite

Copy of Copy of Gully

East facing view of gully behind homesite.

Copy of Mrs. Glennie Lankford and Mary Lankford

"In and around the whole area, the house, the fields, that night, there was a weird feeling.  It was partly uneasiness, but not entirely.  Everyone had it.  There were men there that I'd call brave men, men I've been in dangerous situations with.  They felt it too.  They've told me so."
– Hopkinsville Police Chief, Russell Greenwell

 

Approximate location of the Sutton family farmhouse on Old Madisonville Road, in the unincorporated area of Kelly, about 8 miles north of Hopkinsville, KY

BACKGROUND:

It's easy to dismiss the entire Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter as the booze-fueled fantasy of a bunch of backward hicks who can't tell the difference between a goblin and an owl, or maybe you think it was an outrageous hoax perpetrated for cash.  But before you begin telling people what they saw, or make assumptions based on character or class, just remember: unless you were there, you weren't there.  These people didn't ask for this incident to happen to them, and they especially didn't ask for the notoriety or ridicule that followed.  What the authorities at the time believed, and what many skeptics agree on in hindsight, is that the Sutton and Taylor families were genuinely terrified of something real, and yet even the most seasoned paranormal researcher can't definitively say by what or by whom.  So maybe your educated reasoning doesn't allow for the possibility of otherworldly creatures?  Well, that's fine, it's a natural human desire to make sense of the impossibilities of our strange world with rationalizations that we can comfortably live with.  But as you do so, keep one more thing in mind: you can spend years or a whole lifetime developing and refining your rationale for disbelief, but it only takes one undeniable, paranormal experience to make you a believer.

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Reference Links:

• Total Solar Eclipse 2017: Your complete guide by CNET

• Guide to photographing the Solar Eclipse

• 2017 Pokémon World Championships, Aug 18–20 in Anaheim, CA

• The KH Incident 62 years later and the Eclipse, video segment from WDRB News

• "Hoptown" or "The Hop" i.e. Hopkinsville prepares for the eclipse

• From the Frontiers in Psychology journal: Hauntings, homeopathy, and the Hopkinsville Goblins: using pseudoscience to teach scientific thinking

• The Q RAY website

• Stephan Lewandowski

• Siege of ‘Little Green Men’: The 1955 Kelly, Kentucky, Incident by Joe Nickell on the CSI website

• The Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter by Brian Dunning on the Skeptoid website

• Return of the Kentucky Goblins: New Leads in a Case of Strange Creatures, Crashed UFOs, and the Men in Black by Greg Newkirk from Week in Weird

• The theory of "THEM" and The Legend of Zelda on Zeldapedia

• The Amazing James Randi documentary: An Honest Liar

• "The Owl Whisperer" YouTube video – WARNING: FOWL, er FOUL LANGUAGE!

• The Owl and the Pussycat are best friends!

• Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment

• What is the Fifth Dimension?

• SONG: Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler

• SONG: Elvis Costello's What's So Funny 'bout Peace, Love and Understanding?

• SONG: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In by The 5th Dimension

• SONG: Genesis – "Keep it Dark"

• The KH incident from the Graphic Novel: Encountering Aliens: Eyewitness Accounts by Chris Kincade

• The Historical Blindness Podcast by Nathaniel Lloyd

• Sableye Pokémon – based on the Kelly-Hopkinsville "Goblins"

• The Pukwudgie

• The Wendigo

• The Leprechaun

• "Sam" from Trick 'r Treat

• Dan Piraro's "Creature from the Black Lagoon" comic panel

• WHOP Radio in Hopkinsville, KY

• The "Chinese Whispers" game, or as it's known in the US, "The Telephone Game"

• Police urge people to report crop circle damage in Wiltshire, UK

• The Hatfield–McCoy feud

• Natives not being able to see Captain Cook/Columbus/Magellan's ships

• Discussion on Snopes about natives not being able to see western sailing ships

• The Fermi Paradox

• Crop Circles: The Art of the Hoax on Smithsonian.com

• "Mr. Derp" on South Park

• Kelly Hopkinsville Geographic Information Systems PDF Map 1 by ARC Member Cody Rice

• Kelly Hopkinsville Geographic Information Systems PDF Map 2 by ARC Member Cody Rice

• Kelly Hopkinsville Geographic Information Systems PDF Map 3 by ARC Member Cody Rice

• Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of 1955 by Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher (PDF)

• Original report from the Kentucky New Era newspaper, Monday, August 22, 1955

• Another UFO report from Garrard Co. Kentucky, October 9, 1955, from the Albuquerque Journal

• Kelly Little Green Men Days Festival, August 18–21, 2017, Kelly-Hopkinsville, KY

• All about the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse on NASA's website

• NASA's event bulletin board about the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse

• Where, when and how to see the Total Solar Eclipse on Space.com

• Could Kelly's "Little Green Men" return with the coming Total Solar Eclipse?

• The Kelly-Hopkinsville Incident article by Joe Nickell on the CSI website

• Acoustic Shadow and the American Civil War

• The UFO Close Encounter classification system

• The Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter on Wikipedia

Related Books:

Alien Legacy

By Geraldine Sutton Stith

Buy on Amazon

The Kelly Green Men

By Geraldine Sutton Stith

Buy on Amazon

The Kelly Green Men: Alien Legacy Revisited

By Geraldine Sutton Stith

Buy on Amazon

Encountering Aliens: Eyewitness Accounts (Eyewitness to the Unexplained)

By Chris Kincade

Buy on Amazon

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Credits:

Episode 81: The Kelly-Hopkinsville Incident, Part 3.  Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees; Ryan McCullough Sound Design; Research Assistance by Tess Pfeifle and the astonishing League of Astonishing Researchers, a.k.a. The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2017 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.