Besieged by Goblins

Classification (Hynek): CE3.
Witnesses: 11 Witnesses aged between 7 and 50.
Time & Place: 21 August 1955; Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
Entity Type (Lawson): Exotic.
Craft: Flying saucer (seen by only one witness).
Summary: Floating critters lay siege to farmhouse!

Enter the Goblin

One August night in 1955, eleven terrified witnesses in a remote Kentucky farmhouse experienced one of the longest close encounters on record.

The Sutton family's ordeal began as they were enjoying an evening meal with their guest, Billy Ray Taylor. Feeling thirsty, Billy Ray stepped outside to draw some water from the well. Moments later, he rushed back in yelling that a flying saucer "glowing all the colours of the rainbow" was landing in a nearby field. The others laughed and assured him he had only seen a shooting star. But then the dog chained out in the yard began barking frantically.

Billy Ray and Elmer Sutton peered out through the kitchen window and received the shock of their lives. A goblin-like entity was approaching the house with its hands held above its head. The 3-ft-tall creature glowed silver as though lit from within. It had disproportionately long arms, huge elephantine ears, and yellow shining eyes.

The men grabbed their shotguns and opened fire on the intruder. The bullets ricocheted off it with a metallic sound "as if you had shot into a pail". The creature somersaulted backwards through the air and took shelter in some maple trees.

Hearing something scuttle across the roof, Billy Ray ventured outside. Another goblin was perched on top of the porch. It leant down and tugged his hair with its claws, and he beat a hasty retreat.

The frightened men ran through the house securing all the doors and windows, then took refuge with the rest of their family.

Under Siege

By now, a small group of the creatures had gathered outside. They roamed aimlessly around the grounds, occasionally peeping in through the farmhouse windows.

The men continued taking pot-shots at them, but to little effect. Whenever a bullet struck them, the goblins would momentarily glow brighter then drop down on all fours and scuttle away unharmed.

The uneasy stalemate dragged on until 11pm, when, seeing no end in sight, the terrified family decided to fetch reinforcements. They rushed outside, piled into their two cars, and sped to Hopkinsville police station. They begged the Police Chief, Russell Greenwell, to round up a posse of armed men to help them repel the intruders.

The posse arrived at the farm only to find that the goblins had vanished. Greenwell conducted a thorough search of the area but found no evidence of the invasion other than the spent shotgun shells littering the yard. The police finally called off the hunt and left at 2:20am. The creatures promptly returned and appeared intermittently at the bedroom windows until dawn.

Monkey Business?

The witnesses doggedly stuck to their story in the face of considerable public ridicule. One of their few supporters was Police Chief Russell Greenwell, who assured the press that the Suttons had been genuinely traumatised by their experience.

"Something scared those people," he stated. "Something beyond reason - nothing ordinary."

Ufologist J. Allen Hynek (then working for Project Blue Book) suggested that the goblins might have been escaped circus monkeys. But given the number of bullets fired that night, the farm would surely have been littered with corpses had the creatures merely been common-or-garden primates.

Similar Cases

The Electric Goblins: Levitating goblins harass an Italian.

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