Dec 6

The Hopkinsville Goblin

I had Jeff on the show about a month ago and he was reading from his grandfather’s diary.

Here is the entry from the diary: “On another occasion, at another plot of acreage on the same farm I was riding one of the horses out in the pastureland of sorts. The soil there wasn’t very productive at the time, so even the grasses were dwarfed in size.

I looked to my right, and there stood two of the darndest critters I had ever laid eyes on. I thought at the time that they were owls between four and five feet tall. They had owl like noses and owl like enormous eyes and sockets. I rode my horse toward them, but as they never moved from their position I become frightened and turned the horse away. I got off the horse and faced them. They looking south toward me. I was looking north toward them. I took a step toward them and they took a step in my direction and stopped. I took two steps toward them only to have them take two more steps towards me and my direction. I thought if they are birds then I can frighten them into flight by shouting and throwing my arms and hands about over my head and in the air. When I did this they looked at each other as if they were communicating some message to each other. I had the distinct feeling it was me who was the one being discussed. They had a look of wonderment in their eyes, but didn’t move or budge from the spot. I took one more little step, an attempt to ease my troubled mind, and in unison they both took another step toward me. By this time I was more frightened than before, I could tell by their determination that the distance between us was only going to get shorter. So I took one giant step backwards to create some more distance between us, and to prevent an experience of the worst kind. This time they remained were they stood, so I knew they weren’t there for the dance. I got back on my horse and rode circles around them, they kept a keen eye on my whereabouts, as I rode circles, and they would follow using the same roundup method. I got off the horse and again flailed my hands and arms, I even looked for a rock or two that I could throw but found none. All the time they just stood there watching fascinated at what I was doing. Finally I decided that this needs the attention of a gun. I rode to the house and grabbed the twenty-two along with some bullets and headed back to where I had left them. I figured I could shoot up the turf around them and see how good something that big was at being able to fly. When I returned, there wasn’t a trace of the whatever’s they were. Perhaps someday I will know, or perhaps maybe I never will.

I went home that night and asked dad if he had ever seen owls four to five feet tall? He looked at me like I had really flipped and told me no. I told him about what I had seen that day on a portion of his farm and thought it was owls. He just laughed I suppose thinking his youngest son was some kind of crackpot. I don’t know what I saw on either occasion, all I know is that I did witness and encounter both creatures. I told another friend of mine about it many years later and he said “come on Jack, you aren’t for real”. I am only adding these incidents in here in hopes that at some time, some of you may be able to sort out the mystery, and come to find out what it was I witnessed. can assure you, as sure as you’re reading these entries knowing that what I have shared is the truth, and everything else concerning it.”

 

 

Ever since that show I have been wondering what that man saw that day. A listener writes “Hello Wes, I have just started listening to your podcasts and I’m definitely fascinated by what I’ve heard. I was listening to one the other day that mentioned something about seeing something that looked like owls. Oddly enough, today I ran across this wikipedia page of people who said they saw some creatures in Kentucky but was brushed off as a misidentification of owls. I wonder if the two stories are connected somehow.

The link to the widipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly%E2%80%93Hopkinsville_encounter

 

Here is a portion from that page:

The Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter (a.k.a. Hopkinsville Goblins Case, Kelly Green Men Case) was a claimed close encounter with extraterrestrial beings in 1955 near Kelly and Hopkinsville in Christian County, Kentucky, United States. UFOlogists regard it as one of the most significant and well-documented cases in the history of UFO incidents, while skeptics say the reports were due to “the effects of excitement” and misidentification of natural phenomena such as meteors and owls. Psychologists have used the alleged incident as an academic example of pseudoscience to help students distinguish truth from fiction.

 

 

On the evening of August 21, 1955, five adults and seven children arrived at the Hopkinsville police station claiming that small alien creatures from a spaceship were attacking their farmhouse and they had been holding them off with gunfire “for nearly four hours”. Two of the adults, Elmer Sutton and Billy Ray Taylor, claimed they had been shooting at “twelve to fifteen” short, dark figures who repeatedly popped up at the doorway or peered into the windows.

Concerned about a possible gun battle between local citizens, four city police, five state troopers, three deputy sheriffs, and four military police from the nearby US Army Fort Campbell drove to the Sutton farmhouse located near the town of Kelly in Christian County. Their search yielded nothing apart from evidence of gunfire and holes in window and door screens made by firearms.

Residents of the farmhouse included Glennie Lankford, her children, Lonnie, Charlton, and Mary, two sons from a previous marriage, Elmer “Lucky” Sutton, John Charley “J.C.” Sutton, and their respective wives, Vera and Alene, Alene’s brother O.P. Baker, and Billy Ray Taylor and his wife June. Both the Taylors, “Lucky” and Vera Sutton were reportedly itinerant carnival workers that were visiting the farmhouse. The next day, neighbors told two officers that the families had “packed up and left” after claiming “the creatures had returned about 3:30 in the morning”

 

I am still stumped as far as what Jeff’s grandfather saw that day.

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