On the night of August 21, 1955, at the Sutton farmhouse in Kelly Kentucky friend of the family Billy Ray Taylor was going to get water at the well before he saw something falling out of the sky which he described as “real bright, with an exhaust all the colors of the rainbow.” Billy would then return to the farmhouse however his claims were laughed off. An hour after this sighting the family’s dog would seem to freak out barking at something.
Lucky Sutton and Billy Ray would go to investigate what had agitated the dog and that’s when they saw… something. Billy Ray would describe what he saw as having an “oversized head…almost perfectly round, [its] arms extended almost to the ground, [its] hands had talons… and [its oversized] eyes glowed with a yellowish light” The creatures were reported to be 2-3 feet tall and with a silver color.
After seeing the creatures the five adults and seven children would then barricade themselves inside the farmhouse before gathering all of their firearms and firing on the creatures. For the next four hours, the creatures would appear in windows and doorways where the family would then shoot at them to scare them off. One of the women described the creature as “It looked like a five-gallon gasoline can with a head on top and small legs. It was a shimmering bright metal like on my refrigerator.”
At 11 PM the family rushed to the vehicles on the property and drove to the Hopkinsville Police Station. The police on duty did not know if the story was true but believed that the family believed in their story. The police went back with the family with a large group including Hopkinsville’s police, Christian County sheriff’s deputies, and some military police from Fort Campbell.
At the return of the Farmhouse, there was very little evidence of the standoff besides minor damage to the house which may have been caused by bullets. Seeing no reason to stay the police leave for the night, and leave the Suttons alone at their home. At 2:30 AM one of the residents said they saw a green glowing claw appearing in their window and scratching. The next day the police returned to the farmhouse to find it empty with the family packing up and leaving and according to their neighbors, the creatures came back.
Like most UFOs and encounters with extraterrestrial life opinions are mixed on the veracity of this event. Operation Blue Book, an investigation into aliens by the U.S. Government, claimed that this event was purely a hoax. In addition to this many scientists have theorized that the aliens or cryptids the family saw were instead just Great Horned Owls who match up to a lot of the traits described.
Despite all of this there are still a few questions that remain unanswered: 1. What was the falling thing that Billy Ray saw before the attack; 2. Why were the military police in the area so quickly? These two events may be linked as some have suggested. Looking at the timeline of events the family left the farm at 11 PM, arrived at the police station at 11:15 PM, and returned to the farmhouse at around 11:50 PM.
Fort Campbell is 30 minutes away from the police station which makes it impossible for the military police to arrive after the Suttons had arrived at the police station. This all builds to some theories that the device that crashed was a military device that crashed into a ravine and scared away a family of Great-horned Owls who then went and attacked the Suttons, however, the truth of this night will forever remain unsolved.
