Tag: Elmer Sutton

Five Famous Kentucky UFO Encounters

Article by Emma Austin                                                June 21, 2021                                                         (courier-journal.com)

• In 2020, more than 80 Kentucky cases were reported to and investigated by the Mutual UFO Network or ‘MUFON’. “Most people walk around the world careened from one spot to another and don’t take the time to look up,” says Barry Gaunt, director of Kentucky’s MUFON chapter. “If you look up, you may see things.” The Louisville KY newspaper, The Courier Journal, looked back at five well-known UFO reports in Kentucky spanning decades.

• Fort Knox, KY 1948 – On January 7, 1948, Fort Knox received a report from the Kentucky Highway Patrol of a gleaming saucer-shaped UFO near Maysville, KY on the Ohio River. Reports also came in from Irvington, KY more than 240 miles away. Fort Knox radioed to four planes flying overhead to intercept the flying disk. The pilots responded that the UFO was at 20,000 feet “and going too fast for them to catch.” Capt. Thomas F. Mantell, a 25-year-old Kentucky National Guard pilot, was among the pilots chasing the UFO. Three of the pilots called off their pursuit at 22,500 feet, but Mantell continued to climb. Once he passed 25,000 feet, he blacked out from lack of oxygen. Hlane began spiraling toward the ground and crashed at a farm south of Franklin, KY. A university astronomer said that the pilots had likely been chasing the planet Venus.

• Hopkinsville, KY 1955 – On August 21, 1955, a group of eight adults and four children reported seeing a lit object glide onto a field outside one of their homes in Kelly, KY near Hopkinsville. They said it looked like an egg-shaped washtub. About 40 minutes later, they noticed “shiny little men” walking toward their house, and soon 15 of them were “all over the place.” Seeing the chrome-like creatures converge on the house, Billy Ray Taylor stepped out the front door and one of them grabbed at him from the roof. Elmer Sutton grabbed his shotgun, stepped outside and shot one of the silver creatures. The bullets didn’t seem to have an effect. His brother, John Sutton, fired four boxes of .22 cartridges from his pistol, but they ricocheted off. The creatures, who were described as having faces that looked like “skin stretched over a skull,” returned to the house five times in the course of about three hours, with the men running them off with their firearms each time. After the sixth visit, shortly before 11:00 pm, all 12 of the witnesses loaded into two cars and sped toward Hopkinsville to tell police. The police found no physical evidence to back up the story. Word spread the next day as newspapers and wire services picked up the story. Today, the Kelly community commemorates the event every August with the Kelly Little Green Men Days Festival.

• Casey County, KY 1976 – In January 1976, Elaine Thomas, Louise Smith and Mona Stafford from Casey County were driving home from a restaurant together when they saw a bright object in the sky about half an hour before midnight. The women watched it fall toward the ground, believing it was a plane about to crash. But before oval-shaped craft with revolving yellow lights hit the ground, it stopped, hovering above their car. Blue light filled their car, which began to shake back and forth. Then they felt the car being pulled backward before all three lost consciousness. They woke up in Hustonville, about eight miles from where they first saw the UFO — an hour and a half later. All three women had headaches and what appeared to be burn marks on the backs of their necks. The women underwent hypnosis to recall what happened during their missing time. In separate sessions, they all told the same story: They were taken aboard the spacecraft and closely examined by scaly, blue-eyed, telepathic creatures. They also were given lie detector tests, which they passed. But the three women became outcasts in Casey County, where they were ridiculed after sharing their story. “I tried to talk about it to people. They wouldn’t listen,” said Mona Stafford. “I say if you don’t want to face the truth, that’s like living in fairyland.”

• Prospect, KY 1977 – About 1:00 am on January 27, 1977, 19-year-old Lee Parrish was driving home from his girlfriend’s house in Prospect, KY when Parrish saw a bright orange rectangular object, about 10 feet tall and 40 feet long, hovering just above the treeline about 100 feet from the road. Parrish became frightened and wanted to leave the area but was unable. The car seemed to be driving itself. Parrish’s car radio failed and he continued watching the UFO until he was directly underneath it. Then it sped away. It never made a sound. Parrish realized that he had lost about 35 minutes of time. His eyes were bloodshot and painful. He enlisted the help of UFO researcher Carla L. Rueckert who hypnotized Parrish. Under hypnosis, Parrish described not being able to see anything after he first spotted the UFO. When he could see again, his Jeep was gone, and he was in a circular, white room with “self-luminous” walls. “Before him stood three objects which he instinctively felt or sensed were sentient beings, although they were definitely not human: a ‘black one,’ a ‘red one,’ and a ‘white one’. The black one was the tallest, “jug-shaped, with a relatively small head.” It had one single limb: a handless, one-jointed appendage. Parrish said the black one moved toward him slowly and used its arm to touch him on his left side and back, causing a painful feeling that was both cold and burning. He felt like he was vibrating. The shorter red one also had one handless and unjointed arm. He felt like the red one was scared and reluctant to touch him, but it touched him on the shoulder and above his right ear. “This felt like a needle and stung briefly, but did not terrify Lee and did not hurt long,” Rueckert wrote in her report. “During this time, (Parrish) felt quite cold. The whole ship seems to be rocking like ‘a boat on the water,’ back and forth.” The white one was about 6 feet tall, had two appendages and ‘glowed brightly’. However, it did not move and just watched Parrish. Parrish sensed that it was the ‘ruler’ of the other two.” The white one began making a rhythmic scraping sound. Then the black one backed up slowly, and the other two either merged with it or disappeared behind it. Parrish felt that the creatures were checking out his ‘chemical make-up’ and doing a physical check-up.”

• Louisville, KY 1993 – Around midnight on February 27, 1993, two Jefferson County air unit police officers flying in a helicopter reported a glowing, pear-shaped object about the size of a basketball that flew in circles around their helicopter before shooting three baseball-size fireballs out of its middle. Another officer said he saw the object from his squad car below for about a minute and confirmed it shot three fireballs into the air before disappearing. An engineering professor blamed the incident on atmospheric conditions and reflections off the snow on the ground below. Another local claimed that it was a homemade hot-air balloon. But officer Kenny Downs, who was one of the two in the helicopter that night, said “there’s no way” it was tiny hot-air balloon. “I don’t think six candles and a plastic bag can fly at the speeds we flew.”

 

Most UFO sightings can be explained away.

  Hopkinsville alien creature

Unidentified flying objects usually turn out to be airplanes, drones, satellites, stars or even balloons.

But what about the ones that don’t have an explanation?

A highly anticipated federal report on UFOs commissioned by Congress has brought speculation on UFOs back into the limelight. It’s expected to be released this month and reportedly says the government did not find evidence UFOs are alien spacecraft, but the report also does not definitively say they aren’t, according to the The New York Times and CNN.

Barry Gaunt, director of Kentucky’s chapter of the Mutual UFO Network — the “world’s oldest and largest civilian UFO investigation and research organization” — has spent more than half his life working in what he considers the “paranormal field,” which includes investigating UFO sightings and abduction cases.

“I think it’s very important that we get all the cases into a database because what that does is it allows us to be able to really do deeper research,” Gaunt told The Courier Journal. “The more people that report these incidents, the more we can deal

             Hopkinsville creatures

with it.”
The Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, was created in response to the Air Force’s decision to shut down Project Blue Book, its study of unidentified flying objects from 1952 through 1969.

Hopkinsville creature grabbing at Billy Ray Taylor

In 2020 alone, more than 80 Kentucky cases were reported to and investigated by MUFON, according to its online database.
“If you look up, you may see things,” Gaunt said. “Most people walk around the world careened from one spot to another and don’t take the time to look up.”

In anticipation of the government report’s release, The Courier Journal looked back at well-known UFO reports in Kentucky spanning decades. Here are five of those:

the Casey County UFO witnesses, Elaine Thomas, Louise Smith and Mona Stafford

Fatal air chase: Fort Knox, 1948

One of the earliest UFO reports happened in Kentucky, and it was among the most publicized because it ended in the death of Capt. Thomas F. Mantell, a 25-year-old Kentucky National Guard pilot.

On Jan. 7, 1948, Fort Knox received a report from the Kentucky Highway Patrol of an unusual aerial object near Maysville, according to a case summary by the Mutual UFO Network. Maysville sits on the Ohio River and is 66 miles northeast of Lexington. But reports that day also came in from Irvington — roughly 180 miles from Maysville — and Owensboro —

sketch of UFO and police helicopter in Jefferson Country

more than 240 miles away — of a westbound circular object in the sky, according to the network.

        Thomas F. Mantell

The gleaming object was easily visible from Fort Knox, and officers at the post radioed to three planes flying overhead to see if they could catch the object, which they thought might be a flying disk, according to a Courier Journal report the following day.
“About 20 minutes later they radioed back they were 20,000 feet high and the saucer was still above them,” a colonel told the newspaper. “The pilots said the saucer was too high and going too fast for them to catch.” The pilots said the saucer was traveling west at about 180 mph, though from the observation tower it appeared motionless.

University of Louisville astronomer Walter Lee Moore told The Courier Journal at the time the planet Venus had been near the sun during the reported sightings, and “very exceptional atmospheric conditions” could have made it visible to the naked eye during the day.

“If they chased Venus in airplanes, they certainly had a long way to go,” Moore said.

A report of Mantell’s death was printed on the front page of the Louisville newspaper alongside the article detailing the chase toward the object, but neither stories mentioned Mantell’s involvement in the chase. Airport officials said he was on his way back from a training flight to Atlanta when his plane exploded five miles south of Franklin, Kentucky.

Likewise, the report on pilots chasing the disk did not mention Mantell or any related fatality.

Contrary to what officials said at the time, Fort Knox commanders actually ordered four planes to follow the object, including Mantell’s. One of the four planes was low on fuel, and its pilot quickly abandoned the chase, according to the Mutual UFO Network.

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The Real-Life UFO Encounter That Inspired ‘Critters’

by Nat Brehmer                   June 29, 2018                  (bloody-disgusting.com)

• The 1986 cult-classic monster movie, “Critters”, begins in space as the goblin-like Critters break out of their asteroid prison and crash their hijacked spaceship in Grover’s Bend, Kansas. Soon they besiege an isolated farmhouse where the frightened family holds them off with shotguns.

• As pointed out by veteran writer, Matt Molgaard, and by Bruce G. Hallenbeck in his chronology of Comedy-Horror Films, “Critters” is loosely based on a real-life alien confrontation known as the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter, one of the most well-documented UFO incidents out there. (see previous ExoNews article on the Hopkinsville Incident)

• On the evening of August 21, 1955 in a rural farmhouse located between the towns of Kelly and Hopkinsville, Kentucky, five adults and seven children were besieged by little monsters from space. As Billy Ray Taylor was drawing water from the well he saw shooting star streak across the sky and land somewhere nearby behind a tree line. Billy Ray and his friend Elmer Sutton went to investigate. They came upon a creature, ran back to the house and barricaded their family inside. Before long many of these creatures were besieging the farmhouse as Billy Ray and Elmer held them off with shotguns. Although the creatures were shot several times, even at point-blank range, they were apparently unharmed. At one point Billy Ray’s hair was grabbed by a huge, clawed hand. And several times family members would leap back, startled, from the glowing eyes and twisted faces of the creatures staring in at them through the window.

• After several hours, the family took an opportunity make a dash to their car, and they drove to the police station where they reported the entire thing. Four police officers raced out to the scene, alongside five state troopers, three deputy sheriffs and four military police from the nearby US Army base. They searched the property and found nothing except evidence of gunfire.

• In the early 1980’s when film writer/director Steven Spielberg was considering ideas for a UFO-themed movie, he planned to do a movie called “Night Skies” about a family besieged by vicious aliens in a farmhouse, while one of the children would befriend a gentler alien who was different from the others. Ultimately, Spielberg split the ideas into two different movies – “E.T.: The Extraterrestrial” about a child befriending an alien, and “Poltergeist” about a family besieged by a paranormal entity. Spielberg also produced Joe Dante’s “Gremlins” which has similarities to the creatures that visited Hopkinsville in 1955, but in a family-friendly way as Spielberg had envisioned “Night Skies”.

• But “Critters” is the film that most closely mirrors the Hopkinsville encounter, complete with a shooting star, vicious creatures from outer space, a family barricaded in a farmhouse with shotguns, glowing red eyes peering in through the window, and a space critter’s clawed hand grabbing one of them.

 

Critters is, with good reason, a cult classic of the mid-eighties. It followed on the heels of Gremlins and certainly has its similarities to Joe Dante’s little monster masterpiece, but Critters still manages to stand apart. It has a flavor all its own.

Whereas the Gremlins remained much more mysterious in origin—unless you go by the novelization, which goes obsessively into detail over their backstory—the Critters are extraterrestrial from the first moment we’re introduced to them. The movie begins in space, watching them break out of their asteroid prison before crashing their hijacked spaceship into Grover’s Bend, Kansas, where the film begins in earnest. That’s not only where we’re introduced to our main characters, but where we set up the surprising siege movie that Critters actually becomes.

For as fun and goofy as it is, Critters takes to heart the inherently unnerving concept of a family in a small, isolated farmhouse being besieged by little monsters. And that’s very interesting, not just because of how well it works tonally and stylistically for the film, but also because of the fact that it was based on an actual, famous real-life incident in which a family in a small, isolated farmhouse was apparently besieged by little monsters.

I’m not the first to make the connection. A great writer named Matt Molgaard, who tragically passed last year, wrote a terrific piece for Blumhouse.com that was how I first learned of the incident and how it connected to Critters. But I thought it would be worth not just looking at the fact that Critters takes its inspiration from this encounter, but specifically breaking down how it takes inspiration and what moments from the encounter clearly made their way into the film.

The incident is now widely known as the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter, though it has also been cited over time as the Hopkinsville Goblins Case and the Kelly Green Men Case. It is one of the most well-documented incidents in the history of UFO sightings and became famous because of that.

Said incident took place in 1955 in Kentucky, just between the towns of Kelly and Hopkinsville. Two families rushed into the police station claiming that they had been holding off vicious, small creatures for several hours, which they believed to have come from a UFO. Five adults and seven children apparently witnessed these events unfold over the course of the evening of August 21st. Elmer Sutton and Billy Ray Taylor seemed to take charge during the farmhouse siege, shooting at twelve to fifteen creatures that repeatedly attacked the group over the course of the evening.

It began around seven o’clock, when Billy Ray looked up while he was drawing water from the well to see what appeared to be a shooting star streak across the sky and disappear behind the tree line, somewhere behind the house. Taylor and Sutton went back out to investigate, running back into the house when they saw a creature outside, kicking off an apparent invasion that would last for the next three hours. At one point, Taylor’s hair was grabbed by a huge, clawed hand. At several points, family members would leap back, startled, from the glowing eyes and twisted faces of the creatures staring in at them through the window.

Although the creatures were shot at several times, none were killed, otherwise the incident would have become much more famous. Once they had a clear shot, the two families piled into their cars and drove to the police station where they reported the entire thing. The police responded, not because they believed the claims, but because they were legitimately worried about a possible gun battle erupting between local citizens. Four police officers raced out to the scene, alongside five state troopers, three deputy sheriffs and four military police from the nearby US Army base. They searched the property, but found nothing but evidence of gunfire; bullet holes were found in the trees, the side of the house and through the screens of the doors.

They found no monsters. No evidence that it was a hoax, either.

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