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Trippy Tales from the Backyard
The Kelly-Hopkinsville incident & the Hopkinsville Goblins
Welcome back, Young and Young-at-Heart explorers! Welcome back to Trippy Tales from the Backyard! The show where we explore some of the strangest, scariest, and most curious urban legends from around the world, especially the good old U.S.A.! Be they unknown cryptids, horrific hauntings, or random unexplained phenomena, the stories we tell on this show explore the mostly untapped supernatural side of the 50 states and beyond!
As we start a new year, we here at Something Niche will be exploring a New Frontier with this show; aliens! Yes, indeed, aliens! Extraterrestrials! Spacemen! Little Green Men! Greys! Those weirdos you see in all the movies and commercials!
Indeed, when it comes to urban legends, you can't get any more classic than the humble alien. Arguably since ancient times, mankind has often turned to the stars in order to explain unexplainable phenomena or strange figures standing outside their doorsteps late at night. In some cases, there have even been legends about aliens abducting and replacing our beloved kin. A few even believe that aliens may be responsible for building some of the greatest monuments in the world; the pyramids for instance!
However, for today's article, we will be sneaking a peak at one particular extraterrestrial encounter. And in order to do so, we well be traveling to the home of the world's most famous brand of fried chicken; Kentucky! Here, you will find the teeny-tiny hamlet of Hopkinsville, which houses a teeny-tiny home, once populated by a teeny-tiny family, who were greeted with a not-so-teeny-tiny sight one still evening.
That encounter has been immortalized in urban legend as the Kelly-Hopkinsville Incident, where a small family claimed to have been harassed one night by a group of strange creatures that have come to be simply known as the Hopkinsville Goblins. A story that has not only put a small hamlet seemingly closed off from the rest of the world onto maps all across it, inspiring not only a conspiracy cult following, but also inspiring some of your favorite movies and fictional aliens-including one movie that was never actually made!
So, make sure your all bundled up, and please watch that first step, as we venture outside in order to catch the mysterious wonders that are the Hopkinsville Goblins!
Disturbing the Peace
Sources for exactly when the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter occurred, but locals usually place it on the evening of either August 21st or 22nd of 1955. It was a soft, quiet evening in the small hamlet of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and the Sutton family was visiting several members of their extended family on their ranch. A family friend-Billy Ray Taylor-was also visiting from Pennsylvania, on break from his job at a traveling carnival.
Everybody was enjoying a game of cards and having a good time, and as the evening started to wind down, Billy went outside to fetch some water from the family's well. It was then when he heard a strange noise, and when he turned his head over to investigate, he saw a rainbowy streak appear across the sky.
Billy rushed back to the house and explained frantically what he saw. The family initially wrote it off as Billy having an overactive imagination, as most people would. However, Sutton family patriarch Elmer Sutton humored his good buddy, and went with him outside to investigate once more.
Everything was initially calm for a while after. However, things quickly took a turn for the chaotic after the family dog suddenly came running past them whining and quickly took refuge underneath the farmhouse porch. At that moment, the two men instinctively turned around, and were met with the most eerie of sights.
"From the back of the house, there comes this little three-and-a-half foot tall building", Elmer's daughter and author Geraldine Sutton Stith explains, "Huge ears, big, glowing eyes, arms down to the ground. So, they both go running into the house, slam the door, and everybody stops what they are doing and looks, and they're like "What is going on with you two?" Because now they're sweating bullets, they're white as ghosts. Something's happened."
The World's Scariest All-Nighter
From there, the Suttons and their guests prepared for the longest night of their lives. Billy and Mr. Sutton both took up arms as a similar looking creature-nobody was sure if it was the same that the two men had seen earlier that night-suddenly lurched towards a nearby window. The creature never attempted to attack or break the class, but the two men were so terrified, they unloaded without hesitation.
As the rest of the group barricaded into the house in pure terror, the children hiding under the beds, the two men then set outside as the creature suddenly vanished. The duo checked for a body, and that's when the real scary part began.
"He runs out to see if there's a body lying there. There's nothing there." Sutton-Stith describes. "And he's standing there looking as this clawed hand comes down to grab his hair off the little perch above the door. Well, my Aunt Eileen grabs him and yanks him back in the house. My dad runs out towards the roof, and sure enough, he's sitting there."
Indeed, right before Elmer Sutton's bewildered eyes are a group of the same creatures standing on the house's roof and in the nearby trees. Their eyes glowed bright, and their skin shone with a metallic glow.
Sutton continued to fire again and again, but his gun didn't appear to do any major damage. The so-called "Goblins" continued to stare, as if taunting Elmer and his family and friends.
Eventually, the creatures just left, and Elmer did not hesitate to reunite with the rest of his group inside his farmhouse. The group continued to hunker down in the house for the next few hours, until they were absolutely certain that they could contact the police.
However, the Hopkinsville Goblins continued to appear sporadically until the dawn. Despite this, the family was able to make a quick trip around 11 PM to the local police station, where they frantically explained their tale to the authorities.
After this, Police Chief Russel Greenwell sent several men out to investigate the farmhouse, including a duo of military policemen from the nearby Fort Campbell Air Force Base. The investigation went on for the next day or so, but aside from a brief, unexplained glow, nobody was able to find any bodies or concrete proof about the Hopkinsville Goblins.
However, that didn't stop the story from reaching headlines nationwide, with the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter making it to the front-page news of every major outlet in the country, from the New York Daily News to the Los Angeles Times to even page 2 of the Honolulu Advertiser.
Fact or Fiction?
Indeed, regardless of what actually happened that night, it was very clear that the Sutton family, along with a select few of acquaintances, had seen something that night. And once the big secret got out, the news was quick to jump onto the mysterious headline, making it front page news everywhere. For a moment in time, it would seem that all of the science fiction movies that were all the rage at that point in time had suddenly become a reality.
At least, that's what it seemed to be upon first glance. Much like a lot of paranormal encounters over the years, there have been a fair share of skeptics who have come up with alternate explanations for the Sutton's supposed "alien encounter".
One of the most commonly thrown around explanations is a mere case of mistaken identity. A lot of notable skeptics have pointed out that the Hopkinsville Goblins may merely be some kind of misidentified species of animal, with the most common culprit being the Great Horned Owl, a large bird of prey that has also been pinpointed by others as the true identity of other notable cryptids in the past.
Several rumors also began to spread that the Hopkinsville Goblins may have just been a mere hallucination, brought on by the effects of potential illicit substances. More specifically, there have been those who have often accused the extended Sutton family of being Moonshiners, a group that peddles and produces alcohol in unlawful ways. The Suttons themselves have frequently disclaimed this.
In spite of all of this, much of the Sutton family lineage have held onto the claim that their story is 100% true, in particular the aforementioned Geraldine Sutton-Stith, who was even invited to share her side of the story at an event that commemorated the encounter's 50th anniversary in 2005. She also wrote two separate books on the incident, one published in 2007, and another during the event's 60th anniversary in 2015.
"I thought I had heard from the horse's mouth", she explained at the 2005 event, feeling that some details hadn't been made clear and jumbled up over the years. "If people want to hear the story, let's get it right."
However, to this day, nobody has been able to truly validate the legend, much like a lot of other unsolved mysteries in the paranormal world. The Hopkinsville Goblins never returned, as if they don't want to ever be found, leaving no concrete proof of their existence in their wake.
A Night to Remember
However, even if the Hopkinsville Goblin encounters may not be 100% factual, like the many urban legends that have peppered America over the decades, that eventful night in 1955 has, for better or worse, become an essential part of folk history. And if nothing else, the small hamlet of Hopkinsville has found itself the center of attention since that night, with many local events having been held in the event's honor.
In addition to Sutton-Stith's aforementioned 50th anniversary panel, events that have been held in Hopkinsville marking the anniversary of the Sutton's long standoff have included the now-defunct Little Green Men Festival, and most recently, Goblin Con, first held this past October in observance of the encounter's 70th anniversary.
"We don't just want to be UFOs, as you kind of cut your audience down," explained Goblin Con Organizer and Paranormal Podcaster Eric Freeman Sims, "So, we have speakers that will be talking about UFOs, alien encounters, but also cryptids like Bigfoot and Dogman in Land Between the Lakes, as well as ghosts and ghost hunting." Other events included food trucks, games, and photo ops with "special visitors".
A stage musical about the incident, dubbed It Came from Kentucky, was even staged in 2015, which utilized Henson-Esque hand puppets in order to portray the creatures. It was staged at The Annoyance Theatre in Chicago and directed by Sam Locke.
"I was trying to think of a show I could do for adult that would have puppets in it,", explained Locke on the genesis of his unusual stage play "and the fact that the Hopkinsville and Kelly encounter mentioned that the aliens could jump high distances led me to decide to go with the story."
The legend has also broken out of Hopkinsville in order to inspire creators from around the world. Most notably, the Pokémon Sableye, pictured above and introduced in Gen 3, was directly modeled after the creature. It also appears, alongside other cryptids we've discussed here, in the Pokémon-inspired card game MetaZoo: Cryptid Nation, as well as the lesser-known Game Boy Advance game Chocovader: Invaders from Beyond alongside many other legendary aliens.
However, perhaps the most notable contribution that the Kelly-Hopkinsville Incident made to popular culture, was a film that was actually never made. One that involved the big man of Hollywood himself, Steven Spielberg.
An Unmade Hopkinsville Close-up
It was the late 1970s, and a young man named Steven Spielberg had already become a prodigy in Hollywood. He has exploded onto the scene with a little film called Jaws in 1975, and two years later, he struck gold once again with the alien invasion thriller Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It wasn't long afterwards when the man who had already changed Hollywood forever was contacted by the latter's distributor, Columbia Pictures, to make a follow-up.
After turning down working on a direct sequel, Spielberg came across the story of the Hopkinsville Goblins. Intrigued, he used the story as inspiration for a film treatment; a horror-tinged alien invasion film entitled Watch the Night Skies, later shortened to just Night Skies.
The tone of the film seemed to be a combination of the best from both of Spielberg's previous achievements; much like the supposed alien encounter that inspired it, Night Skies was to focus on a farmhouse family that fell prey to a group of cattle mutilating alien invaders. The family also had an autistic son who befriends one of the aliens; one that is far less vicious than its kin. Spielberg had intended to produce the movie, while directing duties were to be handed to Texas Chainsaw Massacre patriarch Tobe Hooper. The alien effects were to be created via practical effects, set to be supervised by the now-prolific Rick Baker.
However, despite the production crew having been fully assembled, production on the film never officially began, as much of the crew later became preoccupied with other projects. It was at this point where Spielberg met up with screenwriter Melissa Mathison, who took interest in the alien friendship subplot, and eventually encouraged Spielberg to create a new film based solely around that. Spielberg also said that he ultimately wanted to re-visit the more spiritual side of aliens, rather than just portraying them as horrific beasts. It probably also didn't help that around that same time, Ridley Scott's Alien had just been released, which pretty much filled the niche of a horror movie about aliens.
So, with that, Spielberg teamed up with Mathison to tweak the script for Night Skies, ditching anything that resembled horror in order to create a new film about a boy and his alien friend. If any of this sounds even slightly familiar (or that alien sculpture by Rick Baker pictured above looks slightly familiar), than you probably know exactly what happened next!
That's right, Night Skies ultimately became the pop cultural landmark that is ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, that classic story about a boy befriending an alien who just wanted to phone home. However, just because ET would ultimately turn out very different from Night Skies, that didn't mean the unmade film's scary roots didn't go to waste.
Much of the horror-based elements of the unproduced Night Skies would go on to serve as the basis for Poltergeist, a supernatural horror classic that Tobe Hooper would ultimately direct in Night Skies' absence. It just replaced the aliens with ghosts!
However, a couple of years after both ET and Poltergeist were released, Spielberg would go one to produce arguably the closest to Night Skies we ever got. That was when he teamed up with director Joe Dante and writer Chris Columbus to produce a very similar story involving a boy, in this case a teenager, befriending a different kind of supernatural creature in the form of a small furry creature; one that would end up accidentally spawning vicious little green men similar to both the creatures in Night Skies and the Hopkinsville Goblins that inspired it. I am of course talking about none other than Gremlins, one of my personal all-time favorites!
The, a couple years after Gremlins was released, another film about vicious alien creatures came out in its wake, called Critters. This film took more direct inspiration from the Kelly Hopkinsville encounter and even retained the same farmhouse setting!
It ultimately goes to show you; even though arguably the most important work that took inspiration from our little metallic friends may have never came to be, it still left a massive impact on popular culture that can still be felt today. This effectively proves the massive impact of the Sutton's supposed standoff with strange creatures had on our world today!
The Goats of Goblins
So, in the end, while the mystery of the Sutton's encounter with strange little creatures may never be solved, we can still thank it for leaving behind a legacy that has kept the world curious for more than half a century.
Many creatives from all over have used the legend as the blueprint for some of our favorite movies and video games alike, meaning that this legend may have impacted the lives of many without us realizing. Until now, that is!
And like every story we've explored thus far on Trippy Tales from the Backyard, the Hopkinsville Goblins have given one of the greatest gifts ever; it put the small village where they were supposedly first encountered on the map, attracting many worldwide paranormal enthusiasts to an otherwise obscure place closed off from the rest of the world. As a small-town native myself, I also feel a little warm inside whenever I hear stories such as this happening.
Overall, even if the Hopkinsville Goblins may have just been a strange, moonshine-fueled dream all along, it's still a tale that's quite fascinating, and one that has deservedly earned its place amongst the most legendary of creatures in American folklore.
But, what are your thought? Were you familiar with the tale of the Hopkinsville Goblins prior to this article? Do you think it may have just been a mere case of mistaken identity, or do you believe that there is some truth to the Sutton's tale? Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments down below, and share this article with your friends. AND DON'T FORGET TO WATCH THE STARS!!!
And with that, This Trippy Tale from the Backyard, has been finished, and this meeting, adjourned!
Sources:
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Brehmer, N. (2018, June 29). Let’s examine the real-life UFO encounter that inspired “critters.” Bloody Disgusting! https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3507236/lets-examine-real-life-ufo-encounter-inspired-critters/
Dickey, C. (2024, February 8). The long, surprising legacy of the hopkinsville goblins - atlas obscura. Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/column-hopkinsville-goblins-spielberg
Dunning, B. (2012, October 9). The Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter. Skeptoid. https://skeptoid.com/episodes/331
Ferguson, A. (2025, August 21). 70 years later: Revisiting the Kelly-hopkinsville encounter. https://www.wbko.com. https://www.wbko.com/2025/08/21/70-years-later-revisiting-kelly-hopkinsville-encounter/
Girkin, Pierce. “The Pyramid Conspiracy.” Reed Magazine, 4 Feb. 2019, www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2019/pseudo-archaeology-paideia.html.
Maddox, Wesley. “### Have Aliens Taken over? The Case for a Secret Alien Invasion | by Wesley Maddox | Medium.” Medium, 2 Apr. 2025, medium.com/@wm8104595/have-aliens-taken-over-the-case-for-a-secret-alien-invasion-ed26cf9695b4.
Null, J. (2016, August 19). A Hopkinsville alien tale has inspired a yearly festival, a musical and Pokémon. WKMS. https://www.wkms.org/arts-culture/2016-08-19/a-hopkinsville-alien-tale-has-inspired-a-yearly-festival-a-musical-and-pokemon
Squires, J. (2014, May 29). Steven Spielberg’s night skies: The most important movie (n)ever made. Halloween Love Blog. https://halloweenlove.com/steven-spielbergs-night-skies-the-most-important-movie-never-made/
Wood, J. (2025, August 6). “the granddaddy of UFO stories”: 70 years later, Kentucky “green men” encounter endures. Journal. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2025/08/06/kelly-hopkinsville-kentucky-green-men-encounter-turns-70-goblincon/83900933007/
The Hopkinsville Goblins: The Strangest Alien Encounter in History - YouTube
Hopkinsville Goblin - Cryptid Nation: First Edition Tribal Theme Decks - MetaZoo - TCGplayer.com
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