Red Web
Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter | Was This Farmhouse Terrorized by Goblins or Aliens?
Mon, 17 Feb 2025
The story behind this landmark extraterrestrial case that led to the popularization of the alien term "little green men," the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter. Support us directly: http://www.redwebpod.com With Patreon, you get access to ad-free content, our exclusive bonus show Movie Club, the Red Web Discord, and more! It was a warm summer’s night in 1955 when the Sutton family witnessed something otherworldly on their property. What began as glowing eyes and small creatures looking into their home quickly escalated into full blown gunfire. News of this event spread rapidly, first popularizing the phrase “little green men”. Today, we explore the fascinating case of the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter. Our sponsors: Rocket Money - Go to http://rocketmoney.com/redweb to cancel your unwanted subscriptions with Rocket Money. Shopify - Go to http://shopify.com/redweb to sign up for a $1-per-month trial period. Factor - Go to http://factormeals.com/factorpodcast and use code FACTORPODCAST to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp — go to http://betterhelp.com/redweb to get 10% off your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened on the fateful night of the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter?
It was a warm summer's night in 1955 when the Sutton family witnessed something otherworldly on their property. What began as glowing eyes and small creatures peering into their home quickly escalated into full-blown gunfire outside. News of this event spread rapidly, first popularizing the phrase Little Green Men. Today, we explore the fascinating case of the Kelly Hopkinsville encounter.
This is Red Web. Welcome back, Task Force, to another episode of Red Web, the podcast all about unsolved mysteries, true crime, and the supernatural. I'm your resident mystery enthusiast, Trevor Collins, and joining me, hearing this case for the very first time, Alfredo Diaz.
Oh, you said gunfire? mm-hmm that's okay we're just and then you said little green man little green man gunfire uh very van meter style if you remember that episode where they saw creatures outside just started blasting yeah that's right was it that farm yes over in iowa yeah uh okay i'm just you know making sure i hear this correctly yeah no it's uh it's an interesting case
all right so we're shooting at aliens yeah i don't know if that's like the smartest thing to like if i was walking my dogs in the middle of the night and i saw a little figure on top of the house or something yeah or down the street gonna give him a little boom bop i feel like if it started approaching me you know or at least if it was in my home or somehow it was more legal i guess i i guess i would i don't know man like
started fronting on me yeah or oh my god started hopping house to house on rooftops oh my god some like krampus or something yeah man hell no uh i wouldn't start firing off but i i would unholster if i had a gun on me so you're getting your hand prepped you know you're cracking your knuckles with a fist i'll be prepped what am i gonna do against something like that man
Very little. Zero, in fact. These are maybe multidimensional beings, maybe intergalactic. Who knows? This thing's going to hold out its hand like Neo and stop your bullets with a smile.
Exactly.
But at least you tried. Right. Maybe ants are doing something to us when we're just kind of going about our lives. You're a kid with a magnifying glass if you're extra sadistic or you're just kind of walking down the sidewalk and don't see them. Maybe they're down there going like... Here comes another! And they're starting to launch little sand granules at you.
But you just, you have no idea, right? I feel like it'd be of that nature. I always go back to ants and humans when I think of humans and aliens. I don't know. It's a scale thing. It's not a technical thing, but I don't know. This topic is super fascinating. It is...
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Chapter 2: Who were the Sutton family involved in the encounter?
We got Melissa P., X Wild Angel, Sir Curbs, Sabrina Hall, Andy Schrock, Chase Martinez, TGYK94, just to name a few. Thank you all so much. Redwebpod.com. That's our Patreon page. Fredo, what might they find over there as some thank yous, some shows of gratitude for the direct support?
Oh, you can see a little show called Movie Club where we watch a ton of different movies from classics. I will say this because it is a banger of a classic, The Exorcist. Or some terrible movies. Recently, we've done Saw and we've also done a handful of foreign films as well. I know eventually one of us is going to pick Jason X. So it ranges from amazing to absolute dog water.
I feel like Jason X has to be on the horizon. It's coming. It's inevitable.
So Christian, help me out. If I'm thinking in my mind's web well enough, I think the Saw episode comes out this Friday.
Indeed it does.
And if I go chaos mode, I might pick Jason X to be the next one, which would be March 7th.
I haven't seen any other Jason. I'm going to go straight to X, which I've seen like a clip or two on TV.
Really? Oh, that's awesome. I'm so glad you haven't seen it. Listen, there's a scene where he gets rebuilt with nanobots. And I think that's all you need to know that this movie is going to be exactly what it is.
It's awesome.
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Chapter 3: What did Billy Ray Taylor see in the sky?
But I have to say, again, it's one of those cases where it depends on the source. You know, I've seen 12 people listed. I've seen 10. I've seen seven.
i've seen it including neighbors i've seen it only with the family so there's a lot of different ways to go about this we again looking at the broadest swath possible this is the information we pulled together you know i wanted to give that caveat that transparency as we descended into this this story yeah this game of telephone 100 and we will come to find out that there's a lot of missing information immediately following this story because the family was seeking privacy
And that will kind of play into maybe some of the theories, kind of some of your gut instinct as we go. Does that show validity? Does it show maybe mistake? We'll get there. But I do think the lack of wanting to talk about it in the aftermath kind of prevented a lot of available information. So, you know, people filled in the gaps and news news stories went pretty crazy with it at times.
I will say I do respect like the whole privacy aspect. Yeah. You know, not everyone needs to know everything about you. Sure. Your private life. So I get that.
Especially if, you know, you're dealing with something, I don't know, otherworldly. You might just kind of be like, yeah, that was crazy. I was scared and I need to leave that behind. Especially when, like, everyone nowadays is trying to monetize anything. Sure. So, yeah. This would be slapped on social media, you know, the Reels, the TikToks, immediately.
So, the family itself, to the best of our knowledge, consisted of the widowed matriarch, Glenny Langford, who was 50, her two adult sons, both 25, and their wives, 29 and 27. It also included her three younger children, 12, 10, and 7 respectively, and her brother-in-law and two family friends, known as the Taylors, who were 21 and 18, who happened to be visiting at the time.
Now, like I said, the amount of family members present fluctuates depending on the source, but we found the adults ages, which were also reported to be different things or not reported at all. These ages came from a written report in project blue book, which we recently covered.
I have a screenshot of that page for you Fredo, because I think it's so fascinating that there was, I believe a near 100 page report on this incident in project blue book. So if you want to take a look, it's like a minorly redacted letter.
822.
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Chapter 4: What did the Suttons experience with the creatures?
Yeah, that'd kind of be like the foyer there where it's like a narrow room where you first walk into the right as the single bedroom to the left is the living room with a kitchen attached. So kind of an L on the side shape. Interesting.
This is like a single bedroom house. Yeah. Very, very, very small. Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we're talking about 55. It's just because there's like, I guess you would call it the massive bedroom has two beds, one on each side. And then there's a stove in the middle. Yeah.
And then probably for heat, you know, because again, it's not like wired. This is an old, almost like a smaller shack of a house, right? Where it's not properly wired or plumbed. So it's, that's where you're getting your heating from.
Yeah, and you step down from the kitchen, you go into the living room, there's a fireplace, and again, two beds, one on each side of the room, and then a couch. Yeah, interesting. Okay, you got two beds in the living room. Yeah, this is back then.
Mm-hmm. So this house, just to give you an idea more geographically, it's about eight miles or 13 kilometers north of the larger town of Hopkinsville. Again, the name Kelly Hopkinsville, it's in this arena. Hopkinsville itself is about 20 miles north of Tennessee. Generally, we're just looking at southwest Kentucky.
Now, at around 7 p.m., Billy Ray Taylor was outside getting water when he saw bright lights in the sky. Taylor is going to be the centerpiece of this experience, and he claimed to see what he described as, quote, a silvery object, end quote, silently flying towards their home. So whatever this was, there was bright lights in the sky heading in the direction of the house.
And he also stated that he saw exhaust or smoke seemingly emanating from this craft that included, quote, all the colors of the rainbow, end quote.
Yeah, I wouldn't know what to do. You know, you kind of just hope it goes away. Right, right. I'm not equipped for that. Don't stop at our place. Yeah, I can't diagnose it or something. You just hope you're not in its path.
yeah now as i kind of paint this picture using his words see if you can visualize it in your mind we don't know how high it was so a silvery object silently flying some smoke or exhaust coming off of it and that smoke was kind of all the colors of the rainbow this will play a little bit into the theories but this is just the beginning of everything to come so seemingly this object went over the house before suddenly stopping mid-air and then dropping to the ground
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Chapter 5: How did the police respond to the reports of the encounter?
little knobs and then it then the head i mean there's no this isn't like a detailed drawing but it just seems more like a like a helmet um very much like a light bulb yeah very pointy bottom though um and then its ears are kind of like really thin it's got some lines on it but it seems like it's more like i don't know like the flab like like ears you would see in like a superhero's helmet you know what i mean that are like tacked on as opposed to its actual ears
This is a kid in a Batman costume. That's what I'm saying. They went to spirit Halloween. They got an outfit and they're messing with the wrong people.
They're just at the wrong time, wrong door. Check out the second image. It has a little bit more detail, some musculature going on, but the ears I would describe as kind of like bat-like in the sense that they're like, it looks like raw flesh, you know, like bat wings have just like that fleshy appearance.
Yes. okay well now i'm looking at the second picture which has more detail now he's buffed up okay so yeah so one he looks like i could just beat the hell out of this thing the second one looks like he's got some lower body like he's just he's like dense he looks a little denser he's got more muscle to him longer sharper claws arms aren't as long
Um, his eyes are very fisheye now and he's got a mouth, which before in the other drawing was just a line across, but now he's got a mouth, a little nose. He's very fish like looking and his ears look more like kind of like fins.
Yeah. Yeah. Very, um, if I had to guess if this was worldly, like amphibian, like, you know, like a salamander that learned to walk upright.
Yes. Yeah. I agree with that.
Yeah. Now, by all accounts, when referring to this creature as they they're kind of stood in awe as these glowing eyes suddenly turn into no, that's a glowing being. Oh, my gosh, it's only three and a half feet tall and our dog is barking excessively at it. It seemed like it's the creature's hands were like on the on the window or on the screen as it was peering into the house.
Now, in response to the sight of this unknown creature, Lucky and Taylor went full van meter visitor, as I mentioned. They went full van meter visitor on this creature and shot at it with 20 gauge shotgun, a 22 caliber rifle. I mean, they're just trying to put this thing out. They don't know what it is, but they know, you know, they're in the wilderness.
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Chapter 6: What evidence was found after the incident?
And the two men then retreated into the living room with the rest of the family, at which point another creature was spotted through the window of this room. So, of course, the natural response was to hide and hunker down, right? Oh, wait, no. The two men went outside and continued blasting off, again, taking their shotgun and their rifle outside to fire upon whatever this kind of...
this peering this peeping alien yeah whatever it was doing okay so now we're starting to creep into gun madness here yeah maybe running down the down the block firing off yeah so langford actually told author isabel davis in an interview this quote
it looked like i need somebody to photoshop this and send it to us it's very much like fredo describing a ufo as two plates with an upturned teacup damn look at that i need i need to see this so here's what she describes it as quote 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 end quote So she also saw it.
I think that's going to be important because we will come to find out that not many of the family described what they saw that night.
I mean, that's an interesting way to describe it.
Mm hmm. Five gallon gasoline can with then a head on top with some small legs. Uh huh. Uh huh.
Yeah.
Yeah. Shining like a refrigerator.
Yeah. I feel like they go into some detail and then just kind of slapped on limbs.
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Chapter 7: What theories exist about the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter?
Okay, so as Taylor walked out the back door, he claimed talons grazed the top of his head, seemingly grabbing at his hair, right? So this is when they're stepping outside to blast off at this either second creature or the original creature, whatever it was, peering in through this window. They stepped outside, some sort of claw-like thing grabbed at his head and at his hair.
The two men, as you might expect, then began firing on the creature. It was up on the rooftop. There was another in a nearby tree, and these creatures still seemingly were unaffected by the bullets. They would do things like flip and then disappear into the darkness before then reappearing in a different tree or somewhere else around the house or somewhere else in the backyard.
The exact locations and the amount of creatures is uncertain. Some reports do claim very specific numbers, and we'll talk about that a little bit more later on, but we really don't know based on their actual authentic reports.
It's game over, man. You got multiples and they're just shooting at them with all your might and they're just toying with you, it seems like.
yeah well this went on for a few hours creatures appearing gunfire brief pause what don't really know all the details in between these hours but yeah it went on for some time and i'm thinking after the first 10 minutes of gunfire not working and these things staying around i'm trying to get to a car or i mean yeah i'm trying to just get out of there
I would start to think like, maybe I'm not in danger. Maybe what I'm doing is not working, but clearly if the bullets aren't working, I'm either wildly missing or it is impervious. And I was always the one in danger and yet I'm still here. So it's, It's a very interesting moment, I think, after hours of doing this to reflect on it.
And thankfully, Lankford actually attempted to deescalate the situation. She reminded everybody that these creatures had not tried to attack them by this point and that clearly the bullets weren't doing anything. And eventually, whatever these creatures were, did seemingly flee off into the night.
Now, when the Suttons finally felt safe enough, they themselves ran out of the house, drove in two separate cars to the Hopkinsville police station. They told the police, quote, We need help. We've been fighting them for nearly four hours, end quote. Oh, my God. Yeah. I don't know. Fighting is the right word or if it's like swinging at the air. Right. But yeah.
And that's all according to the Kentucky New Era. And we'll kind of talk about their article here a little bit more as well. Boom, they got you covered. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money will even help negotiate lower bills on your behalf.
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