The Hopkinsville Goblin's

 

Just over 70 years ago,a strange possibly extraterrestrial encounter took place on a rural farm in Kentucky.

On the night of August 21, 1955, five adults and seven children arrived at the Hopkinsville police station claiming that small goblin like alien creatures from a spaceship had been attacking their farmhouse and that 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 a few short, dark figures who repeatedly popped up at the doorway or peered into windows.

 The Kentucky New Era, the first paper to report the incident, increased the number of creatures to "12 to 15," and this continues to be the number most often reported.

The report of gunfire and unknown creatures triggered a large police response that included local city police officers,  state troopers, deputy sheriffs, and even four military police officers from the nearby United States Army Fort Campbell  to the Sutton farmhouse located near the town of Kelly in Christian County.

There were dozens of eyewitnesses to the incidents, which included two families present at the farmhouse and others in the area; other civilians, some of whom had no connection to the families and even one in another state. the witnesses also included several local policemen and a state trooper who saw and heard strange phenomena including unexplained lights in the night sky and noises the same night.

The family present in the farmhouse all claimed that they were terrorized by several creatures similar to gremlins, which have since often been referred to as the "Hopkinsville Goblins" in popular culture. 

The possibly otherworldly creatures were described as about three feet tall, with upright pointed ears, thin limbs (the beings' legs were said to be almost non functional or devolved, even in a state of atrophy), long arms and claw-like hands or talons. The creatures were either silvery in color, or wearing something metallic. ( Skeptics claim the witnesses were seeing large owls and simply mistook them for something else)

Their movements on occasion seemed to defy gravity with them floating above the ground and appearing in high up places, and they "walked" with a swaying motion as though wading through water. Although the creatures never entered the house, they would pop up at windows and at the doorway, waking the children in the house up to a hysterical frenzy. The families fled the farmhouse in the middle of the night to the local police station and sheriff Russell Greenwell noted that they were visibly shaken. 

The families returned to the farmhouse with Sheriff Greenwell and several officers, yet the occurrences continued. Police saw evidence of the struggle and damage to the house, as well as seeing strange lights and hearing noises themselves. The witnesses additionally claimed to have used firearms to shoot at the creatures, with little or no effect, and the house and surrounding grounds were extensively damaged during the incident. There are no known photographs of a Hopkinsville Goblin.