Une équipe de film intéressée par l'histoire datant de 1955
Princeton — Geraldine Hawkins n'avait que 7 ou 8 ans la 1ère fois qu'elle entendit parler de l'histoire des hommes verts de Kelly.
Although her father, Elmer "Lucky" Sutton, said he was one of the people who witnessed the alien invation on Aug. 21, 1955, he didn't talk to Hawkins about it until the late 1960s when two writers contacted him for an interview.
"This was the first I'd ever heard of it," Hawkins said. "I remember it was a man and woman that came to the house. I had never heard anything about it. I remember sitting on the floor with my legs crossed listening to this story. It terrified me."
The local legend recently attracted the attention of an independent production company in Glendale, Calif.
A film crew from Barcon Productions came to Hopkinsville to research the incident. Barcon has been recording witnesses' accounts for a fil titled Monsters of the UFO to be released next summer.
The sighting occured at Kelly, a small town on U.S. 41 about 8 miles north of Hopkinsville. "Lucky" Sutton and several family members said a spaceship landed near the house that evening. It was carrying about a dozen little space creatures, they said.
"Lucky" Sutton and other family members said they had a gunbattle with the creatures that lasted for hours.
Most of the Sutton family members who said they fought the aliens off with shotguns are dead.
However, Hawkins and her younger brother, Elmer Sutton Jr., of Trigg County, said their father, who died in 1995, shared his experience with them.
"He talked to me about it because I was one of the last ones to leave home," Elmer Sutton said. "I prodded him about it a lot. If I'd catch him in the right mood, he'd sit down and talk for hours about it."
According to the family, a visitor to the Sutton house, Billy Ray Taylor of Pennsylvania, had been in the backyard getting water from the well. He noticed a light streak across the sky and descend into the trees along a ravine about a quarter of a mile away.
A while later, "Lucky" Sutton's mother, Glennie Lankford, saw a creature with long arms and talon-like hands raised in the air approaching the back of the house.
"(Dad) said they appeared to have a human shape, but with some modifications that made them different," Sutton said. "He called them little green men. Geraldine Hawkins and Elmer Sutton Jr. say their father told them he saw aliens.
He called them green, but said they actually weren't green. He said they were silver, but they had a greenish silver glow to them. He said they were about 3-foot tall.
"Their arms were double the length of humans' and had pointed ears. He said the eyes were in the same place as humans', but were more of an almond shape. The eyes had a luminous glow. He said they really didn't walk, just skimmed on top of ground, but moved their legs."
"Lucky" Sutton and Taylor each fired several shots at the aliens, they later reported to the police. The siege continued through the night, the story goes. None of the bullets seemed to affect the creatures.
"He told me he didn't know what in the world they had in mind, but he wasn't going to stand around to find out", Sutton said.
The Suttons, Taylor, Lankford and a few children in the house that night said they piled into two cars and headed for the police station in Hopkinsville.
City, county and state police, along with military personnel from then-Camp Campbell, flocked to the Kelly homestead and stayed until about 2 a.m. They searched the house, the yard, surrounding fields and a wooded area, but reportedly found nothing.
The family claimed the creatures returned again about 3. a.m. and stayed until morning.
Contrary to speculation by some, Hawkins insists that her father and other family members were not drinking alcohol that night, nor did they fabricate the story.
"I could always tell when my dad was pulling my leg or not. He wasn't pulling a fast one," Sutton said.