- Paperback:
- 100 pages
- Publisher: AuthorHouse (31 May 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1425984169
- ISBN-13: 978-1425984168
- Product Dimensions: 15.2 x 0.6 x 22.9 cm
I read a lot of books in a day!
According to the book blurb:
August 21, 1955. Just another hot summer night like so many others in the small community of Kelly, Kentucky. Lucky Sutton along with his family and friends were enjoying a quiet peaceful evening. The family not knowing that all around them strange things were happening. Things that no one would come forward and talk about, too afraid to bring up what they had witnessed. But Lucky and his family were about to find out what could lurk in the darkness. The visitors were not from this earth. Were they possibly from the depths of hell? The gunshots and the screams could be heard by neighbors, but nobody came to help. Lucky and his family could only live as they could after the events of that night, fearing the unknown and wondering for the rest of their lives... Would they come back?
Well, if you have been in the business of strange and weird for long enough you should have heard of this case. But I write that knowing that most people today have gotten their education on UFOs and Alien Entity cases from bad TV programmes or...You Tube! The Kelly~Hopkinsville case is what is known as a "classic".
Over 60 years every attempt has been made to dismiss it by...shall I write "stretching the truth more than a little"? To the skeptic it is nothing more than "hillbillies high on moonshine" or so dumb they have no idea what they are seeing. Prejudice plays a great part in this. Geraldine Sutton Stith is, of course, a family member and she deals with the various claims made against the family and they do tend to fall apart quickly. For a family "out to make a small fortune" because of their poverty it has to be said they made no money ~not even while attempting to drive off sightseers who trampled all over their property and home: no one paid a penny.
Back in the early 1980s I was going over this case and asked a couple of people in the States whether they could do some up~to~date checks? Had the family earned any money from TV, radio or newspapers? Had the much maligned Billy Ray (often portrayed as a tall tale teller who liked the moonshine) made money from the event? Had he been involved in anything that had made him money from his encounter story?
Well, no. The family had made no money and everything Sutton Stith tells us rings true on that point. Billy Ray never returned to that part of the country after leaving it with his wife not long after the event. Hios wife was traumatised by what happened.
Every time I read "Kelly Goblin Case Solved" I read the account and it is the same old thing. Or the skeptic is simply pulling together half truths that are easily dismissed. That is not the scientific way ~not explainable so just lie about it.
Those who are panicked by the possible reality of these things will tell you, on TV, that "it was a garden gnome" and he is the "expert" (X equals The Unknown and "spurt" is a drip under pressure) so if the expert tells you it was a garden gnome it was a goddam garden gnome ~got it?
Dry old investigators like to ask "What happened leading up to the sighting?" The witness will reply: "Well, Dave and his wife and Stuart and his had come down the day before~" at which point they are interrupted with a "No. What happened in the hour leading up to the incident?"
What Sutton Stith does here is tell us what was going on prior, during and after the event. We get a full picture of everything, Nothing leads up the event, no one says "Hear about them durned flying saucers?" It was just everyday life and Billy Ray did not go out to "the outdoor privvie" but went to get a cold drink from the pump out in the yard. That hardly sounds like a boozed up hillbilly.
We also find out that Lucky was not believing what Billy Ray said and the reason for it. Lucky was a downright skeptic. And when Lucky saw something...his mother was the big skeptic and everyone else laughed. Right up to the point that Lucky's mother saw one of the "goblins" for herself she was paying no attention to Lucky and Billy Ray's joke. Everyone was skeptical from the outset until they set eyes on something. This is as far from a slightly tipsy Billy Ray rushing in to say he had seen a "flying saucer" and everyone starting to panic which created hysteria as you can get.
No TV, no radio.
Throughout, and later still, the family being Christian, believed the entities they saw were either goblins or demons...that they did not seem to be trying to harm the family led Lucky's mother to advise against trying to hurt them ~but Lucky was having none of it.
There is a flaw in the book. Sutton Stith has included no photographs or line drawings. So the reader is left wondering exactly what these entities looked like or the shack? I doubt Sutton Stith will read this but an updated book with these in would help those in the know.
In case you are wondering.....
Several web sites will tell you these are drawings by the family. You read that then leave the site because they are idiots and know nothing. See that "BL" at the bottom of the drawing? Budd Ledwith who was from the local radio station, WHOP, drew these based on the family descriptions.
Now, you will see why I find this case fascinating and perplexing.
These entities look fairly unique and although there have been cases where it was claimed "the entities looked similar to those seen at Kelly~Hopkinsville" they did not look so (if anyone can correct me on this point please get in touch). The entities approached the Suttons with arms raised ~even Lucky's mother realised the possible significance of this. It can be seen as a sign of surrender but was originally meant to indicate "Look: not hostile, arms raised no weapons in hand. Here in peace."
There had been a lot of meteors that particular month. However, what Billy Ray saw did not look like a meteor. Others reported odd sightings and even hearing the gunshots and shouting from the Suttons home. Sadly, I tend to dismiss witnesses who come forward years later, as in this case. I do understand why, if genuine, they did not want to get involved at the time ~they saw what the Suttons went through. Anecdotal evidence at best. Now, I cannot say 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt genuine because I was not there. There were no real procedures used to gather samples and no geiger counters used. The gut feeling is that the family had a genuine experience involving unique looking entities.
This is where we speculate. Had this been a forced or planned landing? Were these 'goblins' attempting to make peaceful contact with the Suttons (one was seen to reach down to touch Billy Ray's hair and did not, as some accounts claim, "take a swipe at him"/"grabbed his hair" or anything else and, no, no one was abducted) who then, through fear opened fire on them? The mindset was not there for "Hey, peaceful aliens from another planet ~and they want to make contact!" These were "goblins or demons" and were approaching the house where the women and children were. Lucky, Billy Ray and Co. did what people might still do today ~they opened fire.
What might have happened had they not? Why did these entities return again, after all the police had gone? Still no hostile action.
Sutton Stith's book tells us a side of the story we haven't heard before and she makes it clear that even up to their deaths the Sutton members did not want to talk about what happened but only told the younger members of the family what happened so that they knew the facts.
Add this book and what it tells us to the accounts written by Ledwith and Isabel Davis and you have a case that will make you think. You may say "Bull crap!" and, indeed, for a number of years I was in a similar frame of thinking. If you read the accounts and investigate the case and read Sutton Stith's book and you still say that without the slightest doubt well....
I would highly recommend this book highly and I hope any update features some photographs, etc.
