MUFON Expedition Team: Dave Miller
Date: October 6, 2003
CLAIMS: The Kelly Green Men Case was a claimed close encounter with extraterrestrial beings on August 21, 1955 in rural Kelly, Kentucky on the Sutton farm. UFOlogists regard it as a well documented case while skeptics claim it was misreported due to extreme excitement and the Sutton family only saw great horned owls or a meteor. Five adults and seven children from the Sutton family arrived at the nearby Hopkinsville Police Station claiming that small alien creatures from a spaceship were attacking their farmhouse and they had been holding them off with gunfire for nearly four hours. Two adults claim they were shooting at 12 to 15 short, dark figures that would pop up at windows, at the front door or in the nearby woods (Photo #2 shows drawings of the aliens by Sutton family members). Since reports of UFO’s & space aliens were rampant in post WWII, police, state troopers & military checked the farm immediately & found bullet holes in windows and screens but no other evidence. The family’s claims received widespread claims in local, national & international press.
INVESTIGATION: Real encounter, group hysteria or a hoax? Early newspaper articles did not refer to the “little green men”, the color was added in later stories. Additionally, the height of 3 to 4 feet tall, claw-like hands and yellow glowing eyes were also added later by the media which to me, does not add credibility or believability to the case.
This alleged sighting took place a long time ago, actually one month before I was born. So what is my interest? A local Moraine connection. Senior citizen Art Cansler, former Moraine councilman and board member was a young Police Chief (Photo #1) in nearby Crofton, Kentucky. I interviewed Mr. Cansler at the Moraine Municipal Building. He calls Crofton “a little one-horse town” back then with a population of 500. Someone came into the police station and said something was going on up there at Kelly so Cansler drove his police cruiser five miles to the farm arriving at dusk. “There were people milling around and some laughing going on. A girl was chasing a cat which ran up on the screen door.” Cansler looked around and thought it was all a hoax. Later, he heard the family raced to Hopkinsville that night well after dark and told police the baffling story about battling the space creatures from the house. Police then drove to the Sutton farm to investigate. Cansler was never interviewed by the media, military or any UFO investigators.
Does Police Chief Cansler’s comments shed new light on the case? If Chief Cansler did arrive before the Hopkinsville Police and military then his eyewitness account certainly seems to debunk the Sutton’s alien sighting claim. Who knows, perhaps a little moonshine may have contributed to the Sutton’s tale as well.
