Little Green Men -- Part III B

*whew* 

 Blogspot is giving me some major formatting headaches tonight. My apologies for everyone who tried to read tonight's post only to find a black screen. I think I have things jury-rigged now...

The men herded everyone away from the doors and took stock of the situation. With three of them now armed, the family’s odds seemed to have improved considerably, but what should their next move be? Lucky, Billy Ray and J. C. decided to venture outside to reconnoiter, still unwilling to believe that all three of their shots had missed.

“Several of the men were out front now… and they discovered another up in the tree... and one on the ground right in front of Lucky Sutton,” reported local radio engineer and host “Bud” Ledwith in his personal case report. “He brought the shotgun to bear on the little fellow at point blank range… fired… and stood in amazement as it flipped over and got up.”

Another shot at the creature in the tree had the same astonishing effect. The little man flipped like a play target in a carnival shooting gallery 

and floated down to the ground before scurrying off into the woods. As with each shot before, the impact sounded like a shotgun being fired into a metal pail.

It took a moment for the men to come to the unnerving realization that their weapons were useless against the invaders, and when they did they retreated into the house to await the creatures’ next move. They didn’t have to wait long. “The objects would continue to come to the window and peer inside,” Ledwith wrote. “The Sutton family would fire through the window… it would flip over or fall back and disappear for a few minutes. However they kept coming back… time after time.”

It became apparent to Miss Glennie that the creatures were averse to the light from the front and rear porch lights, and so those lights were kept on. Although this limited the creatures’ approach to the sides of the house and made the homestead easier to defend, the little men did not relent.

Eventually the Suttons heard an ominous scraping on the kitchen roof, and the men raced into the back yard to see a creature clawing its way across the tin roofing panels. “They shot at it and knocked it from the roof; then it ‘floated’ to the back fence—a distance of some 40-odd feet—where it seemed to perch; they shot again, knocked it off the fence, and this time it scurried off into the weeds in the ‘all-fours’ position.”

Strangely, although the creatures themselves never uttered a sound, the men could hear the rustle of the underbrush as the creatures ran away through the weeds.

Perhaps the most convincing evidence in the Kelly-Hopkinsville case is the fact that Lucky Sutton, a man who took immense pride in being able to take care of his own, decided, in the middle of the night, to go get help from the police.

  The exhausted family had been fighting off the glowing silver creatures for nearly four hours, nerves were fraying, and the children were falling apart.

“At least once, one child was in the front yard when a creature was seen and fired at,” reported Davis.

“(The children) did hear the gunfire; they did hear the conversations that were going on, the hollering,” confirmed Stith. “June was hysterical, she was crying.”

The situation was becoming untenable, and when things at last grew quiet out in the yard, Lucky decided to make a move. “He was needing help,” Stith said. “They were trying to figure out what to do, and they weren’t getting anything done, so the next best thing was to throw everybody in the trucks and head to Hopkinsville, try to get help from the police. Why would you do that unless you were needing help? He wouldn’t have, no.”

            It was unusual, to say the least, for two trucks to skid, one after the other, into the parking lot of the Hopkinsville Police station after 11 p.m., and then for 11 adults and children to pile out of the vehicles and pour into the station. The desk officer could tell that something out of the ordinary had occurred, and when he finally made sense of the story he was concerned enough to alert the State Police and call his own Chief of Police Russell Greenwell at his home. “A spaceship has landed at Kelly,” was the desk sergeant’s message.

            Greenwell, who had himself seen an unidentified object in the sky some years before, mobilized immediately; the assumption was that the invaders were still present at the farm, so Greenwell made sure his own responding officers were backed up by the County Sherriff’s men and the State Police for good measure. Clearly, Greenwell was taking the story very seriously. “These aren’t the kind of people who normally run to the police for help,” he said of the Suttons. “When they feel themselves threatened, what they do is reach for their guns.”

            One of Greenwell’s officers confirmed the Chief’s convictions when he reported that Billy Ray Taylor was showing undeniable physical signs of raw terror during the ride back to the farm. The officer, who had a medical background, observed Billy Ray’s accelerated pulse in his neck and timed it at 140 beats per minute, twice normal. “Maybe the boy could pretend to be frightened in some ways,” the officer reported, “but I don’t know how he could make his heart beat twice as fast as usual.”

In all, sixteen law enforcement officers raced to the Sutton farm, and, although the Air Force tried to deny it, four M.P.s from nearby Fort Campbell Air Force Base responded to the APB as well. Within a half hour the Sutton farm was awash with police officers, all scouring the house, outbuildings and grounds for signs that the creatures were still present.

The Suttons, for the most part, waited in their vehicles as the police inspected the area. “Everybody was terrified,” Stith said. “The women wouldn’t go back in the house.” A piercing wail from the yard caused hearts to freeze, but it was only a cat. Someone had stepped on its tail in the dark… “You never saw so many pistols un-holstered so fast in your life,” Chief Greenwell said.

Rumors of a “Martian invasion” at the Sutton farm had spread, meanwhile, and local reporters and curiosity-seekers began to show up. Although no one ever saw more than two of the creatures at the same time, the story quickly morphed into an invasion of 12 to 15 of the little men, and everyone wanted to get a look at the alien army. Before long, Lucky was regretting his decision to go to the police. “Yeah, there was evidence that gunfire had taken place, but little green men? They thought it was a joke,” Stith said. “(Lucky) could hear people laughing and joking about the situation, and that’s when he started to think, ‘Maybe I did the wrong thing trying to go for help,’ because he didn’t get it.”

To Be Continued...