The police respond; the aliens launch a counterattack!
After a two-hour inspection
of the house and the surrounding area, the only clues the police could find
were what appeared to be bullet and shot holes in some of the screens, a few
spent shell casings in the house and yard, some shot embedded in a door frame,
and a luminous patch in the grass beyond the fence...
The luminous patch was about 18” across, and located near where one of the little men was supposed to have been shot. “(T)he patch was only visible from one angle,” Davis reported. “Greenwell and others examined the spot carefully, but at close range nothing at all was visible and the grass did not seem different in any way.”[1] No one seems to have thought to secure samples of the soil or foliage.
While there was no sign
that the Suttons had imagined it all or tried to perpetrate a hoax, there was
also no clear evidence that any creatures had attacked the house. Nevertheless,
the lawmen felt a certain malevolence permeating the Sutton property. “In and
around the whole area, the house, the fields, that night, there was a weird
feeling,” Greenwell recounted. “It was partly uneasiness, but not entirely.
Everyone had it. There were men there that I’d call brave men, men I’ve been in
dangerous situations with. They felt it, too. They’ve told me so.”[2]
With so little to go on, a puzzled Chief Greenwell sent everyone home to bed and the Suttons reluctantly returned to the farmhouse.
Sleep did not come
easily. “Mrs. Lankford, was resting in her bed... situated near a window. Again…
all the lights were off… and she became conscious of something glowing at the
window,” Ledwith reported. “She looked and saw the being watching her. It’s [sic]
hands were again raised in that familiar position of about to be robbed, but it
made no motion.”[3]
Scarcely
able to believe that the creatures were back, Miss Glennie quietly woke the
others. Lucky leapt to the window with his gun, but his mother stopped him.
“My grandmother was like, leave them alone, because maybe they don’t want to hurt us,” Stith said. “She believed there was good in everything. She wouldn’t want anything to be hurt or killed, even though they may have been something from another world!
“But my dad was not going to do that, because he was afraid that was exactly what they were there to do,” she went on. “They kept coming up to the doors and windows, and if they’re coming up to the doors and windows, what are they wanting? Do they want to get in? And what are they going to do when they get in? He wasn’t going to give them that chance.”
In the end, Lucky won the argument. He fired at the face at the window, and once again the creature disappeared.
“The night wore on… and before daybreak the men dissapsared [sic] completely,” Ledwith related. “They left before the sun came up. The Sutton household, needless to say, didn’t sleep at all that night… and during the early morning hours the farm was crawling with the curious and sightseers.”[4]
Although Chief Greenwell never cast
any doubt on the Suttons’ accounts of what happened the night of the 21st,
he did them a grave disservice by failing to secure the farm as a crime scene. There
was never a comprehensive search for evidence, and because anyone and everyone
could trespass on the property—and even get inside the house, which, it must be
remembered, had no locks on the doors—no one could ever be sure whether there
might have been evidence present that night that could have been stolen or
destroyed by a curious reporter or tourist. To make matters worse, a downpour
the next day turned the ground to mud; had there been any footprints left
unmolested by the trampling feet of the police and sightseers, they would
surely have been washed away by the rain.
“If things had been done
right, there’s no telling what evidence they could have gotten,” Stith
lamented.
Lucky
thing, then, that when Bud Ledwith happened to come into the local radio
station the next morning—Monday was his day off, but he needed to speak with
the chief engineer—and heard talk of the invasion at the Sutton farm, he grabbed
some drawing materials and drove straight out to the scene of the events.
Ledwith, in addition to being an on-air personality and engineer at the
station, was also an artist, and when he arrived at the farm he was able to
persuade three of the women—Miss Glennie, Vera Sutton and Alene Sutton—to help
him draw a composite sketch of the creature. If the police weren’t going to do
a proper investigation or preserve evidence, Ledwith would. Turned out the
women were more than happy to tell their tale to someone who didn’t make them
feel embarrassed or insane, and after an hour and a half of intense discussion
Ledwith produced a drawing of a misshapen goblin that met with their unanimous
approval. So accurate was the drawing that Miss Glennie went outside so she
wouldn’t have to look at it.
The men had gone off in different directions for the day, and when Billy Ray returned to the farm, he took one look at Ledwith’s picture and said, “That’s it, that’s it, that looks just like it.”[1]
When Lucky arrived home later he “came in like a bear”[2]: the drive was blocked by cars and strangers were milling around in the yard. Ledwith was prepared to leave immediately, not wanting to add to Sutton’s stress, but when Lucky saw the drawing he grew silent, then he sat down and began to suggest corrections… “One could tell by the look on his face that we had struck home with that picture,” Ledwith reported.[3]
“I’m sure it meant a lot to Dad that (Ledwith) listened to him and seemed to believe him,” Stith said. “Russell Greenwell believed it too; he never doubted. Anybody that would seriously come in there to talk about the situation and not make fun was high on my dad’s list. There was a lot more who didn’t believe him than did.”
To Be Continued...
