Community remembers story of spaceship landing with festival - WSMV Channel 4

For more than 50 years, some have been convinced a spaceship landed in a quiet Kentucky community. The story goes that little green men jumped out and ran around a family farmhouse.

Now, after decades of theories into what happened that night, the town of Kelly is celebrating with a three day festival.

"The thing is, every community has a story," said Frank Brown of the Kelly Community Organization. "Every community you go to throughout America has a story."

"It is pretty well wide known all the way around now," added resident Martha Anne Goodwin.

"It's a story about our culture, I guess," said resident George Whitaker. 

"It was made fun of around here," remembered Yvonne Sutton, a woman who lives just down the road from the site of the supposed spaceship landing. "People were embarrassed about it. I've always thought something happened down there because there was just too much talk about it for there to have been nothing."

"On August 21, 1955, at the Sutton family farm, one of the gentlemen had gone out to get a drink from the well," said Brown. "He saw some lights in the sky and something land behind the house."

"There were these invaders, very small individuals," Whitaker added.

"These little silver aliens were on their roof and when they went out, they were pulling their hair," Goodwin continued.

"They were in the trees," said Brown. "The family decided to protect their farmhouse, so they brought out their guns."

"They would shoot at them to no avail, so they went to Hopkinsville and got the police," added Sutton. "Of course, they didn't find any spaceship, and they didn't find any green men."

"I would grab my pillow at night and sleep under the bed," Goodwin remembered from her childhood. "I did this for a good two weeks. I was terrified. If you heard any noise you thought it was a spaceship."

Looking to raise money for a learning center, park, volunteer fire department substation, and tornado siren, the festival in Kelly includes a 38-foot spaceship members of the community built themselves.

No matter what their persuasion happens to be on little green men, everyone in Kelly seems to agree, there's a story here that needs to be shared by their town.

"Here in rural Kentucky, any story that's worth telling is worth repeating," said Sutton. "It could be as 100 percent truth as anything else."

The festival is taking place at the intersection of Old Madisonville and Kelly Church roads in Kelly. For details on the event, follow this link: http://kellyky.com/lgmfestival.html