The Alien Invasion of 1955

In the early 1960s, Betty and Barney Hill’s supposed abduction and subsequent experimentation by aliens sparked a mass interest in aliens across the United States, to put it mildly. Suddenly everyone was seeing flying saucers, everyone was being abducted, everyone was talking to aliens. Blurry black and white images of odd shapes in the night sky, or of weird creatures half-hidden behind a tree and other dubious pieces of “proof” were widespread. Some people wanted to ride the bandwagon to get their 15 minutes of fame, others wanted to capitalize on the phenomenon in order to bring some tourism revenue, while others still genuinely fell to the psychosis of the time and believed they had been visited. As such, the overwhelming majority of reports from the 60s and 70s should be, and have been, rightfully dismissed as untrue, which is why it is so crucial that we examine the reports dating before the word UFO was a household name. And by far the most famous of these cases is the 1955 Hopkinsville Goblin.

As the name would suggest, the case occurred in the small town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky – more particularly in and near the small Sutton farmhouse where, at the time, lived over ten people. One of them was a 21 year old man name Billy Ray Taylor, who was a carnival worker from Pennsylvania there with his 18 year old wife. At about seven PM, Billy was drawing water from the well nearby when he noticed an odd light in the sky – a sight which had also been reported by numerous people in Hopkinsville. An hour later, the barking of a dog outside attracted him, and once he left the farmhouse Billy noticed an odd, small creature roaming about. Going back in the house, he picked up his rifle and shot the creature dead. For the rest of the night, the farm was assaulted by up to fifteen creatures which banged on the walls, pressed their faces against the windows and threw rocks. Come morning, the creatures – including the one shot by Billy – were gone.

Numerous reports have been written about the case in an attempt to identify the creatures and examine the evidence to determine if the whole thing was a hoax or not. It’s important to note that while Billy was a known prankster and nobody at the house took him seriously when he reported the glowing light, the story about the creatures’ assault was confirmed by almost all of the residents, safe for Billy’s wife who confirmed the noises but claimed she was too afraid to look. The description of the creatures was identical across all the residents of the farmhouse – small, with silvery, glowing bodies. While a popular theory states that the creatures were, in fact, Great Horned Owls, it has neither been proven nor disproven.