The evening of Sunday, August 21st, 1955, began one of the strangest and most credible UFO occupant encounters of a time when such things were seemingly commonplace compared to today. Elmer "Lucky" Sutton had brought his wife, Vera, and friends Billy Ray and June Taylor with him to visit his mother Glennie Lankford and three younger half-siblings at the family farmhouse, just eight miles north of Hopkinsville; also present were his brother JC, sister-in-law Alene, and a family friend, OP. Lucky, then a young man in his early twenties, was home from the traveling carnival where he worked.

At around 7 p.m. that evening, Billy Ray had gone outside to fetch water from the well; while doing so, he saw what seemed to be a large, metallic object streak across the sky and land in a nearby field. Billy Ray convinced Lucky, who originally thought that perhaps his friend was pulling a prank, to go outside with him so that he could show Lucky the path of the object. It was then that they were approached by what they described as "little grey men" with big heads and long arms. The little men had huge eyes, over sized hands, and appeared to be perhaps wearing clothing made out of a metallic substance.

The two men armed themselves with a 20-gauge shotgun and a .22 caliber target pistol, and proceeded to engage what seemed to be several entities who quickly besieged the isolated farmhouse. The goblin-like visitors peered through windows, only to disappear when shot at, and even climbed on the roof. At one point, Billy Ray emerged outside to check on their status, only to have one of the things reach down from above and grab him by the hair. Billy Ray pulled himself free and quickly fled back inside. The men claim to have hit several of the entities, even claiming to have heard a metallic sound on impact, but the firearms had no effect on the creatures other than to briefly knock them down.

This went on for hours, until the terrified occupants experienced a lull in the activity, and took the opportunity to run for help. They loaded themselves into two cars and sped away to the local police department in Hopkinsville, arriving around 11 p.m.

"We need help," the Kentucky New Era reported one of the men saying to officers upon their arrival. "We've been fighting them for nearly four hours."

The city policy dispatched four officers to check the scene, who met with five state troopers, three deputy sheriffs, and four military policy from a nearby Army base. The officers reported no sign of the "little grey men," but noted the presence of bullet holes in the areas of the home the men said they had shot at the creatures. The officers left the scene sometime after 2 a.m., and the Suttons reported that the activity started again after they left, at 3:30 a.m, only to be gone by morning.

Police officers noted that the witnesses seemed genuinely terrified and excited, and that there was no indication that alcohol was involved. Other than those observations, officers at the scene were reluctant to express an opinion on the veracity of the witnesses' testimony, noting that no physical evidence was found at the scene of any craft having landed.

The only police officer to make a declarative statement was city police desk sergeant Frank Dudas, who was not on duty during the incident. Sergeant Dudas was one of two city policemen who reported seeing three UFOs the previous summer.

"I think the whole story is entirely possible," said Sergeant Dudas. "I know I saw them. If I saw them, the Kelly story certainly could be true."