Hopkinsville Goblins

As every fan of science fiction knows, the universe is a vast place, with terrors both subtle and gross, and wonders to freeze the soul. There are a billion billion stars out there, and some monsters come from places darker than the blackest woods.

That was the case at the Sutton farmhouse in 1955, in the wild expanse between Kelly and Hopkinsville,Ky. Legend has it that the Suttons' guest, Billy Ray Taylor, had stepped outside to fetch water from a pump when he saw lights in the sky.

Being from the big city, Taylor had never seen such a thing before, and assumed they must be those "stars" his friends had been puling his leg about, although these moved through the sky and appeared to land in the middle of the cornfield. (Stars are bright lights that country folk say come out at night once the sun has set. Science fiction writers have run with this idea further, and suggested that stars are like the sun, but more remote and may even have life-sustaining planets like our own orbiting them. No one has explained why the sun should be only star ever visible in big cities, but we'll indulge this silliness a little further.)

Not long after, the house was set upon by a dozen or so small, green and glowing creatures with spindly legs and clawed hands. Bullets soon flew, and those that found their mark echoed with a metallic pa-ting! until the strange visitors from another world left the way they came.

In the morning, the Suttons found notes the aliens had been carrying with titles like "Cure for Cancer and All Human Diseases," "New Agricultural Techniques Guaranteed to end Famine," "You Won't Believe the Simple Trick this Girl Used to Lift her Entire Nation out of Poverty" and "Generals Hate This Combat-Free Solution to War. None of them was readable.

The Suttons, who had fired 57,000 rounds of ammunition, quickly were hailed as true American heroes by the NRA and given jobs by FOX.News to discuss the "liberal menace from outer space."

As every fan of science fiction knows, the universe is a vast place, with terrors both subtle and gross, and wonders to freeze the soul. Some monsters come from places darker than the blackest woods.

That was the case at the Sutton farmhouse in 1955.

ETA: The encounter is depicted in the stage musical "It Came From Kentucky."