Foil Hat Ninja

“Are the people on your planet usually in a frantic panic, like they are here most of the time?”—Steve Vai, Little Green Men

 

This one is an oldie but a goodie – at least old as far as close encounter stories go, but good by any standard. It’s considered a classic of UFO lore. If you’ve never heard it, you need to. It’s the story of the Kelly Green Men, aka the Hopkinsville Goblins, which would be the perfect name for a minor league baseball team if they ever get one. I know I’ll buy a jersey.

Precisely who was involved in the incident isn’t entirely clear. We know that it involved the Sutton family, who lived on the property where the events took place. There was also a second family present for the festivities, but exactly who they were is never clearly stated by any source that I can find. They may have been the family of Billy Ray Taylor from Pennsylvania, who was definitely there visiting the Suttons and may have owned the property. Everyone seems to agree that there were eleven people at the house – either eight adults and three children or seven adults and four kids. Despite these inconsistencies and sketchy details, we know that something happened that night as at least 20 law enforcement officers and possibly some military investigators became involved in the festivities. There was also testimony from a number of neighbors who reported seeing strange lights and hearing weird sounds on the night in question.

It started on the evening of August 21, 1955 on a farm near the tiny town of Kelly, Kentucky. Sometime around 7:00 pm, Billy Ray Taylor went outside to retrieve some water from the well. When he came back in the house, he told everyone that he had seen a flying saucer come down out of the sky and disappear into a gully near the edge of the property. Everyone laughed at him and accused him of exaggerating having seen a shooting star. About an hour later, the family dog started barking at something outside, then ran and hid under the house where it remained until the next day. Billy Ray and Elmer “Lucky” Sutton, apparently the only grown men present, went outside armed with a 20 gauge shotgun and a .22 caliber rifle to see what was going on.

What they saw was a glowing shape in the field that was approaching the farmhouse. As it got closer, it became clear that the glowing object was a being about three to four feet tall. It had a large head with big, bulging yellow eyes that were partially on the sides. It had large, pointed ears and long arms that nearly reached the ground and claws on the ends of its fingers. Its legs were short and scrawny, and it walked with a peculiar gait, as if it were sloshing its way through waist deep water. It was either silver or wearing a tight-fitting silver suit. It approached them with its arms raised above its head as if it were surrendering…or signaling touchdown.

This obviously didn’t impress Sutton and Taylor, because when the creature was about 20 feet away, they opened fire. Rather than falling down dead like a reasonable creature would do when shot at point blank range, this one instead did a backflip and then scurried off into the woods on its tiny little legs, all of which I would have paid to have seen.

The two men went back in the house, but it wasn’t long before the creature, or perhaps another one, was back and peering in a window. They fired at it through the screen, and once again it did a backflip and then ran off. Lucky and Billy Ray, certain that they had hit the creature, went out to see if they could find any evidence that it was wounded. On the porch, a clawed hand reached down from the roof and grabbed Billy Ray by the hair. Family members were able to pull him away, and Lucky ran out into the yard and shot the creature on the roof, causing it to roll off the side of the house. Another one was spotted in a nearby tree, and both men shot at it. Instead of falling, it floated down to the ground and disappeared into the darkness. The one that had been on the roof came back around to the front of the house and stood right in front of the startled witnesses. Lucky fired his shotgun at it, and this time it didn’t bother with any gymnastics. It just turned and ran off into the woods.

With all of their visitors now gone, everyone went back inside the house. The calm didn’t last though. The creatures kept reappearing at the windows, and the men kept firing at them. This was despite the fact that a Mrs. Lankford, seemingly the matriarch of the bunch, had suggested a cease to the hostilities, pointing out that the beings had taken no aggressive action nor had they tried to enter the house. Clearly the menfolk disagreed and kept shooting.

The families would later report that when the creatures were struck by gunfire, it sounded like bullets hitting a metal bucket, but there were no holes made or any trace of blood, except for possibly one place that was discovered later. They also estimated that there were at least a dozen of these beings, although it doesn’t seem that they ever saw more than two at one time. This may be because they couldn’t believe that the ones who were shot were uninjured and kept coming back for more.

I suppose it never occurred to these bumpkins not to shoot at creatures who approached them with their hands up, or at least to stop shooting at them when it had no effect. Then again, when that didn’t happen, these beings could have just left. I get the impression that the goblins were just screwing with them after that, but we’ll never know how they would have reacted if they’d been met with curiosity instead of immediate and unprovoked hostility. If these creatures were extraterrestrial, is it any wonder that they don’t want anything to do with us – at least not in any sort of official, diplomatic capacity?

Anyway, there was a break in the action around 11:00 pm, and the families decided to make a run for it. Everyone piled into the two cars that weren’t on cinder blocks and took off for Hopkinsville, the location of the nearest police station. Half an hour later at the station, they told their story to Sheriff Russell Greenwell. He later reported that the families were obviously frightened by something that was beyond their comprehension. He was familiar with these people and did not believe that they would make up such a story. Shortly after midnight, 20 state and local officers descended on the property, possibly accompanied by four military policemen from a nearby Army base. They found the house badly shot up but saw no evidence of the creatures. Some reports claim that they located a patch of ground that was glowing where one of the creatures had been shot, but it was back to normal by the following morning.

Some of the Sutton’s neighbors who were questioned that night and the following day reported seeing strange lights in the sky earlier that evening and hearing the gunfire coming from the Sutton farm. A local police officer out on patrol that night also saw what appeared to be an unusual craft flying through the sky, making sounds like artillery fire.

Police remained at the farm for a couple of hours, the last ones leaving at around 2:15 am. The families had calmed down enough by then to try to get some sleep. Once again, the quiet didn’t last.

About 3:00 am, Mrs. Lankford spotted one of the glowing goblins peering in a window. Although she once again encouraged the family to let cooler heads prevail, Lucky Sutton again decided that aggression was the better part of valor and opened fire. This went on periodically for the rest of the night, stopping only at around 5:15, about half an hour before sunrise, when they last spotted one of the creatures. How they departed is unknown. No one reported seeing any sort of unusual objects in the sky that morning.

In all, more than 100 shots were fired that night with no apparent effect except to damage the property. Because if something doesn’t work the first hundred times you try, you might as well keep doing it. It’s bound to work sooner or later, right?

The police and possibly some Air Force officers came back later that day, but even in daylight they could find no evidence of the creatures’ presence or any craft having landed nearby. Several UFO investigators spoke with members of the Sutton family and drawings of the beings were made from their descriptions. No one but the military seemed to think that the witnesses were making the story up, including the late, great J. Allen Hynek, who spoke with the family some years later. Air Force investigators from Project Blue Book looked into the case and dismissed it as a hoax. Why the Suttons would have fabricated such a story is unknown. All that they got for their trouble was ridicule and extensive and expensive property damage. They never made a cent from the story.

The deeper questions, if you choose to believe that these events happened as described, remain unanswered. Why would apparent aliens choose a farm in a rural part of Kentucky to make their landing? Why would they keep coming back for over nine hours despite being greeted with nothing but gunfire? If they were extraterrestrials seeking to make contact with simple human residents of the planet, they showed an amazing about of persistence, patience and restraint. Obviously (at least to those of you who have read much of my earlier stuff), I’m more than a bit skeptical about that. As is often the case with the alleged aliens, this whole incident looks to me like it was some kind of psychological experiment. What the point of it all was remains a mystery, at least to me. I nevertheless get the impression that Mrs. Lankford may have been the only one who passed.

To conclude on a more positive note…

If you’re already thinking about next summer’s vacation, keep in mind that the tiny town of Kelly still has a Little Green Men Days Festival every year, because they know which side their bread is buttered on. Even little Hopkinsville has a community college, but without the events of 1955, Kelly would just be another wide spot in the road with a post office and a Dairy Queen. Now they even have a reason to have a website. So this August, grab your foil hat and your banjo and head for Kentucky. A good time is a distinct possibility!

 

 

 

 

“A working knowledge of occult science…is indispensable to UFO investigation.”—Trevor James Constable

 

I’ve mentioned a number of times that paranormal entities of all varieties seem unable or unwilling to cause serious harm to humans. However, I’ve also mentioned that this does not appear to be the case in Brazil, where they seem to play by a different set of rules. There have been numerous instances of UFO related injuries and deaths in that country, primarily involving an unusual type of UFO described as being about the same size and shape as a refrigerator, hence the title.

The first case that we’ll look at didn’t have anything to do with these particular types of objects, but it did take place in Brazil and is probably the most famous incident in which a UFO may have had something to do with two unexplained deaths. Most of what follows was taken from Jacques Vallee’s book Confrontations, but some details were obtained from other sources. I’m not sure how reliable these other sources are, but I trust Vallee completely. So here’s at least a fairly accurate description of what happened.

In 1980, Vallee travelled to South America to investigate a number of mysterious deaths seemingly connected to UFOs that had occurred in Brazil. While there, he visited the site where two men who had been involved with a spiritualist group had been found dead in August of 1966. They had died on top of a hill in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro under circumstances that the police have never been able to satisfactorily explain. This case was of interest to the world’s greatest ufologist because an unusual light had been seen by multiple witnesses hovering over the hill on the night that the men most likely died. He was accompanied by, among others, a Rio detective who specialized in unsolved cases and a witness who had seen the bodies and was the first to report the deaths to police.

The bodies were found lying side by side with no evidence of violence. Next to each of the bodies was a crude metal mask, and police found a handkerchief with the initials AMS on it. They also found a note that read “Meet at the designated spot at 16:30 pm. At 18:30 pm, ingest the capsules. After the effect is produced, protect half of the face with lead masks. Wait for the prearranged signal.” The two men were identified as electronics technicians Miguel Jose Viana, 34, and Manuel Pereira da Cruz, 32. An autopsy revealed no trace of poison from any pills that they might have taken. He ruled the cause of death in both cases to be cardiac arrest. Two men in their 30s both simultaneously dying of heart attacks seemed pretty unlikely to investigators, but later autopsies performed by another doctor didn’t turn up anything to dispute this finding. The date of their deaths could only be narrowed down to sometime between August 17^th and 20^th.

If those last few sentences seem ridiculous to you, remember that this was Brazil in 1966. Forensic pathology has come a long way since then. It’s also noteworthy that the man who had seen the bodies told Vallee that although they appeared to have been dead for a while, there was no smell of decay and scavengers had left them alone.

Both men were from the town of Campos and had taken a bus to Rio on the morning of the 17^th. They told friends and relatives that they were going to Sao Paolo to purchase a car and some electronic equipment. They supposedly had around $1000 dollars on them, although one relative told police that he doubted that either man actually had access to that kind of cash. Again, it was Brazil in 1966. That was a lot of money for someone in a poor country to have been carrying around at that time. Police considered robbery to be a possible motive for murder, but there was just no evidence to support that. And since the whole Sao Paolo story was a lie to begin with, they weren’t certain that there had been any money to steal.

This pair of mysterious deaths would have gone relatively unnoticed by the general public if not for the fact that a highly respected citizen of Rio and her children reported to the police that they had seen an orange, oval shaped object emitting blue rays in all directions hovering over the hill on the night of August 17^th. More witnesses then came forward and also stated that they had seen the same thing that night. The police were stymied by what to do with this information. It’s not like you can put out a warrant for a big arrange egg with a blue halo.

When they searched Miguel’s workshop, they found some other lead masks like the ones found next to the bodies and a book on “scientific spiritualism” with underlined passages concerning how to contact spirits, intense luminosity involved in this process and the need for lead masks. Family members confirmed that the men were members of a spiritualist group, but they didn’t know much about it. Other members of the group told police that they had participated in some occult experiments with the two men. Rumors had been circulating around Campos that the group was also trying to communicate with other planets. A few days before their deaths, Manuel had told some people that he was about to conduct a “final test” that would determine whether or not he was a believer.

It’s worth noting at this point that spiritualism, more correctly called spiritism, is about as common in Brazil as yoga classes are in upscale American suburbs. The same is true of Indonesia, where the jin kurcaci are allegedly snatching people, and John Keel suspected that all of the weirdness that was going on around Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the 1960s had been triggered by someone in the area practicing black magic. So is there some connection between UFOs and trying to contact the spirits of the dead? There does seem to be an apparent overlap in that area, although many would dispute that. But there are some highly knowledgeable and credible individuals who would agree that this might be the case, especially the ones who have seen dead friends and relatives in connection with their abduction experiences. I’m sure that I’ll have more to say on this in the future.

So anyway, police suspected that there might be an unknown ringleader of the spirit group, probably whoever wrote that note found with the bodies. Miguel and Manuel may have been seen talking to a blond man at the base of the hill on the afternoon of the 17^th, just before they began their ascent. The witness who reported this wasn’t sure that it was them, but it seemed likely given that his description matched what they were wearing. Naturally, attempts to locate this unknown blond man led nowhere.

So what were these guys up to and what happened to them? Other UFO sightings had occurred in the area of the hill shortly before their deaths. Could that have been why they went there? While I think that it would be jumping to conclusions to assume that a UFO killed them, it is interesting that the witness who had seen the bodies pointed out to Vallee exactly where they had been found, and 14 years later there was still no vegetation growing on that spot in an otherwise overgrown area. Without even a plausible cause of death, and none likely to be forthcoming at this point, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever have any satisfactory answers as to what transpired on that night.

While this may have been Brazil’s most famous UFO death case, it’s far from being the only, or even the first UFO related fatality in that country. The first one that we know of predates what is generally considered to be the modern era of the UFO by a year.

In 1946, Joao Prestes Filbo was returning home after having spent the day fishing with a friend near the Brazilian village of Aracriguama. As he reached his front door, he was hit by a beam of bright light that blinded him and caused him to collapse. He managed to make his way to his sister’s house, but his condition rapidly deteriorated. Witnesses stated that his flesh seemed to be coming detached from his bones. He felt no pain but was understandably terrified. Pieces of skin and flesh began falling off, and neighbors placed him in a cart to take him to a hospital. He died on the way, less than six hours after the initial incident. By the time they returned to the village, the corpse already looked decomposed. A police investigation turned up nothing. Since no autopsy was performed, we have no idea what might have caused his condition.

We don’t really even know that what happened to this man was UFO related since no unusual object was seen at the time, but in light of what was to come 31 years later, it’s not too much of a stretch to make that assumption.

The late 70s into the early 80s was when the defecation really struck the rotary ventilator in Brazil as far as UFO attacks are concerned. At least six people were killed and dozens more were injured in northeastern Brazil between 1977 and 1982, usually by concentrated beams of light fired from low-flying objects, frequently ones described as being rectangular boxes the size of a refrigerator. These were commonly referred to as “chupas” by the locals. Four of the fatalities and most of the injuries happened to men on overnight hunting trips which are common in northern Brazil. It’s so hair-meltingly hot there that even animals don’t move around much during the day, and hunters have a better chance of bagging game late at night. It was standard practice for them to take a hammock with them to string up between trees once they were done hunting to try to get some sleep before heading back home in the morning. This was when most of the men were attacked.

Incidentally, Terry Sherman, patriarch of the family that formerly owned the now infamous Skinwalker Ranch, once saw and stalked a similar object that he witnessed flying low over his property one night. It flew slowly, shining a searchlight over the ground beneath it as it moved back and forth over a pasture, as if it were looking for something. It’s probably lucky for him that this thing seemed to be searching for something else and either didn’t know or didn’t care that he was there.

A Dr. Carvalho on the island of Colares near the town of Belem told Vallee that she had treated 35 people, including a woman who died, for injuries and illnesses related to the chupas between September and November of 1977. She made note of a number of symptoms affecting all of these patients, including weakness, dizziness, headaches, and a pallid complexion. Their skin was black and numb where the beams had hit them, but they also had round, purple marks on them that were hot and painful. Inside each of these purple circles were two red puncture marks that resembled mosquito bites. All of her patients also experienced anemia due to a loss of red blood cells. The victims reported that the beams that struck them were painfully hot and had immobilized them before slowly withdrawing. These beams were reported to be highly concentrated with sharply defined edges and were about 3” in diameter.

Based on their effects on the victims, Vallee concluded that these were beams of radiation that contained pulsed-microwaves, which can cause physical and neurological damage. He also quotes Dr. Keith Florig, an expert on high-power microwaves, who points out that although an HPM weapon could be used to disable a human target while causing only minor injuries, that same beam could easily kill the person if it were used at close range. So might the chupas only be guilty of manslaughter and not murder? Maybe they only intended to cause some short-term damage to their victims for some reason, but in a few cases they got too close and accidentally killed the person. Florig also mentions the disgust and moral outrage that people would feel toward any government that used such a weapon to roast people from the inside. That sounds like it could be what happened to Joao Prestes Filbo in 1946. Maybe whatever hit him with that light had no idea how badly it would injure him. Maybe that’s why they didn’t try it again for over 30 years. Maybe. Make of this what you will.

For several months in 1977, UFOs of many descriptions were making nightly appearances over Colares. Once word of the number of injuries that had occurred got out, everyone who could afford to do so fled the island, including most local officials. Dr. Carvalho, who could have left, stayed to care for the injured. Those who had no choice but to remain began staying up all night to avoid being ambushed in their sleep. Mobs took to the streets, chasing the objects in the sky while banging on pots and trash can lids and shooting fireworks at them, which had to have been quite a spectacle. Dr. Carvalho herself saw a cylindrical UFO that gave off two concentric halos of purple light that surrounded it. She described it as being the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen and said that she had wanted it to land and take her with it. Considering how much damage she had seen these things do, that must have been some UFO. However, there were no reports of anyone being harmed by anything other than the chupas. Round objects were also seen shining lights down into the forest at night, but they never harmed anyone that we know of.

The Brazilian army sent two teams to the island during the height of the UFO activity. Although they weren’t supposed to talk about why they were there, it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. They were seen openly filming and photographing the objects. Naturally, none of these films or photos have ever been seen by the general public. According to Vallee, they were sent there to try to establish contact with these things, but I don’t know how he knows that.

This sounds like it must have been the biggest Chinese fire drill in paranormal history. While the military was trying to document and make contact with the objects, gangs of citizens were chasing after them, banging on pots and shooting off fireworks. Whatever intelligence was behind all of this, if it/they have any kind of a sense of humor at all, they must have been laughing their asses off at us. Either that, or just shaking their heads in disbelief.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly like the idea that these things are laughing at us. In fact, I really don’t like the idea that these things are laughing at us while they’re also shooting death rays at us. The least that we could do is die with a little bit of our dignity still intact. I know that I’m not going down with a garbage can lid in one hand and a bottle rocket in the other. I’ll have my rubber chicken to protect me.

So that about wraps it up for the flying Brazilian refrigerators of death, except for the possibility that this may still be going on down there. If you happen see one of these things flying around in your neighborhood, you might want to take cover…or bang some pans together and throw a sparkler at them.