The Kelly-Hopkinville UFO Occupant Sighting

I couldn’t stop reading this one… kevinrandle.blogspot.com has an interesting write up on a close encounter of the third kind.

… The story officially began early on the evening of August 21, 1955, when Billy Ray Taylor, a young friend of Elmer “Lucky” Sutton, had gone to the well behind the farmhouse, and came running back telling all that he had seen a flying saucer. The object, described as bright with an exhaust that contained all the colors of the rainbow, passed above the house. It continued over of the fields, finally came to a hover, and then descended, disappearing into a gully.

No one in the Sutton house, including Glennie Lanford, Lucky Sutton, Vera Sutton, John Charley (J.C) Sutton, Alene Sutton, three Sutton children, June Taylor and O.P. Baker, believed the story of the flying saucer. None of them considered walking out to the gully to see if something might be down there. The whole idea was preposterous.

Not long after Taylor told his tale, the dog began to bark. Taylor and Lucky Sutton went to investigate that, but the dog ran under the house, not to reappear that night.

Out in the fields, away from the house, was a strange, hovering glow. As it approached, they could see a “small man” inside it. He was about three and a half feet tall, with a large head that looked to be round, and long, thin arms that extended almost to the ground (Seen here). The creature’s hands were large and out of proportion with the body, and were shaped more like a bird’s talons than a human hand. The two eyes were large and seemed to glow with a yellow fire.

As the creature continued to move toward the house, the two men retreated, found a rifle and a shotgun inside, and then waited. When the creature was within twenty feet of the back door, both men fired at it. The creature flipped back, regained its feet and fled into the darkness.

The two men watched for a few minutes, searching for the creature and then walked into the living room where the others waited. The creature, or one just like it, appeared in front of one of the windows and the men shot at it, hitting it. This one also did a back flip and disappeared.

Now the men decided it was time to go out to learn if they had injured or killed the creature, or animal, or whatever it was. Taylor was the first out, but stopped on the porch under a small overhang. A claw-like hand reached down and touched his hair. Alene Taylor grabbed him to pull him back into the house. Lucky, pushed past him, turned and fired up, at the creature on the roof. It was knocked from its perch.

Someone, probably Taylor, shouted, “There’s one up in the tree.”

Both Taylor and Lucky shot at it, knocking if from the limb. But it didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, it seemed to float. They shot again, and it ran off, into the weeds.

At the same moment, another of the creatures appeared around the corner of the house. It might have been the one that had been on the roof or one of those seen in the backyard. Lucky whirled and fired. The buckshot sounded as if it hit something metallic like an empty bucket. Just as had the others, the little creature flipped over, scrambled to its feet and fled, moving rapidly into the darkness.

Having failed to stop the creatures with either the shotguns or the .22 caliber rifle, Lucky decided to leave them alone. Someone noticed that the creatures only approached from darkened areas. It seemed that they were repelled by the light.

At some point they heard noises on the roof and went out the back door to investigate. One of the creatures was back on the roof. They shot at it, knocked it off the roof, but it floated to a fence some forty feet away rather than falling to the ground. Hit by another shot, it fell from the fence and ran away, seeming to use its arms to aid its locomotion.

Some of the others in the house were still unconvinced that there were real creatures outside, believing instead, that the boys were playing some sort of a prank on them. With the lights in the house turned out, they had taken up a position close to one of the windows. Taylor told Lankford to wait and she would see for herself.

After twenty minutes or so, one of the creatures approached the front of the house. According to Lankford, it looked like a five gallon gasoline can with a head on top of two thin, spindly legs. It shimmered as if made of bright metal.

Lankford, who had been crouching quietly near the window for a long time, tried to stand, but fell with a thud. She shrieked in surprise and the creature jumped to the rear. Taylor fired at it through the screen door.

About three hours after the first creature had been seen, about 11:00 that night, they decided it was time to get out. Everybody ran to the cars. One of the kids was screaming and had to be carried. They all raced to the Hopkinsville police station for help.

At the police station, there was no doubt that the people have been frightened by something. Police officers, and the chief, interviewed after the events, made it clear they believed the people had been scared by something. That doesn’t mean they were “attacked” by strange little metallic men, but does mean they were relating what they believed to be the truth to the assembled police officials.

Within minutes, the police were on their way back to the house, with some of the Sutton men in the cars. The police also called the Madisonville headquarters of the Kentucky State Police. A call was even made to the chief, Russell Greenwell at home. He was told that a spaceship had landed at Kelly. Greenwell then told the desk sergeant that it had better not be a joke.

There were now Kentucky State Police, local police, the Chief, and a sheriff’s deputy either heading out to the Sutton house, or already there. One of the state troopers, who was only a few miles from Hopkinsville, on the road to Kelly, said that he saw what he called several meteors flash over his car. They moved with a sound like artillery, and he looked up in time to see two of them. They were traveling in a slightly descending arc, heading toward the Sutton house.

The yard around the Sutton house was suddenly filled with cars, and more importantly light. The men tried to point out where the various events had taken place. The chief searched for signs that anyone or everyone had been drinking but found nothing to indicate that anyone had even a beer. Glennie Lankford later said that she didn’t allow alcohol in the house.

Once the police arrived, the situation changed radically. Although the atmosphere was tension charged, and some of the police were nervous, they began to search for signs of the invasion from outer space. There were apparent bullet and shotgun blast holes in the screens over the windows, and there was evidence that weapons had been fired, but there were no traces of the alien creatures. The hard packed ground did not take footprints.

The search of the yard and fields around the house revealed little, except a luminous patch where one of the creatures had fallen earlier and was only visible from one angle. The chief said that he saw it himself and there was definitely some kind of stain on the grass. There is no evidence that anyone took samples for analysis later.

But with no real evidence to be found, with no alien creatures running around, and with no spacecraft hidden in the gully, the police began to return to their regular, mundane duties. By two in the morning, only the Suttons were left at the house.

A half an hour or so after the last of the police left, and with the lights in the house down, Glennie Lankford saw one of the creatures looking in the window. She alerted her son, Lucky, who wanted to shoot at it, but she told him not to. She didn’t want a repeat of the situation earlier in the night. Besides, the creatures had done nothing to harm anyone during the first episode.

But Lucky didn’t listen to her. He shot at the creature but the shot was no more effective than those fired earlier in the night. Other shots were fired with no apparent affect. The little creatures bounced up each time they were hit and then ran away.

The little beings kept reappearing throughout the night, the last sighting occurring just a half an hour before sunrise. That was the last time that any of the beings were seen by any of the Suttons or their friends.

Although it seems that military personnel, from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, did visit the Sutton house, and interviews with the witnesses were conducted in 1955, an investigation by the Air Force didn’t take place until two years later. According to Project Blue Book files, apparently, in August, 1957, prior to the publication of a magazine article that would review the case, someone in the Air Force decided they should “investigate.”

In a letter from the ATIC at Wright-Patterson, to the commander of Campbell Air Force Base, Wallace W. Elwood wrote, “1. This Center requests any factual data, together with pertinent comments regarding an unusual incident reported to have taken place six miles north of Hopkinsville, Kentucky on subject date [21 August 1955]. Briefly, the incident involved an all night attack on a family named Sutton by goblin-like creatures reported to have emerged from a so-called ‘flying saucer.’”

Later in the letter, Elwood wrote, “3. Lacking factual, confirming data, no credence can be given this almost fantastic report. As the incident has never been officially reported to the Air Force, it has not taken official cognizance of the matter.” Here, once again is the Air Force attitude that if the case has not been reported to them, then it simply doesn’t exist. …

via A Different Perspective: The Kelly-Hopkinville UFO Occupant Sighting.

From the wikipedia article on this event:

Police interviewed neighbouring farmhouses, whose residents were also distressed and reported to the police strange lights, strange sounds, and of hearing the gun battle at the Sutton farmstead. Police and photographers who visited the home saw many bullet holes and hundreds of spent shells, and further discovered what Clark describes as “an odd luminous patch along a fence where one of the beings had been shot, and, in the woods beyond, a green light whose source could not be determined.”^[2] Though the investigation was inconclusive, Daniels et al. writes, “Investigators did conclude, however, that these people were sincere and sane and that they had no interest in exploiting the case for publicity. The patch sample, although photographed, was never collected and had mysteriously disappeared by the noon the next day. “^[7]

… In addition to Ledwith’s sketches, Pfc. Gary F. Hodson of the 101st Airborne Division stationed at nearby Fort Campbell sketched the creatures based on eyewitness descriptions. The “men” were described as approximately 3 feet tall and either being silver in color or wearing silver colored clothing that lit up or glowed when the invaders shouted to each other. All of the witnesses agreed to a remarkable degree as to the appearance of the creatures, and never changed their stories.

Did Archaeologists Uncover Blackbeard’s Treasure?

The vessel believed to have been Blackbeard’s flagship is currently occupied by octopuses, which turn a pale, disgruntled green when nautical archaeologists approach. Black sea bass nip at the excavators’ ears, and moray eels spill out of the mouths of cannons, many of which are still loaded.

But after nearly 300 years in the North Carolina shallows, the remains of what may be the Queen Anne’s Revenge are surfacing, plank by worm-eaten plank. The site, discovered in 1996, is 25 feet underwater, less than a mile and a half from shore. But long weather delays during diving seasons and uncertain funding have slowed the excavation—this past fall’s expedition was the first since 2008—and it can take years to clean and analyze artifacts corroded beyond recognition. Still, with objects recovered from 50 percent of the site, archaeologists are increasingly confident that the wreck is the infamous frigate that terrorized the Caribbean and once blockaded Charleston, South Carolina, for a week before running aground in June 1718.

“We’re not going to find anything that says ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’ or ‘Blackbeard Was Here,’” says Wendy Welsh, manager of the state-run Queen Anne’s Revenge Conservation Laboratory in Greenville, North Carolina. “You have to use all these little clues.” …

The heavily corroded cannons—some eight feet long and meant to spit six-pound cannonballs—were soaking in various chemical baths to restore them, a process that takes roughly five years. Some cannons that hadn’t undergone chemical treatment were barely recognizable. When a metal artifact corrodes underwater, sand, seashells and other objects adhere to its sides—which then provide attachment points for marine life, such as barnacles. These outer layers, which grow thicker over time, are known as “concretions.” Before breaking them apart, lab workers try to identify what lies beneath with X-rays, but some objects are undetectable. If technicians aren’t careful while cleaning the concretions with air scribes—a type of mini-jackhammer—valuable pieces can be destroyed, especially small ones. …

via Did Archaeologists Uncover Blackbeard’s Treasure? | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine.

Commercial Airline Pilot Saw Phoenix Lights

It’s been almost 14 years since Phoenix became the center of the UFO-sighters’ universe, thanks to a phenomenon known as the Phoenix Lights.

“Greg” is a commercial airline pilot who asked not to be identified. On that night- March 13, 1997- he and his wife were driving home in the West Valley after a date night.”All of a sudden, with some urgency, my wife said, ‘What are those lights?’” Greg said.

They pulled over to get a closer look. Greg had spent years flying choppers in Vietnam and fighter jets at Luke Air Force Base, so he brushed off the odd sighting – at first.

“Then I noticed, ‘Wow, no anti-collision lights, no navigation lights,’” said Greg. “I kind of just stood there, watching the lights go overhead. And then I realized, ‘Wow, I don’t really know what these are!’”

Greg and his wife are not alone. Thousands in Phoenix, Nevada, Tucson, even in northern Mexico have testified to the same close encounter: a V-shaped formation of five lights, moving silently, slowly, at a low altitude.

“I was asking myself, ‘Well, what is this?’ because I’ve spent years of my life looking into the sky,” said Greg.

Explanations for the so-called Phoenix Lights are as numerous as the sightings themselves. The U.S. military admitted to dropping flares that night southwest of the city, but that doesn’t explain the numerous sightings of an actual black craft with up to seven lights moving silently overhead.

“I’ve actually dropped flares from the air in Vietnam,” said Greg. “What I saw wasn’t flares.”

Conspiracy theorists and extraterrestrialists jumped on the event, insisting this is proof that we earthlings are not alone. Then-Gov. Fife Symington would admit 10 years later that he saw them, too, calling the lights “otherworldly.”

As a commercial airline pilot, Greg won’t necessarily go there.

“I do wish that I could see them again,” Greg said. “When I fly at night now, I kind of keep an eye out, because I’d really like to see that V of lights again someday.”

“I don’t have an explanation. I don’t know what it was,” Greg said.

via Commercial Airline Pilot Saw Phoenix Lights – Valley News Story – KPHO Phoenix.

Experts unravel ‘churkey’ appearance mystery

The “churkey” owes its distinctive look to a complex genetic mutation, according to scientists.

Experts at Edinburgh University set out to discover how the Transylvanian naked neck chicken came by its appearance.

The bird, which has also been dubbed the turken, has the neck of a turkey and the body of a chicken.

The scientists said the effects of the genetic mutation were enhanced by a vitamin A-derived substance produced around the bird’s neck.

This causes a protein, BMP12, to be produced, suppressing feather growth and causing the bird to have its bald neck, according to researchers at the Roslin Institute at Edinburgh University.

The team said the findings could help poultry production in hot countries because chickens with naked necks were better equipped to withstand the heat.

They also have implications for understanding how birds, including vultures, evolved to have featherless necks.

Transylvanian naked neck chickens, which are thought to have originated from the north of Romania, were introduced to Britain in the 1920s.

Researchers analysed DNA samples from naked neck chickens in Mexico, France and Hungary to find the genetic mutation.

Skin samples from embryonic chickens were also analysed using complex mathematical modelling.

Dr Denis Headon, who led the research, said: “Not only does this help our understanding of developmental biology and give insight into how different breeds have evolved, but it could have practical implications for helping poultry production in hot countries, including those in the developing world.”

via BBC News – Experts unravel ‘churkey’ appearance mystery.

Rainbow cloud towers over Mount Everest

The phenomenon is caused by light reflecting off tiny ice crystals inside the body of the cloud’s water vapour.

‘I only took a couple of shots as I was overwhelmed with feelings and wanted to see everything with my eyes and prolong the moment,’ Mr Bartunov said.

‘The light was coming from the sun, which was right under the clouds at the perfect angle to create the magical effect.’

When he witnessed the event he could hardly believe this eyes, so asked others nearby to confirm that it really was a rainbow cloud.

Mr Bartunov, who is a fellow at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute in Moscow, said: ‘There was a group of elderly English women there.

‘I told them to look at the clouds and they started to moan and sigh and started to photograph the clouds with their small photo cameras.’

via Rainbow cloud towers over Mount Everest | Mail Online.

Ant bite may have killed worker

A Bunbury man who died last month is believed by his widow to have been killed by an ant bite in what could be one of the first cases of its kind in WA.

Council worker John Banks, 48, died on February 19, a day after suffering anaphylactic shock just 350m from an ambulance depot.

His widow Katrina Banks is pushing for an inquest into the cause and circumstances of his death after he rang complaining he was being bitten by ants while working near Parade Road in the centre of Bunbury.

Mr Banks had suffered severe allergies to bee stings in the past, she said.

“John called me after he’d been bitten and said ‘hello sweetheart how are you’ and then turned around and said ‘ants are biting me’,” she said.

“I said well flick them off then, and he said no, ants are biting me and it’s got me worse than a bee-sting, because he was anaphylactic to bee stings, I could tell in his voice he was really struggling.”

Ms Banks said paramedics and a police officer worked hard to resuscitate her husband. He was taken to hospital five minutes away where he died a day later.

She said she was convinced he had been bitten by an ant, not a bee, and had discovered “jumper jack” ants had killed people in Tasmania with bee sting allergies.

Ms Banks said a report was being prepared for the Coroner.

Dr Simon Brown, head of the centre of clinical research in emergency medicine at the University of WA and an expert in anaphylaxis, said ant bite deaths from “jumper jack” ants had occurred in Tasmania.

Dr Brown said it was the first case of ant bite death he had heard of in WA, but stressed it was yet to be proved. “In Tasmania jumper jack causes quite a few deaths but they’re pretty uncommon in mainland Australia,” he said.

via Ant bite may have killed SW worker – The West Australian.

Man tells police he set fire because of Satan

Convinced that he was sharing a motel room with Satan, a man set his blankets ablaze in Lynnwood on Friday, according to what he told police.

The man, 52, of Redmond, had been staying at the Days Inn on 196th Street SW for about a month, according to a police affidavit filed in Snohomish County Superior Court.

Fire crews were called about 8:30 a.m. Friday when smoke began pouring out of the second floor room where the man was staying.

The fire was contained to one room because of fire sprinklers, officials said. About six rooms were damaged in all, as well as guests’ personal property.

The man told police that he set the room on fire because Satan was in there, according to the affidavit. He reportedly said he wanted to protect “the good people” by setting the fire.

The investigation showed that flames began in the room in at least four different places, including the blankets.

Hotel officials told police the man had repeatedly called hotel employees the “anti-Christ” and “spawns of Satan.”

Hotel management had asked the man to move out the day of the fire.

The man was being held Monday at Snohomish County Jail for investigation of first-degree arson. Police who searched his room after the fire found two bottles of lighter fluid, records show.

The case remains under investigation by Lynnwood police. No injuries were reported.

via HeraldNet.com – Local news: Man tells police he set fire because of Satan.

Physicists move closer to efficient single-photon sources

Charles E. Blue – A team of physicists in the United Kingdom has taken a giant step toward realizing efficient single-photon sources, which are expected to enable much-coveted completely secure optical communications, also known as “quantum cryptography.” The team presents its findings in Applied Physics Letters, a journal published by the American Institute of Physics.

Fluorescent “defect centers” in diamond act like atomic-scale light sources and are trapped in a transparent material that’s large enough to be picked up manually. They don’t need to be kept at super cold cryogenic temperatures or trapped in large electromagnetic fields to be stable—unlike quantum dots or trapped atoms.

This makes them strong contenders for use as sources of single photons (the quantum light particle) in provably secure quantum cryptography schemes, explains J. P. Hadden, a Ph.D. candidate in the Centre for Quantum Photonics, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering & H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory at the University of Bristol.

“Defect centers could also be used as building blocks for ‘solid-state quantum computers,’ which would use quantum effects to solve problems that are not efficiently solvable with current computer technology,” Hadden says.

To fulfill the potential of diamond defect centers, it’s essential that the light be collected efficiently from the diamond material. But this collection efficiency is dramatically reduced by reflection and refraction of light passing through the diamond-air interface.

“We managed to show an improvement in the brightness of these defect centers of up to ten times by etching hemispherical ‘solid immersion lenses’ into the diamond,” notes Hadden. “This is an important result, showing how nanofabrication techniques can complement and enhance quantum technologies, and opens the door to diamond-defect-center-based implementations of quantum cryptography and quantum computation.”

More recently, Hadden and colleagues developed a technique that allows them to reliably etch these structures over previously characterized defect centers to a precision of about 100 nanometers — another significant step toward a practical and repeatable combination of nanotechnology and quantum optics.

via Physicists move closer to efficient single-photon sources.

Creator Of ‘A Note To God’ App In Coma

The creator of an iPhone app called “A Note To God” is in a coma after being hit by a car early Sunday morning.

Allen Wright, 18, left a friend’s house and was walking at Sunrise Boulevard and Arcadia Drive at about 12:45 a.m. Sunday morning when he was hit by a car, Josh Hart, Wright’s brother-in-law, confirmed with KCRA 3.

In 2009, Wright developed an iPhone application that allows users to send up prayers that go into cyberspace and can be viewed by others.

Hart said that a friend was on the phone with Wright when he was hit. After the collision, the friend said he could hear cars driving by but no sound from Wright.

When family members got to the scene, they found one of Wright’s shoes in the road. A family member eventually found the Del Campo High School senior sitting down on an island in the middle of the roadway, conscious but bleeding from the ears and not talking.

At some point, Wright suffered a seizure and lost consciousness. He has been in a coma at Mercy San Juan Hospital since the crash, Hart said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, police were still looking for the driver of the car that hit Wright.

via Creator Of ‘A Note To God’ App In Coma – Most Popular News Story – KCRA Sacramento.

The messages people post on this app (I just got it after reading this news) are really interesting. People need money, they drink, they are depressed, lonely, self conscious, disconnected from the world and some are bipolar. They thank him for good days.  They really believe that God exists, that he is listening and that he cares.

These are much better than kid’s notes to Santa Claus.  Great app. Great insight into people’s deepest concerns and hopes.

But God, why did you smite the young App creator? Jealous? Don’t have an iPhone and feel left out? Hmmm. Anyway, here’s hoping Allen Wright recovers quickly and fully.

London 2012 countdown clock stops in Trafalgar Square

The digital clock in central London which has been counting down to the 2012 Olympics has stopped, less than 24 hours after it started.

The timer was unveiled in a ceremony in Trafalgar Square on Monday to mark the 500th day before next year’s Games.

But the 6.5m (21ft) display became stuck on 500 days and 7:06:56.

“We are obviously very disappointed that the clock has suffered this technical issue,” said a spokesman for the Swiss-based Swatch Group.

“The Omega London 2012 countdown clock was developed by our experts and fully tested ahead of the launch in Trafalgar Square,” he added.

“We are currently looking into why this happened.”

The clock had resumed its countdown by Tuesday evening.

via BBC News – London 2012 countdown clock stops in Trafalgar Square.

Probably just got caught in a time bubble created by the LHC. The Swiss are very advanced, but they probably shouldn’t have used so many Higgs singlets to make this clock.