Chasing Footnotes - Kelly Hopkinsville, Part Two

 

This latest started as a “Chasing Footnotes” segment in which a paper about critical thinking included a short note on the Kelly-Hopkinsville alien encounter. The footnote suggested that the witnesses had been drinking and linked to a book by Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher. That book actually said the opposite. I wrote to one of the paper’s authors and he responded by saying the mistake had been corrected. You can, of course, read all that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/08/chasing-footnotes-kelly-hopkinsville.html

However, in the comments section, there were those who didn’t believe the story and thought it nonsense. I have to admit that the thought had crossed my mind as well. It is an incredible story that seemed to make little sense. John Steiger wrote that the case had been carried as “unidentified” by the Air Force. That didn’t seem right to me and in fact, the Air Force didn’t even carry it as a real case. It was one of their ‘info only” with no real evaluation.

John wrote back, saying, “I'm sorry if the information from Mr. Clark's UFO Encyclopedia is inaccurate, but this is what the latest edition reports. In any event, Kelly-Hopkinsville remains as an intriguing encounter yet to be fully and adequately explained.”

Jerome Clark (Jerry) wrote in his UFO Encyclopedia, 3^rd Edition, “Yet even the Air Force, not known to lend a sympathetic ear to reports of UFO landings and humanoids, lists the case in its “Unidentified” file.”

Well, now there is a problem. As noted, the Air Force doesn’t provide much commentary on the case, other than to make a big deal about how they didn’t investigate it. This is a fine hair to split because there was an investigation but it wasn’t made by a member of Blue Book. It was carried out by a reserve officer on temporary duty at Campbell Air Force Base, Kentucky. He heard about it while driving into work and contacted his superiors who told him to look into it. Not an official investigation for Blue Book, but an investigation by an Air Force officer, nonetheless.

The Hopkinsville Folder in Project Blue Book.

Brad Sparks had compiled a long list of Blue Book Unidentified cases, using lists originally created by me, by Don Berliner, and other sources. The Kelly-Hopkinsville sighting is on the list. However, Brad had expanded the list by adding cases the Air Force had labeled as something else but that didn’t seem to be explained by the Air Force investigation. Brad’s is not an official list of Air Force Unidentified case but is a valuable resource.

Allen Hynek, in his book, The UFO Experience, wrote, "Still, the case is carried in Blue Book files as 'Unidentified'." This is probably where Jerry got the idea that the case was listed as “Unidentified.”

Here’s where we are on this aspect of the case. The Air Force, technically, did not investigate. They dispatched a reserve officer who had called in after hearing a news broadcast about the sighting. His statement, which appears in the Blue Book file is dated 1957, or two years after the event. You can find the Air Force documents on the case here:

https://www.fold3.com/image/6972750

The inspiration for contacting Major Albert and getting a written statement, was the Kelly-Hopkinsville sighting was about to blast into the public mindset. Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher were preparing a long report on the case. This new activity, or interest in the sighting was, by coincidence, just a few weeks before the Levelland events took place.

What we can say is this. The Air Force did, technically, investigate the landing and did unofficially check it out in 1955. In fact, those at Blue Book went out of their way to deny an official investigation. However, they do have a file on it, but it is not part of the main index of cases. It does show up as “Additional reported sightings not cases".

The page from the Blue Book Index that shows this was not a case.

The argument, I guess, degenerates to this. Was it labeled as “unidentified” by the Air Force and the answer is, “No.” Did the Air Force label is as a “Hoax”? Again, the answer is, “No.” Did Allen Hynek write that the case was “Unidentified”? “Yes.” That wasn’t the official explanation by the Air Force, however.

And that’s where we are. The Blue Book ignored the case until they were forced to investigate… but it wasn’t an official Blue Book investigation, though that is really just a matter of semantics, and more of a lie than anything else.

I will not offer an opinion on the case other than to say that it was one of the strangest to be reported and there currently is no good terrestrial explanation for it.

A special thanks to Brad Sparks for helping me sort all this out.

Chasing Footnotes: The Kelly-Hopkinsville Edition

It has been a while since I chased a footnote. These are difficult to find and I usually just blunder into them. This time I was looking at some the documentation about the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter on August 22, 1955.

For those unfamiliar with the case, it is basically an “attack” on a rural farmhouse. There was a report of a UFO landing in the area, which skeptics suggest might have been a bright meteor that didn’t really land anywhere near the house. The perspective of the witness caused him to believe it had fallen, or landed, close by.

Later, the residents of the house believed they saw strange creatures described as about two and a half to three feet tall, with glowing eyes and short legs. Frightened, the men in the house, using a shotgun and a .22 caliber pistol, engaged the target… or targets. According to the reports, they did hit one or two of the creatures but they seemed unharmed. One, knocked from the roof, floated to the ground.

The men and there weapons after the "invasion."

The family, now hysterical because of the encounter, fled the house to report the incident to the police. Several members of law enforcement, and apparently some interested bystanders, drove out to the house. By the time they arrived, the creatures, it seemed, had gone.

The excitement over, the cops and others left. The family went to bed, only to have one of those creatures return, staring through a window. The men opened fire again, and the creature disappeared. By dawn, everything had quieted down.

There was some sort of an investigation and although the Air Force denied they had any part in that, an Air Force major, on reserve duty at Campbell Air Force Base (and before you all write in to tell me there is no Campbell AFB, I will point out in 1955, there was… it is now Campbell Army Airfield) was asked to look into it. True, it was more unofficial than official, but he was told to go out there and he was in the Air Force.

Investigation in the next couple of days found bullet holes in the window screens, expended shotgun shells (three, I think is the official count), and evidence of rounds fired by the pistol. No UFO was found, no footprints were found, no landing traces were found and no Great Horned Owl remains were found (the Great Horned Owl now the preferred explanation for the creatures).

I found, at a website, a partial explanation for the sighting. According to the website, “The ‘aliens’ were in fact, Great Horned Owls, and the eyewitnesses were probably intoxicated during the ‘alien attack’ (Davis and Bloecher, 1978).” You can read it here:

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4331

Davis and Bloecher refers to the book Close Encounters at Kelly and Others of 1955. This footnote (as they are done in the academic world today) seems to suggest that the information about the intoxicated witnesses came from that source.

The creature as described
by the witnesses.

Since I have a copy of it, I looked it up. I found nothing in the work of Davis and Bloecher to suggest that those involved were intoxicated. However, on page 83 of their book, they wrote, “(Alcohol had been ruled out early by all the official investigators, though not by the public, to judge by the way the accusations still rankled Mrs. Lankford’s [one of the witnesses] mind when I talked to her.)”

Or, in other words, the source cited as evidence for the suggestion of alcohol specifically addressed that point and ruled it out.

In the Project Blue Book files, there is a newspaper report that appeared on August 22 that addressed that issue as well. According to it, “All officials appeared to agree that there was no drinking involved.” The document was signed by Charles N. Kirk, a first lieutenant in the Air Force. Interestingly, a copy of that document, according to Davis, is missing from the Blue Book file. I do have a copy of it, however.

It establishes two things. One is that there was an Air Force officer who investigated (and before you write to tell me, yes, he conducted that investigation two years after the fact, I know this as well). And two, there was a newspaper article, as part of the file (or however it was categorized by the Air Force) that reinforced the idea that there had been no drinking.

So, no, this wasn’t much of a chase. Just from the source claiming that drinking might have been the problem, to the source they quoted that said that there had been no drinking.

I haven’t really dealt with the fact that there were no bird remains found to establish that Great Horned Owls were the culprits. Had that been the answer, and one of the beings was shot from nearly point-blank range, some evidence would have been found. The Air Force officer, Major Albert, who was there later in the morning saw no evidence of the birds.

I will also note that I believe that the skeptics have an obligation to be, well, skeptical of solutions if those solutions don’t work. Some have leaped on the Great Horned Owl bandwagon and I believe that to be premature. As I said, there was nothing found to suggest birds…

And, no, I’m not endorsing the alien creatures theory either. I have to admit that this case is just weird with no similar cases anywhere. You have to wonder why aliens would travel light years and then assault a rural house… You have to wonder why something like this hasn’t been reported elsewhere… And, you have to wonder about the lack of any physical evidence for aliens or birds.

Of course, the point here was to chase the footnote and show that it doesn’t support the information in the document where it was cited. Clearly, the opposite of their claim was true.

PS: I have reached out to one of the authors of the paper but have not heard a response. If I do, I will append it here. 

I have received the following email from one of the authors, Rodney Schmaltz:

Thanks for the email.  The Hopkinsville case is an interesting one and makes for great class discussion.  The error you reference was pointed out to us earlier.  We should have cited Nickell (2006) rather than Davis and Bloecher (1978).  When this was brought to our attention, we immediately contacted the journal and had a corrigendum published.  If you’re interested, here it is: 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01982/full 

Nickell does not think alcohol is the explanation for the sightings (see Nickell, 2006 – it’s an interesting read), but does say, “I talked with one of the original investigators, former Kentucky state trooper R.N. Ferguson (2005), who thought people there had been drinking, although he conceded he saw no evidence of that at the site.  He told me he believed the monsters “came in a container” (ie., a can or bottle of alcohol).  A visitor to the farm the next day did notice “a few beer cans in a rubbish basket (Davis and Bloecher, 1978, 35).”  We agree that intoxication was not the cause of the sightings, though there is some speculation that there may have been drinking involved.