Thoughtography

Probably because I’m a huge fan of Spiderman, I was interested in photography from an early age. At one point I had even considered a career in photography, until I realized how bad I am at composition and how much talent is required to be a photographer. In high school I took a photography class and really enjoyed it, but it was obvious that it was not for me. Coincidentally within the realm of the paranormal there is a different kind of photography which I was recently reminded of; (real talk it was because I spent the weekend marathoning The X-Files) Psychic Photography or ‘Thoughtography’.

The origins of this particular psychic expression seems to be with a Japanese Psychologist named Tomokichi Fukurai. Fukurai was an assistant professor of psychology at Tokyo University around the turn of the 20th century, around 1910 or so. He was the first to recognize this phenomenon which he called nesha, spirit photography. Fukurai’s studies into psychic areas were occurring almost simultaneously as the introduction of Western Spiritualism ideas into Japan by Wasaburo(u) Asano.  Asano created the Shinrei-Kagaku-Kenkyujyo (Japanese Society for Spiritual Science Research) in 1923, which is apparently still in existence today, although confirming that hasn’t been easy.

                                                     

Fukurai started out by studying specific mediums and psychics. One in particular was Chizuko Mifune, pictured above. Mifune claimed to have gained her powers at the age of 25 after much breathing and meditative practices. Sadly, Mifune who later took her own life following a demonstration of her ‘powers’ which led to her being discredited. She ingested poison and committed suicide. Of particular interest to today’s post was a psychic by the name of Ikuko Nagao. According to Dr. Fukurai, Nagao was able to transmit her thoughts and project them onto film. This was the start of what was to become “thoughtography”. It wasn’t long before Nagao was also accused of being fraudulent and she too later died.

The third time apparently being the charm for Dr. Fukurai, he met with Sadako Takahashi who was also able to produce thoughtography. With the time spent studying Takahashi, Dr. Fukurai published Toshi to Nensha which was translated and published into English as Clairvoyance and Thoughtography. Critics notwithstanding, Dr. Fukurai was apparently able to have some success in the area of Thoughtography. ALthough not much of it is available on the internet, I was able to track down at least photo which is attributable, allegedly, to Dr. Fukurai’s nensha experiments.

       

Dr. Fukurai wasn’t the only person who did work in this area, however. A clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Medical school, and a charter member of the Parapsychological Association, by the name of Julie Eisenburd wrote numerous articles on psychiatry and psychoanalysis based on studies he did relating to telepathy. In the 1960’s , Eisenburd discovered a unemployed bell hop by the name of Theodore Serios. Serios, who is better known as ‘Ted Serios’, had an unusual gift. By concentrating on a polaroid camera, Serios claimed that he could project his thoughts on to the undeveloped film. Serios was apparently engaging in thoughtography just as Takahashi had some 30 years before.

As with most paranormal or psychic phenomenon, the thoughtographs produced by Serios didn’t always display something. More often than not they were either completely black, as though they had never been developed, or completely white, as if they were overexposed. On occasion however, strange fuzzy like images could be seen to have appeared on the film. As with Takahashi and Nagao before him, the source of these images were allegedly the mind of Serios.

Probably not surprisingly, skeptics and photographers alike believe that Serios and Eisenburd collaborated together on hoaxing all of the photographs that Serios produced. The claim was that Serios would palm materials that would be exposed onto the photographs and would result in the images which were alleged to be thought projections. Eisenburd seemed to remain convinced of the ability he believed Serios had. He would eventually write a book all about Serios titled The World of Ted Serios: "Thoughtographic" Studies of an Extraordinary Mind.

What are we to make of these claims? I for one remain skeptical, but as always open-minded. Though I couldn’t offer a mechanism which would explain how thoughtography could work, I’m not ready to rule it out either. The evidence which Takahasi, Nagao, and Serios produced isn’t exactly the most concrete, but who can say what we could learn in the future? Perhaps this is an area worth investigating further. I’m also left curious if anyone has attempted to use digital cameras for thougthographic experimentation? In the end, I will leave to the reader to decide for themselves how the feel about these claims. As for myself, I’m going to start trying to figure out how I can take a digital thoughtographic selfie.

Living Dinosaurs!

As a kid I was extremely fascinated by Dinosaurs and read voraciously on the topic. Every book on the topic I could find I would read. At one point I even thought I would grow up to be a Paleontologist when I was older so that I could spend everyday with these wonderfully fascinating beasts. As with many of my childhood ambitions, my dream of being a paleontologist was abandoned when I found out how terribly boring their day-to-day lives were, and as I discovered the wild and crazy world of Fortean phenomena.

Imagine my surprise when I found that these two seemingly disparate passions found an interesting intersection in the form of modern sightings of living dinosaurs! The current scientific theories suggest that the demise of the dinosaurs began some 65 million years ago, give a take a few years for stragglers to completely die out. This allowed our ancestors, the mammals, to gain a foothold on the planet and for humans to eventually arrive on the scene (thanks to the intervention of the Annunaki of course wink, wink).  

Since when has science ever had the final answer on anything? After all, prior to 1938 it was generally believed that the Coelacanth, a close relative to the lungfish, had been extent since the Cretaceous period. This turned out to not quite be the case as fisherman began collecting very-much alive specimens of the species. Who’s to say that some other dinosaurs also didn’t survive the decimation of their fellows and continued flourishing to this very day (aside from conventional wisdom, but who needs that?)

With this in mind I offer to you dear reader the following tales and accounts of interactions with giant terrible lizards who certainly should not be roaming around any longer. As always draw your own conclusions as to the validity of the reports. For myself, I will take these people by their word until sufficient evidence comes in to the contrary. 

Mokele-mbembe

Perhaps the most (in)famous of all living dinosaurs is Mokele-Mbembe which translates as "one who stops the flow of rivers" in the language of the people of the Congo river basin. Mokele is a favorite dinosaur of my wife and many others for that matter. Sightings of the creature have been reported in Western sources for a few hundred years. Mokele makes his home in the Congo River basin of Africa traditionally in Lake Tele. Local tradition holds that Mokele is an herbivore which seems to prefer shallow waters. The creature most clearly resembles a Sauropod.  

Some sightings:

One of the earlier “modern” accounts comes from just over 100 years ago. Commissioned by the German government, which had a colony in the area of the Congo, Capt. Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz came in the area to do a survey of the land. His writings report the following.

The animal is said to be of a brownish-gray color with a smooth skin, its size is approximately that of an elephant; at least that of a hippopotamus. It is said to have a long and very flexible neck and only one tooth but a very long one; some say it is a horn. A few spoke about a long, muscular tail like that of an alligator. Canoes coming near it are said to be doomed; the animal is said to attack the vessels at once and to kill the crews but without eating the bodies. The creature is said to live in the caves that have been washed out by the river in the clay of its shores at sharp bends. It is said to climb the shores even at daytime in search of food; its diet is said to be entirely vegetable. This feature disagrees with a possible explanation as a myth. The preferred plant was shown to me, it is a kind of liana with large white blossoms, with a milky sap and applelike fruits. At the Ssombo River I was shown a path said to have been made by this animal in order to get at its food. The path was fresh and there were plants of the described type nearby. But since there were too many tracks of elephants, hippos, and other large mammals it was impossible to make out a particular spoor with any amount of certainty

The above was reported by Jerome Clark in his Unexplained! 2nd edition, which as I’ve pointed out previously on this blog has a newly printed 3rd edition.

Expedition after expedition has been mounted to find this creature over time, all clearly unsuccessful. The thing that allows this creature to remain a possibility is the fact that this area is home to the second largest rainforest in the world. This is all to say that it’s not terribly unlikely that a small population of sauropods could have survived to this day. 

Pterosaurs

Relatively large-winged reptiles which took the skies some time in the late Jurassic Period. Some of them had wingspans upwards of 16 ft or more, with one of the largest being Hatzegopteryx thambema(having 33-36 ft). Like other dinosaurs, the Pterosaurs died out near the end of the Cretaceous period, or did they?

Writing for paranormal.about.com, Stephen Wagner relates the following accounts of people that claimed to have seen the Pterosaur very much alive.

January, 1976, Harlingen, Texas - Jackie Davis (14) and Tracey Lawson (11) reported seeing a "bird" on the ground that stood five feet tall, was dark in color with a bald head and a face like a gorilla's with a sharp, six-inch-long beak. A subsequent investigation by their parents uncovered tracks that had three toes and were eight inches across.

February, 1976, San Antonio, Texas - Three elementary school teachers saw what they described as a pterodactyl swooping low over their cars as they drove. They said its wingspan was between 15 and 20 feet. One of the teachers commented that it glided through the air on huge, bony wings - like a bat's.

September, 1982, Los Fresnos, Texas - An ambulance driver named James Thompson was stopped while driving on Highway 100 by his sighting of a "large birdlike object" flying low over the area. He described it as black or grayish with a rough texture, but no feathers. It had a five- to six-foot wingspan, a hump on the back of its head, and almost no neck at all. After consulting some books to identify the creature, he decided it most looked like a pterosaur.

These stories are anecdotal to the extreme of course, but as always I’m not sure what more we have to go on besides the stories. The accounts are interesting to say the least, but who knows how much validity there is to them.

Loch Ness ‘Monster’

Plesiosaurs first arrived on the scene, the scene being Earth’s oceans of course, some 205 million years ago during the the Triassic period. They officially lived until about 66 million years ago going extinct about the same time as all of their reptile brethren did. Except that one of them didn’t get the extinction memo and has shown up a number of times over the years in a lake in Scotland. The earliest “sighting” allegedly happened to a Saint Columba in the 6th century, who used his god powers to keep the beast at bay. The modern version of Nessie begins in 1933 with the following account by a George Spicer and his wife who claim to have seen  a creature which they described as “having a large body (about 1.2 metres (3 ft 11 in) high and 7.6 metres (25 ft) long), and long, narrow neck, slightly thicker than an elephant's trunk and as long as the 10–12-foot (3–4 m) width of the road; the neck had undulations in it. They saw no limbs, possibly because of a dip in the road obscuring the animal's lower portion” (Wikipedia).

1934 brought us the so called “Surgeon’s Photograph” (shown above) which was purportedly captured by Robert Kenneth Wilson and was later to be published in the Daily Mail on April 21, 1934. The good doctor claimed to have taken the picture after sighting the creature in the Loch, although the photo is generally believed to be a hoax.

As with Mokele, many expeditions have been mounted to capture on film Nessie and all have proven fruitless. The reason for this may be that Nessie isn’t as corporeal as one may assume. A blogger over at the aptly named LOCH NESS MONSTER blogspot page discusses the author, Ted Holiday’s more interesting explanation for the Loch Ness Monster posited in his 1979 work The Goblin Universe.

The blogger writes:

This theory essentially borrowed from the obscure work of a Professor Harold Burr in positing that Nessie was a three dimensional form which could be formed and held by something Burr called Life Fields which were electrical in nature and had some organic organising properties.

Burr proposed this as a biological principle but Holiday took it further in suggesting that a mind could control the process and cause unexpected forms to materialise. Indeed, he proposed a universal mind akin to God as the controller of these phenomemon though the discussion also included the human mind and the collective subconciousness of the entire human race.

I don’t have much more to say on the topic of Nessie, the creature is so iconic at this point I’m not too sure what I could add that hasn’t already been said. Although I do wish to point the reader towards something Greg Taylor wrote up about a Nick Redfern article for the Dark Lore Vol 2 anthology entitled “"What Lies Beneath"

Burrunjor

We come now to our final stop on today’s tour of “living dinosaurs” and what better place to wrap it up than with the ‘king’ himself? At some point during the Cretaceous period our friend the Tyrannosaurus Rex arrived on the scene instilling in all creatures living at the time mixed feelings. On the one hand, T. Rex was one of the largest land carnivores ever known to have lived. On the other, their arms were almost comically tiny. I digress. T. Rex were known to have roamed of much of what is now North America and, as with most of our other friends we’ve spoken about today,  to have gone extinct around 65 million years ago. Or perhaps not? Blogger Peter James Theiss, relates the following accounts on his Dinoplaza blog about sightings of a creature in Australia called the Burrunjor. This creature, by all accounts, sounds strikingly like our friend the T. Rex. Here are some of the accounts Theiss shares:

In 1922, north of Cloncurry, stock men saw a "big lizard monster" that was bipedal and moved its tail from side to side when walking.

In 1950, in the Burketown region, two reptile tracks were sighted by ranchers.

Back in 1950, cattlemen lost stock to some mysterious beast that left the mutilated, half-eaten remains of cows and bulls in its wake over a wide area, stretching between the border country and Burketown.  At first the cattlemen suspected crocodiles, but, Charles Waterman, a cattleman, described a "fearsome", mottled 20 foot tall beast carrying a cow in its jaws that bounded out of sight as he hid behind a bush.

Searchers on horseback found huge reptilian tracks of some bipedal-walking beast.  They followed these three-toed tracks with their cattle dogs through some rough jungle terrain until they entered swampland beyond which was more dense scrub.

However, it was at this point that the cattle dogs became uneasy and ran off.  The horses were also uneasy and obviously did not want to cross the swamp.  While most of the cattlemen decided their animals knew best, two men set off on foot with their carbines.

The story goes that they soon came across further tracks in an open area beyond the swamp.  While his mate searched about, the other man briefly spotted the dark form of an enormous creature, perhaps 30 ft. in height, further off in dense timber.  The men left the scene in haste.

Be sure to head over to Theiss’ blog in order to read more of the accounts that he shares. What is going on here? Is there some kind of Dinosaur living in Australia? We all know that the country has all sorts of bizarre and kooky animals, maybe living dinosaurs are just another part of the fauna of the land?

Conclusions?

One of the biggest criticisms of the continued existence of our friends the Pterosaurs, Mokele-Mbembe, T-Rex or Burrunjor, and the Loch Ness Monster are the locations where they are sighted don’t necessarily have a lot of good hiding places for them. Mokele could, at least in theory, hide in the rain forest, Pterosaurs? Not so much. After all, most of them are sighted in the Midwest of the United States. There aren't too many places for a giant flying creature to hide. Honestly the same can be said of the Loch Ness Monster. Yes, Loch Ness is actually quite large and deep. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a big enough population of creatures living in the Loch to sustain a Plesiosaur or family of them. Of course this is working under the assumption that these are actual physical creatures and not phantoms from another time. Which, seeing as this is the world of the Fortean, who can say they aren't?

For all we know these creatures could be slipping temporarily from their own time and invading ours. And really, is this any crazier than their existing currently living dinosaurs? That’s all for now dear readers, be sure to check back in on Monday for more from the strange world of the Fortean!

Black-Eyed Kids: Monster or Meme?

You’re home alone, it’s late at night. As you’re watching TV you hear a knock at the door. Puzzled, you think to yourself, “Who could that be at this hour?” Confused you make your way to the front door. Turning on the light, you see two children. One looks older than the other, perhaps a teenager, but what strikes you as odd is their dress. Never mind the fact that they’re perhaps out much later than children should be, their dress looks slightly old-fashioned. The last thing that you notice about the children that almost sends you running away in terror is their pitch-black eyes, soulless and dark like a shark or other predator. The children began demanding to be let in, they need to use the phone, or perhaps want a drink of water. Or they want to collect you?

Please sir, won't you let me in?

If the above story, or a slight variation of it, sounds familiar to you then that means you’ve been on the Internet at some point in the last decade. The above is a fictionalized amalgamation of the basic “Black-Eyed Kids” meme that you’ve probably seen pop up on a number of various paranormal sites or even Reddit. Yesterday as I was working (read surfing reddit from my phone) I came across a very recent version of this worn out tale. The story comes from Redditor kyuss534. I’m not going to go into the whole account, but I will link it here. Suffice it to say, my little fictionalized account above isn’t too far from what kyuss534 related.

And I think that’s what my problem with this whole “Black-Eyed Kids” meme, every account of them that I’ve seen is identical. Maybe a little too identical? I dunno, perhaps I’m being a bit cynical about the whole thing, but it reeks to me of an Internet urban legend. Not entirely unlike the “Slender man” meme. The key difference is that we can trace back the origin of Slender man directly to an Internet contest. A few year’s back the gang over at Something Awful held a competition to see if they could create, from nothing, a new paranormal entity. The winning entry was Slender man. If you want to know more about Slender man, I suggest checking out this entry of Know Your Meme.

No, trust me. I'm good with kids!

In my mind, at least at the moment, there is no reality to the Slender man aspect (tulpas and thought forms not-withstanding I suppose). And I guess that’s where I’m at with the Black-Eyed Kids stories as well. Prior to Brian Bethel posting his own account of interacting with the Black-Eyed Kids to a newsgropu in 1998, the Black-Eyed Kids were seemingly non-existent. I’m sure you can find stories that claim to have occurred before 1998, but I doubt you’d find evidence of any stories being recounted before Bethel started the trend.

Frequent readers of this blog, the few of you left after my almost year hiatus, will likely be aware that I don’t tend to state things in definite terms too often. Preferring rather to keep the possibility open for more information in the future. So too it is with my opinion of the Black-Eyed Kids. For the moment I’m leaning towards them being an Internet urban legend, and they do make for great “campfire” ghost stories, but I doubt very much they have any basis in reality. As always I leave the door open for future information that will prove me wrong and I would love to know your thoughts and opinions on the topic. Or, for that matter, if you have a personal account of your own interaction with a Black-Eyed Kid please let me know in the comments or drop me an email.

Until next time (which may actually be this year!), this is your friendly neighborhood Fortean Philosopher saying, “Good night and for the love of god don’t let the children in!”

Ghost of Guildford

I don't often post ghost photos, or posts about ghosts for that matter, but I couldn't pass this one up only because it struck me as quite interesting. I first found the photo from an AboveTopSecret thread [which is evidently my M.O. :)]. The story originally came from GetSurrey, a news website. The article relates the following from the photographer who allegedly captured the "ghost";

Ghost or some kind of image artifact?

THROUGH the low light borne from a thick swathe of fog wrapping itself around The Mount, a featureless figure stands on the path – could this be a genuine photograph of a ghost captured in Guildford, or is it a mere trick of the light?

Amateur photographer, Mark Baker, 37, who took the picture has no idea, but does think it strange the series of pictures he took last week when trying out a new camera timer appeared to show a white form when he downloaded them.

Mark, who was sitting in his van, using his new equipment when he took the photos, said: “I have just got a new timer for my camera and wanted to get some photos of the fog lifting – so my camera was just taking pictures.

“It was not until I got home and was downloading, I noticed it,” he said, adamant he had not digitally altered the image in any way. “The black specks are dirt on the windscreen of my van, but the image is way past that.”

The concept of taking a photograph without seeing anything anomalous, only to find something after the film has been processed (or downloaded nowadays), is really quite common within the ghost hunting side of the paranormal. Additionally the area of Guildford, which is located in Surrey, UK, where the photo was taken has a history to it that, at least according to ghost hunters, would be conducive to allowing for ghostly manifestations to occur. It was the location of where the town's executions were carried out in the past. The author of the article interviewed Phil Hutchinson who not only runs the Ghost Tour of Guildford, but who also is a member of the Ghost Club that is, at least according to the article, is “one of the world’s oldest organisations associated with psychical research”.

Hutchinson is quoted as saying:

“I do not think it is fake,” he said. “It is not the sort of photo I was expecting, almost always they are illuminated bits of dust on the flash – this is something very different.”

Mr Hutchinson said the only sightings he had heard related to The Mount previously came from council workers at Henley Fort who claimed to have seen a man walking his dog disappear before their eyes.

“This is one of the best ghost photographs I have seen for some time, however, I think it is an amazing trick of the light, although that does not mean I am convinced – it is symmetrical and has about the height and dimensions of a human form.”

According to both the original article and also the AboveTopSecret thread, a local ghost hunting group by the name of The GhostfinderParanormal Society conducted an investigation of the site around which the photo was taken. A part of their investigation can be viewed no the YouTube video below.

The head of The Ghostfinder Paranormal Society had this to say about the photo:

Barri Ghai, director of The Ghostfinder Paranormal Society, also believed the photos were free of doctoring. He said: “I am stuck for words on this one – these images have caused quite a stir amongst my team.

“We are actually convincing ourselves that this could be genuine, a real ghost, but obviously for us to say that without a full investigation of the area is a tough one.

“At first glance I thought it could be a light anomaly, 99% of all photos have an explanation and my impression would be an anomaly caused by the light and camera.”

Follow this link in order to view the article for yourself. Additionally you can head over to the AboveTopSecret thread to find the original post I read and to hear from one of the members of The Ghostfinder Paranormal Society. So, what exactly did Mark Baker photograph? Who knows? I will say that this photo certainly looks far better than any of the “orb” photos that I have seen and certainly ranks right up there in my mind with the photos that I originally discussed in this earlier post. I'm by no means a photo-analyst and so can only offer a layman's opinion. It looks really good. But I'm reserving calling it a photo of a ghost. I'm willing to say that the photo is extremely strange and I'm interested to hear what you guys think about it. If you have any ideas please feel free to comment below and let me know. 

Little Green Meme?

Almost a year ago I emailed an editor of one leading UFO magazine about potentially writing an article for them for publication. I sent some of my work that I had written up to that point and he seemed interested in me potentially expanding one of my original articles for Binnall of America. So with that in mind I worked somewhat diligently at the task for a few months. At the same time I commissioned my girlfriend Ashley to do artwork that would appear in the magazine. Eventually for reasons that I'm still not too sure of the article never appeared in the magazine (I think the editor quit and then the magazine folded or something) and because of this I've sat on the article for quite some time. But I've finally decided to share it with you guys, including Ashley's original artwork, to help me get back into the swing of regular updates as I'm out of school for the summer. Presented below is the article in it's entirety (be warned it's a bit lengthy, after all it was going to appear in a magazine). Hope you enjoy!

Little Green Meme?

When the modern UFO era began after Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting of objects near Mount Rainier, Washington sightings of flying saucers began to be reported from all over the world. Not long after these sightings people also began to report seeing the occupants of the disks. People from all different walks of life were apparently sighting a myriad of strange creatures. In South America little hairy dwarves were sighted, while in other parts of the world the sightings of 9 foot tall monstrosities were reported. But whenever anyone refers to the occupants of these crafts, especially in the 'mainstream' media they only speak of “little green men”. The reason for this is the events of the Kelly-Hopkinsville Case, the aftermath of which is that the term “little green men” would enter the vocabulary of the population and became an infective meme that would be with Ufology for years to come.

On an August night in 1955, Billy Ray Taylor and his wife were visiting the family of Lucky Sutton. The Suttons; Vera Sutton, JC Sutton, Alene Sutton, and three Sutton children, lived in the rural town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Glennie Lankford, June Taylor and O.P. Barker were also visiting the Lucky Sutton house. Early in the evening Taylor went outside of the Sutton house in order to get some water from the outside pump. Just a few minutes later Taylor rushed back into the house exclaiming that he had just seen a flying saucer fly over the house, hover around the woods, and descend into a gully located nearby the home. No one in the family took Taylor's claim seriously as no one went outside to investigate.

An hour later the Sutton’s dog began to bark, so Lucky and Taylor grabbed their guns and went outside to see if they could find what was upsetting the dog. The frightened dog ran under the house and would not return until the following morning. While outside of the house, Lucky and Taylor were amazed to see a 3½ ft tall being approaching them with its arms raised up. They later described the being to researchers as having a large round head, long thin arms that extended nearly to the ground, and legs that did not appear to move. The hands of the being were out of proportion to the rest of its body, and looked more like the talons of a bird than human hands. While the being's eyes appeared to be glowing with a fire that was the shade of yellow.

Being the good country folk that they were, Lucky and Taylor decided to shoot first and ask questions later. When the bullets from their rifle and shotgun struck the creature it back flipped, landed on its feet, and ran back into the darkness. At this point the men went back into the house to check on the family and tell them what had happened. When they rejoined the group in the living room they were astonished to see the same, or similar to it, being at the window. Again, Lucky and Taylor took a shot at the creature. This caused the being to flip backwards and retreat into the shadows. At this time the men were certain that they had either killed or at least wounded the creature(s), so they went outside to see if they could locate the bodies.

Taylor walked outside, but paused on the porch for just a moment. Suddenly, from the roof, a talon reached down and grabbed his hair. Alene pulled Taylor back into the house. Lucky fired upon the creature which caused it to release Taylor and fall from its perch. At this point, it’s not clear who, but someone noticed that one of the beings was in the tree. So both Taylor and Lucky fired at the creature knocking it from the limb, however, instead of falling straight down, the being appeared to float in a falling leaf motion to the ground.

This attack lasted for a little while longer before the group could no longer stand it. Everyone ran to their cars and took off towards the police station in Hopkinsville. When they arrived and began telling their story, it was obvious to the officers on duty that something had happened to these people as they were clearly shaken. A few sheriffs’ deputies and the chief of police, Russell Greenwell, accompanied the Suttons and Taylors back to the house. Once the police arrived they searched for a long time, but could find no apparent trace of anything out of the ordinary. They did, however, see plenty of buckshot meaning that shots had been fired on the grounds of the home that night. The police couldn’t directly tie the buckshots to the sightings of the numerous beings, however in a few places that Taylor and Lucky had fired on the creatures there appeared to be a strange green luminescence on the ground, the source of which the police were never able to determine. A photograph was taken of the luminous patch of grass but a sample was not collected, upon returning the following day the patch had mysteriously disappeared. Police also interviewed neighbors that live close to the Sutton house, most reported not only seeing strange lights flying around in the sky that same night but also heard the gunshots that came from Lucky and Billy’s guns.

Ultimately unable to truly prove anything, the police left the family to resume their duties. A little later that night once the police had finally gone and the family tried to go to sleep, Glennie Lankford spotted another one of the creatures back at the same window and told her son Lucky. Of course Lucky wanted to shoot it, but Glennie told him not to as the creatures, although certainly bizarre, had actually done nothing to harm them that night. Lucky fired at the creature anyway and once again the bullet had no effect and the creature retreated back in to the darkness. The being’s presence at the home lasted until dawn.

The following day the story was repeated in the Kentucky New Era Newspaper and the Sutton Farmhouse became a huge tourist attraction. The family was interviewed about the events of that night and no matter how many times the story was recounted it was always the same. A man named Andrew Ledwith, who worked with WHOP a radio station in a nearby town, interviewed each of the seven adults involved in the incident separately and each told the same story and described the creatures almost identically. Except that the female witnesses thought that the creatures had a more husky build than what the male witnesses described. Ledwith, who was also an artist, was one of the first people to illustrate what the witnesses saw. As later newspapers picked up the story over the weeks and months that followed, they began to refer to the beings as “little green men” although the original descriptions had been that they were in silver suits or were silver themselves.

After the initial media attention, people began to swarm the Sutton house. If the Suttons believed that the worst of their ordeal was over they were sadly mistaken. They were inundated with people seeking proof, stories, or in some cases even autographs. Sadly this was not all that the Sutton family had to deal with. Local public opinion almost immediately labeled the incident as a hoax. Eventually the family could no longer take all of the negative publicity and they started to charge the thrill seekers that came to see them. This only fueled the charges that the family was hoaxing the entire event simply to exhort money from people.

The Sheriff’s department, to its credit, took the family at their word. Chief of Police, Russell Greenwell had a few things to say about what had happened that night. When he described his initial meeting with the Sutton Family the night of the events he said that they appeared to have been frightened “beyond reason, not ordinary”. He would also remark to Ufologist Isabel Davis that when he and the other officers arrived at the Sutton household that, “In and around the whole area, the house, the fields, that night, there was a weird feeling. It was partly uneasiness, but not entirely. Everyone had it. There were men there that I’d call brave men … they felt it too.”

The local police were not the only group to get involved in the investigations or to take what happened seriously. The US Air Force, upon hearing about the incidents, sent officers from the nearby Fort Campbell to do some investigations. Although the Air Force investigation also turned up empty handed for any kind of concrete evidence, this incident remains as an open case to this day. Project Blue Book, the official Air Force UFO investigation from the time period, never did an official investigation but kept a file on the incident none the less. They labeled the case as an 'unknown' which is something they were not very fond of doing at the time.

Eventually the family got completely fed up with all of the attention they were getting, so they sold the property to extended family and moved away. To this day, the surviving witnesses to the event are hesitant to ever talk to anyone about the case. Although on the rare occasion that they have told anyone their stories, they are exactly as they were on that late night oh so many years ago.

Persons that were skeptical of the case almost immediately came forward with alternative theories as to what the Suttons may have actually seen that night. One of the most obvious alternative explanations was that the family simply hoaxed the entire event. As it stands, although others may have also seen unidentified lights in the sky that night, only the families involved in the incidents ever claimed to have actually seen the beings. The local community seemed to accept this theory pretty readily at the time, as a matter of fact they wrote the entire saga off as a drunken hoax that had simply gotten out of hand. It's unlikely that this was the case as Glennie Lankford was known for not allowing the consumption of alcohol at her house, especially when young children were present.

In any event it wasn't too long before a member of the Air Force was ready to offer a very down-to-earth explanation for the strange firefight that had occurred on that August night just two years prior. Speaking in 1957 U.S. Air Force Major John E. Albert came to the conclusion that what Lucky and Taylor had been shooting at was none other than an escaped monkey from a circus that was dressed in silver. There are a few problems with this explanation however. While it is true that a circus was in town during the week of the sightings, the circus never reported losing a monkey. Additionally if Lucky and Taylor shot nearly as many times at the creatures as they have said, there would have been a body of some kind that was discovered by the Police or other investigators that night.

The most recent terrestrial explanation for what had occurred that night was first proposed by French Ufologist Renaud Leclet. He suggested that perhaps the beings the family had sighted that night, were in fact Great Horned Owls. The owls would match the descriptions of the beings 'glowing' eyes and would explain some of the apparent otherworldly abilities displayed by the entities. As the owls fly silently it is unlikely that either Lucky or Taylor would have heard the owls flying around from say a limb to the top of the porch. Another part of this explanation that would seem to solve this case, is that the Great Horned Owl aggressively defends its nest. Perhaps, the theory goes, when Lucky and Taylor first started firing on the beings they must have accidentally hit the owls nest causing them to attack for most of the night. The problem with this explanation is not unlike the circus monkey theory. Where are the bodies? At many times Lucky and Taylor apparently hit the beings dead on, so if they were simply misidentifying owls, bodies would or should have been found somewhere at the house. Not only that none of these theories can explain the luminescence patch of ground that was seen, nor the very eerie feeling that was reported by all present at the house the night of the siege.

As with most cases of UFO occupant accounts, the skeptics are still skeptical and the believers still believe in the basic validity of the story. No official explanation has ever been offered by either the police that investigated nor by the Air Force. The surviving members of the incident still maintain that the testimony that was given on that fateful night in 1955 is what actually occurred to them. The legacy of the case, besides offering yet another anecdotal story of human / non-human interaction, is the term 'Little Green Men'. The term has become a meme that has been picked up by people ever since. To this day you will still hear people mockingly refer to the occupants of UFOs as little green men. The next time you hear this, you can smile knowing where this term originated.