The Kelly-Hopkinsville UFO and Alien Shootout

About the Author

George Dudding was born in Mason County, West Virginia in 1950 and holds degrees from Glenville State College and West Virginia University (physics and mathematics), with a career spanning teaching, police dispatch, firefighting, and 911 telecommunications. He is a prolific self-published author of short regional paranormal and cryptid titles — Bigfoot, the Mothman, the Silver Bridge collapse, and, elsewhere in this site's own Essential Reading library, similarly short accounts of the Flatwoods Monster and the Kecksburg UFO Incident. This book carries a foreword by Liz LaMac.

As with his other titles this site has reviewed, Dudding brings no personal or investigative connection to this specific case: he did not live in the region, did not interview the Sutton or Taylor families directly, and did not conduct original archival research. This article names that plainly, consistent with how this site's own essential-reading entry on his Kecksburg book already treats his working method, rather than presenting a compiled secondary narrative as if it carried the same weight as firsthand investigation.

Historical Context & Origins

The book's real point of comparison on this site is not a rival investigation but a genuinely different kind of source entirely: Alien Legacy: The Story of the Kelly-Green Men, Geraldine Sutton Stith's 2007 memoir, already covered on this site. Stith is the daughter of witness Elmer "Lucky" Sutton and granddaughter of matriarch Glennie Lankford — a firsthand family account from someone who grew up living with the case's aftermath, categorically different in kind and authority from Dudding's outside compilation. This article treats the two as complementary rather than competing: one an insider's memoir, the other a concise outside summary assembled from published reporting.

Dudding's book arrived roughly sixty years after the event, in the same self-publishing format and length as his other regional case titles, part of a broader pattern this site has now reviewed several times: short digest-style accounts that make well-known cases more accessible to a general audience without adding new primary evidence to the record.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

Per available descriptions and the book's own framing, Dudding's narrative reconstructs the night's events in roughly chronological order — Billy Ray Taylor's initial sighting of a light in the sky, the family's subsequent encounters with the small glowing figures, the hours-long shooting, and the family's flight to the Hopkinsville police station — drawing on the same publicly available police records, contemporary news reporting, and existing witness testimony this site's own case file also cites, rather than presenting material exclusive to this book.

This article did not find any specific new evidence, interview, or document in this book beyond what is already part of the case's well-established public record, consistent with the pattern already identified in this site's review of Dudding's Kecksburg book. The reconstructed narrative follows the case's well-documented public shape: Taylor firing through a window screen at an entity around 8:30 PM, the creatures appearing at windows, doors, and the roof over the following hours, and, by 12:30 AM, a convoy of sixteen officers from the Hopkinsville Police, the county sheriff's office, the state police, and Fort Campbell military police arriving to document bullet holes and shell casings without finding any entities themselves.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

This site's own Kelly-Hopkinsville case file documents the full record in far greater depth than this book review needs to repeat: the complete witness timeline, matriarch Glennie Lankford's account, the police and military response, and the shell casings and shattered window screens found at the scene with no bodies recovered. Readers wanting the complete, independently sourced record should consult that case file directly.

For the family's own perspective specifically, this site's separate essential-reading entry on Geraldine Sutton Stith's Alien Legacy is the more authoritative source; this book is best read as a concise general-audience introduction to the case rather than as a substitute for either the case file or the family's own memoir.

Critical Reception & Controversies

As of this article's research (August 2026), the book carries a Goodreads rating of roughly 3.75 out of 5 across only about a dozen ratings and two written reviews — too small a sample to characterize as any real consensus. Available reader comments are mixed: one review criticized the writing itself as repetitive and grammatically rough, while another praised it for consolidating scattered information about the case into a single accessible narrative.

No dedicated trade or journalistic review was found, consistent with the book's nature as a short, self-published digest rather than a title aimed at wide critical attention.

Influence & Legacy

The book's role, like Dudding's other short regional titles this site has reviewed, is primarily as an accessible entry point for readers encountering the case for the first time through general-audience paranormal and UFO reading lists, rather than as a work that has shaped the case's own research history.

Set alongside this site's own case file and Geraldine Sutton Stith's family memoir, this book adds a concise, general-audience framing of an already well-documented case rather than new investigative substance — useful chiefly as a quick, if imperfectly written, on-ramp to a story readers can then follow into the case file's fuller record.

The Book

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