A Town Famous for a U.F.O. Sighting Awaits the Solar Eclipse

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A Town Famous for a U.F.O. Sighting Awaits the Solar Eclipse

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-town-once-visited-by-aliens-awaits-the-total-solar-eclipse

Well, never in my life would I have thought I'd see this," Rusty Cole said on Sunday afternoon, taking a drag from his Eagle 20's cigarette as a crew of cameramen from a Japanese television station walked by. Cole, who is forty-one, is a lifelong resident of Christian County, Kentucky, an area in the southwest corner of the state that is known for its cattle, its tobacco crop, and a violent close encounter with extraterrestrials. He was sitting under a tent in a big green field in the tiny village of Kelly, at an annual festival called Kelly's Little Green Men Days. The alien on his lime-green T-shirt held a suitcase that read "Kelly or bust," and Cole's backward green hat read "Jesus s U." The Japanese camera crew was in town for the total solar eclipse, which will reach its greatest point in nearby Hopkinsville, the county seat. Close to two hundred thousand people, from every state and at least nineteen countries, are expected to be here today to see it.

"I am shocked, to tell you the truth," Cole said. "No one ever heard of us before." He paused, then corrected himself—"except for the U.F.O. people." Hopkinsville and Kelly have been famous among ufologists for more than half a century, ever since a local family, the Suttons, saw what they believed was a spaceship and at least a couple of aliens "with a greenish-silver glow." They shot at the creatures through the windows of their house, but the bullets did nothing to harm them. Eventually, some of the men alerted the police. Later, the Air Force was even called in. "I've been hearing about them since I was in diapers," Cole said. "My church is right across those train tracks," he added, pointing across a hazy, hot field, to where a string of steel cars, piled high with coal, had just rolled by, whistle blaring over the festival's country music. "The church elders always would tell us, 'You know what made this town famous? Aliens!' " He doesn't believe the story but said that he knows plenty of people who do. "It is a co-inky-dink," he said, nodding. "They landed on August 21, 1955. The eclipse is August 21, 2017. That is kinda scary."