Kentucky UFO Sightings and Experience Reports

It was a chilly thirty-eight degrees with a south wind of fifteen miles per hour and a visibility of fifteen miles. Leaving the restaurant at 11:15 PM, we were all in a jovial mood. No one had anything to drink at dinner that night and Louise was driving.

Leaving Stanford, and heading for Hustonville on Highway 78, the three of us saw see a bright red object in the clear night sky. At first, I thought it was an airplane that had caught on fire, heading for a crash landing. As the glowing object came closer, Louise lost control of the car. We were now going eighty-five miles per hour and she never drives this fast!

In a panic, Louise cries, "I can't hold the car on the road." I reached over to try and help her, thinking maybe something is wrong with the steering, but to no avail. The car continued it's high rate of speed without deviation and Louise's foot wasn't even on the gas pedal!

What they were looking at was an enormous, metallic, disc-shaped object with a dome on top, and a ring of red lights around it's mid section. The women all saw it close enough to see a yellow, blinking light on it's underbelly.

Suddenly, the unknown craft was frighteningly close to our car, following from behind. Then, we all saw the object flip on its end and it came extremely close to the driver's side of the vehicle. Just as the craft began to move forward of the driver's side door, a bluish-white light shot into the car, illuminating the entire interior of the vehicle! It was like we were in a haze, or a fog.

At this, all three of us now suffered from a burning sensation. It was so strong that we could not open our eyes from the irritation. The last thing in my memory, before we experienced an hour and twenty minutes of missing time, was being backed into a pasture entrance.

The next thing we knew, we found ourselves back in the car, driving toward Liberty. We were shaken and tense. There were exposed areas of flesh, painful from burns. We we got to Louise's house, we noticed the clock in the kitchen showed 1:20 AM! So, a trip of thirty-five miles, normally taking us forty-five minutes to drive, took over two hours! Our neighbor, Lowell Lee, confirmed the time on the clock as we wanted to verify that it was correct.

Confused as to what to do next, we called the Police station, and the next day, the Naval recruiting station. Neither of these cries for help yielded any results. The Navy station did give some of the details of the incident to a Lexington Television Station and when this reached the press it was given headline status.

Following the incident, all three of us were in physical pain and had an insatiable thirst. In addition, we all experienced excessive weight loss and Louise had a roundish, pinkish-gray blotch, the size of a half-dollar on the nape of her neck.

Recalling the memories of that night proved very painful to all of us during suceeding interviews, which we agreed to do in hopes that someone might be able to help us. We were living in fear of what we didn't know regarding those missing hours. Mona Stafford

A bit later, our dog began barking and Lucky and Billy grabbed their guns and headed outside. Just a short distance from the front door of the house, both men were stopped in their tracks when they saw a three foot tall creature which had large luminous yellow eyes, and glowed with a silvery luminescence. It came walking towards them with its hands up, as if to surrender!

Frightened, Billy Ray fired a shot with his twenty-two calibur, and Lucky unloaded his shotgun. Both men later admitted that there was no way that they could have missed the creature at such close range, but the creature just did a back flip, and ran into the woods in fright.

No sooner had they came back inside before the creature, or another like it, appeared at a window. They took a shot at him, leaving a blast hole through the screen. They ran back outside to see if the creature was dead, but found no trace of it.

While now standing at the front of the house, the men were terrified by a clawed hand reaching down from the roof in an attempt to touch them. Again, they shot, but the being simply floated to the ground, and scurried into the cover of the woods. When they came back inside the house again, the entities seemed to tease the family, appearing from one window to another. Taking pot shots through the windows and walls, their weapons seemed totally ineffective against the invading creatures.

After several hours of fear, we decided to make a break from the house, and get help from the Hopkinsville Police Department. We reported our strange tale to Sheriff Russell Greenwell. They thought we were joking, but finally agreed to investigate.

They found no trace of the creatures, but did find numerous bullet and rifle holes in the windows and walls. Greenwell was in charge of the twenty plus officers at the scene, and reported that we all seemed sober and genuinely frightened. The Neighbors told the police that they had heard the shots being fired and that they had seen "lights in the sky."

The police left about 2:15 AM and as soon as they were gone, the creatures made their return. They began again peeking in the windows again, seemingly out of curiosity. More gunfire took place, but again without effect. Several more hours of antics followed, finally stopping just before daybreak. That morning, the police called the Air Force and they came out to the house to search, but found nothing. The Sutton Family

At approximately 1:30 PM, the Kentucky State Police began receiving reports from worried citizens of spotting a large circular object flying over the city of Mansville. In a matter of minutes the area of the sightings expanded to cover Irvington and Owensboro. This large, metallic flying craft was then clearly seen from the tower of Godman Air Force Base.

The object was described as being an extremely large, round, whitish in color, with a red light toward it's bottom side, and seemed to be moving slowly toward the South. A little over an hour after the first reports, Mantell and his crew were asked to investigate these strange reports. The actual transcripts read," Godman Tower Calling the flight of 4 ships northbound over Godman Field. Do you read? Over.

After a pause then came, "Godman Tower Calling the flight of 4 ships northbound over Godman Field. Do you read? Over. Roger, Godman Tower. This is National Guard 869, Flight Leader of the formation. Over. National Guard 869 from Godman Tower. We have an object out south of Godman here that we are unable to identify, and we would like to know if you have gas enough; and if so could you take a look for us if you will. Roger, I have the gas and I will take a look for you if you give me the correct heading."

One of his three companions in flight received permission to continue his pre-assigned flight plan, while Mantell and the remaining two planes headed to the coordinates of the visual sightings.

Mantell led the way in the climb to fifteen thousand feet, and upon reaching the position, he radioed the following statement back to the control tower. "The object is directly ahead of and above me now, moving at about half my speed... It appears to be a metallic object or possibly reflection of Sun from a metallic object, and it is of tremendous size... I'm still climbing. . . . I'm trying to close in for a better look." eighteen, twenty, twenty-two thousand feet! Too high for the WWII fighters which had no supplemental oxygen! The other two planes turned back, leaving Mantell alone to pursue the giant object.

By all accounts Mantell must have passed out from lack of oxygen at about 30,000; at least his plane leveled off at that height. His plane now began to plunge back toward earth. He crashed a few harrowing moments later on the farm of William J. Phillips near Franklin, Kentucky. Mantell's watch stopped at 3:16 PM, and his body was still strapped in his plane, which become his coffin. He had spent forty-five minutes in a frantic flight into the realm of the unknown. By 3:50 PM, the giant craft was not visible from Godman, but other reports continued southward into Tennessee.

Richard T. Miller, who was in the Operations Room of Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois also made several profound statements regarding the crash. He was monitoring the radio talk between Mantell and Godman tower, and heard this statement very clearly. "My God, I see people in this thing!" Miller added that on the morning after the crash, at a briefing, investigators had stated that Mantell died "pursuing an intelligently controlled unidentified flying object."

In conclusion, Miller made this statement, "that evening, Air Technical Intelligence Center officers from Wright-Patterson AFB arrived and ordered all personnel to turn over any materials relating to the crash. "Then, after we had turned it over to them, they said they had already completed the investigation." "I was no longer a skeptic. I had been up to that time. Now I wondered why the Government had gone to all of the trouble of covering it up, to keep it away from the press and the public."

In more recent years, additional information has come forward. Captain James F. Duesler, who was one of several military officers at Godman, was retired and living in England. In 1997, he stated that he and several other officers actually saw the gigantic UFO hovering over Godman field that day. Duesler, who was a pilot and crash investigator, stated, "the UFO was a strange gray-looking object, which looked like a rotating inverted ice cream cone."