The Hopkinsville Goblin Attack

[Magical Realist]

This is a famous case that occurred in Hopkinsville KY in 1955. It's hard to believe at first, and everything from escaped circus monkeys to a hoax has been suggested as an alternative. I pretty much accept the eyewitness accounts as valid, concluding the tale too fantastic to be something 2 whole families and local policemen would just make up for no reason. As they say, reality IS stranger than fiction.
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"Witnesses to the incidents included eleven people belonging to the two families present at the farmhouse and others in the area. Several local policemen and a state trooper saw unexplained lights in the night sky and heard odd noises the same night.[citation needed]

The seven people present in the farmhouse claimed that they were terrorized by an unknown number of creatures similar to gremlins, which have since often been referred to as the "Hopkinsville Goblins" in popular culture. The residents of the farmhouse described them as being around three feet tall, with upright pointed ears, thin limbs (their legs were said to be almost in a state of atrophy), long arms and claw-like hands or talons. The creatures were either silvery in color or wearing something metallic. On occasion, their movements seemed to defy gravity, with them floating above the ground and appearing in high-up places. They "walked" with a swaying motion as though wading through water. Although the creatures never entered the house, they would pop up at windows and at the doorway, waking up the children in the house in a hysterical frenzy. The families fled the farmhouse in the middle of the night to the local police station and sheriff Russell Greenwell noted they were visibly shaken. The families returned to the farmhouse with Sheriff Greenwell and twenty officers, yet the occurrences continued. Police saw evidence of the struggle and damage to the house, as well as seeing strange lights and hearing noises themselves. The witnesses additionally claimed to have used firearms to shoot at the creatures with little or no effect. In addition, the house and surrounding grounds were extensively damaged during the incident.

UFO researcher Allan Hendry wrote "[t]his case is distinguished by its duration and also by the number of witnesses involved."[2] Jerome Clark writes that "nvestigations by police, Air Force officers from nearby Fort Campbell, and civilian ufologists found no evidence of a hoax". Author Brian Dunning contends that "The claim that Air Force investigators showed up the next day at Mrs. Lankford's house has been published a number of times by later authors, but I could find no corroborating evidence of this." Dunning also observes that "the four military police who accompanied the police officers on the night of the event were from an Army base, not an Air Force base." Project Blue Book listed the case as a hoax with no further comment.[1][3].......

.....Police interviewed residents of neighboring farmhouses. They were also distressed and reported to the police strange lights, strange sounds, and of hearing the gun battle at the Sutton farmstead. Police and photographers who visited the home saw many bullet holes and hundreds of spent shells, and further discovered what Clark describes as "an odd luminous patch along a fence where one of the beings had been shot, and, in the woods beyond, a green light whose source could not be determined."[3] Though the investigation was inconclusive, Daniels et al. writes, "Investigators did conclude, however, that these people were sincere and sane and that they had no interest in exploiting the case for publicity. The patch sample, although photographed, was never collected and had mysteriously disappeared by the noon the next day. ""===https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly–Hopk..._encounter

[Image: tumblr_m6uwjzox4W1r6ti0go1_1280.jpg]

[C C]

[...] Though the investigation was inconclusive, Daniels et al. writes, "Investigators did conclude, however, that these people [...] had no interest in exploiting the case for publicity." [...] Some residents of the local community, including members of the police department, were skeptical of the Sutton's story and believed that alcohol (possibly moonshine) may have played a part in the incident. [...]

A former drug experimenter once told me that, back in the day, he and a buddy often shared the same LSD hallucinations. Even to the point of one seeing the creatures and objects that the other was lifting up and removing from a table, tossing out a window, kicking through a door, etc. Since the very conclusion that it was "shared" implies that they were informing each other of what was transpiring, it might be contended that their communications mutually influenced the content of their personal phantasms.

At any rate, 1955 was well before both Haight-Ashbury and the contemporary era of doper or meth-lab hillbillies, and the latter's new strain of paranoid fear about snooping-stranger publicity. It seems unlikely that liquor could induce shared, 1967-style trips unless these ol' boys were in the delirium tremens stage of a month-long Top Drunk competition.

[Magical Realist]

The ridicule and disparagement these poor families suffered from their community over the following years is really unfortunate. It shows how people coming forward about anomalous experiences is highly discouraged in our culture. Who knows how many others have experienced such outlandish phenomena but have remained silent about it for fear of mockery and accusations of dishonesty? Would I admit to such an experience? Probably not. But I would go to my grave with the certain knowledge that such surreal goings-on are of the nature of the reality we live in.

As for shared hallucinations, I find that extremely interesting. DMT seems to result in identical although not necessarily synchronized experiences of elves and aliens and chrysanthemums and mayan structures. I experienced mayan style hallucinations staring at my popcorn ceiling while on diet pills. Staring at a candle once a technicolor scene of me flying over some rocky planetary landscape opened up suddenly! In your friends' LSD case I'd agree some shared description process must have been going on encouraging common hallucinations. Experiments should be done on the power of suggestion to construct hallucinations in drug-addled minds.
"See the green cat in the tree? Come on! He's right THERE! Look harder.."