The 1973 Pascagoula Alien Abduction

Revisiting the 1973 Pascagoula Alien Abduction

On the 11th of October 1973, nineteen-year-old Calvin Parker and forty-year-old Charles Hickson had the scare of their lives, a frightening encounter with a UFO.
pasagoula_alien_1
The two men, who were from Gautier, Mississippi, were fishing in the Pascagoula River on a dark night at about 9 PM when they suddenly heard an unusual zipping noise from behind them. When they turned around to see what’s causing the sound, they were awestruck to see a glowing, egg-shape object with a bluish front light hovering about two-feet from the ground. Then a door opened and came down from an unusual aircraft were three strange beings floating just above the water going straight toward them.

Parker and Hickson described the three creatures as having leathery gray skin, round feet and crab-like claws. They were about five-feet tall and had bullet-shaped heads without necks. They have slits where their mouth and eyes were supposed to be, and they have thin conical objects sticking out from their head.

Two of the eerie creatures grabbed Hickson who froze in fear and disbelief, while the third one took Parker who fainted from fright. Hickson said that the creatures levitated them aboard the alien aircraft and took them into a room where a device that looked more like a large floating eye examined him. After his ordeal, the being left the room – probably to examine Parker.

Parker shared he was conscious but paralyzed when the creatures came to check him. “They gave a thorough, I mean a thorough, examination to me just like any doctor would,” he said.

After 20 minutes or so later, Parker and Hickson found themselves back on the shore where the creatures took them. The aircraft was gone and there wasn’t even a trace of it. Both men tried to collect themselves. Hickson took three shots of liquor to calm his nerves before deciding to report what happened to the authorities.

Deputies at the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department initially laughed at the report, but when then-captain Glenn Ryder personally met the men, he said he was stuck to their story. But he still was not convinced. He and another investigator tried to poke holes to the story. They left Hickson and Parker together in a room with a hidden tape recorder in hope to catch them in a lie.
pasagoula_alien
“Me and the other investigator got up and left to let them talk, to see if they were going to say, ‘Well, we got them fooled,’ but they didn’t,” Ryder said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “They were really concerned.”

On the recorded tape, Hickson can be heard telling Parker that the experience scared him to death and is not something he can get over with in a lifetime.

“I don’t know what happened to them. I wasn’t there with them, but I know you don’t fake fear, and they were fearful. They were fearful,” Ryder said.

Both Parker and Hickson were encouraged to take a lie-detector test which they both passed.

The incident made headlines in the next afternoon and sparked a wave of UFO sightings across the country. And in what may be a related incident, Coast Guardsmen and fishermen in south Mississippi reported a chilling account of an encounter with a metallic object underwater. According to the Guards, they saw a floating strange object and chased it down to Pascagoula River. The object was just closed enough to touch but it would turn off its light and move a distance away each time they prod it with a large boat hook. About 40 minutes or so later, the craft disappeared.

Over 40 years after the strange incident, Parker and Hickson still hold to their story. Parker on his part though said that over the years, he’s had conflicting thoughts about that night in 1973. At one point, he said wasn’t even sure if the creatures were aliens and might have been demons instead.

“I’m a firm believer in God and where there’s good, there’s bad,” he said.