It was around 7 p.m. on October 11, 1973, when shipyard workers Charles Hickson, 42, and Calvin Parker, 19, were fishing in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
The fish weren’t biting, so the two men moved upriver from their usual spot to an abandoned dock. After a while, they noticed a hissing sound and flashing blue lights behind them, and turned around to look. The lights were coming from a vehicle unlike any other on this planet. It was floating just above the ground.
Hickson and Parker wanted to run, but felt paralyzed and numb. Three figures approached; they had wrinkled, gray skin and no eyes, ears, or noses, but three carrot-like growths on their heads; claws for hands; and a slit where the mouth would be. Hickson said he later understood the figures to be robots.
The robots floated them toward their craft and brought them into a room for a medical examination. A short time later, the men were let go.
When the saucer left, they went to Parker’s car. Hickson got out a bottle of whiskey and took a drink to calm his nerves. Parker was shaking.
From a pay phone, they contacted the local Air Force base, which referred them to the sheriff’s office. They brought along some catfish they had caught as evidence of at least part of their story. The sheriff was, however, skeptical, and kept the men under observation for several hours. At one point, he left the room and listened to their conversation on a hidden microphone. Their story didn’t change.
Hickson and Parker insisted that a lie-detector test be given, but they were too nervous for the instrument to give a clear result. The sheriff and the administrator of the test said they believed Hickson and Parker were experiencing genuine fear.
Hickson said the encounter in Pascagoula was the most frightening thing he had ever experienced — and he had fought in the Korean War. Hickson’s wife later said that after the encounter, her husband would wake up in a cold sweat so often that he had to change his bedsheets two or three times a night.
Despite the sheriff’s assurances, the press found out about the story and insisted that Hickson and Parker talk about it to a public that was not very sympathetic. Despite the ridicule he was given for this bizarre story, Hickson appeared on talk shows, gave interviews to the press, and wrote a book about the encounter. He never offered any doubt of his story. Why would he subject himself to ridicule if the story were not true? he said.
Parker said the incident lost him his family and friends and made it impossible for him to stay in a relationship or keep a job. For years, he did not say much about the encounter, but later added some details. He says that the aliens did return and contact him several times. On one of those visits, a humanoid being told him that he and they share the same Bible, and that humanity was on its way to destroying the Earth, the same way the humanoids had destroyed their planet.
The Hickson-Parker story was one of the best-known cases of UFO lore, after the Barney and Betty Hill incident in New Hampshire in 1961. The southeastern corner of Mississippi, where Pascagoula lies on the Gulf of Mexico, was a hotbed of UFO sightings in the 1970s and ’80s.
It remains unclear what exactly happened that October night 40 years ago. Hickson passed away in 2011; Parker says the incident still haunts him to this day.
Language note: This page has video interviews with both Hickson and Parker, as well as with others who had spoken to them in 1973. Notice the difference between the way Charles Hickson speaks standard US English with a Southern accent, and the way that Calvin Parker often speaks in Southern dialect. “Little did I know what was fixin’ to happen,” Parker says; something that “is fixin’ to happen” is about to happen. He gives the word “door” an extra syllable, pronouncing it as “dowor”, and uses the word “set” to mean “sit”. Not only does he use the standard Southern plural of “you” — “y’all”; he accentuates its possessive form — “Y’all destroyin’ y’all’s planet” — and expresses the present continuous by leaving out the helping verb “are”. All of these features of Parker’s speech are common across the American South.
