20 Chilling Facts You Never Knew About The Frightening Alien Abduction Of Charles Hickson And Calvin Parker

As the sun set on a typical workday in 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, a foreman and worker at a Pascagoula shipyard, decided to unwind by going fishing at an abandoned boat launch. As the two waited for a bite, a sudden and unexpected sight appeared before them: a UFO with mysterious blue lights descended from the sky. According to the duo, the object emitted a strange zipping noise as it approached, and what followed next would change their lives forever. In 1975, Hickson told The Washington Post:

I was just getting ready to get some more bait when I heard a kind of zipping sound. I looked up and saw a blue flashing light. Calvin turned around too. We saw a 30-foot-long object with a little dome on top.

Hickson and Parker claimed that as the UFO descended closer to the ground, three small, otherworldly beings emerged. The creatures, described as having leathery gray skin and pincer-like claws, were able to hover just like the UFO itself. The two fishermen claimed that they were then suddenly paralyzed, unable to move as the creatures grabbed hold of them with their claw-like appendages and pulled them towards the hovering object. Adding to the terror, the men claimed that a large floating eye appeared and began to examine them. Hickson told the Clarion Ledger in 2002:

I looked around, and it just startled me. Something was hovering two or three feet above the ground, probably no more than 10 or 15 yards from us. There were two blue flashing lights on the top part of the end that was toward us. I couldn't tell if it was round or oblong. I could see a little dome on top, but I couldn't see all the way around the thing so I couldn't tell for sure how big it was.

While speaking with the Clarion Ledger in 2002, Hickson stated that he believes the extraterrestrials were actually robotic in nature. He described the events of the abduction in detail, stating:

All of a sudden, these three things began coming out of that door. They looked like they had elephant skin. Wrinkled. Real wrinkled. And triangle shaped ears that had to be some sort of antennas. These things were robots. They seemed to come right out of that beam of light. They never touched the ground. They moved right out there beside me and Calvin. I couldn't move, and neither could he. Two of 'em came around behind me, took me under each arm. When they grabbed me, I seemed to rise to their height. They weren't as tall as me, but they sorta had me in a leaning position... I couldn't move anything but my eyes. They let go of me. I still wasn't touching nothing, just kinda floating. All I could think was, 'What are they gonna do with us?' I figured they'd take us off, and we'd never see our families again.

In a bizarre and unnerving twist, Hickson recounted that after being taken aboard the UFO, he and Parker were subjected to a physical examination by a strange entity that resembled a "big eye." In 2002, Hickson explained:

I didn't see [the robots] for a while. Then an eyeball, about the size of a football, came out of the wall. It moved right in front of my face. I saw dials and gadgets moving around. It went behind me, then came back over me. Then it disappeared back into the wall.

Just as suddenly as they had been taken, the two men were unceremoniously dropped back in the same spot in the Mississippi delta where they had been fishing earlier. According to Hickson, Parker was standing upright with his arms raised to the sky, screaming in terror. The pair wasted no time in getting out of there, desperately seeking help, and trying to make sense of what had just happened to them.

Both abductees were understandably freaked out by what had just happened to them, but Hickson has maintained that his young work buddy was upset deeply by the invasion that the two men had experienced. Hickson says that from the moment they were returned Parker was off. He explained:

I saw Calvin standing there, staring out at the water. He was in shock. I've seen men in shock, and if you don't do something pretty quick, they'll die. I started going over to where he was, and I saw the craft leave. The blue lights were on again, I remember that. When I got to Calvin, I had to slap him a time or two. I finally got him to where he could say something. He said, 'Charlie, what in the world was that?' I said 'Son, I don't know. But they didn't kill us.'

Speeding away from the sight of the abduction in Parker's Plymouth, the men made a pact to stay silent about the UFO. Hickson knew that whoever they told would see them as crazy, but as he settled down on the drive home he thought better of himself and decided to call the Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. Whomever Hickson spoke to at the base shut him down immediately and said that he should call his local sheriff's department. That's when Captain Glenn Ryder was looped in. Ryder recalls:

He said, 'I want to tell you something, but you've got to promise not to laugh,' I was about to get off work, so it kinda aggravated me. I said, 'If you want to tell me something, then tell me.' He asked me again to promise not to laugh, so I promised. He said, 'I just got picked up by a UFO.' And, of course, I busted out laughing. He got real upset, so I apologized and told him to go ahead with his story. I could tell he was serious.

Hickson and Parker made their way to the sheriff's office where they did their best to keep it together while they endured questioning about the event.

Following their harrowing experience, Hickson and Parker wasted no time in seeking help, making their way to the local sheriff's department to report their alleged alien abduction. However, their story was met with skepticism by sheriff's investigators, who initially suspected the men had been drinking or were simply lying. In a desperate bid to uncover the truth, investigators secretly recorded their interviews with the pair, hoping to catch them dropping the act. Yet, to their surprise, Hickson and Parker continued to recount their terrifying ordeal in vivid detail, describing what they had seen and the overwhelming fear they had experienced. In 1975, Jackson County Sheriff’s Capt. Glen Ryder told The Washington Post:

We did everything we knew to try to break their stories. If they were lying to me, they should be in Hollywood.

Even though secretly leaving a tape recorder running while no one but the alleged abductees were in the room is not entirely on the up and up, this decision helped solidify Hicks and Parker's story. On the recording the two men are heard trying to calm one another down after the troubling ordeal with an alien spacecraft. Hickson can be heard telling Parker:

It scared me to death too, son. You can't get over it in a lifetime. Jesus Christ have mercy.

Capt. Glenn Ryder later told NBC:

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.

Following the alleged 1973 Pascagoula Abduction, several individuals came forward to report unusual sightings of lights in the sky over the Gulf Coast. These sightings were said to have occurred around the same time that Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed to have been abducted. Among those who reported a strange occurrence was Mike Cataldo, a retired Navy chief petty officer currently residing in Rotonda West, Florida. Cataldo reported seeing "a very strange object on the horizon" while driving on U.S. 90 between Pascagoula and Ocean Springs late that afternoon. Similarly, Puddin' Broadus, a detective in Pascagoula at the time, informed Captain Ryder of having witnessed something "streak through the air" on the same evening. Ryder told the Clarion Ledger:

Puddin's dead now, but he was a fine man. He wouldn't make up something like that... A guard at Ingalls (Shipbuilding) saw it. Another guy was in his back yard and said he saw something streak above his house. When we studied it, all those reports were in a straight line. And I'll tell you this: After talking with [Hickson and Parker] that night, I'm convinced they had some kind of experience. I don't know exactly what, but something happened to them. They were both shook up, especially that boy.

Following the 1973 Pascagoula Abduction, media coverage of the incident quickly spread throughout the nation, generating intense public interest. Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, the two fishermen who reported the encounter, were thrust into the limelight, participating in press conferences and interviews. A UFO investigator from Northwestern University arrived in Mississippi to evaluate the case and concluded that the men's story seemed credible. However, skeptics challenged the veracity of the claims, suggesting that Hickson may have experienced sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucinations, while Parker was deemed highly susceptible to suggestion. Nevertheless, many individuals remained convinced of the authenticity of the encounter and flocked to Pascagoula to await any further signs of extraterrestrial activity.

Charles Hickson, who was 42 years old at the time of the 1973 Pascagoula Abduction, was a prominent figure in the local community. As such, he was more equipped to handle the intense media scrutiny that followed the incident. Hickson openly discussed his experience with anyone who would listen, and even made appearances on popular television talk shows such as Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett. In 1983, he published UFO Contact at Pascagoula, a book detailing the details of the alleged alien encounter.

Through his time in the media Hickson made acquaintances with Allen Hynek, an astronomer at Northwestern University and a leading UFO investigator during his lifetime. Hynek convinced Hickson to undergo hypnosis multiple times, and in each session Hickson's story remained the same. In 2002, Hickson explained:

Under deep hypnosis once, I discovered something that still gives me chills. There were people on that spaceship— living beings in another compartment. They never came in there where we were. And I'm telling you, they looked almost like us. Only thing I can figure is that they couldn't live in our atmosphere, so they let the robots come out there and carry us inside.

Less than a year after his abduction at Pascagoula, Hickson experienced at least two more run-ins with extraterrestrials. The first occurred in February 1974 while Hickson was squirrel hunting. He says that while sitting down to eat some lunch he noticed a craft hovering through the trees before he heard a voice speaking to him. He said:

It was like a radio signal or something inside my head. hey said, 'Tell people we mean you no harm. You have endured. You have been chosen. There is no need for fear. Your world needs help. We will help before it is too late. You are not prepared to understand. We will return again soon.' I picked up my gun and came straight home.

Hickson heard from the voice again a month later with the same message.

Hickson's third encounter with what he believes to be the same creatures occurred on Mother's Day 1974, while he was driving home from a family event with his wife and two children. He said:

It was almost midnight and I kept noticing a light back behind us. I nudged Sheila, who was sitting on the front seat beside me, and said, 'Look out that window and see if that light ain't following us.' She looked out the window and just froze. Blanche saw it and started screaming. 

What the family saw was allegedly a large saucer shaped ship floating 150 feet above them, just to the right of their car. Hickson's wife, Blanche, said:

It was a terrifying thing to see. It affected me bad. Tore me up. We stopped the car and Charles wanted to get out, but I wouldn't let him. We were all grabbing him and holding him. It hovered there a while, then just disappeared.

While speaking with a reporter from the Clarion Ledger in 2002, Hickson revealed an X-Ray that he believes proves that he received a tracking implant from the Pascagoula abduction. After showing off a strange mark on the X-Ray, he said:

See that little mole-looking thing behind my (right) eye? I think they implanted something in there. I've been to the VA hospital in New Orleans twice. Been to a cancer doctor at Tulane University. Nobody can figure out what it is. Me, I think it's maybe how they keep track of me. It doesn't hurt. Doesn't affect my vision. It just showed up when they were taking pictures of the arteries in my neck.

Following the abduction Parker shied away from the press, allowing Hickson to shape the narrative of their experience however he chose. When Parker was abducted he had just moved to the area and was looking to save up some money before getting married. After returning from the sheriff's department Parker says that he bathed himself in bleach out of fear that he was infected with an alien disease. As soon as he could, Parker packed up and left town to get a job in an oil field. Any time he was recognized he threw his things in a suitcase and left town to begin again.

Aviation journalist and UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass dismissed the alleged alien encounter of Hickson, claiming that it contained inconsistencies. Klass also highlighted Hickson's refusal to submit himself to a polygraph exam conducted by an experienced examiner. Consequently, Klass concluded that the whole incident was a fabrication.

Additionally, skeptical investigator Joe Nickell called into question Hickson's credibility, citing the inconsistencies in his story over time. Nickell suggested that Hickson may have experienced a hypnagogic waking dream state, leading him to imagine the alien encounter. Moreover, Nickell speculated that Parker's corroboration of the story might have been influenced by suggestibility. Parker initially informed the police that he lost consciousness at the onset of the incident and did not regain it until the end, which aligns with Hickson's account on the show To Tell the Truth.

In 1993, Parker tried to turn his alien lemons into alien lemonade when he started a company named UFO Investigations in Louisiana, where he and his associates would produce TV segments on the subject. Prior to this, Parker had attended multiple UFO conventions and even underwent hypnosis by renowned UFO investigator, Budd Hopkins.

Parker moved to Moss Point in 2006 and, unfortunately, suffered a stroke in 2010, which caused physical limitations. As of this writing Parker is trying to live his best life, but visits the site of his alleged alien encounter while fishing every once in a while.

Parker has expressed his wavering thoughts on the night of his supposed abduction in 1973, along with his friend. At times, he wasn't convinced that the entities he encountered were extraterrestrial. Instead, he suggested that they could have been demons. In 2013, he told NBC:

I'm a firm believer in God and where there's good, there's bad.

In 2019, officials for the city of Pascagoula, Mississippi, unveiled a historical marker on the banks of the Pascagoula River specifically for the abduction of Hickson and Parker at Lighthouse Park, adding serious legitimacy to their claim. Parker was on hand for the event, along with Hickson's son, Charles. At the unveiling Parker told WLOX:

It is emotional for me. I can’t really describe it because I would break out in tears if I do. I wish when I died I could be buried right here underneath this plaque, that would explain it the best. It is quite an honor.