Pascagoula abduction

The full file

At about eleven o'clock on the night of Thursday 11 October 1973, two shipyard workers from Pascagoula, Mississippi, came to the Jackson County sheriff's office with an account of what had happened to them on the river. Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker Jr. had been fishing from an old pier on the west bank of the Pascagoula River that evening. They said they heard a zipping or whirring sound, saw blue lights, and found an elongated or oval object hovering near the bank. Three grey, wrinkled figures with claw-like hands, Hickson said, floated them aboard, where he was examined by something like a large eye before both men were returned to the pier. Within a day the story had been carried across the country by the Associated Press and United Press International.

Who reported it, and the ages on file

Sources disagree on the men's ages. The Associated Press in 2013, Joe Nickell in 2012 and a Hinds Community College library guide give Hickson as 42; Wikipedia's article gives 45. Parker is 18 in the AP's account, 19 in Nickell's and the library guide's, and 17 in Wikipedia's. Parker had recently started at the shipyard where Hickson worked and was living with the Hicksons, according to Nickell. Both men are now dead: Hickson in September 2011, of a heart attack, aged 80 by Nickell's account and 81 by the library guide's; Parker on 24 August 2023, after a long illness, as WLOX reported.

The record and where it is held

The case is on this shelf because of what the sheriff's office did that night. Sheriff Fred Diamond and Capt. Glenn Ryder interviewed both men about three hours after the event. The officers then left the room with the tape recorder still running, hoping, in the AP's words, to catch the men in a lie. That interview and the conversation that followed are known from a transcript printed in Ralph and Judy Blum's Beyond Earth (Bantam, 1974), pages 29 to 36, which NICAP reproduces. Alone, Parker says, "I passed out," and that he is near to going "half crazy"; Hickson says of the doubters, "They won't believe it." The AP quotes Hickson on the same tape: "It scared me to death too, son."

Where the original tape is held now could not be established for this write-up; no archive was found that lists it. A later and retrospective record is held by the University of Southern Mississippi: Hickson's 1979 oral history with Orley B. Caudill, volume CVIII of the Mississippi Oral History Program, kept in Special Collections.

What investigators concluded

The sheriff's office made no formal finding. Ryder, still with the office forty years later, told the AP he had laughed at the report at first but came to believe the men were afraid: "I know you don't fake fear, and they were fearful." Project Blue Book had closed in 1969, so there is no Air Force case file. Wikipedia, citing the Vicksburg Post of 13 October 1973, says the men were checked for radiation at Keesler Air Force Base and released; that clipping was not opened here.

Two investigators arrived within days. J. Allen Hynek of Northwestern University said the men had had "a very real, frightening experience". James Harder of APRO concluded they had met an extraterrestrial phenomenon; Nickell, citing Jerome Clark, says Harder tried to hypnotise them without success. Later in October Hickson took a polygraph test. Nickell writes that it was arranged by the agent with whom the men had signed a contract to promote their story; Wikipedia, citing a Sun report of 31 October 1973, says the examiner concluded Hickson told the truth as he believed it. Parker did not take a test at the time. The AP reports that he later passed one.

The conventional explanations

The leading conventional explanation is a hoax. Philip J. Klass argued it in UFOs Explained (1974), pointing to changes in Hickson's descriptions, to what he called an "inexperienced" polygraph operator, and to Hickson's refusal of a second test by an experienced police examiner. Its strength is that Hickson's story did grow: on television a month later he described an eye injury that a hospital examination the day after had not found. Its weakness is the tape. Nickell, no believer, concedes that alone in the room the two men made no incriminating remarks and behaved more like people comparing notes.

Nickell's own explanation, in the Skeptical Inquirer in 2012, is a hypnagogic or "waking dream" state: Hickson, who had been drinking afterwards and perhaps before, dozed and experienced paralysis, floating and bright lights, all familiar in such states, while Parker, who first told officers he had passed out, later took on Hickson's account by suggestion. It fits the paralysis and the dream-like detail. It does not account for two men both arriving frightened, and it rests on an inference about Parker's state that cannot now be tested.

What remains disputed

The facts of that night are not much in dispute; their meaning is. Parker's account changed from having passed out to having been conscious but paralysed, and in 2013 he told the AP the creatures might have been demons, adding that "where there's good, there's bad." The polygraph is weak evidence either way, and the examiner's qualifications are contested. The tape shows that the two men were consistent and afraid when they thought no one was listening. It cannot show what they saw.

Sources

• Transcript of the Hickson and Parker interview and recording (archived) — NICAP, from Ralph and Judy Blum, Beyond Earth (1974), pp. 29–36. The interview by Diamond and Ryder at about 11 p.m. and the men's words when left alone.
• Man says 1973 UFO incident turned life upside down — Associated Press (Jeff Amy), via KSL, 2013. Ages, the hidden recorder, Hickson's line on the tape, Ryder's quotation, Klass, Parker's later test.
• Mississippi man who shunned spotlight recalls alleged 1973 incident with UFO (archived) — Associated Press, via Fox News, 2015. Ryder still with the office; deputies' first suspicion of drink.
• Famous Alien Abduction in Pascagoula: Reinvestigating a Cold Case (archived) — Joe Nickell, Skeptical Inquirer 36(3), 2012. Klass's case, the polygraph's arrangement, the hypnagogic explanation, Hynek's words.
• Item of the Month, June 2022: Charles Hickson oral history (archived) — University of Southern Mississippi Special Collections, 2022. The 1979 oral history and where it is held.
• Calvin Parker, who claimed he was abducted by aliens in Pascagoula in 1973, has died — WLOX, 2023. Parker's death and the 2019 marker.
• Pascagoula Abduction (archived) — Hinds Community College Libraries. Ages, Hynek's statement, Parker's 2018 book.
• Pascagoula incident (archived) — Wikipedia. Used as an index to the 1973 clippings on Keesler and the polygraph result, which were not opened.