THINK ABOUTIT ABDUCTION REPORT
Date: October 11, 1973
Sighting Time: 9:00 P.M.
Day/Night: Night
Location: Pascagoula, Mississippi
Urban or Rural: -Rural
No. of Entity(‘s): 3
Entity Type: Beings
Entity Description: The Beings had legs but did not use them. They were about five feet tall, had bullet-shaped heads without necks, slits for mouths, and where their noses or ears would be, they had thin, conical objects sticking out, like carrots from a snowman’s head. They had no eyes, grey, wrinkled skin, round feet, and claw like hands
Hynek Classification: CE-IV (Close Encounter IV) Abduction of the witness or other direct contact
Duration:
No. of Object(s): 1
Height & Speed:
Size of Object(s): ten-foot-wide, eight-foot-high
Distance to Object(s): about 30 feet
Shape of Object(s): Egg Shaped
Color of Object(s): glowing egg-shaped object with blue lights
Number of Witnesses: 2
Source: Andy Page / NICAP Source; Webb in 1973, Year of The Humanoids
Summary/Description: The Pascagoula Incident involved two men, Parker and Hickson, both of Gautier, Mississippi, who were fishing in the Pascagoula River when they heard a buzzing noise behind them. Both turned and were terrified to see a ten-foot-wide, eight-foot-high, glowing egg-shaped object with blue lights at its front hovering just above the ground about forty feet from the river bank. As the men, frozen with fright, watched, a door appeared in the object, and three strange Beings floated just above the river towards them.
Full Report
The scene of the alleged abduction is an abandoned
fishing pier on the Pascagoula River.
The Pascagoula Incident involved two men, nineteen-year-old Calvin Parker and forty-two-year old Charles Hickson, both of Gautier, Mississippi, who were fishing in the Pascagoula River when they heard a buzzing noise behind them. Both turned and were terrified to see a ten-foot-wide, eight-foot-high, glowing egg-shaped object with blue lights at its front hovering just above the ground about forty feet from the river bank. As the men, frozen with fright, watched, a door appeared in the object, and three strange Beings floated just above the river towards them.
The Beings had legs but did not use them. They were about five feet tall, had bullet-shaped heads without necks, slits for mouths, and where their noses or ears would be, they had thin, conical objects sticking out, like carrots from a snowman’s head. They had no eyes, grey, wrinkled skin, round feet, and claw like hands.
Pascagoula UFO occupant, as described by Charles Hickson to Tony Accurso, artist for the “Dick Cavett Show.” (credit: Ralph and Judy Blum, Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact with UFOs)
Two of the beings seized Hickson; when the third grabbed Parker, the teenager fainted with fright. Hickson claimed that when the Beings placed their hands under his arms, his body became numb, and that then they floated him into a brightly lit room in the UFO’s interior, where he was subjected to a medical examination with an eyelike device which, like Hickson himself, was floating in mid-air.
At the end of the examination, the Beings simply left Hickson floating, paralyzed but for his eyes, and went to examine Parker, who, Hickson believed was in another room. Twenty minutes after Hickson had first observed the UFO, he was floated back outside and released. He found Parker weeping and praying on the ground near him. Moments later, the object rose straight up and shot out of site.
Expecting only ridicule if they were to tell anyone what had happened, Hickson and Parker initially decided to keep quiet; but then, because the government might want, or ought, to know about it, they telephoned Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. A sergeant there told them to contact the sheriff. But uncertain about the reception their bizarre story might get from the local law, they drove to the local newspaper office to speak to a reporter. When they found the office closed, Hickson and Parker felt they had no alternative but to talk to the sheriff.
Federal authorities at Keesler Air Force Base questioned
Hickson and Parker the day after the incident.
The sheriff, after listening to their story, put Hickson and Parker in a room wired for sound in the belief that if the two men were left alone they would reveal their hoax; of course they did not. The local press reported their tale; the wire services picked it up; and within several days the Pascagoula Encounter was major news all over the country. The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), founded in 1952, sent University of California engineering professor James Harder to Mississippi to investigate; J. Allen Hynek, representing the Air Force, also arrived. Together they interviews the witnesses. Harder hypnotized Hickson but had to terminate the session when Hickson became too frightened to continue.
Charles Hickson (left) and Calvin Parker.
Hickson and Parker both subsequently passed lie detector tests. Hynek and Harder believed the two men’s story. And Hynek was later quoted as saying “There was definitely something here that was not terrestrial”.
OTHER REPORTS
The strange case of nineteen-year-old Calvin Parker, and forty-two-year-old Charles Hickson actually began a day before their famous encounter. On October 10, 1973, fifteen different people, including two policemen reported seeing a large, silver UFO slowly fly over a housing project in St. Tammany Parish, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Only a scant 24 hours later, Hickson and Parker would have the scare of their lives; a frightening encounter with an eerie UFO.
The two men were both from the town of Gautier, Mississippi, and were doing some fishing in the Pascagoula River on a dark night about 9:00 P.M. They suddenly heard a type of buzzing behind them.
Both men turned around to see the source of the sound, and were amazed to see a glowing, egg-shaped object with bluish lighting on its front side.
The unusual craft was hovering just a few feet above the ground, and about 30 feet from the shore of the river. To their unbelief, a door opened in the object, and three strange beings began to float just above the water straight toward them. Though the beings had legs, they did not use them, they simply floated across the river.
Parker and Hickson would later describe the beings as “about five feet tall, had bullet-shaped heads without necks, slits for mouths, and where their noses or ears would be, they had thin, conical objects sticking out, like carrots from a snowman’s head. They had no eyes, grey, wrinkled skin, round feet, and claw-like hands.”
Hickson, frozen in fear and unbelief, was grabbed by two of these creatures, and the third one took Parker, who fainted from fright. Hickson would later relate that when the beings put their arms under his body to support him, he felt numb all over. He was then floated into a a brightly-lit room inside of the UFO. Inside this room, he floated, along with an eye-like device which examined him all over.
After his ordeal, Hickson was left floating, while the beings left the room, probably to examine Parker. Approximately 20 minutes after the ordeal had begun, it was over, and Hickson was floated back outside of the strange craft. Parker was crying, and praying on the ground. Only a moment or two later, the craft rose straight up into the air and disappeared.
As the two men began to regain their composure, they were uncertain as to what they should do. Reluctant to report their harrowing experience, they felt obligated to tell someone. Despite fearing ridicule, they telephoned Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. Kessler referred their problem to their local sheriff’s office.
Afraid of what reaction they might get from law enforcement, they opted instead to drive to their local newspaper. Finding the office closed, they decided to take their bizarre story to the sheriff after all. Naturally the sheriff felt the two men’s story was some kind of hoax, and to get to the truth, he put Hickson and Parker into a room which was wired for sound, hoping that they would slip up, and reveal why they were perpetuating such a strange tale.
Soon news of the event began to surface. The local press released the story first; quickly followed by the wire services. Within a few days, the Pascagoula incident was major news all over the USA. The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), sent University of California professor James Harder to investigate; Dr. J. Allen Hynek, representing the US Air Force, also arrived to look into the story. Harder and Hynek interviewed Hickson and Parker together. Harder hypnotized Hickson, but he became so frightened that the session had to be aborted.
The two abductees were encouraged to take a lie-detector test, which they both passed. Harder and Hynek, both highly respected in their professions, believed the two men’s story.
At a later date, Hynek stated; “There was definitely something here that was not terrestrial”.
In what may be a related incident, a couple of weeks after this chilling account, Coast Guardsmen and fishermen had an encounter with an underwater metallic object.
This strange object had an amber light on it, and the Guard chased it in the Pascagoula River. The object was close enough to touch, but each time it was prodded with a large boat hook, it would turn off its light, move a distance away, and turn its light back on. This unusual encounter lasted about 40 minutes before the craft disappeared.
The Pascagoula encounter is one of the most unusual accounts of all UFO reports. Though the sighting and abduction involved only two witnesses, there were several other sightings of unusual flying objects on the same night. The two men have held to their story, though no earthly explanation has been offered for the strange events of the night of October, 11, 1973.
All They Meant to Do Was Go Fishing The Pascagoula Incident
Charles Hickson/Calvin Parker Abduction Case
October 11, 1973
Charles Hickson & Calvin Parker
I can tell you here and now, and God is my witness and l believe in God, that when 1 die I’ll tell everybody what I saw. And it’ll be the same story.
—Charlie Hickson
By Sunday night the news people had left Pascagoula. Dr. Hynek was on his way back to Chicago, Dr. Harder to Berkeley. By then, the entire country knew what had happened to Charlie Hickson and Calvin Parker.
It was a strange moment to be in Pascagoula-like arriving on the scene right after a disaster. People corn- pared it with the time Hurricane Camille struck the coast. Tough-minded sheriffs needed to talk about what had happened. Maybe a week later, when things had returned to normal, I wouldn’t have been invited to the sheriff’s office to hear and record the taped interview made barely three hours after Calvin and Charlie saw the flashing blue light. It was the first time in any major UFO encounter that the witnesses’ testimony was recorded so swiftly, and on tape.
I tried to imagine Charlie and Calvin’s feelings as they told their story. I had seen their condition: two men on the borderline of collapse who had been through an experience for which nothing on earth could have prepared them.
The interview was conducted by Sheriff Fred Diamond and Captain Glen Ryder at approximately eleven o’clock Thursday evening. It began with Charlie’s voice saying:
· . . even though I’ll be the laughing stock of the country, I’ll tell what I seen, and the experience I’ve had…
What did you say your name was?
Charles Hickson. H-i-c-k-s-o-n. Even though they laugh me out of Jackson County, I’ll do what I know is right. That’s all I can do. And I don’t expect anybody to believe it. It’s just unbelievable.
There was a weight in Charlie’s voice. As though he was having to push the words up, heave them out.
We just have to know what happened. What happened to y’all from the very beginning.
Well, this’ll be the third time.
We just want to make sure. To hear your story. That’s what convinced us.
OK. OK. Calvin and me, this boy-he works with me-we went down below the grain elevator along the river. We caught a few haid heads down there, a couple of croakers, not much. So I said to Calvin, son, let’s go up by the old Schaupeter Shipyard. I’ve caught redfish in there, and speckled trout-
Is he your son?
No, no. He’s just a friend. He’s from Jones County. That’s where I’m reared from. I’ve got a farm and a home up there. Well, so we went over there to try a little while. We set there fishing. I don’t know how- I guess we must’ve seen the thing the same time. It’s a blue light. It circled a bit-
How high was it?
You couldn’t hardly tell. It wasn’t too close. But ft wasn’t no two-three miles away. It was pretty close.
And a blue light-you’re surprised when you look in the sky and you see a blue light. It really calls your attention to it. Then in just a little while, it come right down above the bayou. You know, about two- three feet above the ground.
How close was it?
Twenty-five, thirty yards. But it might have been thirty-five, forty yards. You see something like that, it scare you to death! And I couldn’t believe it. I started to head for the river-
Was there a noise to it?
A little buzzing’ sound-nnnnnnnn, nnnnnnnn-just like that, that’s all. Wasn’t any back blast or anything. And, you think you dreaming‘ about something like that, you know. And I started to hit the river, man. And Calvin just-he went hysterical.
What’s Calvin’s last name?
It’s Parker. Calvin Parker, Junior. He’s got his father’s name.
Charlie paused a moment, then went on:
So we was right on the river. It didn’t hit the ground. It hovered. And all of a sudden-right in the end of it-this opening was laid up there, and three of them just floated out of the thing. They wasn’t on no ground.
They didn’t have feet?
No, they didn’t have toes. But they had feet shape… It was more or less just a round like thing on a leg-if you’d call it a leg… I was scared to death. And me with a spinning’ reel out there-it’s all I had. I couldn’t-well, I was so scared-well, you can’t imagine. Calvin done went hysterical on me-
Then what happened? They walk on up to you?
They just-no, they just glided up there to me. Then one of ’em made a little buzzing’ noise, and two of ’em never made no noise.
What kind of noise?
Just ZZZZZZ zzzZzZZZ.
It sound like a machine?
Yeah, like that. It might have been contacting’ the others. See, I don’t know. By then I was so damn scared I didn’t know anything. And two of ’em just floated around behind me and lifted me off the ground.
By your arms?
By my arms. With their pincher things. They must of done something. I just raised off the ground.
They didn’t use no force though?
No force. They didn’t hurt me. I didn’t feel nothin’.
How was your buddy doin’ then?
He just passed out on me. And they glided me into that thing. You know, how you just guide somebody. All of us moved like we were floating’ through air. When I got in there, they had me, you know, they just kind of had me there. There were no seats, no chain, they just moved me around. I couldn’t resist them, I just floated-felt no sensation, no pain. They kept me in that position a little while, then they’d raise me back up.
You said they had some kind of instrument on you, didn’t you?
Some kind of instrument I don’t know what it was. I didn’t see anything that I could call an instrument that I’ve ever seen before.
What did it look like? Could you describe it?
I just couldn’t describe it.
Was it like an X-ray machine?
No it wasn’t like no X-ray machine. There ain’t no way to describe it. It looked like an eye. Like a big eye. It had some kind of an attachment to it. It moved. It looked like a big eye. And it went all over my body. Up and down. And then they left me.
They left you inside the machine?
Left me right by myself. And the position they had me in-I couldn’t move. Just my eyes could move. And I don’t know how long they left me. I don’t even know if I stayed conscious but I think I did. And then they came back.
How long did they leave you?
I don’t know. I never wear no watch.
How long would you say?
I’d say twenty to thirty minutes. Then, when they came back, they laid me back over again.
You didn’t try to talk to ’em, ask ’em what was going on?
Yes–I did! But I’d get a buzzing’ sound out of one of ’em. That’s all. They didn’t pay me no attention, my talking’ or anything.
How many eyes did they have?
There could have been eyes but I didn’t see any. But there was something that came straight out more or less where a nose would be on a human being’s face.
They have any hair?
I don’t know. I just swear I don’t know. That’s blank in my mind.
You looked at ’em didn’t you? Did they breathe?
I swear I don’t know.
How tall were they?
They were about five feet tall.
They didn’t have no kind of clothes on or nothing?
Not so’s I noticed.
And you can’t tell me what color they was?
Man, you scared as I was-
Was they white-ooking? Pale? Blue? Green?
Best I remember, they looked pale like to me – Wrinkled skin?
It might have been. It looked kind of like a skin fit. They might’ve had something on, they might not’ve. I don’t know.
You say below the nose there was an opening?
Like a slit-and I never saw that opening‘ move. And they had something on each side of the head that resembled ears, but didn’t look like ears that we know. And the head-I didn’t see any neck. It looked like it just sit there on a body.
Was this right after dark?
It wasn’t too long after dark.
Well, why you waitin’ till this time of night to call us?
Well, Mr. Fred, when I got out of there, I knowed nobody wouldn’t believe me. I went by the Mississippi Press, beat on the door. This colored guy was sitting‘ at the desk. I said I wanted to see a reporter. He said there won’t be no reporter till morning. I thought about it again. If I call the sheriff’s department they won’t believe me. If I call the police department they won’t believe me-
Well, how’d you know unless you tried?
Well, I apologize for that. That’s my thinking.
How much did you have to drink?
I hadn’t drank anything, but in the forty-five minutes to an hour before I called you all, I did drink! I had to settle my nerves. I just about went crazy. And I gotta get back and let my wife know. She’s probably hysterical now.
Your wife’s alright. You remember leaving?
Leavin’ where?
The ship. When they put you out.
The only thing I remember is that kid, Calvin, just standing there. I’ve never seen that sort of fear on a man’s face as I saw on Calvin’s. It took me a while to get him back to his senses, and the first thing I told him was, Son, ain’t nobody gonna believe this. Let’s just keep this whole thing to ourselves. Well, the more I thought about it, the more I thought I had to let some officials know
What they do after they let you go?
There was a buzzing‘ sound, and it was gone.
Can you describe the vehicle?
Yes, I can. It was about eight feet tall. It wasn’t round. It was oblong, sort of oblong, and the opening it had was at one end of it. The only lights I seen on the outside was that blue light.
Inside, what lights they have?
I didn’t see no bulbs or anything. It just glowed light. But it was real bright.
Charlie told how he’s tried to call Keesler Air Force Base and how they told him to call the sheriff. There were a few more questions and the interview was over.
Sheriff Diamond asked Charlie to come back in the morning to make a complete statement. Charlie said he didn’t want any publicity, and he didn’t want to get his family upset. Then Diamond and Captain Ryder went out and left the two men alone in the room with the tape recorder still running.
Charlie’s voice was shaky as he said to Calvin: “I can’t take much more of that” And Calvin sounded frantic.
CALVIN: I got to get home and get to bed or get some nerve pills or see the doctor or something. I can’t stand it. I’m about to go half crazy.
CHARLIE:: I tell you, when we through, I’ll get you something to settle you down so you can get some damn sleep.
CALVIN: I can’t sleep yet like it is. I’m just damn near crazy.
CHARLIE: Well, Calvin, when they brought you out-when they brought me out of that thing, goddamn it I like to never in hell got you straightened out.
His voice rising, Calvin said, “My damn arms, my arms, I remember they just froze up and I couldn’t move. Just like I stepped on a damn rattlesnake.”
“They didn’t do me that way,” sighed Charlie.
Now both men were talking as if to themselves.
CALVIN: I passed out. I expect I never passed out in my whole life.
CHARLIE: I’ve never seen nothin’ like that before in my life. You can’t make people believe-
CALVIN: I don’t want to keep sittin’ here. I want to see a doctor-
CHARLIE: They better wake up and start believing‘… they better start believin’.
CALVIN: You see how that damn door come right up?
CHARLIE: I don’t know how it opened, son. I don’t know.
CALVIN: It just laid up and just like that those son’ bitches-just like that they come out.
CHARLIE: I know. You can’t believe it. You can’t make people believe it-
CALVIN: I paralyzed right then. I couldn’t move-
CHARLIE: They won’t believe it. They gonna believe it one of these days. Might be too late. I knew all along they was people from other worlds up there. I knew all along. I never thought it would happen to me.
CALVIN: You know yourself I don’t drink’
CHARLIE: I know that, son. When I get to the house I’m gonna get me another drink, make me sleep. Look, what we sittin’ around for. I gotta go tell Blanche… what we waitin’ for?
CALVIN (panicky): I gotta go to the house. I’m getting‘ sick. I gotta get out of here.
Then Charlie got up and left the room, and Calvin was alone.
CALVIN: It’s hard to believe . . . Oh God, it’s awful… I know there’s a God up there…
His words, as he prayed, became inaudible.
The Pascagoula case is not unique. As Dr. Hynek has pointed out, people around the world have, for years, been experiencing “close encounters” with bizarre craft, and, in many cases, contact with “occupants.”
But this was the first time I had seen for myself the profoundly disturbing effect of a UFO encounter on two ordinary human beings. It was impossible to be with Charlie and Calvin-or listen to that tape-and not believe that something terrifying had happened to them.
And yet what happened in Pascagoula seems to be part of a mystery that is at least as old as man himself.
SOURCE: BEYOND EARTH: Man’s Contact With UFOs, Ralph & Judy Blum, 29-36
Interview With Mike Cataldo, New Pascagoula UFO 1973 Witness
reported that a new witness to a legendary 1973 UFO incident has
recently surfaced. Chambers identified this individual as Mike
Cataldo, a retired Navy chief petty officer.I was interested in more general details of this account, and
specifically the reference to “a report” Cataldo made with a
supervisor. This morning I conducted a YAHOO PEOPLE SEARCH
for the name Mike Cataldo and found his telephone number listed for
his residence at Marker Rd. in Rotonda West, FL.Cataldo came to the phone and was surprised at my call, stating
that I was the first person to ever contact him about this UFO
sighting from 1973. He explained that he had been in touch with
Associated Press reporter Natalie Chambers, but only after
calling a Pascagoula, Mississippi newspaper a month ago. When
calling the newspaper, he asked to talk with an old-timer
employee at the paper, someone that might remember the
Hickson/Parker abduction. Cataldo said that when he talked with
Natalie Chambers, she made reference to the book entitled ‘UFO
in Pascagoula.’ Being unaware of this book, Cataldo was shocked,
saying “you gotta be kidding me!” to the reporter.He went on to excitedly relate the story as it happened back in
1973.”The story is very true,” he assured while recounting the event.
“We (Cataldo, Ted Peralta and Mack Hanna) left the shipyard and
rode in Ted’s Volkswagen to Hwy. 90, traveling west towards
Buloxi, Mississippi. It was not even dusk yet, there was still
some daylight to see by.”When we first saw this thing through the windshield we thought
it was a shooting star, going from right to left, but then it
came down into a marshy, tree-lined area and hovered there for
about 30-seconds. It was spinning and had blinking lights on the
top of it all around its edge, all the way around it in a
circle. These were blinking lights arranged on it just like you
would tape lights to the side of a cake pan.”Cataldo affirmed that there was a definite structure to be seen,
not just blinking lights.“This thing was like a whitish-gray colored sailor hat, or a
tambourine, and it was less than half a mile away and looked as
big as any big American airliner I’ve ever seen. And then it
just shot away, almost like it was just suddenly gone.”Cataldo said that shortly after the sighting he parted company
with Ted Peralta and Mack Hanna and changed cars. Then while
enroute to Ocean Springs as darkness was setting in, he saw the
same object a second time at about the same distance away,
watching it for another 45 seconds to one minute before it again
shot off in the same manner as before.Mike Cataldo said that there were other motorists in the area
during each episode and that some of them had slowed down to look
at the ufo.
“We were the only ones on the road to stop and look at it
though,” he said.
During this time, Cataldo said he never knew anything about the
Hickson/Parker claim. He went home, telling his wife about it.
Cataldo humorously recalled how his wife said he was
hyperventilating with excitement. He went on to liken the anxiety
and strangeness of the situation to a large snake sighting he had
years earlier in 1963, “Some things you see in your lifetime that
you just don’t ever forget,” he said.
The next day he returned to the site with Ted and Mack and they
parked their car at the shipyard area, talking about the
sighting from the previous day. They discussed what should be
done about it and if they should report what they saw.
Cataldo said that he felt the sighting should be reported and he
approached a man by the name of Nick, his division officer. He
then approached the executive commander, Lt. Commander
Heath and issued him a verbal report on the sighting. He said
that to his knowledge, Heath did not prepare a written report
concerning what was told to him.
“Not one of them took me seriously,” he complained, “and I never
heard another thing about it. Nobody ever asked about it again.
“I never knew of the Hickson/Parker abduction until days later.
It happened on Thursday and it was not until the following
Sunday that I saw the headline in the morning paper about two
men taken aboard a Flying Saucer, I’m telling you I about died.”
The next morning, Oct. 15, Cataldo said that he talked the
situation over with his wife and again decided that it would be
important to report the UFO sighting. At that time he placed a
phone call to a an assistant public relations officer Keesler
AFB. The female taking his call took the information, but
Cataldo said that once again nothing resulted from his
advisement.
“I have never talked to the fella involved, Charles Hickson, and
I’ve never discussed this case or met with them at all, I never
knew them and I never saw anything and had no involvement with
what they said,” Cataldo assured, “and I’ve never seen a UFO
since then, not at all. Not even before then. Was it real?
You’re damn right it was real. I can’t say anything about they
did or were involved in. I don’t even know if what I saw matches
what they saw, but I know what I saw and where I was at. But
where we saw the thing going across the sky through our
windshield is basically the area where Hickson and Parker said
they were taken aboard. The time frame of our sighting might
have been around 6:00, but I can’t recall for certain.”
Cataldo said that two weeks after the sighting he left for
California on temporary duty. While there, he saw Hickson on the
Dick Cavette television show.
“I just couldn’t believe it, here I was seeing this guy,” he
said.
Mike Cataldo explained that he has not seen Ted Peralta for 21
years, but thinks he could possibly be in the San Diego,
California area. Likewise he has not seen Mack Hanna for about
23 or more years and suspects that he could also be located in
either Kentucky or Logan, West Virginia. In the intervening
years, Cataldo said that he has frequently told told his family
(wife, 2 sons and relatives) about the sighting.
Cataldo said that aside from this present call, he has not been
contacted by anyone regarding this except for his discussion
with reporter Natalie Chambers. He said that he has not seen the
newspaper article and would like to read it. He also said that
he received a message from a friend telling him that Paul Harvey
mentioned the story on his radio program yesterday, and wishes
he could have heard it.
I thanked Mike Cataldo for talking with me and told him that I
would be happy to E-mail him the text of the newspaper article
by Chambers. Although it is a disappointment to know that his
claims were probably not documented in a written report by his
supervisor, further interviews with Hanna and Peralta would
still be valuable to provide some verification of this alleged
sighting. A YAHOO PEOPLE SEARCH was conducted for their
names in the specified locations resulting in many returns and
as of this writing some of the names have already been
contacted but thus far with no success in finding the right
individuals.
Filed,
October 27, 2001
Kenny Young
sources:
http://www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk/newwitness.htm
Clarion Ledger Article on Hickson/Parker-Pascagoula, Mississippi 1973
GAUTIER – Charles Hickson has no proof. No photograph he can pull from his wallet, no papers certifying his story. Just his word that 29 years ago this month he and a fishing buddy were abducted by a UFO, examined by a machine resembling a giant eyeball, then released physically unharmed.He has told his story under hypnosis, told it to Johnny Carson on national TV. Recently, while sipping coffee in his modest home in Gautier, he told the story to a Clarion-Ledger reporter. His account of that night never changes. He has passed numerous lie-detector tests.What Hickson hasn’t talked about publicly, until now, is that he believes whatever – or whoever – was on that craft has kept track of him.”I think they know where I am at all times,” he says. “Too many strange things have happened.”Hickson, a retired shipyard foreman with five children and a no-nonsense demeanor, is 71 and spends most of his time caring for Blanche, his wife of 48 years who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis. He is fighting health problems of his own, including clogged arteries in his neck.Hickson says he is a God-fearing man who “believes Jesus Christ died for my sins.” Whether people believe his UFO story doesn’t seem to be a big deal to him. “If you were in my place right now, I’m not sure I’d believe you or not,” he said.But others saw something that night, too.
Several people later reported strange lights in the Gulf Coast sky just after sunset on Oct. 11, 1973 – about the time Hickson and then 19-year-old Calvin Parker say they were abducted.
Mike Cataldo, a retired Navy chief petty officer now living in Rotonda West, Fla., says he saw “a very strange object on the horizon” late that afternoon while driving on U.S. 90, between Pascagoula and Ocean Springs.
“Puddin’ Broadus, a Pascagoula detective back then, told me he saw something streak through the air,” says Glenn Ryder, a former captain with the Jackson County Sheriff’s department who was the first to interrogate Hickson and Parker. “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.”
Parker, now 48, has avoided the media in recent years.
“This thing really messed Calvin up,” Hickson says. “He was so young … he just couldn’t handle it.”
In a 1993 interview with The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Parker said he was convinced it was demons, sent directly from Satan, who visited them that night.
Beverly Parker, Calvin’s stepmother who lives with his father in Kiln, says they haven’t heard from him “in a couple of months.” Last she knew, Calvin was working construction in North Carolina and “doing pretty good.”
The UFO incident is “something he won’t talk about anymore,” she says.
It is late on a Saturday night, and Blanche Hickson has gone to bed. The house is quiet and dark, except for a single lamp softly illuminating the den.
“I don’t mind talking about it,” Charles Hickson says, settling his 5-foot-8, 172-pound body into an easy chair. “I don’t seek folks out to tell it, but it’s something I feel like people deserve to know if they ask.”
Hickson begins his story:
“Calvin was working for me at Walker’s Shipyard, and doing a dadgum good job. Calvin and his brother had sorta grown up with my oldest boy, Eddie. Some evenings after work, we’d go fishing.
“We got off about 4 o’clock that day and came by my house to get the fishing tackle, then we went and got some shrimp for bait. We tried several places and hadn’t caught anything. I said, ‘Calvin, there’s one more place I want to try. If they don’t bite there, we’ll give it up and go on home.’
“So we went down toward Ingalls and started fishing off a pier. We sat there for a while, and I finally got a bite. I was reeling in and started hearing this hissing sound. Like steam coming out of a pipe.
“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.
“I jumped to my feet, looked over at Calvin, and he looked plumb strange. Then a door opened and this brilliant light came out of it. I couldn’t figure what in the world was happening. I’ve known fear. I fought 20 months in hand-to-hand combat in Korea. The only thing I’m scared of is a snake. I’ll run from a snake. But this wasn’t normal.
“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.
“One took hold of Calvin, and I saw him go limp. He told me later that he fainted. They took us through that doorway, in the middle of a room, and I couldn’t see Calvin anymore. There was nothing in there … just a real bright glow. 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.
“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.
“I was just about out of my mind. I thought they were gonna kill me. Folks would think we fell off in the river and drowned, and nobody would ever know about this.
“It seemed like a long time, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. (The robots) came and carried me back outside. They didn’t throw me down, they eased me down. And when they did, I fell to the ground. My legs were real weak.
“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.’ “
As they drove away in Parker’s Plymouth, Hickson and Parker agreed not to tell anyone about the incident.
“I knew people would call us crazy and everything else,” Hickson says. “But I thought about it some more and said, ‘What if it’s a threat to our country?’ That’s when I decided to call Keesler (Air Force Base in Biloxi).”
The person who answered the phone at Keesler said they didn’t investigate UFOs and suggested Hickson call the sheriff’s department.
That’s when Hickson spoke with Glenn Ryder from a convenience store pay phone.
“He said, ‘I want to tell you something, but you’ve got to promise not to laugh,’ ” recalls Ryder, now 63 and retired. “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.”
Ryder convinced Hickson and Parker to drive to the sheriff’s office. He called Jackson County sheriff Fred Diamond, now deceased, to join him for the questioning.
Ryder remembers: “When they walked in, Charlie said, ‘I just want to tell you up front, I’ve had a drink. I had to do something to try and settle my nerves.’
“The young boy was real fidgety. He was about to crawl the walls.”
Hickson and Parker told the officers what had happened. Ryder says it was a struggle to keep a straight face.
Then he and Diamond plotted to find out the truth. “We kept a tape recorder in the top drawer of the desk,” Ryder says. “It was a small office, so it would pick up everything said in there. We let them go to the bathroom and decided to turn the recorder on, then leave them alone for a while.
“We did that, and when we listened to the tape later, we expected to hear them saying, ‘Boy, we sure fooled them’ or something like that.”
But they didn’t. Here is the transcript from the hidden recorder.
Parker: “I got to get home and get to bed or get some nerve pills or see the doctor or something. I can’t stand it. I’m about to go half crazy.”
Hickson: “I tell you, when we’re through, I’ll get you something to settle you down so you can get some damn sleep.”
Parker: “I can’t sleep yet like it is. I’m just damn near crazy.”
Hickson: “Calvin, when they brought you out – when they brought me out of that thing – (expletive) I like to never in hell got you straightened out.”
Parker: “My damn arms, my arms. I remember they just froze up and I couldn’t move. Just like I stepped on a damn rattlesnake.”
Hickson: “They didn’t do me that way.”
Parker: “I passed out. I expect I never passed out in my whole life.”
Hickson: “I’ve never seen nothing like that before in my life. You can’t make people believe …”
Parker: “I don’t want to keep sitting here. I want to see a doctor.”
Hickson: “They better wake up and start believing.”
Parker: “You see how that damn door come right up?”
Hickson: “I don’t know how it opened, son. I don’t know.”
Parker: “I just laid up, and just like that, those (expletive) come out.”
Hickson: “I know. You can’t believe it. You can’t make people believe it.”
Parker: “I paralyzed right then. I couldn’t move.”
Hickson: “They won’t believe it. They gonna believe it one of these days. Might be too late. I knew all along they was people from other worlds up there. I knew all along. I never thought it would happen to me.”
Parker: “You know yourself I don’t drink.”
Hickson: “I know that, son. When I get to the house, I’m gonna get me another drink, make me sleep. Look, what we sitting around for? I got to go tell Blanche … what we waiting for?”
Parker: “I gotta go to the house. I’m getting sick. I gotta get out of here.”
Hickson leaves the room, and Parker is left alone.
Parker: “It’s hard to believe … Oh, God, it’s awful. I know there’s a God up there.”
Parker begins to pray. His words become inaudible.
Hickson and Diamond agreed to keep the story quiet.
When he got home, Hickson told his wife what had happened and where he had been.
“I was like everybody else … I had a hard time believing it,” Blanche Hickson says. “But three or four hours later, I knew something was wrong. I was up all night, wiping sweat off of him. He’d jump straight up in the bed. He was scared to death.”
Hickson went to work the next morning. “I had to get my men going,” he says. “But as soon as I got back to my office, the phone rang. It was a reporter from Jackson, asking what had happened the night before. I just slung the phone down.”
Diamond called minutes later. He said word had leaked out and that his office was flooded with reporters.
“He asked me to come over and talk to them, and I told him I wasn’t going no damn where,” Hickson says.
Hickson took off work for two weeks, hoping things would die down. They didn’t.
Officials at Keesler interviewed him and Parker. Reporters and astronomers were coming to Hickson’s house, begging for details.
“It got to the point where I was like, ‘They know about it. I might as well tell them what happened.’ And I told Calvin that,” he says.
Hickson and Parker were all over the national news and made the talk-show circuit: The Dick Cavett Show, The Mike Douglas Show, The Tonight Show.
Something surprised Hickson: “Nobody was laughing at us, at least not to our face. I never took any ridicule. My children at school never took any ridicule. It surprised me.”
Hickson became friends with Allen Hynek, an astronomer at Northwestern University and one of the world’s leading UFO investigators at the time. Hynek is now deceased.
“He convinced me to undergo hypnosis,” Hickson says. “I wasn’t sure about it at first, but I did it several times.”
His story was basically the same during each session.
“But under deep hypnosis once, I discovered something that still gives me chills,” Hickson says. “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.”
The Pascagoula incident was not the first – nor the last – reported abduction. The first documented case involved Barney and Betty Hill, who said they were taken aboard an alien craft in 1961 while driving in New Hampshire.
Hickson visited Betty Hill in Boston a few months after his encounter. “Her husband had died, but she wanted to try and find out if it could’ve been the same craft,” he says. “From what she described to me, I told her I didn’t think so.”
Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, has studied both cases extensively.
“It was the Pascagoula case that played a crucial role in convincing my predecessor (Robert J. Gribble) to set up this center,” says Davenport, a graduate of Stanford University with degrees in Russian and biology.
“He said cases like Mr. Hickson’s and Mr. Parker’s made him realize the need for a centralized place where people could call and report things they had seen.”
Davenport realizes many people believe UFOs are about as real as the Tooth Fairy.
He is not one of them. When he was 6, Davenport witnessed a bright red object, the size of a full moon, hovering like a traffic signal in the night sky above a drive-in theater in St. Louis. “People were getting out of their cars and pointing and actually running toward it,” he says. “In a matter of seconds, it accelerated and was gone over the horizon.
“My father had seen it with binoculars from the airport tower where he worked. I always thought it was strange he didn’t care to talk about it.”
Davenport can cite numerous inexplicable cases, including the Phoenix Lights of 1997. “Tens of thousands of people witnessed objects acting in an utterly bizarre fashion over Arizona,” he says. “The objects hovered, then flew at supersonic speed through the air space of at least three major airports.”
He says five years ago, “prestigious people” with the U.S. government requested a meeting with him in Washington.
“They asked not to be identified,” Davenport says, “and they were 32 minutes late to the meeting. But when they got there, they said, ‘As a courtesy to you, we’d first like to tell you our position on UFOs. One, we know they’re real. Two, they appear to be sophisticated crafts under intelligent control. And, three, we’re worried about them.’
“That confirmed everything I had suspected up to that time. I don’t think I’m crazy. I don’t think I’m dumb. And I believe the UFO phenomenon is real.”
So does John Podesta, President Clinton’s former White House chief of staff. Just last week, Podesta said he will be leading a group to gain access to secret governmental records about UFOs.
“It’s time to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon,” he said.
On Mother’s Day, May 1974, Hickson was riding back from a family get-together in Jones County with his wife, their youngest son (Curtis), their daughter (Sheila) and the man she was married to at the time.
“It was almost midnight,” Hickson says, “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.”
Seconds later, a saucer-shaped craft was hovering 150 feet above, and to the right, of their car.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” says Sheila Hynum of Vicksburg, who was 18 at the time. “Mama was so scared, she was screaming.”
“It was a terrifying thing to see,” Blanche Hickson says. “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.”
Charles Hickson, whose 1983 book UFO: Contact at Pascagoula will be re-issued in November, says that wasn’t the first sighting he’d had since the initial encounter.
While squirrel hunting in February 1974, he knelt down beside a tree to eat a sandwich. Through the brush, he says, part of a craft was visible. Suddenly, he heard a voice.
“It was like a radio signal or something inside my head,” he says. “They 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.”
The same voice, with the same message, came to him again a month later in his back yard. Since then, he says, all the fear has left him.
“I want to go to that world – wherever it is they came from,” he says. “I don’t think they’d carry me if they couldn’t bring me back. And if they ever decide to destroy this world, they might save a few of the people. I’d like to think I’d be one of those.”
Well past midnight now, Hickson gets up from his chair, leaves the den, and returns with a large brown envelope. He pulls out several X-rays and shows them to the visiting reporter.
“See that little mole-looking thing behind my (right) eye?” he says, holding the image over the lamp. “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.
“Strange, ain’t it?”
source & references: http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0210/30/o01.html By Billy Watkins
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