THINK ABOUTIT ABDUCTION REPORT

1973 Pascagoula Incident: The Hickson and Parker CE-IV Encounter

On the night of October 11, 1973, two fishermen on the banks of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi were seized by three non-human entities that floated out of a glowing, egg-shaped craft — and the case that followed would become one of the most rigorously documented abduction events in the entire UAP record. Charles Hickson, a 42-year-old shipyard worker and former military man, and Calvin Parker, his 19-year-old colleague, were subjected to a physical examination aboard the craft before being released approximately twenty minutes later. What separates the Pascagoula Incident from the broader abduction literature is not the strangeness of the event itself but the speed and quality of the documentation: the witnesses reported to law enforcement within hours, were secretly recorded by the sheriff, passed polygraph examinations, and were independently investigated by both J. Allen Hynek (representing the Air Force) and James Harder of APRO. Hynek’s subsequent public statement — that there was “definitely something here that was not terrestrial” — remains one of the most significant institutional endorsements of a CE-IV event ever made.

Landmark CE-IV Case:

The Pascagoula Incident is widely regarded as one of the most credible and well-documented close encounter abduction cases in UFO history. The immediate law enforcement involvement, secretly recorded witness audio, independent polygraph validation, and dual investigation by Hynek and Harder establish an evidentiary chain that few abduction reports can match.

Date: October 11, 1973

Sighting Time: 9:00 p.m.

Day/Night: Night

Location: Pascagoula, Mississippi (abandoned fishing pier on the Pascagoula River)

Urban or Rural: Rural

No. of Entity(‘s): 3

Entity Type: Non-human beings

Entity Description: Approximately five feet tall with bullet-shaped heads, no necks, slit mouths, no visible eyes, grey wrinkled skin resembling elephant hide, thin conical protrusions where ears and nose would be (compared to carrots on a snowman), round feet, and claw-like hands. The beings had legs but did not walk — they floated above the ground.

Hynek Classification: CE-IV (Close Encounter IV) Abduction of the witness or other direct contact

Duration: Approximately 20 minutes

No. of Object(s): 1

Description of the Object(s): A glowing, egg-shaped craft with blue lights at its front and a small dome on top. A door appeared seamlessly in the side of the craft when the entities emerged.

Shape of Object(s): Egg-shaped / Ovoid

Size of Object(s): Approximately 10 feet wide by 8 feet high

Color of Object(s): Glowing luminous body with blue lights at the front

Distance to Object(s): Approximately 30 to 40 feet from the witnesses

Height & Speed: Hovered 2 to 3 feet above the ground during the encounter; departed by ascending straight up and disappearing at high speed

Number of Witnesses: 2 (Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker); additional witnesses reported UFO activity in the area on the same night

Special Features/Characteristics: The craft emitted a buzzing or hissing sound described as steam escaping from a pipe. A door materialized seamlessly in the side of the craft — no visible hinge or mechanism. The entities floated rather than walked. Hickson reported complete body numbness upon contact. He was floated into a brightly lit interior room and examined by a free-floating, eye-like scanning device. Parker fainted upon contact and was examined separately. Approximately two weeks later, Coast Guardsmen and fishermen pursued an underwater metallic object with an amber light in the Pascagoula River for approximately 40 minutes.

Case Status: Unexplained

Source: Andy Page / NICAP; Webb in 1973, Year of The Humanoids; Ralph and Judy Blum, Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact with UFOs; APRO investigation; Sheriff Fred Diamond and Captain Glen Ryder recorded interview; polygraph examinations

Summary/Description: Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were fishing on the Pascagoula River at approximately 9:00 p.m. on October 11, 1973, when they heard a buzzing noise behind them. Turning, they observed a glowing egg-shaped craft with blue lights hovering two to three feet above the ground roughly 30 to 40 feet away. A seamless door appeared in the craft, and three entities floated out toward them. Two beings seized Hickson; the third grabbed Parker, who fainted. Hickson was floated into a brightly lit interior where a free-floating eye-like device scanned his body. After approximately 20 minutes, both men were released. They reported to Keesler Air Force Base, were directed to the sheriff, and were placed in a secretly recorded room where they maintained their account. Both passed polygraph tests. The case was investigated by J. Allen Hynek and James Harder, both of whom found the witnesses credible. A related underwater object was pursued in the Pascagoula River two weeks later.

Detailed Report

The Pascagoula Incident of October 11, 1973, is one of the most thoroughly documented and institutionally investigated abduction cases in the history of the UFO phenomenon. Its evidentiary architecture — immediate law enforcement reporting, secretly recorded audio, dual investigation by military and civilian researchers, and independent polygraph validation — establishes a standard of documentation that few CE-IV cases in the global literature can approach.

The event occurred on the banks of the Pascagoula River, at an abandoned fishing pier near the old Shaupeter Shipyard. Charles Hickson, 42, and Calvin Parker, 19, both residents of Gautier, Mississippi, had been fishing for hardheads and croakers with little success and had relocated to the shipyard area in search of redfish and speckled trout. At approximately 9:00 p.m., both men became aware of a blue light circling in the sky. The light approached rapidly and resolved into a glowing, egg-shaped craft with blue illumination at its forward end. The object descended to hover two to three feet above the ground at an estimated distance of 25 to 40 yards from the witnesses.

The craft emitted a buzzing or hissing sound — Hickson later described it as sounding like steam escaping from a pipe. As both men watched, frozen in terror, a door appeared seamlessly in the side of the object. No hinge, track, or mechanism was visible — the opening simply materialized. Three entities emerged from the craft and floated toward the witnesses, not walking but gliding above the surface of the water and the ground.

The entities were approximately five feet tall with bullet-shaped heads set directly on their shoulders with no visible neck. They had slit-like mouths, no discernible eyes, and grey, heavily wrinkled skin that witnesses compared to elephant hide. Where a nose or ears would be, thin conical protrusions extended outward — Hickson compared these to carrots on a snowman’s head. Their feet were round and their hands were claw-like appendages. They possessed legs but did not appear to use them for locomotion.

Two of the entities seized Hickson. The third took hold of Parker, who fainted immediately upon contact. Hickson reported that when the beings placed their appendages under his arms, his entire body went numb. He was then floated into the interior of the craft — a brightly lit room with no visible light source. Inside, Hickson himself floated in mid-air while an eye-like device, also suspended and free-floating, moved around his body conducting what appeared to be a scanning examination. Hickson was unable to move during the procedure but retained the use of his eyes.

After the examination, the beings left Hickson floating and departed — presumably to examine Parker, whom Hickson believed was in a separate room. Approximately twenty minutes after the encounter began, Hickson was floated back outside and released. He found Parker on the ground nearby, weeping and praying. Moments later, the craft rose straight up and departed at high speed.

The immediate aftermath of the event established the evidentiary chain that would make Pascagoula a landmark case. Hickson and Parker initially considered keeping silent, expecting only ridicule. However, they felt an obligation to notify the government and telephoned Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. A sergeant directed them to contact the local sheriff. Uncertain of the reception their story would receive from law enforcement, they first drove to the local newspaper office, but found it closed. With no other option, they reported to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff Fred Diamond and Captain Glen Ryder conducted a formal interview at approximately 11:00 p.m. — barely three hours after the event. This represented one of the fastest official recordings of witness testimony in any major UFO encounter. Crucially, after the formal interview, Diamond placed both men in a room that had been secretly wired for audio recording. The sheriff’s intent was clear: if the two men were perpetrating a hoax, they would likely drop the act and discuss their fabrication when they believed themselves to be alone. They did not. The secret recording captured both men in continued distress, maintaining their account, with Hickson’s voice carrying the weight of genuine trauma.

The story reached the local press, was picked up by the wire services, and within days became national news. The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) dispatched University of California engineering professor James Harder to investigate. J. Allen Hynek arrived independently, representing the Air Force’s interest in the case. Together they interviewed the witnesses. Harder attempted to hypnotize Hickson to recover additional details, but the session had to be terminated when Hickson became too frightened to continue — a reaction consistent with genuine trauma rather than rehearsed testimony.

Both Hickson and Parker subsequently passed lie detector examinations. Hynek and Harder, both men of significant professional standing, found the witnesses credible. Hynek was later quoted publicly as stating that there was “definitely something here that was not terrestrial.”

In what may represent a related event, approximately two weeks after the abduction, Coast Guardsmen and fishermen in the Pascagoula River encountered an underwater metallic object with an amber light. The object was pursued for roughly 40 minutes. Each time it was prodded with a boat hook, it extinguished its light, moved to a different position, and re-illuminated. The object eventually disappeared.

The broader context of the October 1973 wave adds additional weight to the Pascagoula account. The day before the abduction, on October 10, 1973, fifteen witnesses including two police officers reported a large silver UFO slowly flying over a housing project in St. Tammany Parish, New Orleans, Louisiana. Multiple additional sightings of unusual aerial objects were reported across the Gulf Coast region on the night of October 11 itself. The Pascagoula event did not occur in isolation — it emerged from a documented regional wave of UAP activity.

Calvin Parker initially withdrew from public life after the event but returned decades later to share additional details, including memories of the examination and the beings’ behavior that he had not disclosed in 1973. Charles Hickson maintained his account until his death in 2011, never altering the core details of his testimony. Parker published his own account, Pascagoula — The Closest Encounter, in 2018, providing additional context and previously unreported details about the aftermath of the incident and its long-term impact on both men’s lives.

Researcher’s Notes

The Pascagoula Abduction — Mississippi 1973 and the Gold Standard of CE-IV Documentation

Classification Integrity — CE-IV Confirmed: The Pascagoula case is properly classified as CE-IV (Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind) — abduction or direct physical contact with non-human entities. Both witnesses were physically seized, transported into the interior of the craft, and subjected to examination procedures before being released. The presence of the entities, the physical numbness upon contact, the interior examination, and the involuntary nature of the event all satisfy the criteria for CE-IV classification under the extended Hynek taxonomy. This is not a borderline case — it is a textbook CE-IV event supported by immediate law enforcement documentation.
Source Chain Assessment — Exceptional Provenance: The evidentiary architecture of the Pascagoula case is among the strongest in the abduction literature. The documentation chain includes: a law enforcement interview conducted within three hours of the event; secretly recorded audio of the witnesses in an unmonitored room; independent investigation by J. Allen Hynek (Air Force consultant) and James Harder (APRO/UC Berkeley); polygraph examinations passed by both witnesses; contemporaneous media coverage by local press and national wire services; and subsequent publication of detailed accounts by both witnesses. The secret recording is particularly significant — it was designed as a hoax-detection tool, and its failure to reveal any inconsistency constitutes powerful negative evidence against fabrication. The dual-investigator structure (military-affiliated Hynek and civilian APRO) provides independent corroboration of witness credibility that no single-source investigation could achieve.
Entity Morphology — The Carrot-Eared Type: The Pascagoula entities occupy a unique position in the entity classification literature. Their description — wrinkled grey skin, bullet-shaped heads, no visible eyes, claw-like hands, conical ear/nose protrusions, and floating locomotion — does not correspond to the standard Grey archetype, the Nordic type, or any of the more commonly reported entity categories. The absence of visible eyes is particularly unusual and eliminates most conventional anthropomorphic templates. The floating locomotion and claw-like manipulators suggest a physiology radically different from terrestrial bipedal models. The entity type has been reported in very few other cases worldwide, making Pascagoula a primary source document for this morphological category. The description has remained consistent across more than four decades of witness testimony, with Parker’s 2018 account adding detail but not altering the core morphological profile established in 1973.
Pattern Context — The October 1973 Wave: The Pascagoula abduction did not occur in a vacuum. October 1973 represents one of the most intense periods of UFO activity in American history, with sightings reported across dozens of states and multiple countries. The Gulf Coast corridor — from New Orleans through Pascagoula and along the Alabama-Florida coast — was particularly active. The St. Tammany Parish sighting of October 10 (fifteen witnesses, two police officers) occurred less than 24 hours before the Hickson-Parker event and within 90 miles of Pascagoula. The underwater amber-light object pursued in the Pascagoula River two weeks later extends the geographic and temporal footprint of anomalous activity in the immediate area. This wave context does not prove or disprove the abduction claim, but it does establish that the region was experiencing a documented concentration of aerial and aquatic anomalies during the period in question — a pattern that supports the plausibility of the witnesses’ account as part of a larger phenomenon rather than an isolated fabrication.

The Pascagoula Incident of October 11, 1973, remains the most thoroughly documented CE-IV case in the Mississippi record and one of the most significant abduction events in the global UAP archive. Two men with no prior interest in UFOs were seized by entities of a type rarely reported elsewhere, examined aboard a craft, and released — then reported immediately to law enforcement, were secretly recorded maintaining their account under the assumption of privacy, passed polygraph examinations, and were independently found credible by two of the most qualified investigators in the field. J. Allen Hynek’s assessment — that something “not terrestrial” was involved — stands as one of the most direct institutional endorsements of a CE-IV event ever made. The witnesses held to their testimony for decades. The record is as clean as any abduction case in the literature, and the case file remains unexplained.

Media

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)