Pascagoula, 11 October 1973: Two Fishermen and the Tape Left Running

Thursday, 11 October 1973. Charles Hickson, 42, and Calvin Parker, 19, both shipyard workers, were fishing off an old pier on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. That night they walked into the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office with a story they said nobody would believe: a blue light, a humming oblong craft hovering just above the bank, and three pale figures with pincer-like hands that floated them aboard.

The tape

Sheriff Fred Diamond and Captain Glen Ryder interviewed the men at about eleven that night. Hickson said he had first tried Keesler Air Force Base and been told to call the sheriff, and he admitted he had taken a drink to settle his nerves before phoning. Then the officers left the room and kept the recorder running.

Alone, the two men didn’t drop the story. Parker said his arms had locked up “like I stepped on a rattlesnake,” that he needed a doctor, and he ended up praying. Hickson kept saying nobody would believe them. The transcript, as later published and reproduced by NICAP, is the part of this case that has held up best. It’s very hard to read as two men rehearsing a hoax.

The gaps

The tape shows that the men were frightened. It doesn’t show what frightened them. Skeptic Philip J. Klass pointed out that Hickson’s widely reported polygraph pass came from a young examiner who wasn’t fully certified, and that an offer from an experienced police examiner was turned down. He also argued that the spot could be seen from toll booths and a drawbridge, and was near shipyard security cameras, and that nobody there reported anything. We haven’t found those attendants’ own statements, so we mark that point unverified. Parker’s later accounts, decades on, added detail that isn’t in the 1973 tape, and we keep those separate.

Ledger status

Marked disputed. The contemporaneous record is real and unusually early, but the event rests on two witnesses with no physical evidence. No map pin: the riverfront is private and industrial, and no visitor site exists.

Sources

• Sheriff’s office interview of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, 11 Oct 1973, transcript as reproduced by NICAP. nicap.org
• Philip J. Klass, critique of the Pascagoula polygraph and case (archived scan). debunker.com
• “‘UFO Reports Swamp Mississippi’: Media Coverage of the 1973 Pascagoula Alien Abduction,” University of Southern Mississippi honors thesis. aquila.usm.edu
• “A fresh look at Pascagoula’s 1973 UFO alien abduction,” Biloxi Sun Herald, 2018. sunherald.com
• “Calvin Parker tells his story of Pascagoula’s famous UFO incident 40 years later,” gulflive.com / Mississippi Press, Oct 2013. gulflive.com

Part of the October Ledger. Original text; quotations are short excerpts from the 1973 transcript. No images are used.