2 men said they were abducted by aliens while fishing. 50 years later, the mystery lives on

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (WLOX/Gray News) - The story of two men who said they were abducted by aliens while fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi is now a 50-year-old legend, WLOX reported.

Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker have since died, with Parker dying just two months ago, but their story of allegedly being abducted by aliens on Oct. 11, 1973, lives on.

Back in 1973, Hickson and Parker told the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department that they were fishing off the bank of the Pascagoula River when they heard “whizzing” sounds, and saw two flashing blue lights and an oval-shaped object.

Parker and Hickson say they were “conscious, but paralyzed” while three creatures took them aboard and examined them. Authorities also received “dozens” of phone calls that night about people claiming to have seen something unusual in the sky.

Exactly what happened on the Pascagoula River that night is still being debated around town.

Pascagoula resident Dwight Watkins is skeptical.

“Do I believe they’re just coming and picking up random people in the middle of the night? No, not really,” he said.

Pascagoula resident Rebecca Davis said that while she wasn’t there, she knows that “something happened.”

As a child, Davis first heard about the alleged alien abduction.

“I just remember my friend’s dad putting aluminum foil in the windows and that intrigued me,” Davis said. “I asked him why he was doing it and he said so the aliens can’t get to our brains.”

Davis remembers asking her grandparents about the alien abduction.

“I was told, ‘Hush child, we don’t talk about that,’” she said.

Davis says her grandmother didn’t talk about it until many years later when she was cleaning out her grandmother’s house and found old newspaper clippings about the alleged abduction.

”It piques your curiosity. You want to know, is it true or is there really something out there?” Jackson County resident Grant Fair said.

Parker stayed silent about the alleged alien abduction for years. He did not publicly talk about it until 2018 when he released a book. “The Closest Encounter.”

“We got abducted, took aboard. We got examination and then we got put back out,” he said in his book.

Davis encouraged Parker to write another book and over the next five years, he told his story to whoever would listen.

“He didn’t have a lack for not talking. The man could talk,” Davis said. “I think he hungered for that human acceptance.”

A historical marker now overlooks the site of the alleged abduction. Davis led the way for the placement of the landmark with the help of Main Street Pascagoula. She also organized the start of what’s now an annual community celebration of the story every October.

“The community embraced him, and he needed that,” Davis said. “He needed some closure to a part of his life that he left.”

Parker and Hickson first told their story at the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, and their accounts were recorded. From the time of those recordings in 1973 until their deaths, the story stayed the same.

”I just don’t know how you can make up things that are in these books and the detail they’re in,” Davis said. “That would take way more than some imagination.”

Hickson and Parker may not be around anymore to tell their story, but that doesn’t mean the conversation will stop.

”I don’t think his story will ever die,” Davis said.

The incident on the Pascagoula River 50 years ago will always be a mystery, but the legend is a convincing one for Davis and others who choose to believe.