Pascagoula Abduction: The Closest Encounter

12/18/2024

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
It was some time after 7 PM on October 11, 1973, when two men were fishing on a pier on the Pascagoula River at an abandoned shipyard. One was Charles Hickson, 42, and the other was his co-worker Calvin Parker, 19. They heard something that sounded like a whizzing noise, and then they were engulfed in a blue, blinding light. What followed next was a classic, extraterrestrial abduction experience.

Calvin Parker's book published in 2018 about the experience Pascagoula - The Closest Encounter: My Story

Hickson died in 2011, and Parker in 2023, however he did write a book about his experiences in 2018. Hickson went on to appear on talk shows, and self-published a book in 1983 titled UFO Contact at Pascagoula.

He claimed that in 1974, he had other close encounters with aliens that imparted to him that they were "peaceful".

In his book Parker described where three, legless figures approached them as if they were floating. The bulky figures had grayish, wrinkled skin and lobster-like claws for hands. The creatures immobilized them, and then levitated them into a waiting spacecraft that was large, oval shaped and about eight feet tall.

He said:

There was an examination room, what I call it, and the ole big ugly creature that brought me in, he took me and laid me on the examination table and he just backed up out of the way. I couldn’t move or anything. All I could do was look. A device about the size of a deck of cards then came down from the ceiling. It hovered about a foot in front of my eyes and then it went to the right side of my head and it clicked, went behind my head and it clicked went to the left side of my head and clicked and then straight to the front and then it shot back into the ceiling.

A more feminine creature who had regular fingers, came over and pinched me on the side of the cheek and then she took her finger and ran it down my throat and got it behind that thing that hangs down back there and tried to come up in my nasal cavity and that is when it started hurting and I started choking and I got scared and she just kind of telepathically told me ‘Don’t be afraid we aren’t going to hurt you.'

Hickson at the pier where the abduction took place c.1970s

The men were released after about 15-20 minutes and the creatures levitated them, with Hickson's feet dragging along the ground, back to their original positions on the river bank.

The men contacted Keesler Air Force Base, who told them to contact the Jackson County Sheriff's Office. Captain Glenn Ryder told them to come to the station. Their story was hard to believe so a tape recorder was secretly placed in the interrogation room, and both men were left alone.

Parker was recorded saying, "I got to get home, get to bed or get some nerve pills or something, see the doctor or something. I can’t stand it. I’m about to go all to pieces."

Contrary to his initial disbelief Ryder said, "Something happened to them. You don’t fake fear. He was scared. He was scared out of his mind."

Both men passed lie detector and sobriety tests.

The media descended on the town and it became a circus. Hundreds of people started looking for UFOs, their cars jamming the area. Within six months everything died down, however both men were shunned by locals.

Parker moved away from the area in pursuit of a normal life, and returned to the coast around 2009. He never told his family about what happened to him, and they found out about it from outside sources.

On June 22, 2019, a historical marker was unveiled at the site of the alleged abduction, funded by the historical society and with placement approved by the city.

Skeptical investigator Joe Nickell speculated that Hickson may have fantasized the alien encounter during a hypnagogic "waking dream state", and suggested that Parker's corroboration of the tale was likely due to suggestibility, because he initially told police he had "passed out at the beginning of the incident and failed to regain consciousness until it was over".

Maria under hypnosis, recalling the UFO abduction (Source-Philip Mantle/ Flying Disc Press)

However it turns out there was more than one abduction in the same area that day.

Maria Blair said she saw the UFO land on the pier, before Hickson and Parker were taken. She saw the weird gray men come out from the water on the opposite side from where she stood with her husband, Jerry. This was all she remembered for 45 years until her husband made a death-bed confession about their own abduction.

Ufologists, Dr. Irena Scott and Philip Mantle traced Maria after her daughter Tracee left a message on a Fox 10 News YouTube interview with Calvin in 2019.

Maria and Jerry Blair were sitting in their vehicle overlooking the river when they saw a blue light in the sky, which lasted for over 30 minutes. Finally they exited their vehicle and walked down the pier.

Maria saw a "gray man" come out of the water, however Jerry didn't and they kept walking down the pier. She did not think anything of the sighting, until the next day when the news carried the story of the abduction of Parker and Hickson. It was then she realized their sighting had been from the other side of the river.

Like Parker, Maria never told anyone about the encounter except to her family. Jerry urged her to stay quiet, lest they be considered crazy. She kept her silence until Calvin Parker started to speak about his experience over four decades later.

Dr. Scott found during her interview, that Maria and Jerry coincided in their stories, except that Jerry was skeptical about UFOs. Maria however was emotional about what she saw exiting from the water.

Rendition of aliens based on abductees' description (Source-Philip Mantle/ Flying Disc Press)

Jerry died in 2019, however before he was placed on a ventilator he confessed to Maria they had both been abducted. He explained his silence was due to fear they would be harassed and embarrassed. Maria called Scott and Mantle, and Jerry told them over the telephone that he had seen what his wife had described. He also provided more details than his wife; he said the creatures were about 6 feet tall and gray. The beings only floated but never walked. Two of them grabbed and controlled him. He said he saw them, but was repelled at the same time. The beings floated them into their ship.

Jerry remembered both of them were forcibly examined, and that he noted one of them appeared to be a leader. Like Hickson and Parker they were floated back to the river bank. After this the craft shot straight into the sky and out of sight.

Maria Blair who was now 72 years old, was hypnotized in order to jog her memory. She described looking for Jerry, and that something had control of her. She saw something she had never seen before, and felt she had been given some type of sedative but without a needle. The aliens had complete control of her mind. She felt they were interested in her eggs and her DNA. Nothing touched her, and there was no pain.

Maria said the aliens "need a disguise. They need their children to look like humans, so they can roam the earth and look like us." Maria said the beings said their ultimate mission was to help mankind. Surprisingly Maria said she believed her husband had seen these creatures before and was protecting her from them. She added: "He knew they were going to attack me. He knew that they were going to come get me. I don’t know what he had with them, but he knew."

This was a strange statement considering the aliens messaged her they were here to help humans.

The hypnotist, who had not been told about the UFO experience beforehand, asked Maria why she was chosen, and she answered they were performing a human-alien hybrid program.

Ultimately the questions that beg to be asked, is not only whether extraterrestrials are abducting humans, but what are their true intentions towards us.