On This Day: 47 years pass since Pascagoula Alien Abduction

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (WLOX) - On this day nearly 50 years ago, two Jackson County men went on a fishing trip that would forever change their lives.

On Oct. 11, 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker decided to go fishing on the Pascagoula River. Both men said they heard a piercing sound and saw a large UFO hovering above them.

Gautier Man Shares Story of 1973 Alien Abduction

A piercing sound made Hickson and Parker stop what they were doing. That’s when Hickson says he spotted a large UFO hovering behind them.

“It was some type of craft, it was 30 or 40 feet. There were three things they weren’t human beings. I know now they were robots," Hickson told WLOX News in a 2000 interview.

Hickson said the aliens held them for about 30 minutes and examined them with strange, oblong instruments, later releasing them unharmed.

After the mysterious abduction, Hickson and Parker both passed lie detector tests and were even questioned under hypnosis. Investigators are on record saying the pair’s story never wavered.

Both men went on to write books about their experiences that night.

Miss. Man Writes Book About His 1970s Alien Abduction

Hickson died in 2011 when he was 80 years old. He missed seeing the historical marker placed at Lighthouse Park to commemorate his and Parker’s story as well as meeting Maria Blair.

More than 45 years after the original encounter, Blair came forward to say she witnessed the abduction on that fateful night.

“I was watching two men being abducted by a UFO,” she previously told WLOX.

No matter whether you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials or not, there is no doubt that this story has now become part of South Mississippi history.

Copyright 2020 WLOX. All rights reserved.