At approximately 9:00 PM on October 11, 1973, forty-two-year-old shipyard foreman Charles Hickson and nineteen-year-old Calvin Parker were fishing from an old pier on the west bank of the Pascagoula River in Pascagoula, Mississippi. They heard a zipping sound and saw a brilliant object with two blue flashing lights approach from the southwest, hover ten feet above the ground nearby, and emit a buzzing hum. Three figures floated out of the object toward them — pale, roughly humanoid beings, around five feet tall, with wrinkled skin, claw-like hands, small pointed ears, and what appeared to be a single slit eye or no visible eyes at all.
Both men were paralyzed. The creatures took Hickson and Parker into the craft, where Hickson was examined by a mechanical eye-like device that floated around his body. After what felt like twenty minutes, the men were returned to the riverbank and the craft departed. Parker was so traumatized he collapsed on the pier; Hickson reported being barely able to stand.
The two men initially considered remaining silent, but ultimately drove to the Jackson County Sheriff's Department and reported the event. Sheriff Fred Diamond placed them in a room with a hidden recording device, expecting to catch them changing their story when alone. Instead, the two men spoke to each other in genuine distress, reinforcing their account. The tape became a key piece of evidence supporting their sincerity.
J. Allen Hynek of Project Blue Book and Dr. James Harder of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization interviewed both men and considered them entirely credible. Parker rarely spoke publicly about the event until 2018, when he published his own book. Hickson wrote about it throughout his life. Declassified letters from additional witnesses who had seen a craft over the Pascagoula River the same night emerged decades later. The Hickson-Parker abduction remains one of the most widely corroborated and psychologically documented abduction cases on record.