
Parker later passed a lie detector test himself. In his book “UFOs Explained,” he noted Hickson changed some details of his story and claimed a polygraph operator whose test Hickson passed wasn’t up to the task. UFO skeptic Philip Klass believed Hickson and Parker’s report was a hoax. Mayor Tom Stennis voted against the ordinance, joking he didn’t want to discourage tourism. Roughly 1,000 cars converged on the spot, where nothing happened.Īn Ocean Springs alderman proposed an ordinance making it illegal to operate a UFO at more than twice the speed of light on U.S.
New alien news 2015 driver#
A Long Beach, Miss., taxi driver told police a being with pincers tapped on his window, a story he admitted days later was fake.Ī Mobile, Ala., television station said it would record a UFO appearance predicted by a psychic between Mobile and nearby Pascagoula.

In south Mississippi, hundreds of reports overwhelmed authorities in the two weeks after the Hickson-Parker encounter. The widespread attention to the Pascagoula encounter set off a new round of reports.
New alien news 2015 series#
In the 1960s, interest flared anew with a series of reports, including the purported alien abduction of New Hampshire couple Betty and Barney Hill in 1961.

Widespread interest in UFOs began in the 1940s with an incident at Roswell N.M., in which UFO enthusiasts believe the government got its hands on a crashed UFO and alien bodies. Overnight, Pascagoula became a magnet for news reporters and UFO investigators. The next afternoon, the story was splashed across the front pages of newspapers in Pascagoula and Gulfport. “I wasn’t there with them, but I know you don’t fake fear, and they were fearful. “I don’t know what happened to them,” Ryder said. On the tape, Hickson tells Parker, “It scared me to death too, son. “Me and the other investigator got up and left to let them talk, to see if they were going to say, ‘Well, we got them fooled,’ but they didn’t,” Ryder said. Parker and Hickson stuck to their story.Īfter the formal interview, deputies left Hickson and Parker together in a room with a hidden tape recorder, hoping to catch them in a lie. Glenn Ryder, who still works for the sheriff’s office, said he laughed at the report, but met with the men. Hickson needed three shots of liquor from a bottle in his car to calm his nerves before deciding to report what happened.Īt the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, deputies initially suspected both men were drunk. The UFO was gone and Parker said they tried to collect themselves. “They gave a thorough, I mean a thorough, examination to me just like any doctor would,” he said.Īnd then they were back on the shore, where it all began.

Parker says he was conscious but paralyzed. Parker, now 58, was 18 when he went fishing with Hickson on a tranquil Thursday night after work. Skeptics ranged from the deputies who first interviewed the men to an author who sought to poke holes in the story, and Parker himself has had conflicting thoughts about whether he was visited by aliens or demons. The incident made headlines, sparked a wave of UFO sightings nationwide and became one of the most widely examined cases on record.

He tried to dodge the spotlight for decades, moving frequently before returning to Mississippi’s Gulf Coast in recent years. Parker was unnerved by initial crush of unwelcome attention, with newsmen and UFO enthusiasts overrunning Walker Shipyard, where he and Hickson worked. “This is something I really didn’t want to happen,” Parker told The Associated Press as the 40th anniversary of the encounter approached. Until his death in 2011, Hickson told his story to anyone who would listen.īut Calvin Parker Jr., the other man present for one of the most high-profile UFO cases in American history, has never come to terms with what he still says was a visit with gray, crab-clawed creatures from somewhere else. PASCAGOULA, Miss.-Charles Hickson never regretted the notoriety that came his way after he told authorities he encountered an unidentified flying object and its occupants 40 years ago on the banks of the Pascagoula River.
