Background
Hickson, then in his early forties, and Parker, about eighteen, had been fishing. Hickson told Sheriff Fred Diamond and Captain Glenn Ryder they had started below the grain elevator, caught little, and moved to a pier by the old Shaupeter shipyard on the west bank. Not long after dark they saw a blue light. It came down to a few feet above the ground, twenty-five to forty yards off, with a buzzing sound. An opening appeared. Three beings about five feet tall floated out. Hickson described pale bodies, no visible eyes, a slit for a mouth, something projecting where a nose would be, ear-like points, no neck, and pincer hands. Two of them took him by the arms. He said he floated inside, could move only his eyes, and was gone over by a device like a large eye. He put the time at twenty to thirty minutes. The craft, he said, was oblong, about eight feet tall, bright inside, with no seats. Parker, he said, had gone hysterical and passed out. When Hickson came back, Parker was on the bank, and the object lifted away with the same buzz.
They did not go straight to the sheriff. Hickson said they beat on the door at the Mississippi Press and were told no reporter would be in until morning. He also said he telephoned Keesler Air Force Base and was sent to the sheriff. He told Diamond he had drunk whiskey in the hour before the call, to settle his nerves. Ryder smelled it and told the press the men were not drunk. They reached the office around 11 p.m. The Mississippi Press carried the story on 12 October. The wire services picked it up the same day. Keesler examined the two men and reported no radiation.
Research notes
Historical research: The Hidden Tape
The part that holds the file up is the hidden tape. Diamond and Ryder left the room with the recorder still running. Hickson said he could not take much more of the questioning. Parker said his arms had frozen, that he had never passed out in his life before, and that he had watched the door open and the beings come out. He asked for a doctor and prayed when he was left alone. Ryder later said that conversation convinced him they were not inventing it for the deputies. It is a record of two frightened men agreeing on the riverbank. It is not a record of a craft.
Parker’s account that night is thinner than Hickson’s. He remembered the door, the beings coming out, and his arms locking, and he also said he passed out. He did not describe an examination of his own. Joe Nickell later treated Parker’s agreement as suggestibility for that reason. The tape shows Parker was not silent, and it also shows the interior story is Hickson’s.
J. Allen Hynek and James Harder interviewed them within a few days. The Mississippi Press of 14 October reported that the scientists thought the account was based on a real experience. That is an opinion about the witnesses, not a finding of a vehicle. A polygraph examiner later said Hickson was telling the truth as he believed it, and added that the test did not show a ship had landed or that creatures had come out of it. Parker declined the test unless Hickson asked him to take it. His lawyer said he had been in the hospital. Philip J. Klass called the case a hoax and said Hickson would not sit for an examiner Klass considered experienced. A polygraph would not settle it either way.
Hickson’s later career is a different layer. In 1974 he claimed further contact and a message he would carry to Washington. He met Erich von Däniken, appeared on national television, and in 1983 published UFO Contact at Pascagoula. None of that is on the 11 October tape. Parker stayed quiet for decades, then published Pascagoula: The Closest Encounter in 2018. People who said they had seen lights that night came forward after the book. A service-station operator, Larry Booth, did call the sheriff around 8 p.m. on 11 October about a strange light overhead. That call is the same evening. It is not a view of the pier or of three beings. A historical marker went up at the site on 22 June 2019. Hickson had died of a heart attack in September 2011, at 80. Parker died of kidney cancer on 24 August 2023, at 68.