Hickson, Charles

Charles Hickson (1923–2011) is best known as one of the two men — along with his coworker Calvin Parker — at the center of the Pascagoula incident, one of the most widely cited alien abduction cases in American UFO history.

The 1973 encounter: On the night of October 11, 1973, Hickson and 19-year-old Calvin Parker went fishing on the west bank of the Pascagoula River, and as dusk fell they heard a whirring sound and saw flashes of blue light on the water before seeing an oval-shaped object roughly 30-40 feet across and 8-10 feet high. (Sources disagree on both men's ages at the time — one source gives Hickson as 42 and Parker as 19, while Wikipedia gives Hickson as 45 and Parker as 17).

Three creatures reportedly emerged from the craft and took the men aboard, where they were paralyzed but conscious while undergoing what they described as a medical examination performed by a giant robotic eye, before being released as the craft sped off. They reported the incident to Keesler Air Force Base and the Jackson County Sheriff's Department.

The secret recording: A key piece of evidence in the case: officers left Hickson and Parker alone in a room and secretly recorded their conversation hoping to catch inconsistencies, but their stories remained consistent with their original testimony. On the tape, Hickson tells Parker "It scared me to death too, son. You can't get over it in a lifetime," and the sheriff's investigator Ryder later said he knew "you don't fake fear, and they were fearful."

Investigation and media attention: The story broke in the Mississippi Press on October 12, then was picked up by AP and UPI wire services and covered nationwide. The men were examined at Keesler AFB and cleared of radiation exposure. Ufologist James Harder and J. Allen Hynek separately interviewed both men under hypnosis. Note the important epistemic distinction here for Exopaedia's purposes — the original waking account (to police, secretly recorded) versus the later hypnotically elicited material from Harder and Hynek's sessions are separate evidentiary layers.

Aftermath and career as a contactee figure: Hickson went on to appear on talk shows, give lectures and interviews, and self-published a book in 1983 titled "UFO Contact at Pascagoula." He reported three further encounters in 1974 and said the aliens communicated peaceful intentions to him. Additional Hickson-authored sources include an oral history recorded as part of the Mississippi Oral History Program at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Hickson died of a heart attack in September 2011 at age 80. Calvin Parker released his own book in 2018, "Pascagoula: The Closest Encounter, My Story," and a historical marker was unveiled at the site in June 2019, which Parker attended along with Hickson's family. Parker died of kidney cancer in August 2023 at age 68.