On the evening of October 11th, 1973, 42-year-old Charles Hickson and 18-year-old Calvin Parker — co-workers at a local shipyard — were fishing off a pier on the west bank of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi.
They heard a whirring/whizzing sound, saw two flashing blue lights, and reported that an oval-shaped “craft”, about thirty feet long, eight or ten feet high suddenly appeared near them. The ship seemed to levitate about 2 feet above the ground. A door opened on the ship, they said, and three creatures emerged and seized the men, floating or levitating them into the craft. Both men reported being paralyzed and numb. Parker claimed that he had fainted due to fright. They described the creatures as being roughly humanoid in shape and standing about five feet tall.
The creatures’ skin was pale grey in color and wrinkled, and they had no eyes that the men could discern, and slits for mouths. Their heads also appeared connected directly to their shoulders, with no discernible neck. There were three “carrot-like” growths instead – one where the nose would be on a human, the other two where ears would normally be. The beings had lobster-like claws at the ends of their arms, and they seemed to have only one leg (Hickson later described the creatures’ lower bodies looking as if their legs were fused) ending in elephant-like feet. Hickson also reported that the creatures moved in mechanical, robotic ways.
On the ship, Hickson claimed that he was somehow levitated or hovered a few feet above the floor of the craft and was examined by what looked like a large football-shaped mechanical eye, about 6 to 8 inches in diameter, that seemed to scan his body.
Parker claimed that he could not recall what had happened to him inside the craft, although later, during sessions of hypnotic regression, he offered some hazy details.
The men were released after about 15-20 minutes and the creatures levitated them, with Hickson’s feet dragging along the ground, back to their original positions on the river bank. Both men said they were terrified by what had happened. They claimed to have sat in a car for about 45 minutes, trying to calm themselves. Hickson drank a small amount of whiskey.