A living Coast legend relives his story of aliens and UFOs. An 11-year-old has questions.

The tale Calvin Parker was telling seemed better suited to a campfire than a lecture at a public library.

It began with a classic scary-story setup: in 1973, Parker was 18 years old and somewhere he was not supposed to be. He and his friend, Charlie Hickson, were fishing on private property on the Pascagoula River when they saw blue lights behind them, and Parker assumed it was the law.

“I was thinking, we’re fixing to go to jail, we’re trespassing, we’re on private property. So I turned around and looked — and all of a sudden, a bright light hit us.”

Parker then realized it wasn’t the police, he said, but three “robotic-looking creatures” gliding across the water toward the two men. “And they were ugly. I know they had gray skin like an elephant, stood about five foot tall. I know they was robots ‘cause the way they moved.”

Chances are, you probably know what happens next.

And it’s very possible you even believe the story: that Parker and Hickson (who died in 2011) were abducted by the unidentified creatures, taken to a spaceship, examined, and released to a lifetime of notoriety for the alleged events of October 11, 1973. Parker believes 90% of the Mississippi Coast has heard the story, and he says only one person has ever told him to his face they didn’t believe him.

But he told the tale again to an intimate crowd at the March 14 talk at the Lucedale-George County Public Library.

Questioners in the audience on a recent evening in Lucedale prodded him to recount details they already knew, or half-remembered from old TV specials or Parker’s two books.

An unexpected question came from the youngest person in attendance — 11-year-old Bailey Williams — who stood up to ask, “I was wondering, what did the ship look like on the floors and ceilings?”

“I wish I’d brought my sketch pad,” Parker answered, “but it was kind of like a football on the outside. It wasn’t like your typical UFO.” He added there were portholes visible on the sides.

After the talk, having selected a thick stack of mystery books to borrow from the library, Bailey explained that her question about the spaceship’s exterior stemmed from curiosity. “I was wondering if they maybe had designs on the floors that contributed to their type of people or something like that, you know, a culture thing.”

Bailey planned to write up the event for a newspaper she writes and distributes to neighbors for 15 cents per copy.

Bailey originally found out about Parker’s story through an old Sun Herald article about the abduction which she found while “rummaging through our barn.” The clipping is now taped to her wall.

She said the story sparked her interest because it took place “whenever my Juju was a kid”—gesturing at her grandmother, whom she had dragged to the event.

Her grandmother, Judy Williams, was 10 years old in 1973 and living in Arkansas. When Judy moved to Hurley as a teenager, she started hearing about the Pascagoula alien abduction and believed the story from the start.

“I’ve seen things in the sky before that I couldn’t explain,” she said.

“Twice,” Bailey interjected. “I’m actually kind of upset that she got to see it.”

A living icon of modern Gulf Coast folklore

Parker is a gruff 67 year old with a thick Mississippi drawl. And he’s tired.

“I’m tired of books. I’m tired of making appearances,” he told the 19 attendees at the event.

He was also tired because earlier the same day, he had completed a chemotherapy regimen for lung cancer, and left the hospital to find his car battery stolen. Parker suspects his many health problems—which have also included a stroke, kidney cancer, two open heart surgeries—are somehow connected to his abduction.

Parker lives with his wife in Escatawpa, and can get from his house to the site of his abduction in 25 minutes by boat. He settled in Jackson County after a career in the oil industry, including stints working overseas in Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

For some in the audience, the event represented a chance to meet a living icon of modern Gulf Coast folklore or a figure remembered from childhood. Librarians had set out an array of alien-related books from the collection on a table next to the podium.

Chuck Norton, a 73-year-old retired machinist living in Rocky Creek, remembered seeing Parker and Hickson on the Tonight Show in the 1970s, and has never lost his interest in UFOs since then. During the talk, he got a chance to ask questions long burning in his mind, like whether Parker had smelled or tasted anything onboard the ship (answer: nothing could overpower the fish smell from the nearby pogy plant), and if the fingers of the feminine creature who felt around his throat during the examination were warm or cold (they were warm).

Cathy Davis, a retired elementary school teacher, grew up in Lucedale and remembered hearing about the incident when she was 8. “It was in the paper and I remember I saw the paper and I would hear my daddy talking to my mother about it, just kind of puzzled,” she said after the talk ended.

Decades later, Davis read one of Parker’s books and found it “very convincing, because I didn’t feel like he was trying to hide anything.”

She says her views are common in Lucedale.

“I think the general consensus is: Hmmm. I remember when that happened. We believe something happened. Something, you know, not of this world.”

This story was originally published March 23, 2022 at 12:17 PM.