The Pascagoula abduction

Two shipyard workers, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, said they were taken aboard a craft while fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi on 11 October 1973.

A historical marker put up in 2019 by the Jackson County Historical and Genealogical Society and the City of Pascagoula gives their account. Hickson and Parker were fishing from the East Pascagoula River's west bank at dusk when a buzzing noise made them turn, and they saw a craft shaped like a football hovering there. Three creatures came out and carried them inside. Parker passed out and Hickson was paralysed. Hickson said a robotic eye looked him over, then both men were set back on the bank and the craft sped off.

The Mississippi Press reported their story the next day, Wikipedia records. Parker told the Associated Press in 2013 that he still held to what happened, a meeting with gray creatures with claws like a crab's, and that the night had upended his life.

When the city honoured the two men with a small plaque by the river in 2019, NPR noted that the story had its skeptics. Hickson had died by then, and Parker and his family attended the unveiling. Gray Media's KKTV reported in 2023 that Parker had died two months earlier.