Calvin Parker
Calvin Parker Jr. was eighteen years old, newly arrived in Pascagoula and planning to earn money at a local shipyard before returning home to marry, when on the night of 11 October 1973 he was fishing with his foreman Charles Hickson from the Shaupeter Shipyard pier. The encounter that followed reshaped the rest of his life, though not in the way it reshaped Hickson's. Where Hickson sought public attention, Parker fled it. He changed jobs and relocated whenever people discovered who he was. He did not speak publicly about the encounter for forty-five years. In 2018 he published Pascagoula: The Closest Encounter: My Story (Flying Disk Press), and in 2019 a second book that identified Maria Blair of Theodore, Alabama, and an independent eyewitness on the opposite bank of the Pascagoula River. He died of kidney cancer at his home in Moss Point, Mississippi, on 24 August 2023.
A Life
Calvin Parker Jr. was born on 2 November 1954. He had just arrived in Pascagoula, Mississippi, from a smaller town, planning to earn money at a local shipyard before returning home to marry. Charles Hickson, a Korean War veteran and foreman at the yard, was his supervisor. Parker was eighteen or nineteen years old on the night of 11 October 1973.
The encounter reshaped the rest of his life, though not in the way it reshaped Hickson's. Where Hickson sought public attention, Parker fled from it. He changed jobs and relocated whenever people discovered who he was. "I never really had a steady job," he told WLOX in 2018. "I'd move when people found out where I worked." He did not speak publicly about the encounter for forty-five years. In 2018, after attending a funeral where mourners recognised his name from the sign-in registry and shifted their attention from the deceased, his wife Waynette told him on the drive home that he should write a book.
Everybody's got an expiration date, and mine's getting close. I just wanted to get the truth there before I expired.Calvin Parker, WLOX interview, 2018, on his decision to publish after forty-five years of silence.
He published Pascagoula: The Closest Encounter: My Story (Flying Disk Press, 2018) and Pascagoula: The Story Continues: New Evidence and New Witnesses (2019). He died of kidney cancer on 24 August 2023 at his home in Moss Point, Mississippi, aged 68, surrounded by his wife and family. A private service was held at Guardian Angels Funeral Home in Pascagoula.
On UAP
The encounter of 11 October 1973 on the Pascagoula River is documented in the Charles Hickson biography in this archive. Parker's account, as he finally told it in 2018, differed from the version he had given investigators in 1973 in one critical respect: he had not fainted. "That was the only lie he told," The Washington Post reported in 2019. Parker had told the media and investigators in 1973 that he had passed out and remembered nothing, a claim he maintained for four and a half decades. In his 2018 book and subsequent interviews he described being conscious throughout: feeling a creature seize his arm, experiencing numbness ("I think they injected us with something to calm us down. I was kind of numb and went along with the program"), and being returned to the riverbank. He said he bathed in bleach after returning home, fearing infection.
The secretly recorded conversation at the Jackson County Sheriff's Office on 11 October 1973, in which Parker and Hickson were left alone in a wired room, captured Parker's unmediated distress. "I just want to cry right now," he said. "What's so damn bad about it is nobody's going to believe us." He told Hickson: "Don't talk to the deputies. They'll come back and get us." Captain Glenn Ryder, who ordered the recording, later said of Parker: "He was genuinely scared."
Parker's second book (2019) documented witnesses who came forward for the first time. Maria Blair of Theodore, Alabama, had been near the river that same night, waiting for her husband Jerry to leave on a boat for offshore work. She saw a blue light moving over the water. "The story is very true," she told the Clarion Ledger in 2019. "That's what has bothered me for 45 years. It's been on my mind for 45 years." Parker also identified an independent eyewitness on the opposite bank of the river whose account appeared in the book.
Parker maintained a relationship with Hickson until Hickson's death in 2011. Before Hickson died, Parker occasionally paid his electric bill.
Career Record
- 1954, Born 2 November.
- 1973, Working at a shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, under foreman Charles Hickson.
- 11 October 1973, Encounter on the Pascagoula River. Reported to Jackson County Sheriff's Office. Secretly recorded conversation with Hickson.
- 1973 to 2018, Maintained low public profile. Changed jobs and relocated repeatedly.
- 2018, Published Pascagoula: The Closest Encounter: My Story (Flying Disk Press).
- 2019, Published Pascagoula: The Story Continues: New Evidence and New Witnesses.
- 24 August 2023, Died of kidney cancer, Moss Point, Mississippi.
Document Trail
Calvin Parker, Pascagoula: The Closest Encounter: My Story (Flying Disk Press, 2018). Parker's first full public account, containing photographs, documents, newspaper articles, and the first published transcription of his hypnosis session.
Calvin Parker, Pascagoula: The Story Continues: New Evidence and New Witnesses (2019). Includes the accounts of Maria Blair and the independent eyewitness on the opposite bank.
The secretly recorded conversation at the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, 11 October 1973, is archived as audio files at the Internet Archive. Parker's statements on the recording are the earliest primary document of his account. The Biloxi Sun Herald reported Parker's death on 2 September 2023, citing his wife Waynette as the source.
In the Archive
- Charles Hickson, foreman and co-experiencer.
- United States country profile.
- APRO Bulletin, contemporary civilian-research coverage of the case.
