Saucers and the Sacred: The Folklore of UFO Narratives

In 1973, nineteen year old Calvin Parker and forty two year old Charles Hickson, both of Gauter, Mississippi were fishing in the Pascagoula river when they heard a buzzing noise behind them. Both turned and were terrified to see a ten-foot wide, eight-foot- high, glowing egg-shaped object with blue lights at its front hovering just above the ground about forty feet from the riverbank. As the men, frozen with fright, watched, a door appeared in the object, and three strange Beings floated just above the river toward them. The beings had legs but did not use them. They were about five feet tall, had bullet-shaped heads without necks, slits for mouths; and where their noses or ears should be, they had thin, conical objects sticking out, like carrots from a snowman’s head. They had no eyes, gray, wrinkled skin, round feet, and claw-like hands. Two of the Beings seized Hickson; when the third grabbed Parker, the teenager fainted with fright. Hickson claimed that when the Beings placed their hands under his arms, his body became numb, and that then they floated him into a brightly lit room in the UFO’s interior, where he was subjected to a medical examination with an eyelike device which, like Hickson himself, was floating in midair. At the end of the examination, the Beings simply left Hickson floating, paralyzed but for his eyes, and went to examine Parker, who, Hickson believed, was in another room. Twenty minutes after Hickson had first observed the UFO, he was floated back outside and released. He found Parker weeping and praying on the ground near him. Moments later, the object rose straight up and shot out of sight