Anniversary of 1973 Pascagoula Alien Abduction

Forty three years ago today, two men reported an alien abduction in Pascagoula that sparked national interest.
News 25’s Gina Tomlinson sat down with the Jackson County deputy who answered the call and shares a story from out of this world.
“We were just picked up by a UFO.” These are the frantic words former Jackson County Deputy Glenn Ryder heard when he answered a phone call on this day, October 11th, 1973. At first, he laughed at 42-year-old Charles Hickson’s claim of being abducted by aliens, but then he heard 19-year-old Calvin Parker’s cries on the other line. “That boy was cold sober. He was scared to death. He was terrified.”
According to reports, Hickson and Parker were fishing on what is now a signet shipyard on the Pascagoula River when it happened. Ryder says the two men were on the side of the river when they heard a zipping sound, turned around and saw a glowing light hovering, coming toward them. “Couldn’t move and the boy couldn’t either. Said three of them come out of the space craft and come down there and picked them up and took ‘em back into the space craft,” said Ryder.
When Hickson and Parker were interviewed by Jackson County sheriff deputies, Ryder says he stuck a secret tape recorder in a drawer and left the two men alone. “Figured they laugh and say ‘boy, we got them fooled’ and all that, but they didn’t. That boy was crying and he was climbing the wall, he was upset.”
Former deputies tell News 25 they remember when the alleged abduction made national headlines. Ryder says the Pascagoula men passed lie detectors about the incident, had drawings made of what they saw and were interviewed by UFO enthusiasts and scientists. “Scientists kinda say that they come down here, wasn’t people. They were robots,” said Ryder.
While Hickson wrote a book on the sighting and went on to tell and standby his story until his death five years ago, Ryder says Parker didn’t like the spotlight and eventually moved out of state.
Fact or fiction, Ryder says we can never be too sure, but when he tried to pull the recording of the interview years ago, he says it went missing. “They disappeared. I don’t know what happened to ‘em. I guess they come back and got them, they don’t want me to have them.”