Calvin Parker, who claimed he was abducted by aliens in 1973, dead at 68

PASCAGOULA, Miss. — Calvin Parker, a Mississippi man who claimed he was abducted by aliens in 1973, has died. He was 68.

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Parker died on Aug. 24 at his home in Moss Point after a long battle with kidney cancer, WLOX-TV reported. A private memorial service was held Saturday at the Guardian Angels Funeral Home in Pascagoula, according to the Sun Herald newspaper of Biloxi.

On the night of Oct. 11, 1973, near Pascagoula, Parker, then 19, said he and co-worker Charles Hickson were fishing from a pier on the Pascagoula River when he saw blue light reflecting off the water, the Clarion Ledger reported.

“I was thinking, we’re fixing to go to jail, we’re trespassing, we’re on private property,” Parker told the Sun Herald in 2021. “So I turned around and looked -- and all of a sudden, a bright light hit us.”

Parker said the UFO was approximately 80 feet long, according to the Clarion Ledger reported. Parker said the two were lifted into the craft by three aliens with hands like crab claws, examined by an item that looked like a large eye and then returned to the riverbank after about 10 minutes, WLOX and the Clarion Ledger reported.

The story made national news after the pair contacted law enforcement officials, and the city of Pascagoula erected a memorial plaque in 2019 that describes the account, adding that it is one of the best-documented cases of an alien abduction, according to the Sun Herald.

“It completely changed my life,” Parker told the Clarion Ledger during an interview on Nov. 7, 2022. “It’s just a deal in life that happens and you don’t have any control over it. Maybe if I was a little older I would’ve handled it better, but I wasn’t, and I didn’t.”

Hickson died in 2011 at the age of 80. He was public about the incident, unlike Parker, who did not like the attention, according to the newspaper.

Parker said he changed jobs and moved to other towns when people realized who he was. At the urging of his wife, Parker wrote a book about the encounter,

Decades later, at the urging of his wife, Waynette, Parker wrote a book about the encounter to set the record straight. “Pascagoula -- The Closest Encounter, My Story,” was published in 2018.

‘The story is very true,” Parker told the Clarion Ledger in 2018. “That’s what has bothered me for 45 years.

“I felt like everyone deserved an explanation,” Parker added. “Everyone has an expiration date and I wanted to get this out there before I die.

“I’ve had some near-death experiences and I’m in bad health. I just wanted to do it.”

Parker published a followup book in 2021, “Pascagoula -- The Story Continues: New Evidence & New Witnesses.”

He has also published a podcast about the incident.