Close encounter: I interview Charles Hickson

 

HicksonUFOpic-wider rt wh space-no bottom wh spAs the story goes, on the evening of October 11, 1973, Charles Hickson and buddy Calvin Parker were fishing on the banks of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi when a buzzing sound behind them turned their attention to an egg-shaped UFO hovering above the ground. Three creatures with gray, wrinkled skin and claw-like hands emerged and floated toward them. The two men were taken aboard the craft and examined by a “mechanical eye.” They were released apparently unharmed and the craft departed. [Mr. Hickson died at the age of 80 on September 9, 2011.]

Left: Charles Hickson with artist’s rendering of UFO craft [image: Pat Sullivan, The Mississippi Press]

Published in the Mississippi Press, October 1983
(10th anniversary of event)
Copyright 1983-2018 by Richard Harkness

[This exclusive interview has not appeared elsewhere until now.]

In the interview, I don’t dwell much on the events of the riverbank abduction. These details have been recounted many times in the local and global news media. My aim is to probe a little deeper inside the man and perhaps dig a bit more out of him than he’s divulged before. This is not easy–he’s given to speaking in generalities and becomes a stone wall when he feels you are probing too far (he attempts to explain why in the interview). Still, he discusses in some detail his belief in universes other than ours, reincarnation, his compulsion to spread the word, the telepathic messages from the other-worldlings, the 12 chosen harbingers of what’s coming; and he gives a definite time frame for when we’ll all realize what’s happening.

Charles Hickson and his wife Blanche and daughter Tisha live in a modest home at the end of a cul-de-sac fringed on two sides by woods. Blanche’s touch is evident all around inside. Charlie and I settle in at a kitchen counter. The sound of wind chimes drifts in from the front porch. As I set up my tape recording equipment, I wonder if I’ll ask him a question he’s never heard before. Probably not. He’s given hundreds of interviews since that fateful night (the tenth anniversary of the riverbank abduction was October 11). No matter–my primary concern is getting some new answers.

Charlie is fifty-two now. He puffs on a cigarette and drinks coffee while we talk, occasionally stroking his beard or clicking his cigarette lighter and gazing broodingly through a window toward the patch of woods out back where a train rambles by later and interrupts us briefly. Blanche sits in the den with the TV volume turned low. When Charlie’s coffee cup is empty, she’s there to refill it. About halfway through the interview, I’ll ask him to be thinking about anything special he might want to mention for his final comment.

I begin by asking him about his recently published book, UFO Contact at Pascagoula.

WAS THIS THE BOOK YOU WANTED WRITTEN?

HICKSON: Yeah. That’s the book I wanted published now, but there’s going to be another one. It’s kind of a long story. This book should help a lot of people understand or believe that this did happen to me. Many strange things have happened to me while we were writing this book, and I think those things should be revealed to the people. I’m not sure yet just the way it should be revealed to them, because there’s many things that’s happened to me that are very strange for some people to understand and I wonder now how is the best way for me to explain these things that I didn’t put in that book for many reasons, and when I finally make my mind up as to how they should be explained, then I think there will be another book.

THERE ARE THINGS YOU KNEW THAT YOU DELIBERATELY DID NOT PUT IN THIS BOOK?

HICKSON: Right. That’s right.

HAVE YOU HAD ENCOUNTERS AFTER THE FOUR DETAILED IN THE BOOK? (HICKSON’S FOUR DOCUMENTED ENCOUNTERS ARE THE ORIGINAL RIVERBANK ABDUCTION ON OCTOBER 11, 1973; THE TREE FARM ENCOUNTER IN JANUARY, 1974; THE TELEPATHIC MESSAGE RECEIVED OUTSIDE HIS APARTMENT IN FEBRUARY, 1974; AND THE MOTHER’S DAY NIGHT ENCOUNTER IN MAY, 1974, ON HIGHWAY 67 INVOLVING SEVERAL OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS.)

Hickson-AliienSketch-resizedsmallerCaptureHICKSON: A lot of others. Yeah. It’s something right now that would be very hard for me to try to explain where someone could partially understand. A lot of the things I’m only beginning to understand now myself, and it’s hard a lot of times to even keep my mind together and take care of my family and our private life and to realize those things have happened to me and will continue to happen to me. For some reason, I’ve got something I have to do.

Left: Artist’s sketch of alien [image: Jim Flynt; UFO Contact at Pascagoula]

HAVE THE ENCOUNTERS BEEN WITH A CRAFT OR MORE OF A TELEPATHIC NATURE? (EACH OF THE THREE ENCOUNTERS AFTER THE RIVERBANK ABDUCTION WAS ACCOMPANIED BY A TELEPATHIC MESSAGE–SUCH AS, ‘WE MEAN YOU NO HARM. . .YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN. . .YOUR WORLD NEEDS HELP…WE WILL HELP IN THE FUTURE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.’)

HICKSON: Most of it has been telepathic. it’s very, very hard to explain. In fact, I’m only beginning to understand it myself. It almost drove me batty for a while. But I’m beginning to understand it myself and once I can understand it, then I can relay it to the people where they can understand it.

IS IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO RELATE EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU RECEIVE A TELEPATHIC MESSAGE?

HICKSON: Oh, yes. It’s just like someone is talking with you, only it seems to be happening inside your mind (In the book he describes it as a ‘radio’ being turned on and off). I can’t identify it with any experience I’ve ever had in in my life.

YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT, YET IT’S THERE WITHOUT A DOUBT?

HICKSON: It’s there. It’s there.

IN YOUR LAST INTERVIEW YOU WERE PRETTY SPECIFIC AS TO THE TIME OF THESE CHANGES WE’RE GOING TO BE EXPERIENCING.

HICKSON: What I stated in the last press conference was that we would be beginning to see a change, and I can see it. Most people are in a hurry in their everyday life. They don’t look at things the way I do. But I can see a change being made in our society, for instance, now, very slowly. I can see other things that’s beginning to happen. By the end of the year, there will be a big enough change so that people will know then that something is beginning to happen. And then at the end of the year, I think we’ll have all of our answers.

AND THAT’S WHEN YOU WILL FEEL COMFORTABLE ABOUT DIVULGING…

HICKSON: That’s right.

DO YOU STILL MEET ANYBODY THAT JUST FLATLY DOESN’T BELIEVE YOU?

HICKSON: Maybe a very few people…but I’ve never met anyone that has tried to criticize me or my family or anything like that, and that’s kind of hard to understand too, you know.

HAVE YOU MET MANY PEOPLE WHO’VE HAD SIMILAR EXPERIENCES WHO JUST HAVEN’T SAID ANYTHING ABOUT IT?

HICKSON: I have, yes I have.

MANY?

HICKSON: A good many, yeah. They’ll call me on the telephone or they’ll write me a letter with a dozen pages or more and send me pictures of things where spacecraft have landed. You’d be surprised at a lot of pictures I have, but they’re confidential, they’re from people that’ve put their trust in me. I’ve quite a collection of those things. But I’ve got letters by the thousands. Have them put away.

BUT YOU DON’T THINK YOU’LL EVER SHOW THOSE?

HICKSON: Maybe someday, when the time comes.

DO YOU RELATE YOUR CLOSE ENCOUNTER TO A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AT ALL?

HICKSON: I can’t say that I directly relate it to a religious experience. I’m a Christian. I believe in God. I was reared as a Baptist. I don’t know whether I call myself a Baptist now or not, because a lot of the things the Baptists believe in, I don’t believe in now. But I think this experience here has caused me to be closer to God if that’s possible, and to have a better understanding of a supreme being, than I’ve had before.

DO YOU BELIEVE THERE’S ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE BEINGS AND A HIGHER POWER? (HE UNDERSTANDS I MEAN IN THE RELIGIOUS SENSE.)

HicksonRiverbank-Capture-resized smallerHICKSON: I don’t know. The only thing I can say, just as surely as God created life here on this earth, he created the life where this came from. So I can’t discuss that because I don’t know. But I fully believe in a supreme being which is God. Not only of this universe, but the other two universes that’s been discovered and the ones beyond that.

Left: Hickson (1998) at site of riverbank encounter [image: AP Photo/William Colgin, Mississippi Press]

WHAT OTHER UNIVERSE IS THERE BESIDES THIS ONE?

HICKSON: There’s going to be another one discovered very soon.

CAN YOU ELABORATE?

HICKSON: No.

DID YOU SAY THIS UNIVERSE AND TWO OTHERS OR TWO IN ALL?

HICKSON: This universe and two more. There’s no end out there. There’s no end to time.

(I COMMENT THAT PERHAPS THE HUMAN MIND IS INCAPABLE OF COMPREHENDING THE BEGINNING OR END OF THE UNIVERSE.)

HICKSON: There’s no human mind, like you say, that can comprehend a beginning or an end. Only the supreme being that created that mind can do that, until that mind reaches the perfection. Now what the perfection is, I don’t know. You know, we only use about four or five percent of our mind. There’s a hundred percent, and someday in time–well, I might explain, too, I believe in reincarnation. I don’t want to get into that right now. But that soul and that mind will live forever. And same day in time that mind will reach that perfection which has to be a hundred percent. I don’t know what that perfection will be, but when it reaches that perfection, then we can understand the things that He intended for us to understand.

WILL IT BE IN A PHYSICAL BODY?

HICKSON: I don’t know. But we’ve lived many tmes before and we’ll live many times after this life. I believe the human body has a soul, a spirit, and that’s what lives forever. The flesh decays away, but to be born again in another body.

WHAT ABOUT ANIMAL LIFE?

HICKSON: I don’t know about animal life. That’s also possible, I’m not saying it’s impossible. But I do know that my soul’s lived forever and it’ll live forever. There’s no question in my mind about that. I’m contented about that.

IS THAT BELIEF IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED FROM THE ENCOUNTERS?

HICKSON: It has to be connected–it’s something I believe since this happened to me. (Charlie discusses his religious upbringing, which, he says, included the usual Heaven and Hell dogma.) But a lot of things that our religion, not our faith–there’s only one faith–taught us at that time was not all the facts to it. And the only thing I did learn was that there’s a supreme being, which is God.

HicksonKeeslerAFBinterrogationCapture-resized smallerDID YOU LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT A SUPREME BEING OR SOUL FROM THE OTHER WORLD CREATURES?

HICKSON: No. But I know that the beings themselves, they must have a soul, because they’re close to what the beings are on this earth, and in my belief that God is the supreme being over this universe and the one beyond, then they must have a soul, just as we do.

Left: Cover page of Keesler Air Force Base interrogation of Hickson and Parker [Image: Huneeus Collection]

DO THESE OTHER-WORLDLINGS COME FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE?

HICKSON: I don’t know what universe they come from. But I think I will be able to know someday. I don’t know when. I’m eager to learn, I live from day to day waiting till I can gain more knowledge, but it’s given to me, I know or I suppose, well, I know–as they think I should have it.

AS THEY THINK–THE CREATURES?

HICKSON: As they think I should have it. Yeah.

HAVE YOU SEEN THE BEINGS OR ROBOTS AGAIN SINCE THE LAST ENCOUNTER MENTIONED IN THE BOOK–MOTHER’S DAY NIGHT, 1974?

HICKSON: Well, the reason I’m a little hesitant on that answer is that (he pauses for a long moment as if mentally debating)–let’s just wait awhile about me answering that question–maybe a little bit later on.

SINCE THAT FIRST TIME, HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU BEEN OUT TO THE RIVERBANK ALONE?

HICKSON: Several different times. Before Hudship built the shipyard there, some nights I’d go down late at night alone. I don’t know, I just felt like I wanted to go down there and be alone, and maybe spend an hour or two there. I’ve done that quite a few times.

HAVE YOU EVER HAD ANY TELEPATHIC CONTACT DURING THESE VISITS?

HICKSON: No. Now, for a long time–until the shipyard was built there–I’d go there on every anniversary of the time this happened, and a few of those times, Mendez (the book’s co-author) would come down here and go over there with me, from Michigan. He’d spend a few days, but he’d be down for the anniversary. We’d spend quite a while over there on that river talking.

THIS SEEMS LIKE IT HAS BECOME A VERY LARGE PART OF HIS LIFE.

HICKSON: It has. I think he’s become possessed with it now, it’s become so interesting to him.

HAS MENDEZ EVER HAD A CLOSE ENCOUNTER?

HICKSON: No.

DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE ANY CHOICE IN RECEIVING THESE MESSAGES?

HICKSON: I don’t have any choice. I don’t have any choice in what I’m destined to do, and I can’t change it. If I get off track, I get put right back on it again. Some things I do is beyond my control.

DO YOU MEAN GET OFF TRACK IN THE SENSE THAT YOU STOP DOING WHAT THE MISSION IS?

HICKSON: Right, and when I try to forget, I can’t do it, you know, I’m compelled to do something and I do it.

WHAT PUTS YOU BACK ON TRACK?

HICKSON: Well, it’s just…I just get on pins and needles…I get upset, I won’t eat, I can’t sleep. It’s just something that compels me to get back on what I’m doing.

GIVE ME A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOU DO TO GET OFF TRACK AND THEN WHAT YOU DO TO GET RID OF THOSE FEELINGS?

HICKSON: Well, when I get a feeling like that, that I’m not doing right, that I’m wrong, I’ll just go off by myself somewhere. If nothing else, I’ll go over on the tree farm, back to the woods and sit down, and I’ll just begin to realize that I have a mission to do, that I have to do it. I get at peace with myself again. And I come on back and get back to doing these things again.

DOING WHAT THINGS?

HICKSON: This is why I know that it’s meant for me to tell people and to go and talk to people. A lot of times I’ll maybe get telephone calls, they want me to come to a college or university somewhere and lecture. Well, maybe I don’t want to go, maybe I just say I can’t go, you know, I’ve got this to do, I just can’t take the time, I don’t have the finances. I’ll put them off, well then it just–it bugs me–it’s on me until I just have to call them up and tell them I’ll do it. Then I’m at peace then. That’s an example, see.

YOU’VE MENTIONED THAT YOU’VE HAD A CHANCE TO SELL THE RIGHTS FOR A BOOK OR TO THE MOVIES AND PROBABLY MAKE SOME PRETTY GOOD MONEY, BUT YOU DECIDED NOT TO DO THAT.

HICKSON: Yeah. See, you know, anybody needs finances to live on. Well, I had my health, and I’ve always been able to make a livelihood for my family, you know, we’ve had hard times like everybody else on different occasions. I can’t see something like this–now I couldn’t have done it, I guess if I wanted to I’d been compelled not to by a stronger force, I think. But if you believe in something as strongly as I do, to throw it out there to people or the public, something that’s going to affect their lives, not only yours, in time to come, and throw something out there that’ll make me rich, you know, I don’t believe in that…I could have made a lot of money, thrown something out there that would have been partly fiction, with the big buildup and everything else, but what purpose has that done? I mean, it just can’t happen that way…The knowledge that I’m beginning to learn now and to understand now, I wouldn’t have gained that knowledge, something would have been wrong, I think that knowledge wouldn’t have been coming to me, It would have been taken away from me.

YOU’D HAVE BEEN UNCHOSEN.

HICKSON: That’s right. It was a hard decision for a human being to make, but I want to see it through to the end.

YOU’VE MADE A REFERENCE—ALMOST LIKE A BIBLICAL REFERENCE–TO 12 CHOSEN PEOPLE.

HICKSON: I think the world will begin to see at the end of this year, you’ll see 12 people emerging that’ll carry on a crusade and let the world know what’s going to happen.

ANY SPECIFIC REASON WHY IT’S THE NUMBER 12?

HICKSON: I don’t know.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IT’S 12?

HICKSON: This has been–this has been told to me. I won’t elaborate any further on it right now…when the time comes, I will. I’m gaining knowledge now that I can’t fully understand myself yet…I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know.

HAVE YOU MET ALL 12 OF THESE OTHER PEOPLE OR DO ALL OF THEM EVEN EXIST RIGHT NOW?

HICKSON: I don’t know. I do know I will, though.

HAVE YOU MET ANY OF THEM?

HICKSON: I don’t know. I probably have, but I don’t know. It’s a lot for a man to have to live with and keep his sanity and try to live a normal life. It’s a lot for a man to have to do.

YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE ONE OF THEM.

HICKSON: I know that to be a fact.

SINCE YOU MADE THAT REVELATION, IT WOULD SEEM LIKE, IF THERE WERE ANOTHER ONE, THAT HE (OR SHE) MIGHT HAVE WANTED TO TELL YOU, OR YOU MIGHT WANT TO TELL HIM–

HICKSON: Well, I think when the time comes, you know, we’ll be aware of it then. There’s a lot of things going to happen this year, a lot of strange things are going to happen this year.

CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE I CAN CATEGORIZE–SOMETHING STRANGE WITH THE WEATHER, THE WORLD POLITICAL SITUATION?

HICKSON: (He ponders for a long moment.) Well, let’s wait till another time.

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT CERTAIN THINGS? IS IT A FEELING?

HICKSON: Well, it’s a feeling, it’s a terrible feeling, it’s very hard to explain. I’ve even tried to even get started talking about it, and I just can’t do it. It’s just a feeling that I’m not supposed to talk about it. I can’t compel myself to do it. And I need to find out why, I need to know about these things. Maybe it’s not time. Evidently, it’s not time for me to talk about it.

BUT YOU HAVE A FEELING WHEN IT IS, YOU’LL KNOW?

HICKSON: Yes. Oh yes.

(THE DISCUSSION TURNS TO THE RIVERBANK ABDUCTION.)

HICKSON: Inside of there (the craft) there was so much light in there, It seemed to me it was glowing from the walls, the overhead, and the floor and I was just in the center of it. Made me feel like I was in an electric light bulb or something, you know. There was three or four days that my eyes was something like I’d had a bad welding flash. They were that way for a few days, and I believe the light done that, I don’t know.

YOU COULD NOT CLOSE YOUR EYES DURING THE TIME INSIDE THE CRAFT? YOU COULDN’T BLINK?

HICKSON: I couldn’t dose my eyes. I couldn’t blink. I could move them but I couldn’t blink. If I could’ve closed them, I’d have closed them against that light. I have a feeling for some reason they wanted me to see, you know, the inside of there.

YOU COULD HAVE SEEN IT EVEN IF YOU COULD BLINK, BUT THEN YOU COULD HAVE KEPT YOUR EYES SHUT ON PURPOSE.

HICKSON: Right. Cause the light, it was terrible.

COULD YOU SPEAK?

HICKSON: No, I could not. You know, when you’re talking you can hear your own self, and I was trying to talk and I couldn’t hear myself talk, so I wasn’t talking. I was trying to get some words out, I wanted to see what they were going to do with me, you know. Because, you know, I was thinking ‘this is it, nobody will see me again.’ And Charlie was scared, I’ll be frank with you, no need for me to lie about it, you know, cause I didn’t know what to expect.

DO YOU THINK MAYBE YOU WERE TALKING, BUT THAT YOU JUST COULDN’T HEAR?

HICKSON: No, I don’t. I don’t know. You know, if I was talking, I didn’t hear myself talking.

DID YOU KNOW YOUR MOUTH WAS MOVING?

HICKSON: Well, I guess my mouth wasn’t moving, cause I couldn’t move anything else (he says he was completely paralyzed except for eye movement). It was a strange feeling that I haven’t been able to even explain it to myself, and I know I can’t explain it to anyone else, you know. Maybe someday I’ll understand it, you know, what happened to me, what state I was put in or what state I become in…and why I couldn’t move and why I couldn’t talk. Maybe that’ll be explained to me…it worries me to death sometime.

ONE DISCREPANCY IN THE BOOK CONCERNS THE TIME OF THE RIVERBANK ABDUCTION. IN MENDEZ’S RECONSTRUCTION OF THE TIME FRAME BASED ON WHEN YOU CALLED THE SHERIFF, HE PLACES THE TIME AT ABOUT 9:30 OR 10PM. YET, YOU WRITE THAT IT OCCURRED AROUND DUSK. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS?

HICKSON: I don’t know. (He says the encounter happened around dusk and that the other time was probably incorrect.)

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE THE ROBOTS TO GET FROM THE CRAFT TO YOU?

HICKSON: (He has trouble answering this question, but finally says about half a minute or so, and agrees with me that this would be an unhurried pace.)

WHEN DID YOU GET BACK TO NORMAL AFTER THEY LET YOU OUT OF THE CRAFT?

HICKSON: When they brought me back outside, they just let me down to the ground, they didn’t throw me down. And of course I fell on the ground. I was real weak, my knees felt weak. I saw Calvin then, and he looked terrible, and I was trying to get where he was. My legs got strong enough I could get up, and I was getting toward him. I heard that hissing sound and I looked back and that thing was gone. I made my way on toward him, I was really concerned about him at that time. And I was trying to get him where I could talk to him, and it took us both a while before we could, you know, get to where we could kind of figure things out.

THAT ABOUT WRAPS IT UP. I ASKED YOU TO THINK ABOUT A CLOSING COMMENT YOU MIGHT WANT TO MAKE TO THE PUBLIC.

HICKSON: I’ll say again, you know, that before the end of the year, that everyone will be aware that we’re not alone, that a lot of things are going to be revealed to us, that there won’t be any doubt in anyone’s mind, and a lot of things are going to happen this year that’s going to seem strange at first to the people, till they begin to realize. And that’s about the only thing I’d like to say now. But I will be saying a lot before the year is over. END