A Mississippi man who claimed in 1973 that he had been abducted by aliens has died.

Calvin Parker died Aug. 24 from kidney cancer, his wife told the Sun Herald. A private memorial service was held Saturday at the Guardian Angels Funeral Home in Pascagoula.

It was just short of 50 years ago when Parker and Charles Hickson claimed they were abducted and examined by aliens in a UFO and returned to the banks of the Pascagoula River that same night.

The story reached the press the next day and soon brought national attention to Pascagoula.

The city now has a permanent reminder of the extraterrestrial tale. A memorial plaque describes the account and notes it is one of the best-documented cases of an alien abduction, with two witnesses.

The two men were fishing after work on Oct. 11, 1973, and were preparing to leave when they saw “heavy blue lights,” which they said appeared to be from a large, oval-shaped craft.

Hickson, who traveled the country describing that October night, died in 2011.

Parker retold his story as recently as last year at a South Mississippi library.

“I was thinking, we’re fixing to go to jail, we’re trespassing, we’re on private property,” he said. “So I turned around and looked — and all of a sudden, a bright light hit us.”

Parker then realized it wasn’t the police, but three “robotic-looking creatures” gliding across the water toward the two men.

“And they were ugly,” he said. “I know they had gray skin like an elephant, stood about five foot tall. I know they was robots ‘cause the way they moved.”

In recent years, Parker recorded several podcasts about the incident.

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