All Aboard!

first-person accounts of three people who claim to have been kidnaped by extraterrestrials and taken aboard a spacecraft

Charles Hickson

It was October 11, 1973. Calvin Parker and I had gotten off from work at 3:30, and by the time I had dinner and got my fishing tackle together, I guess we must have got on the Pascagoula River a little after five o'clock. It had become dusk by then and we were sitting on a small pier on the bank, fishing out into the river, when this noise--a hissing or zippinglike sound--attracted my attention. It was just like air or maybe steam escaping from a pipe. Anyway, I turned around, and as I turned, I saw these two blue lights. When I saw them, well, the sound seemed to go away. They were real close together and they was either flashing or pulsating not over 30 to 40 yards behind us. Almost as big as a car headlight and real bright.

You could make out real good it was some kind of a craft, you know, and at that point, well, it really startled me. I still can't be sure how big it was, because of the angle I was looking at it from; I couldn't see all the way around it. But it appeared to be 20 or 30 foot long, maybe eight or ten foot high.

Then in front of where the lights were, there was portholes or windows. Two was all I seen, but it could have been more. And after, when the noise stopped, these two lights went out. At that point, I suppose, it was a foot and a half or two off the ground. Anyway, when I was beginning to get a little scared, it seemed like an opening just appeared in the craft; it didn't open like a door. I could get the best view of the craft then, because the light--between a white and a yellow one--was glowing from the inside.

And I could really tell then that the craft wasn't on the ground. It was perfectly still, but then these three things appeared in that doorway. They were standing erect and just seemed to glide out the door right toward us. You could tell they had legs, you know, but their legs never moved apart and their arms were down at their sides. Some of these things I can't be positive about, because, to be frank, I was quite frightened at that time. And Calvin was almost scared to death. But when they came out, it just seemed like all of a sudden they were on us. Two of them came for me, one for Calvin. One of them took hold of one of my arms and one took hold of the other, and at that point I felt pain instantly, a sharp sting, you might say.

I got a pretty good look at them. I would say they were about five or five-four, and they didn't have a head that resembled a human head. It seemed to come directly down to the shoulders, without a neck. And they were very wrinkled, with deep lines running horizontal across their arms, their face--all over. I'm not sure at all it was skin, but it reminded me of elephant skin, grayish and roughlike. I can't recall exactly what they looked like, because they were very wrinkled, but they did have something where a nose would be on a face and it came out to a point. One of these beings made some kind of a noise, like a little buzzing sound, but the other I didn't hear at all. Their hands were similar to claws or mittens.

I might add at this time that I thought about it a heck of a lot since then and--of course, I have no way of being sure--I believe now they were robots. I didn't see the legs or neck move, and when they turned, they seemed to move mechanically. I believe from the bottom of my heart that the one that was making the buzzing sound was being controlled from another ship. It appeared that they were more or less programmed to do something and they just simply done it.

Anyway, I just seemed to move up off the ground to about the height that they were and I noticed that Calvin, at that time, he just went limp. Then we seemed to glide back toward the ship, and when we started through the doorway, the light was almost blinding. We don't know for sure whether Calvin was taken in or not and I don't recall seeing him carried aboard. He'd passed out.

Inside the room, it seemed to be round. I didn't see any light fixtures--the light just seemed to glow from the walls. When they stopped--we seemed to be just suspended there, you know--this thing seemed to come out from the wall. It wasn't perfectly round but was blunted in the front end and seemed to taper back maybe like a football. The end that was focused toward me was something similar to the lens of a camera and was either a different type of material or a different color than the rest of it. I have never seen anything like it before in my life; the color would be between a silver and white. Anyway, it moved up real close to my face and it remained there for a few seconds. Then it seemed to move down and go under me.

I didn't have any physical feelings at all. I guess by this time, I don't know, I could have been hysterical. I probably said, "What in the world are you going to do with me?" but--I know this is going to sound strange--I couldn't hear myself saying it. I might have just been screaming in my head, I don't know.

Finally, the thing came back up to about the same point where it originally came out from the wall and then seemed to go directly back in the wall and disappear in that glow of light. I could see then that these things had released me and I was suspended there. I couldn't move or do anything. And that is when I almost passed out.

Finally, they came back and we seemed to turn and glide back out the door. They carried me back almost to the spot they picked me up from, and that's the first time I saw Calvin. He was facing the river with his arms held out and he was like a statue. They seemed to ease me back to the ground and when my feet touched the ground, I felt it. That was the first feelings I had since I went in there. I don't know whether it was from fear or what, but my legs give way and I fell down to the ground. I started trying to crawl toward Calvin, but before I got to him, I heard the little zipping sound again. And when I turned around, the opening had closed and the blue lights was flashing again and just almost in an instant that thing was gone. It left so fast I don't know whether it just disappeared or what.

I had to slap Calvin two or three times and shake him. He was almost in shock. It took a few minutes before it began to register on him that it was me. He was screaming and hollering and was still scared. He was just all to pieces, you know, but I finally got him to where I could talk to him, and I kept assuring him that I had seen the craft leave. But we didn't know what to do. I said, "Listen, Calvin, let's just keep it to ourselves. Let's don't tell anybody, because ain't nobody going to believe this."

Betty Hill

In September 1961, my husband, Barney, and I decided very suddenly to go on a vacation. It was around the Lancaster, New Hampshire, area that I suddenly saw what I thought was a very large new star in the sky--beside the moon just about where Jupiter is. There was no traffic and the moon was so bright we could almost see with our headlights turned off.

Well, it kept getting bigger and bigger and, as it came in, we realized it was too big for a star. Then it changed course and started to go across the face of the moon; it was at this point Barney and I were sure it was a satellite. But when we got out of the car and looked at it with binoculars, I realized right at that moment that this was something I had never seen before. It had all kinds of flashing lights around it and was sort of oblong.

We started driving again and Barney kept telling me, "Look out the window and see what it's doing." So I'm watching this thing coming in toward us, jumping all over the sky and making right-angle turns in a step-by-step pattern. As it came closer, I could see that it had a blinking effect and it was rapidly spinning. Then it came out over the highway and stopped maybe ten stories high in mid-air. I could see the double row of windows and the red light on each side.

Barney stopped the car, got out, and as he stepped away from the car, this object shifted out over the field next to the driver's side. I stayed in the car and Barney started walking across the field toward it, looking up at it through the binoculars. He told me the next day that he could see figures standing in the window, looking down at him, and that he was getting the message not to move, that no harm was going to come to him. Apparently, this is when they were beginning to get him under control somehow. And this is when he yelled to me, "We're going to be captured."

Barney ran back to the car and we went speeding off down the highway about 50 or 60 miles an hour. And he was yelling at me to look out the window. "It's right over us," he said. I put my head out, but I didn't see anything. Later, under hypnosis, I realized that I was actually looking up at the dark bottom of the craft, which was about 60 feet across. When I pulled my head in and put the window up, both of us heard a beeping sound, like something electrical, and the car vibrated.

All the way home, there was almost no conversation between us. We were in sort of a posthypnotic state, only we didn't know it at the time. But once I did say to Barney, "Do you believe in flying saucers?" And he said, "Don't be ridiculous." And then we heard the beeping sound again. "They're on their way," I said. "I don't know where they're going, but they're saying goodbye."

We weren't going to tell anyone, but I started having dreams about it and was convinced that what we saw was an alien spacecraft, that we might have been exposed to some physical danger. But every time I tried to talk about it, Barney would become angry and say, "Let's forget it. If people find out, they're going to think we're crazy."

Then two scientists came to visit us and, after going over our trip step by step, they began to realize that the trip had taken us much longer than it should have and suggested that we should go to a psychiatrist who used hypnosis. We eventually started hypnosis in January 1964, after Barney developed an ulcer.

The doctor hypnotized us individually and caused us both to have amnesia, so we couldn't (continued on page 249)Playboy Panel: UFOs(continued from page 73) discuss what we'd said. This is when we relived the whole experience. We were actually right on board the craft. Later, he played back the tapes of our sessions for us and we learned that we'd left the highway and gone up this small road where there were a group of men. They were short and grotesque and different, but I couldn't say how. I wasn't frightened, but when the car motor died and they came up to the car--three were at my door--I panicked. One of them put his hand in front of my eyes and I went completely under. I felt like I was asleep and I didn't want to be. Finally, I woke myself up and we were surrounded by these men. They were more or less guiding me--one at each arm--and sort of dragging Barney along. I yelled, "Barney, wake up!" And one of them next to me said--in a human voice, like somebody speaking English with difficulty--"Is his name Barney?" And I said, "It's none of your business."

And then I saw the craft. The moon was shining on it and I could tell it was silver metal, like aluminum or stainless steel. It seemed to be sitting on the ground, and after we walked up to it, we went up on this rim and walked through this open space--a door--in the side of the craft. I went into the first room and Barney went into the second. The room looked like a piece of pie with the point cut off and there was a blue-white light just shining through all the walls. At first, I didn't want to look at the creatures, but after a while, I noticed that their eyes were very dark black and extremely frightening to me. I got the same feeling as though I were looking at snake eyes. They didn't have any ears and their skin had a grayish tone to it. I had the impression they were human--or humanoid--and were what we would consider middle-aged.

They sat me on a stool and examined my eyes, ears, nose, throat and hair. The examiner looked at my skin through a big microscope and he got very excited. He was jumping up and down and he called the leader over. Then they put me on the table and checked my nervous system by touching these wires all over my body with something like a brain-wave machine. They told me that's what they were doing. Then he reached for this needlelike instrument that he inserted in my navel. I said, "No, no, it'll hurt." I was moaning and they both looked astonished. When he put his hand over my eyes and the pain went away, I began to realize that they didn't deliberately hurt me. He told me it was a pregnancy test.

When the examiner went into Barney's room, I said to the leader, "When I get home, nobody is going to believe me, so I need something to prove this actually happened." "What do you want?" he said. I looked around and there was a book with columns of symbols that went up and down and said, "I'll take the book." And he said, "Fine, you may have it." Then the examiner came back in with Barney's dentures in his hands and started tapping my teeth. I explained to him that we lose our teeth from accidents, disease, wrong diet and old age. Then he said, "What's old age?" I couldn't get across to him we're supposed to live about 100 years, but most of us don't.

And then I said to him, "Where are you from?" That's when he opened up the wall and showed me the star map. The heavy lines, he explained, led to places they went all the time and the lighter solid lines were places they went to occasionally. The broken lines were expeditions.

As we were leaving, I was feeling very, very happy, but then I heard the crew members all mumbling and humming, like they were having an argument. The leader went back to the crew members and then came back to me and took the book. "It has been decided that you're going to forget the whole thing." I was so angry and I was crying and saying, "Well, I'll never forget!" And then I said, "I wasn't able to answer all your questions, so why don't you come back and I'll make arrangements for you to meet those who can?" "I don't know, it's not my decision to make," he said. So I asked, "Well, if you're going to come back, how will I know where to meet you?" And he said, "Don't worry, we always find those we want."

Travis Walton

We were working on a brush-thinning contract--me and six other guys--on the Mogollon Rim about ten miles south of Heber, Arizona. It was November 5, 1975. We'd finished a day's work and were getting ready to leave. It was starting to get dark, so we put the chain saws in the truck. We were going down this dirt road out of there and we saw this light coming through the thicket ahead of us. When I first saw it, I thought it was a sunset shining over the top of the hill, but when we got around the thicket to where we could see, we saw this object hovering. Everybody started yelling at the same time and we stopped the truck. The object was 20 feet in diameter and shaped like two fry pans, lip to lip. It was about 30 yards away and about 15 feet off the ground and was kinda glowing--a soft golden glow that lit up the whole area. And it had darker bands on it. The glowing panellike areas weren't like windows, because you couldn't see into it. It was like glowing metal; you could feel the heat.

I jumped out of the truck and walked up for a closer look. Just as I got up to it, it started to make a sound like a motor starting up. Kind of a high-pitched sound with rumble to it, like a top when it slows down or starts up. I started to move when it made this sound. I was crouching when I heard it--and when I stood up, everything just went black, kind of like an electric shock.

[Walton's companions that day agree that a flash of light from the saucer hit Walton at mid-chest and that he was thrown into the air and landed ten feet away. The men became hysterical and began to flee. They saw the saucer lift off and disappear over the horizon. When they returned a short while later, Walton was nowhere to be found.]

When I regained consciousness, I was laying on my back on a metal table and I was in a lot of pain. I just lay there trying to let my thoughts clear. I looked down and felt something on my chest. It was about three or four inches thick, of a kind of grayish plastic-looking metal, and it kinda fit the shape of my chest. My shirt was pushed up and I had my coat on; I wondered why they didn't take my coat off, 'cause it was hot in there. I thought I was in a hospital.

But when I looked past the edge of this thing, I saw those three aliens standing over me. They weren't human. They were about five feet tall, had no hair on their heads, small features and great big brown oval eyes. Their skin color was chalky white and they had five fingers but no nails. And they had a real small mouth, but they never opened it or talked or anything to me. They were wearing some kinda real loose-fitting brownish-orange coverall thing--no collar, came up to the neck and gathered at the sleeve.

I jumped up and knocked the thing on my chest onto the floor. I just freaked out. I struck at the one that was on my right and jumped over into the corner. I started yellin' things at 'em, but they didn't try to attack me. I was really hysterical and they just left the room real quick. I was afraid they'd come back, so I left there. This room had one door in it to the outside and there was a dimly lit hallway; they'd gone down to the right, so I went to the left.

I went into this round room. In the middle, there was a metal chair that had about 25 colored buttons on the right arm and a molded-looking lever on the left side. It was on a pedestal, like the table. The room was kinda dimly lit, too, and you could see, like, the stars on the walls, but the stars didn't seem to twinkle. It sounds ridiculous, but it seemed like you could see through the walls. They were flat, but they kinda curved up, and the room had a curved dome. You could see stars on the floor, too.

I sat down in the chair and when I moved the lever, the stars revolved. There was a little green screen there, too, and when I pressed a button, little segments of straight black lines appeared on it. I just did one or two buttons, 'cause I was kinda scared to be messin' with that.

I heard a sound then, I think, and when I turned around, a man--a human--came in the door. You see, there was two distinct types: the first type that was alien--five feet tall, brown uniforms--and the second type, normal humans that could pass in a crowd. The man was about my height--six feet--and was big, muscular and healthy-looking. He was kind of young but mature, with sort of brownish-blond hair. He had a tight-fitting bright-blue uniform and a helmet--just a clear bubble--and I got the impression he was wearing something black on his feet.

I went up to him and started yelling questions at him, like, "Are you from Earth?" That kind of stuff. He gestured for me to come toward him and I just ran up there, you know, thinking, Here's an Earthling. He just smiled, took me by the arm and we went out through the door to the right and into a small narrow room. It must have been air-locked, because we stayed in there for a minute and then went out.

This craft we came out of seemed to be parked inside a huge building, a hangar-like structure with a high, curved roof. The structure was sectioned in panels and some of them were lighted. The two or three other craft that were parked in there were different from the one I came out of--still saucer-shaped but really smooth and brightly chromed lookin'. The one I came out of was sitting flat on the floor and those chrome things--I didn't see any legs on them--had a rounded bottom, so I don't see how they sat there.

Anyway, we walked out onto this ramp into a room that had doors like elevators, and when we went in there, there was three other people like him, a woman and two men. They all looked like they were members of the same family.

They set me down in the chair and the one with the helmet--the others didn't wear any--walked on out through the door on the other side. I started to talk to them, but they didn't answer me. They just seemed kind of tolerant and didn't have any bad intentions. A man and a woman came over and led me to the table and laid me down on it. I don't know why I cooperated, because they weren't answering any of my questions. Then they put this clear soft metallic plastic mask with a black ball about two inches in diameter on it over my face. And I just went out.

The next thing I knew, I was laying on the road out there outside of Heber. I looked up and I saw this light go out--I think it could probably have been a hatch closing or something. And then this craft just went straight up, really fast. I don't see how something could move through the air like that and not make a sound--like breaking the sound barrier or something. It just went straight up and right out of sight.

"But when I looked past the edge, I saw three aliens standing over me. They were about five feet tall."