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September 2, 2018 — Calvin Parker


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
After last week's disappointing episode about vampires, I wasn't sure what to expect with Calvin Parker.

To my relief, he proved to be a true "salt of the Earth" gentleman with a gift for gab.

You'll find his tale of the 1973 Pascagoula UFO abduction to be compelling.

Randall and I also discussed it further on this week's episode of After The Paracast, an exclusive feature of The Paracast+.

For more details on our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio
 
Very good show Gene... this guy is my age, we both remember our abductions during and after and like him, Budd Hopkins hypnotised us years later and we recovered a bit more.... although as you know I freaked out so much in the session that he had to bring me out of it... never wanted, nor will ever want to recover more of that frightening encounter.....nor from any of the others . My family came out of the closet after the show I did with you and Budd - what 8-9 years ago... they shared a lot of other shared encounters from 40-50 years earlier...they were just too scared to talk about it for that many years, but doing your show opened the door.

Crazy stuff, crazy world. I am convinced this is all inter dimensional as there is such a mix of paranormal that it just can not be just ET.

Enjoying being retired, traveling, reading and listening to podcasts. Still can not read about this stuff and never got past the first 4 minutes of my podcast, it just brings back such fear I shake like a 2 year old. Weird, you would think a rational, educated -very conservative OLD man would be able to move past the shock and fear..

Good, luck, keep it up and screw the negative idiots in this field and the weird fans that surround it.
 
This is a very interesting case and I found Calvin Parker to be quite credible. The interview was generally good -- but frustrating. You guys never asked some basic questions: What did the aliens look like? What did the craft look like? What was it like inside the craft? The object that was the size of a deck of cards -- describe it in more detail. What color was it? Etc. It seems like these are the kinds of questions that would help paint a better picture of what happened -- moreso than "How long were you out of work?" Sheesh! What did the damn creatures look like?!
 
And the evidence that he took those tests and passed?
Will you agree to ask future guests for documentary evidence for such claims in the future?
Or are you suggesting that you simply take his word for it?
At best a lie detector test will indicate the subject believes what he or she is relating. It doesn't explain what happened, or whether what happened is, in fact, true.
 
For those who weren’t around when this happened it’s difficult to appreciate what a major event this October 1973 case was. There really has been nothing like it since. In less than 24 hours after it happened it was a major news story across America, and also internationally. And it was being received seriously despite seeming so unbelievable. There were previous UFO events that were probably as immediately prominent - such as the 1966 Dexter, Michigan "Swamp Gas” case and the 1952 Washington, D.C radar-visual nights. But there has been nothing like it since. Even the Phoenix Lights didn’t come close as far as immediate wide-scale attention and interest.

I first learned about it the next day when my dad handed me a copy of a local Chicago newspaper. There on the front page was Charlie Hickson’s drawing of the beings, and a front page article describing what the two men and the police said happened. It was a straight-forward, not tongue-in-check description of the events.

At the time Dr J. Allen Hynek was living in the Chicago area. Prompted by Pascagoula and the 1973 wave, Dr Hynek gave a special talk one night not long after Pascagoula at a local college - the College of DuPage. I’ve been to a number of UFO lectures and conferences. But not another one like that one. I recall Dr Hynek describing the events, and particularly noting the secret audio tape that the police had made of Hickson and Parker talking privately at the Sheriff’s office. But what is most memorable to me was the crowd - the amount of people that showed up. A large college cafeteria had been filled with folding chairs and converted into a meeting hall. Even though the lecture had been announced not long before that night, the large room was packed to capacity. I’d roughly estimate 500 to 1000 people. I would say that the vast majority of the people there that night had given little thought to UFOs prior to that October. I know the friend I attended it with hadn’t. But on that night my friend was quite serious about it and focused on what was being said. I got the same sense from the rest of the crowd. I recall no giggling or laughing. From the questions being asked and the feeling in the crowd it was more a sense of, “Can you tell us. What is going on? Is this really happening? What’s coming next?” More recently there might have been similar local town meetings prompted by local waves in Stephenville, TX and the Hudson Valley. But that 1973 meeting was being held in a state far from Pascagoula.

In 1973 there was a late night talk show hosted by Dick Cavett that was similar to The Tonight Show. On Nov 1, 1973, three weeks after Pascagoula, Charlie Hickson appeared on The Dick Cavett Show. Joining him to discuss UFOs and the possibility of extraterrestrial life would be a panel of guests that included Dr. Hynek, Apollo/Gemini astronaut James McDivitt, Capt Larry Coyne and Carl Sagan. Cavett started by reading a statement signed by polygraph examiner Scott Glasgow. The statement said that based on the exam Glasgow had performed on Hickson at the Sheriff’s office, Hickson told the truth when he said he believed he had seen the UFO and been taken on board it. After Charlie described to Cavett the encounter, the other guests came out for the discussion. This basically broke down to Sagan on one side mocking the idea of UFOs and UFO witnesses, and pitching for money for searching for radio signals from aliens. On the other side were the rest of the guests arguing for more open-minded consideration of UFOs. (The Cavett Show appearance is described in Ralph and Judy Blum’s 1974 book Beyond Earth)

We wonder why a lot of the people interested in UFOs are older. I think part of the answer is that those are the people who were around for the 1973 wave, Pascagoula, and the waves of the 1960s and 1950s.
 
I wouldn’t believe a word of what this man said. Just a bunch of stories, zero evidence.
You bring up two important concepts, 1.) Belief, and 2.) Evidence. When we have a closer look at what those terms mean, their are a couple of problems with your comment. Without getting too technical, evidence is anything that affects the believability of a claim, and belief is the assumption that a claim is true. Therefore pretty much anything that relates to a claim is evidence, and belief is highly subjective. The real question about evidence is how much weight the evidence offered carries.

As Calvin is a firsthand witness, his testimony carries more weight than mere hearsay. So his evidence carries more weight than at least one other type of evidence. Whether or not that's sufficient evidence for you to believe his account is a personal judgement on your part. Other people might find him perfectly believable. Personally, after this interview I tend to favor the conclusion of other researchers like Hynek, who believed that Hickson and Parker did indeed have a genuine experience.

However, how well Calvin's subjective experience translates to an objective reality ( being abducted by objectively real aliens ), is another matter, and we didn't rule out alternative possibilities. The other thing I did, and I'm not sure if you picked up on this, is verify a couple of the details, like how light it was outside and how well that corresponded to the time of sunset, the moonrise and phase. I also asked him to explain the discrepancies in his claims about passing out ( or not ). Taken together these are rather interesting, and IMO that's how we get reasons to think a person appears to be recalling things correctly. Simply passing an offhanded judgement is something I think we should try to avoid.
 
But for listeners who might not be familiar with the case, it seems like this would be interesting, even important information.
I appreciate your suggestion and those were the kind of questions I'd like to have asked if we had more time, however during this episode I was trying to take the advice of another forum member who suggested that we just allow the guest to tell his story and reserve the questions for the last half hour or so. In the future I'll make an effort to try to balance both considerations a little more evenly. Also, we have a question bank on the forum, so if you have specific questions you can always post them there. Keep letting us know how we're doing and if we are moving in the right direction in the future!
 
For those who weren’t around when this happened it’s difficult to appreciate what a major event this October 1973 case was. There really has been nothing like it since. In less than 24 hours after it happened it was a major news story across America, and also internationally. And it was being received seriously despite seeming so unbelievable. There were previous UFO events that were probably as immediately prominent - such as the 1966 Dexter, Michigan "Swamp Gas” case and the 1952 Washington, D.C radar-visual nights. But there has been nothing like it since. Even the Phoenix Lights didn’t come close as far as immediate wide-scale attention and interest.

I first learned about it the next day when my dad handed me a copy of a local Chicago newspaper. There on the front page was Charlie Hickson’s drawing of the beings, and a front page article describing what the two men and the police said happened. It was a straight-forward, not tongue-in-check description of the events.

At the time Dr J. Allen Hynek was living in the Chicago area. Prompted by Pascagoula and the 1973 wave, Dr Hynek gave a special talk one night not long after Pascagoula at a local college - the College of DuPage. I’ve been to a number of UFO lectures and conferences. But not another one like that one. I recall Dr Hynek describing the events, and particularly noting the secret audio tape that the police had made of Hickson and Parker talking privately at the Sheriff’s office. But what is most memorable to me was the crowd - the amount of people that showed up. A large college cafeteria had been filled with folding chairs and converted into a meeting hall. Even though the lecture had been announced not long before that night, the large room was packed to capacity. I’d roughly estimate 500 to 1000 people. I would say that the vast majority of the people there that night had given little thought to UFOs prior to that October. I know the friend I attended it with hadn’t. But on that night my friend was quite serious about it and focused on what was being said. I got the same sense from the rest of the crowd. I recall no giggling or laughing. From the questions being asked and the feeling in the crowd it was more a sense of, “Can you tell us. What is going on? Is this really happening? What’s coming next?” More recently there might have been similar local town meetings prompted by local waves in Stephenville, TX and the Hudson Valley. But that 1973 meeting was being held in a state far from Pascagoula.

In 1973 there was a late night talk show hosted by Dick Cavett that was similar to The Tonight Show. On Nov 1, 1973, three weeks after Pascagoula, Charlie Hickson appeared on The Dick Cavett Show. Joining him to discuss UFOs and the possibility of extraterrestrial life would be a panel of guests that included Dr. Hynek, Apollo/Gemini astronaut James McDivitt, Capt Larry Coyne and Carl Sagan. Cavett started by reading a statement signed by polygraph examiner Scott Glasgow. The statement said that based on the exam Glasgow had performed on Hickson at the Sheriff’s office, Hickson told the truth when he said he believed he had seen the UFO and been taken on board it. After Charlie described to Cavett the encounter, the other guests came out for the discussion. This basically broke down to Sagan on one side mocking the idea of UFOs and UFO witnesses, and pitching for money for searching for radio signals from aliens. On the other side were the rest of the guests arguing for more open-minded consideration of UFOs. (The Cavett Show appearance is described in Ralph and Judy Blum’s 1974 book Beyond Earth)

We wonder why a lot of the people interested in UFOs are older. I think part of the answer is that those are the people who were around for the 1973 wave, Pascagoula, and the waves of the 1960s and 1950s.
Excellent post!
 
Excellent show. I have been listening since the beginning and I must say this is one of my favorite shows. Calvin Parker had a "genuine experience" of some sort, had a close encounter, or is the world most believable liar. I actually lean to the close encounter option. His story is remarkable yet not overly fantastical. Calvin would be a great person to sit around a campfire with and have him recall the events of that evening. Yes, fisherman are know liars, but they tell small fibs to make things appear larger than they were. Calvin seems to do the opposite. He could have made his story so elaborate and over the top that it sounded like a fish tale, but he didn't.

Oh yeah, best Paracast guest quote ever: "I would have taken him down to the river and tied a boat anchor around him and thrown him in."
 
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I enjoyed the show.

It made me wonder if there was a criteria for why some people might be like a lightning rod in a storm to these experiences. In the case of Parker, he actually came across as a fairly open and matter-of-fact kind of man, in the sense that he didn't have a system of belief that objected outright to the intrusion of the unusual and would colour it with some personally formed rationalisation. His "testimony" made it easier to understand what he experienced.
 
I enjoyed the show.

It made me wonder if there was a criteria for why some people might be like a lightning rod in a storm to these experiences. In the case of Parker, he actually came across as a fairly open and matter-of-fact kind of man, in the sense that he didn't have a system of belief that objected outright to the intrusion of the unusual and would colour it with some personally formed rationalisation. His "testimony" made it easier to understand what he experienced.
Good question and fair points. Like Hynek and and most others who have had a chance to interview Parker, I didn't get the sense that he was perpetuating any sort of prank or hoax, and that he and Hickson had a genuine experience of some kind. But was it really aliens in a spaceship?

I can't help but see how what they experienced also fits with the theory that some sort of natural electromagnetic ( EM ) phenomena sent them both into a temporary fugue state during which time they hallucinated the whole thing. During the last two episodes both guests describe cases where the presence of EM fields were directly correlated with paranormal phenomena. Add in Persinger and Halperin's research and expertise as academics, and the idea that hallucinations are more common than we think doesn't seem so far fetched.
 
I was responding to your comment. Geez. And please, do us a favor and consider stopping the endless comments about ‘Randall’s echo’.
I guess you think that’s funny or something, but there’s nothing even remotely comical about it.
Between the choice of guests and you harping on about that, the last two episodes have been incredibly tedious.

Not nice... BUT as some of us can tell by Gene's extremely non humorous remarks and repetitious facts about subjects- no where close concerning the subjects being discussed - obviously points out that Gene is autistic, what commonly was referred to as aspergers--- which is a high functioning person on the spectrum (often very high IQ). People from his/my generation usually die without diagnosis, but a quick perusal of symptoms and his life- would be a huge eye opener and might help Gene in cutting back his aggravating and to others- incoherent banter. ( I am guilty as well)

Don't take this as a criticism, Einstein, Steve Jobs, Spielberg, and many others are after their histories have been analysed and are most likely all on the spectrum.... look it up... such dysfunctional personalities, but superhuman focus- most often in computers, sciences etc... is even actually made fun of in TV shows like the Big Bang - all those scientists show the symptoms of aspergers and is commonly just called geeks or nerds...but show the same symptoms.... the part of the brain that learns social interactions and norms does not work for those skills and is most likely used for other intellectual pursuits. (latest research has scientists realising without this condition and the insane focus it can bring, mankind might still be living in caves as discoveries like working with flint -to keeping fire was most likely attributed to autistic ancestors)

Do everyone a favor Gene, read about it and restrain your comments, no one likes, nor understands what you are even trying to say most of the time and with the massive amount of commercials on top of crazy banter, I would estimate 2/3 of the podcast is wasted. If you want I could easily do an analysis as this is the sort of stuff we are really good at.

I am also on the spectrum, do not understand social norms, but it never stopped me having a full page about me and my company- in the NYT nor Fairfield and Westchester Business Journals... BUT might explain why David Beidney stopped responding to me, or my alienation on this forum... At 63 I also lost out on the benefits of a early diagnosis (caught in elementary school nowadays so social skills can be taught early) so late stage diagnosis comes a little to late to make any huge change in my social awkwardness and interactions. Thank God, business for most of my life looked at being an asshole, mean son of a bitch was a good upper management skill- far before touchy feely -"we are the world types" took over....

Do me a favor, read slowly, do a little internet research and forgive my disability before you ban me. I use to post as victoriaufo -so anyone that cares could look up my past (most likely dysfunctional) comments in the past (I can not tell the difference either Gene). My lifetime of experiences -often with very successful - neurotypical professional people as witnesses -should not become another reason for sceptics -whom seem to be a large part in this field to discount me.

Shocking really, most people are either trying to prove how smart they are by voicing other possible reasons for other peoples experiences, or are just in the field for attention or money. I stand by my and Budd Hopkins statement, that most, by far almost all experiencers that are not mentally ill or clinically narcissistic , keep their mouths shut and suffer in silence and alone. Sane and smart people can just do a fast perusal of websites, so called researchers information and the attacks at anyone whom does come forward...and they run and hide.....

I think my disability has me come back and dip my toes into this every so often (on this forum)- is also a symptom of this condition and is right up there with other self abuse and destructive morbid tendencies.

Oh, forgot, in a correspondence I had with the lead researcher at the university of exeter in the uk -who did the first major study concerning aphantasia (people like me with NO minds eye) he admitted that yes I am right, his research also shows a definite link between people with autism and their inability to visually imagine anything... Impossible for most of us.... hell, I can not even close my eyes and see my dead mothers face, or even my son's even though he is 10 feet away from me right now. Yea, these experiences are not even possible to be imagination, we can not even enjoy the wonders of pareidolia- as discussed on the latest podcast... and as I tell my son and wife.... I envy all of you who can imagine and actually see the characters in that book they are reading (I can not) and wish I could because...wow.... I would never have to rent another movie as most of you have that in your heads anytime you want... Yea, and to me, explains a lot of people's experiences because they have that skill and some have the opposite and have extreme visual imagination- what is now medically called hyperphantasia- and they probably account for another large group of experiencers. All this shit and I understand perfectly why most people laugh at the paranormal no matter how many miliary come forward, or shit in your pants new newspaper articles which report bits and pieces to this huge puzzle.

Did I go on too long again??? I never know when t
 
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