PASCAGOULA, Miss. –  Calvin Parker says he never wanted to talk about  it, but 45 years later, he’s written a book about the night when he says that he and a friend were abducted by aliens.

In an interview with the Clarion Ledger, Parker says he “felt like everyone deserved an explanation,” and the book is his account of what he says happened on October 11, 1973.

The story is well-known in Mississippi, and neither Parker nor his friend Charles Hickson (now deceased) ever wavered in the details.

The two men said they were fishing on the Pascagoula River when they saw a blinding light, hovering over the water.

Parker says the light came from a football- shaped spacecraft about 80 feet long.  He says he saw a door open, and three creatures with large heads, claw-like hands, and no legs “floated” off the spacecraft and pulled the two men inside.

Parker thinks the alien creatures “injected” him and Hickson with something that made them powerless to resist as the aliens subjected them to some kind of physical examination before releasing them, numb and weak but unharmed.

The two men were so shaken that they told their story to the local sheriff, who said at the time that he believed they were relating a true story.

Parker’s book is called “Pascagoula — The Closest Encounter, My Story.”

For more of Parker’s interview with the Clarion Ledger, click here.