On October 11,. 1974, the first anniversary of the now well-known Pascagoula incident, Charles Hickson sat on the same Pascagoula River fishing pier along with a friend, Professor William "chic" Mendez, ... "kinda hopin', you know, that they would come back . . I don't think I'd be afraid again ... , and I thought it would be nice to have "Chic" there with me, especially if something might happen.''

Nothing did. Early the next morning both Hickson and Mendez flew to Austin, Texas, to meet with some mernbers of the P.S.I. staff. When invited to visit the P.S.I. research site to see tile light circle in operation (the laboratory and its equipment were not there at that time), both Hickson and Mendez expressed interest in going that evening. Thus, Hickson, Mendez, P.S.I, Facility Director Robert Dunnam. and Mr. Dan Cornelison accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Ray Stanford to the P.S.I. site, arriving sometime around 8:30 p.m. C.D.S.T. on October 12.

The light circle circuit was connected to its power source, but the lights and sequencer would not function. Repair work was begun. Hickson,. Mendez, and Ray Stanford stood talking in the center of the light circle. At about 8:55 p.m. Stanford said to his guests, "I'd better get up the hill [overlooking the light circle] and put the 300 mm telephoto lens and camera on its tripod."

Stanford set up the tripod and 35 mm camera at the spot where the south end of the P.S.I. laboratory building is now located. In setting up the equipment, Stanford was influenced by an unfortunate unconscious assumption or memory 'set' established by the overhead passage and successful photographing of an object ten nights earlier. The tripod was erected at the very same location and set at the same height as it had been that previous night---very high, to facilitate the capture on film of any object passing overhead, without the photographer having to bend awkwardly under the camera. Stanford did not realize that setting the tripod in that manner would not allow him to view an object on any horizon through the lens. It was a regrettable mistake.

By 8:59 p.m. the camera had been attached to the tripod and situated as just described. At that moment Stanford heard his wife Kitty-bo, who was standing slightly downhill and around one hundred feet to the west, shout, "Hey! Look over there!" Bob Dunnam exclaimed, "Look at that! Wow!" Charlie Hickson simply responded with, "Well, I'll be!" (Hickson's reaction left some of those present with the subjective feeling that he was pleased to be seeing something strange, but was not nearly as startled as the others present - as if he had already seen or experienced something much more startling at an earlier time.)

To the west-southwest of the P.S.I. site, in a direction where the horizon is formed by a wooded ridge almost precisely 5,000 feet away, hovered a very brilliant object resembling either a disc on edge or a sphere. Having often seen the full moon in that position during all-night vigils, it was obvious to the P.S.I. people that the object subtended about 17 to 23 minutes of arc-roughly 60 to 80 per cent the angular size of the full moon.

The object emitted a strange orange color all over its surface. Perhaps the color is best described as about 70 per cent the orange of cadmium orange medium artists' pigment, combined with about 30 per cent of the yellow-orange seen in the light emission of sodium vapor lamps.

Beneath the object, light seemed to be more intense, forming a slightly downward-spreading shaft or beam. So intense was the emitted light that it illumined the entire hillside beneath it with a glow resembling sunset, but more orange-yellow. Lights and shadows cast by the object clearly indicated that it was hovering only a few feet above a large tree and short distance in front of the 5,000-foot-distant wooded ridge. That fact was especially evident as the object began slowly moving parallel with the ridge, to the north. Shifting tree shadows on all sides of the moving object clearly defined its position on the hillside.

It seems the object was thirty or more feet across, when the known data are reduced (17-23 minutes of arc and a distance of 5,000 feet, as later determined by measuring the hillside's distance from the P.S.I. site on a carefully scaled aerial photo).

By the time the UFO began moving slowly to Stanford's right, he had learned that he could not sight it with the camera and telephoto, because the unit was, as explained earlier, set too high on its tripod to allow viewing near the horizon. Stanford fought against time to lower the tripod to a practical height. Finally he succeeded and observed details of the UFO through the 300 mm lens. The illustration included herein is an accurate depiction of the details and surface patterns observed by Stanford through the telephoto. Those witnesses viewing without optical aid could clearly see the object, although not in the detail available through the telephoto.

The observation was brief, however, for just as Stanford was about to use the camera's cable release to open the shutter, the brilliantly glowing object darted backward over the ridge of the hill and then downward into an unpopulated and isolated ravine area to the southwest of the P.S.I. site. The event had lasted about twenty-five seconds, by very careful estimates.

The brilliant and intensely orange glow surrounding the UFO had not only illumined the hillside near it, but it also clearly illumined the bottoms of the low-hanging clouds above it. Upon diving into the ravine the object may have landed, for all the brilliant illumination of the low-hanging clouds above it ceased.

The object never reappeared during the hour or so the group remained at the site. Rough and heavily wooded terrain, along with a steep cliff between the observers and the possible landing site, prevented the group from attempting a nocturnal hike to the a location. No roads of any kind lead into the area. Weather and other circumstances prevented a hike to the ravine on subsequent days. Thereafter it is believed that rains would have obliterated any landing traces which might have been left by the UFO.

On the day following the event someone suggested that the object may have been a manned hot air balloon. However, such craft are not normally operated at night. Any attempt to land in the ravine-or even a close approach to the tree tops-would not only have been foolhardy but probably disastrous to a balloon, if not to its pilot. Professor William Mendez, one of the witnesses, suggested that the observed object could not have been a manned hot air balloon. He had observed the nocturnal landing of such a balloon in his own back yard sometime before, and reported that the object did not produce even a tenth of the brilliant illumination observed around the UFO.

All witnesses agreed on the extreme, even severe, brilliance of the entire surface of the object, on the shape of the object, on the scintillating appearance of its 'halo', and on its seeming landing in the ravine, as well as on its previous location on the observers' side of the hilltop.

Most witnesses felt they had seen some less-illuminated or darker, ill-defined patterns on the object's surface, even though they had not had the opportunity to witness the UFO through a high-quality, high-power optical instrument, as did Stanford. The details shown in John Lucas' artistic rendering of the event are based on a sketch of the object as seen through the telephoto by Stanford, who sketched the UFO immediately after the observation.

Unfortunately, UFO/VECTOR, with its high-speed, remote-control TV-aiming system had not yet been installed at the P.S.I. site on the date of the event. It had only been designed and some components ordered. The automatic recording magnetometer had not even been ordered from Precision Monitoring Systems. Had those instruments and others now used at the P.S.I. site been available, the interesting event described here might have been well- recorded instrumentally, making it a rare and scientifically valuable incident, provided it was a bonafide UFO that was seen. As it stands, it is only one more UFO report, with six witnesses.