Pascagoula, Miss., is known for building Navy ships, but city officials say it's actually famous for two other things.
First, it’s the birthplace of Jimmy Buffett. The city put up a historical marker outside his childhood home.
And then there’s the second thing: space aliens. The city put up a marker for them too.
“It was the evening of October 11, 1973 when two local shipyard workers went fishing,” the marker says, at the edge of the Pascagoula River.
The sign says Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker spotted a football-shaped craft, which took them aboard.
“Inside the craft, Hickson was examined by a robotic eye, then both men were deposited back on the river bank and the space ship shot away,” the marker says. Stamped at the bottom is the seal of the city of Pascagoula and the Jackson County Historical and Genealogical Society.
Mayor Jay Willis says when it came to writing this marker, authorities saw no reason to hedge.
“Because these two guys had the same story of what happened, how it happened for the rest of their lives,” Willis explains. “This marker is going to be there for a long, long time. It’s a lasting tribute … to what occurred right here in Pascagoula.”
There’s no way to really know what happened that night in 1973, when the men waded headfirst into one of humanity’s greatest mysteries: Are we alone?
But the marker is now one of at least 15 that say, without hesitation, that aliens have come to visit Earth.
They join more than 180,000 other historical markers dotting the country’s landscape, and NPR found they wouldn’t be the first to claim something that may, or may not, be true.
There’s a marker in Massachusetts that claims the town was once home to a real, live wizard. New York has a marker about a ghost that plays the fiddle on a bridge in the moonlight.
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But locals say Pascagoula’s alien marker is no tourist stunt.
“If you’re going to be known for something, why the heck not?” says Rebecca Davis, who helped write the marker when she ran the development group Main Street Pascagoula.
At first, she says, most people in town didn’t believe the men’s story.
“They thought they were just off their rockers,” Davis says, standing next to the wooded area by the river where the men said they were abducted. “And we’re in the Bible Belt, you know? Like, my grandma told me, 'Girl, hush, we don’t talk about that stuff.'”
But as time passed, Davis says, the feeling changed. There was also a recording of the men, who have since died, talking about their experience that believers say gives it credibility.
“People back then, I really think they wanted to believe, but they were scared to believe,” she says, “and now’s a different time, a different age, and more openness.”
That openness has spread across American society. Half of Americans now believe that military reports of UFOs are likely evidence of intelligent life outside Earth, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey.
But openness is different than etching facts into a bronze or acrylic plaque and staking it into the dirt.
Scott and Suzanne Ramsey put up one of the nation’s first alien markers in 1999 in the high desert near Aztec, N.M., where they say a spaceship crashed in 1948.
“We welded up a metal stand and had a local trophy shop do the engraving,” Scott Ramsey says. They replaced it with a new version in 2007.
“I think it kind of lends credibility to the fact that something did happen there,” he says.
It’s always been difficult to argue with historical markers. That’s part of their allure. Rewriting them means taking the whole sign down and starting over.
And that permanence has made alien markers an attraction. The Aztec visitor center now hands out maps and hosts the Alien Run mountain bike race.
UFO enthusiasts say they pass around road trip ideas. Start in Lincoln, N.H., where a marker says Betty and Barney Hill were abducted. Head to Franklin, Ky., where another describes how a National Guard pilot died chasing a UFO. On to Shiloh, Ill., which tells of a “confirmed UFO sighting.”
Fascination with extraterrestrials isn’t new, but what was once left to low-budget sci-fi movies has taken on a new seriousness. There’s declassified military reports, even interest from Congress.
Still, none of it has amounted to much actual proof, and even as Frank Drake pointed the first radio telescope at the stars in 1960, and far more sophisticated probes have been searching for the last 20 years, those efforts have so far been met with silence.
That hasn’t stopped cities from stamping alien markers with official emblems and crests.
On a recent afternoon in Pascagoula, Thearon Ephriam and his uncle, David Ephriam, took a break from fishing to read the sign.
“As dusk fell a buzzing sound alerted them to a football-shaped craft hovering behind them,” David Ephriam read from the sign as he started to chuckle. “Ain't this something?” he asked.
Thearon Ephriam pointed to the city of Pascagoula logo. “They put a whole stand up,” he said, laughing. “Gotta be some truth in it.”
“So we have to be aware when we come out here,” David said.
Thearon raised his eyebrows. “If we see a football-shaped craft we know to get low.”
“If one comes up behind you and looks like a football,” David laughed, “don’t look back, dive.”
However future researchers may view these signs years from now, even UFO enthusiasts wouldn’t argue with that advice.
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