BEYOND PASCAGOULA

Irena McCammon Scott, PhD. Beyond Pascagoula: The Rest of the Amazing Story, Flying Disk Press, 2021.

The Pascagoula abduction incident of 11 October 1973 was not just an isolated case but a part of a wave of UFO sightings throughout that region of the United States. Not only that but Irena Scott comprehensively shows that a massive sonic boom accompanied by at least two other booms rocked the USA on the same night as the abduction.

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Amongst the plethora of UFO sightings, the most outstanding one was of an encounter and possible abduction that occurred across the river from the Pascagoula incident and within the same time frame. The young couple, Maria and Vernon Blair were loading a boat on the end of a pier when a blue light was seen moving about in the sky. Maria even claimed to see a person emerge from the water and then drop back in again. At the time her husband told her not to talk about it as people might think they are crazy. It is only in recent years that Vernon admitted seeing the light and that two humanoids appeared and that they seem to have been abducted and examined by them. Maria says they communicated telepathically with her but much of the experience was blotted out of her mind.

Given the lapse of time since the alleged occurrence - more than 40 years - and the confused and fragmented manner it was recalled it does not present a very convincing back-up or addition to Parker and Hickson’s abduction claims. What is interesting is that on 6 November, also near the location of their incident, was the sighting of an Unidentified Submerged Object (USO) that played cat and mouse with a local fishing crew and a Coast Guard vessel.

To confirm that plenty of weird stuff was going on in the area, Scott devotes most of the book to the sonic boom that was second only to the boom created by the Krakatoa volcanic eruption of 1883. It covered 10 Midwestern and eastern states on the night of 11 to 12 October, and although many newspapers explained it as being caused by a meteor Scott argues that the sound wave was much slower than anything created by a meteor or fireball entering our atmosphere.

Another mundane explanation was that it was caused by a SR-71 Blackbird supersonic aircraft. This idea was put forward by Joseph Tester who identified a flight that very night of a SR-71, but Scott says the timings and location of the boom and the aircraft are not an exact match. Also, it does not explain the booms heard later that night. Although no signs of a meteorite were found there were a high number of UFO sightings that night, so it is possible that these were sightings of a rare type of meteor or a terrestrial craft of some sort.

Scott packs in plenty of information and this is a good addition to Philip Mantle’s championing of the Pascagoula case. Next year he and Scott, through his Flying Disk Press will be publishing ‘The Pascagoula Encounter’ that will feature more UFO witness sightings made on that eventful night. He also says this will be the last book he’ll write, but will he go all Frank Sinatra on us? -- Nigel Watson