Inside the quiet Southern city that's famous for two things: Jimmy Buffett and aliens

A sleepy Mississippi beach town has become an unlikely tourist hotspot thanks to a beloved celebrity resident and a wild history of supernatural sightings.

Pascagoula - or the 'singing river' city - is located near the Gulf of Mexico and home to around 22,000 residents.

It is best known as the birthplace of the late legendary musician Jimmy Buffett, who died at age of 76 last year. 

But the coastal town is also the site of one of America's most famous reported alien abductions. 

Two shipyard workers Charles Hickson, 42, and Calvin Parker, 19, claimed they were abducted by aliens on October 11, 1973.

Their tale later became so famous, the city has since put up a historical marker on the banks of the Pascagoula River to commemorate it.   

The pair had reportedly gone fishing on one peaceful Thursday night after work. 

But as they cast their fishing lines into the Pascagoula River, they said they saw a UFO with blue lights zipping toward them.

Hickson claimed the aliens were leathery with crab claws, which they used to grab their forearms and bring them into the vessel.

The marker reads: 'Parker fell unconscious, and Hickson was “paralyzed."'

Hickson also said he was examined onboard by a 'robotic eye'. 

'They gave a thorough, I mean a thorough, examination to me just like any doctor would,' Parker told the Associated Press.

The next thing they knew they were right back on the shore where they started - where Hickson took three shots of liquor to calm down. 

They both claimed they had been left with puncture marks on their arms.   

When they reported their story to the Jackson County Sheriff's Department, deputies assumed they were drunk and making it all up.

Then-Capt. Glenn Ryder said he laughed at the report, but Parker and Hickson stuck to their story.

After a formal interview, deputies left Hickson and Parker together in a room with a hidden tape recorder, hoping to catch them in a lie.

'Me and the other investigator got up and left to let them talk, to see if they were going to say, “Well, we got them fooled,” but they didn't,' Ryder said.

He told The Washington Post: 'We did everything we knew to try to break their stories.

'If they were lying to me, they should be in Hollywood.'

Hickson was very open about the abduction and even wrote a book about his experience in 1983.

Parker, on the other hand, was more spooked. He originally lied that he passed out at the start of the abduction and could not recall what happened.

But he came forward in 2018, explaining that fear kept him quiet.

The Washington Post reported after leaving the sheriff's station, Parker went home and took a bleach bath.

A few weeks later, Parker fled Pascagoula to start over. 

He got married and worked in oil fields. But if anyone recognized him, he would quit and find a new job. 

In an episode of Netflix's 'Files of the Unexplained' about alien abductions, a witness named Maria Blair came forward and corroborated Parker and Hickson's story.

Philip Mantle has been studying UFO sightings for decades and said he found Parker and Hickson's case the most believable one he has come across.

'I have been investigating UFOs for 40 years and have never come across anything like this anywhere. It is unprecedented, physical proof that something happened that night,' he told DailMail.com.

The mayor of Pascagoula, Jay Willis, told NPR: '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 is another historical marker in front of the charming home Buffett lived in before his family moved to Alabama, summarizing key moments in the singer-songwriter's life and career.

It reads: 'Jimmy Buffett will always be the "Son of a Son of a Sailor" and proud son of Pascagoula.'  

In other efforts to honor the star, they named a public beach 'Margaritaville' in 2016 and dedicated a bridge over the Baptiste Bayou to him a year earlier. 

During his career, Buffett wrote a song featuring the city called 'The Pascagoula Run.'

Pascagoula is named after the Native Americans who inhabited the area, according to the city.

Based on legends about the peaceful tribe, the Pascagoula people chose to drown themselves in the river while holding hands and singing instead of fighting a losing battle against the Biloxi tribe, according to the Smithsonian.

This is how Pascagoula became known as the 'singing river' city.

Bernie O'Sullivan, a senior loan officer who has lived in Pascagoula for more than six decades, told Realtor.com: 'We're a small town, where everybody knows everybody else.

'We have a huge beach park where they bring in music several times a year. It's a very laid-back town, with beautiful sunsets.'

The area also boasts Mississippi's largest employer - Huntington Ingalls Shipbuilding - which is the country's leading military ship company. 

'Pascagoula is still a gathering place of nations as they come here to trade, build or buy ships,' the city website reads.

'World War II transformed Pascagoula from a depression era fishing village into the industrial powerhouse it is today,' it adds.  

According to the National Park Service, Ingalls built over 100 ships for the war and in ramped-up war efforts, maritime industries started canning fish. 

In 2022, the city was named a American World War II Heritage City by the National Park Service.

'Today, Pascagoula's growth continues as more and more jobs are being added to meet the nation's military needs,' the city said.