CLOSE ENCOUNTER: MY INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES HICKSON – PART IV

HICKSON: Right, and when I try to forget, I can’t do it, you know, I’m compelled to do something and I do it.

 

WHAT PUTS YOU BACK ON TRACK?

 

HICKSON: Well, it’s just…I just get on pins and needles…I get upset, I won’t eat, I can’t sleep. It’s just something that compels me to get back on what I’m doing.

GIVE ME A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOU DO TO GET OFF TRACK AND THEN WHAT YOU DO TO GET RID OF THOSE FEELINGS?

 

HICKSON: Well, when I get a feeling like that, that I’m not doing right, that I’m wrong, I’ll just go off by myself somewhere. If nothing else, I’ll go over on the tree farm, back to the woods and sit down, and I’ll just begin to realize that I have a mission to do, that I have to do it. I get at peace with myself again. And I come on back and get back to doing these things again.

 

DOING WHAT THINGS?

 

HICKSON: This is why I know that it’s meant for me to tell people and to go and talk to people. A lot of times I’ll maybe get telephone calls, they want me to come to a college or university somewhere and lecture. Well, maybe I don’t want to go, maybe I just say I can’t go, you know, I’ve got this to do, I just can’t take the time, I don’t have the finances. I’ll put them off, well then it just–it bugs me–it’s on me until I just have to call them up and tell them I’ll do it. Then I’m at peace then. That’s an example, see.

 

YOU’VE MENTIONED THAT YOU’VE HAD A CHANCE TO SELL THE RIGHTS FOR A BOOK OR TO THE MOVIES AND PROBABLY MAKE SOME PRETTY GOOD MONEY, BUT YOU DECIDED NOT TO DO THAT.

 

HICKSON: Yeah. See, you know, anybody needs finances to live on. Well, I had my health, and I’ve always been able to make a livelihood for my family, you know, we’ve had hard times like everybody else on different occasions. I can’t see something like this–now I couldn’t have done it, I guess if I wanted to I’d been compelled not to by a stronger force, I think. But if you believe in something as strongly as I do, to throw it out there to people or the public, something that’s going to affect their lives, not only yours, in time to come, and throw something out there that’ll make me rich, you know, I don’t believe in that…I could have made a lot of money, thrown something out there that would have been partly fiction, with the big buildup and everything else, but what purpose has that done? I mean, it just can’t happen that way…The knowledge that I’m beginning to learn now and to understand now, I wouldn’t have gained that knowledge, something would have been wrong, I think that knowledge wouldn’t have been coming to me, It would have been taken away from me.

 

YOU’D HAVE BEEN UNCHOSEN.

 

HICKSON: That’s right. It was a hard decision for a human being to make, but I want to see it through to the end.

 

YOU’VE MADE A REFERENCE—ALMOST LIKE A BIBLICAL REFERENCE–TO 12 CHOSEN PEOPLE.

 

HICKSON: I think the world will begin to see at the end of this year, you’ll see 12 people emerging that’ll carry on a crusade and let the world know what’s going to happen.

 

ANY SPECIFIC REASON WHY IT’S THE NUMBER 12?

 

HICKSON: I don’t know.

 

HOW DO YOU KNOW IT’S 12?

 

HICKSON: This has been–this has been told to me. I won’t elaborate any further on it right now…when the time comes, I will. I’m gaining knowledge now that I can’t fully understand myself yet…I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know.

 

HAVE YOU MET ALL 12 OF THESE OTHER PEOPLE OR DO ALL OF THEM EVEN EXIST RIGHT NOW?

 

HICKSON: I don’t know. I do know I will, though.

 

HAVE YOU MET ANY OF THEM?

 

HICKSON: I don’t know. I probably have, but I don’t know. It’s a lot for a man to have to live with and keep his sanity and try to live a normal life. It’s a lot for a man to have to do.

 

YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE ONE OF THEM.

 

HICKSON: I know that to be a fact.

 

SINCE YOU MADE THAT REVELATION, IT WOULD SEEM LIKE, IF THERE WERE ANOTHER ONE, THAT HE (OR SHE) MIGHT HAVE WANTED TO TELL YOU, OR YOU MIGHT WANT TO TELL HIM–

 

HICKSON: Well, I think when the time comes, you know, we’ll be aware of it then. There’s a lot of things going to happen this year, a lot of strange things are going to happen this year.

 

CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE I CAN CATEGORIZE–SOMETHING STRANGE WITH THE WEATHER, THE WORLD POLITICAL SITUATION?

 

HICKSON: (He ponders for a long moment.) Well, let’s wait till another time.

 

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT CERTAIN THINGS? IS IT A FEELING?

 

HICKSON: Well, it’s a feeling, it’s a terrible feeling, it’s very hard to explain. I’ve even tried to even get started talking about it, and I just can’t do it. It’s just a feeling that I’m not supposed to talk about it. I can’t compel myself to do it. And I need to find out why, I need to know about these things. Maybe it’s not time. Evidently, it’s not time for me to talk about it.

 

BUT YOU HAVE A FEELING WHEN IT IS, YOU’LL KNOW?

 

HICKSON: Yes. Oh yes.

 

(THE DISCUSSION TURNS TO THE RIVERBANK ABDUCTION.)

 

HICKSON: Inside of there (the craft) there was so much light in there, It seemed to me it was glowing from the walls, the overhead, and the floor and I was just in the center of it. Made me feel like I was in an electric light bulb or something, you know. There was three or four days that my eyes was something like I’d had a bad welding flash. They were that way for a few days, and I believe the light done that, I don’t know.

 

YOU COULD NOT CLOSE YOUR EYES DURING THE TIME INSIDE THE CRAFT? YOU COULDN’T BLINK?

 

HICKSON: I couldn’t dose my eyes. I couldn’t blink. I could move them but I couldn’t blink. If I could’ve closed them, I’d have closed them against that light. I have a feeling for some reason they wanted me to see, you know, the inside of there.

 

YOU COULD HAVE SEEN IT EVEN IF YOU COULD BLINK, BUT THEN YOU COULD HAVE KEPT YOUR EYES SHUT ON PURPOSE.

 

HICKSON: Right. Cause the light, it was terrible.

 

COULD YOU SPEAK?

 

HICKSON: No, I could not. You know, when you’re talking you can hear your own self, and I was trying to talk and I couldn’t hear myself talk, so I wasn’t talking. I was trying to get some words out, I wanted to see what they were going to do with me, you know. Because, you know, I was thinking ‘this is it, nobody will see me again.’ And Charlie was scared, I’ll be frank with you, no need for me to lie about it, you know, cause I didn’t know what to expect.

 

DO YOU THINK MAYBE YOU WERE TALKING, BUT THAT YOU JUST COULDN’T HEAR?

 

HICKSON: No, I don’t. I don’t know. You know, if I was talking, I didn’t hear myself talking.

 

DID YOU KNOW YOUR MOUTH WAS MOVING?

 

HICKSON: Well, I guess my mouth wasn’t moving, cause I couldn’t move anything else (he says he was completely paralyzed except for eye movement). It was a strange feeling that I haven’t been able to even explain it to myself, and I know I can’t explain it to anyone else, you know. Maybe someday I’ll understand it, you know, what happened to me, what state I was put in or what state I become in…and why I couldn’t move and why I couldn’t talk. Maybe that’ll be explained to me…it worries me to death sometime.

 

ONE DISCREPANCY IN THE BOOK CONCERNS THE TIME OF THE RIVERBANK ABDUCTION. IN MENDEZ’S RECONSTRUCTION OF THE TIME FRAME BASED ON WHEN YOU CALLED THE SHERIFF, HE PLACES THE TIME AT ABOUT 9:30 OR 10PM. YET, YOU WRITE THAT IT OCCURRED AROUND DUSK. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS?

 

HICKSON: I don’t know. (He says the encounter happened around dusk and that the other time was probably incorrect.)

 

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE THE ROBOTS TO GET FROM THE CRAFT TO YOU?

 

HICKSON: (He has trouble answering this question, but finally says about half a minute or so, and agrees with me that this would be an unhurried pace.)

 

WHEN DID YOU GET BACK TO NORMAL AFTER THEY LET YOU OUT OF THE CRAFT?

 

HICKSON: When they brought me back outside, they just let me down to the ground, they didn’t throw me down. And of course I fell on the ground. I was real weak, my knees felt weak. I saw Calvin then, and he looked terrible, and I was trying to get where he was. My legs got strong enough I could get up, and I was getting toward him. I heard that hissing sound and I looked back and that thing was gone. I made my way on toward him, I was really concerned about him at that time. And I was trying to get him where I could talk to him, and it took us both a while before we could, you know, get to where we could kind of figure things out.

 

THAT ABOUT WRAPS IT UP. I ASKED YOU TO THINK ABOUT A CLOSING COMMENT YOU MIGHT WANT TO MAKE TO THE PUBLIC.

 

HICKSON: I’ll say again, you know, that before the end of the year, that everyone will be aware that we’re not alone, that a lot of things are going to be revealed to us, that there won’t be any doubt in anyone’s mind, and a lot of things are going to happen this year that’s going to seem strange at first to the people, till they begin to realize. And that’s about the only thing I’d like to say now. But I will be saying a lot before the year is over. END