Jackson County deputies left a recorder running after interviewing the men; the tape captures both continuing to describe the event to each other in frightened tones with no audience. Hickson passed a polygraph arranged by a UFO investigator, though the operator's methods were criticized. Parker, then 19, avoided publicity for decades and gave full interviews only in 2018. The sheriff's department file and the tape still exist.
The beings had no eyes, slit mouths, claw hands and floated. Later tellings added a medical-style exam, a floating eye device, and eventually additional witnesses who said they saw the craft that night. The case was absorbed into the abduction canon as a template: paralysis, examination, release, ridicule.
The interesting structure is the interrogation room as an accidental laboratory: two subjects, no perceived audience, a covert microphone. Whatever happened on the river, the tape documents two men who believed it in private, which shifts the case from hoax analysis to experience analysis, the harder and more honest question.
What does a hoax sound like when the hoaxers think nobody is listening?