Tanner Williams unidentified-object report — October 11, 1973

The Tanner Williams entry concerns a very young child's statement during the October 1973 wave of unusual reports along the Gulf Coast. On October 11, a three-year-old boy reportedly told his mother that he had been playing with an unusual visitor in the backyard. The descriptions preserved in the catalogues are brief: gray, wrinkled skin and pointed ears. The child's wording is variously rendered as an old or a nice monster. The surviving summary does not give a detailed sequence of arrival, play, or departure. It does not name the boy or his mother, describe a conversation with the visitor, or establish that an adult saw it. Those omissions matter particularly because the account reaches readers through the mother's report of a small child's experience, followed by later compilation. The date and location have encouraged comparison with the much better known Hickson–Parker claim at Pascagoula, across the Mississippi border, on the same day. Geographic and temporal proximity do not demonstrate a common cause. No craft is described in the Tanner Williams entry, and no abduction is reported there. The plate accordingly shows a safe backyard encounter between a fully clothed child and a gray, wrinkled, pointed-eared figure. The visitor's precise height, other facial details, the yard, and the child's appearance remain illustrative rather than documented.