Posted On: April 17, 2022

The year is 1988, the place, near the Nullarbor Plain, Australia.  The Knowles family had a terrifying encounter with a UFO that attacked their car and tried to carry their away with them in it. There was also missing time involved and an official police investigation.

On January 20th, 1988 at about 02:30 hours, Patrick Knowles, his mother and two brothers were driving from Perth to Melbourne. At this time Patrick advised:

“We were going to drive straight through in shifts, and we planned to cross the desert at night when the heat wasn't so bad. By 2:30 am we were in the Nullarbor Plain. We stopped for petrol and switched drivers. Sean was driving and I was in the front seat next to him. The road was empty.

Suddenly we saw a bright yellow light up ahead and Sean slowed down. As we got closer, the yellow light seemed to be emanating from an egg-shaped object hovering just above ground level.

We thought we might be seeing things but then a caravan passed going the other way, and it swerved sharply to avoid the luminous egg. The closer we got to it, the more we realized it wasn't a normal vehicle or a road signal or anything like that. Sean swerved to avoid it and we continued on, leaving it behind.

The object started towards us. It appeared to accelerate with tremendous speed. We drove on and it literally chased us. The faster we went to get away from it, the faster this object went after us. I reckon we reached a speed of 125 miles per hour but it caught up in a matter of seconds. Then Sean made a sudden u-turn and headed back West in the direction of the petrol station.

The UFO also turned around. I don't know how the hell it was flying, because it didn't have any wings or anything like wings. It just kept coming after us. Sean made another fast U-turn heading back toward Melbourne again but the UFO turned as well and kept pace with the car. In the backseat, everyone was scared. The dogs started barking and whining.

Then we were hit. It shot a beam of light out and punctured our back tire. The back tire was on fire. We started sliding across the road. I realized if we braked we would have to confront the UFO, but Sean didn't have any choice.

Then it landed on the roof of the car and picked the car up. It lit up the car like a microwave. The heat was intense. Our hair was standing straight up and we felt really funny, like we were being dehydrated. It was awful, frightening, like our brains were being sucked out. My fear was that I would be pulled out of my body. I put my hand out of the window and touched something spongy that burned my hand. I thought we were going to die.

You could actually feel the car rising in the air. The car began to fill with a thick black fog. It was so hot, and all this soot, this junk, started covering us.

Our voices started changing, you know how a tape deck sounds when the batteries start to go flat? That's what it was like. Then I passed out.

I came to when I heard a tremendous noise, like a bang, and our car suddenly dropped back to earth. Dawn was coming up. The thing just flew away, that was the last we saw of it. I had to change the tire, and we tried to clean out the black soot. There were marks on the roof of the car. As soon as we could, we drove fast to the nearest roadhouse.

We were too shocked to talk for a while. Then we realized we had lost a couple of hours’ time during the incident.

We called the police. The funny thing was they were already looking for us. Someone, maybe the people in the caravan we passed, had phoned the police anonymously.

Their report states that they witnessed our car being picked up off the road and shaken violently. They noticed the car was covered in black ash. The police inspected our car and noted the ash, the bad smell, and the dents on the roof.

They were convinced something had occurred. They took us to the hospital where we were treated for burns and shock.

But then the media got hold of the incident. I don't think a single reporter or journalist asked sensible questions or tried to console us for our fear, they just wanted to humiliate us.

When our car was examined by forensic scientists, they found unexplained high concentrations of chlorine, an element not usually present in cars, animals, or the desert environment.

My family does not need proof of this sort because we all know what we witnessed and what we went through that night.”

Faye Knowles, a mother of three, also told police that her speech and that of sons Sean, 21, Patrick, 24, and Wayne, 18, changed during the encounter along the Nullabor Plain highway.

The Police dismissed any suggestion of a hoax.

"We were a little bit skeptical at first," said Sgt. Jim Furnell of Ceduna Police in the state of South Australia. "But after investigating, we are treating the reports very seriously."

He said forensic scientists would examine the black powdery ash found inside and outside Knowles’ car.

On a side note. A crew on a tuna boat 50 miles away also said they were buzzed by an unidentified flying object minutes later, and that their voices become unintelligible as a result.

He said the crew of the tuna boat could not have known about the Knowles’ experience when they reported a UFO sighting in the Great Australia Bight, a body of water off the Australian coast.

My Take: This is an excellent encounter. Four witnesses, Physical evidence at the scene and to the car. There was burn marks on the victims. Even the Police said this was NOT a hoax. I couldn’t find out anything about the missing time. Wonder if the family ever did hypnotic regression? What do you think?

Resources: Resources: Martha Cliff for MailOnline, April 19, 2017

Posted On: April 17, 2022

The year is 1988, the place, near the Nullarbor Plain, Australia.  The Knowles family had a terrifying encounter with a UFO that attacked their car and tried to carry their away with them in it. There was also missing time involved and an official police investigation.

On January 20th, 1988 at about 02:30 hours, Patrick Knowles, his mother and two brothers were driving from Perth to Melbourne. At this time Patrick advised:

“We were going to drive straight through in shifts, and we planned to cross the desert at night when the heat wasn't so bad. By 2:30 am we were in the Nullarbor Plain. We stopped for petrol and switched drivers. Sean was driving and I was in the front seat next to him. The road was empty.

Suddenly we saw a bright yellow light up ahead and Sean slowed down. As we got closer, the yellow light seemed to be emanating from an egg-shaped object hovering just above ground level.

We thought we might be seeing things but then a caravan passed going the other way, and it swerved sharply to avoid the luminous egg. The closer we got to it, the more we realized it wasn't a normal vehicle or a road signal or anything like that. Sean swerved to avoid it and we continued on, leaving it behind.

The object started towards us. It appeared to accelerate with tremendous speed. We drove on and it literally chased us. The faster we went to get away from it, the faster this object went after us. I reckon we reached a speed of 125 miles per hour but it caught up in a matter of seconds. Then Sean made a sudden u-turn and headed back West in the direction of the petrol station.

The UFO also turned around. I don't know how the hell it was flying, because it didn't have any wings or anything like wings. It just kept coming after us. Sean made another fast U-turn heading back toward Melbourne again but the UFO turned as well and kept pace with the car. In the backseat, everyone was scared. The dogs started barking and whining.

Then we were hit. It shot a beam of light out and punctured our back tire. The back tire was on fire. We started sliding across the road. I realized if we braked we would have to confront the UFO, but Sean didn't have any choice.

Then it landed on the roof of the car and picked the car up. It lit up the car like a microwave. The heat was intense. Our hair was standing straight up and we felt really funny, like we were being dehydrated. It was awful, frightening, like our brains were being sucked out. My fear was that I would be pulled out of my body. I put my hand out of the window and touched something spongy that burned my hand. I thought we were going to die.

You could actually feel the car rising in the air. The car began to fill with a thick black fog. It was so hot, and all this soot, this junk, started covering us.

Our voices started changing, you know how a tape deck sounds when the batteries start to go flat? That's what it was like. Then I passed out.

I came to when I heard a tremendous noise, like a bang, and our car suddenly dropped back to earth. Dawn was coming up. The thing just flew away, that was the last we saw of it. I had to change the tire, and we tried to clean out the black soot. There were marks on the roof of the car. As soon as we could, we drove fast to the nearest roadhouse.

We were too shocked to talk for a while. Then we realized we had lost a couple of hours’ time during the incident.

We called the police. The funny thing was they were already looking for us. Someone, maybe the people in the caravan we passed, had phoned the police anonymously.

Their report states that they witnessed our car being picked up off the road and shaken violently. They noticed the car was covered in black ash. The police inspected our car and noted the ash, the bad smell, and the dents on the roof.

They were convinced something had occurred. They took us to the hospital where we were treated for burns and shock.

But then the media got hold of the incident. I don't think a single reporter or journalist asked sensible questions or tried to console us for our fear, they just wanted to humiliate us.

When our car was examined by forensic scientists, they found unexplained high concentrations of chlorine, an element not usually present in cars, animals, or the desert environment.

My family does not need proof of this sort because we all know what we witnessed and what we went through that night.”

Faye Knowles, a mother of three, also told police that her speech and that of sons Sean, 21, Patrick, 24, and Wayne, 18, changed during the encounter along the Nullabor Plain highway.

The Police dismissed any suggestion of a hoax.

"We were a little bit skeptical at first," said Sgt. Jim Furnell of Ceduna Police in the state of South Australia. "But after investigating, we are treating the reports very seriously."

He said forensic scientists would examine the black powdery ash found inside and outside Knowles’ car.

On a side note. A crew on a tuna boat 50 miles away also said they were buzzed by an unidentified flying object minutes later, and that their voices become unintelligible as a result.

He said the crew of the tuna boat could not have known about the Knowles’ experience when they reported a UFO sighting in the Great Australia Bight, a body of water off the Australian coast.

My Take: This is an excellent encounter. Four witnesses, Physical evidence at the scene and to the car. There was burn marks on the victims. Even the Police said this was NOT a hoax. I couldn’t find out anything about the missing time. Wonder if the family ever did hypnotic regression? What do you think?

Resources: Resources: Martha Cliff for MailOnline, April 19, 2017