On January 20, 1988, the Knowles family were traveling from Perth to Melbourne for a road trip. In the early hours of the morning, while driving through South Australia’s Nullabor Plain, the family say they were tormented by something for about 90 minutes ‘Out of this world’.
Mother Faye Knowles was the driver of a Ford Telstar, accompanied by her three sons Wayne, Sean and Patrick, who were aged between 18 and 24. After a solid 13 hours on the road, most of the family was asleep. Not far from the Mundrabilla outpost, Sean saw mysterious lights in the distance, waking his family in fear. They were soon convinced that this orb was following them.
To escape, Sean put his foot down and accelerated to about 120 miles per hour as the family sat in fear. Mother Faye screamed and the passengers claimed that her scream sounded distorted, as if time itself was slowing down – something often reported during UFO encounters.
Nullabor Plain (Image source ABC NEWS)
The group later reported to police that a beam of light lifted the vehicle into the air and then dropped it, causing a tire to burst, leaving the car unable to move and stuck on the highway.
“Apparently the car was lifted off the road, shaking it quite violently and forcing the car back onto the road with such force that one of the tires was blown,” a police spokesperson told media at the time.
Source ABC news
They heard a loud thud on the roof of the car as a gray mist filled the car.
“I rolled down the window and I felt something on the roof… all this smoke stuff started coming into the car, the car was covered in black stuff,” Faye Knowles told reporters after the incident.
“It was a small light and suddenly it became so big, like a big ball.
“We thought we were dying, but then we got out of the car and hid behind a small tree and the bushes, but he couldn’t find us.”
Source ABC news
After changing the tire, the family drove to Ceduna, their original destination, and contacted the police to report the strange incident. The police took great interest in this case given the visible damage to the car itself. It didn’t take long for the story to make global headlines. A truck driver who spotted the car in the distance came forward and claimed he saw mysterious lights floating above the car.
even their dogs cowered
the front seat of the car… The whole thing
car smelled like bakelite or just like that
they had blown a fuse… A soot was all
about the car and there were four of them
dents as if the car had been
picked up by a magnet.Source Skeptics.com.au
Police advised the family to contact UFO Research Australia, who were happy to carry out forensic tests on the car. Unfortunately, this did not happen because the media reached the family first. Channel 7 reportedly offered the family $5,000 for an exclusive interview. Under the terms, no other media outlet had access to the family or the car. For this reason, UFO Research Australia was unable to properly test the car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9pGUH4KeYY
In the weeks that followed, it is claimed the family saw their doctor because they were stressed by the incident and had to be sedated twice. It seems the facts of the case faded when the media became involved and after a flood of media attention and interviews, the family declined interviews because they were tired of reliving the incident. This meant that many UFO groups that wanted to study the matter were too late.
Not long after the incident, it was claimed by a newspaper that police tested the substance on the car and found indeterminate results. When police were contacted, they gave a different version of events:
“That’s all bulldust,” said Supt
Schulz of the SA Forensic Police
(referring to the stories, not the
material being analyzed). Quoted in
the Melbourne Sun, he said: “There
there were no volumes of content at all
on the vehicle. Out of interest,
We did do what we call a tape lifting
and that’s just a matter of insisting
place tape on the vehicle and remove the dots
of dust and dirt. I have the sample
here and I looked at it and the
report.“All I have are two small slides with a
tiny amount of dirt or
dust on it. It’s probably a road
still dirty. …There hasn’t been one
there will be no exam
investigation.” That is why the SA
the police had never tested the ash/dust,
and had not discovered any ‘unknown’
substance’.Source Skeptics.com.au
Although many believe this to be an encounter with a UFO, psychologists have offered another explanation.
They reached South Australia, where police interviewed the family who have since made global headlines after claiming their car had been picked up by a ‘UFO’. South Australian police inspected the car and found only typical road grime. An examination of the car was carried out by the Australian Mineral Development Laboratory, which analyzed the ash and found particles of clay and salt, consistent with what you would expect to find in a vehicle that had recently crossed the sand-laden Nullarbor Plains near the Great Southern had crossed over. Ocean.
As for the strange sky light that appeared to follow the car, weather data shows that a temperature inversion had occurred in the area at the time of the incident. Former South Australian meteorologist Allan Brunt later noted that such events in the region are notorious for refracting light and distorting the sizes, shapes and colors of objects. Brunt believes the Knowles family saw the distorted image of a truck’s headlights in the distance, which looked like a UFO to them.
Source: Psychology today
It’s an intriguing case, but like many things, it becomes distorted once the media gets involved. While there is much evidence to suggest that it may have been a misunderstanding of a blowout in sleep-deprived individuals, others believe that it is a typical UFO encounter and that the answers themselves lie deep in the subconscious of the Knowles family. Then there’s the fact that a witness claims to have seen lights above their car, leaving dent marks consistent with a magnet, which would explain the car floating. Others think the four spots on the roof could be from roof racks that may have been on the car before. We will never know the real truth of what happened, which is why it remains one of the most intriguing cases.
What do you think? Do you believe the family encountered a UFO or was it an early morning misunderstanding?
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