On the morning of January 20, 1988, in Mundrabilla, Western Australia, Faye Knowles and her three children, Patrick (24 years old), Sean (21 years old), and Wayne (18 years old), were traveling along the Eyre Highway, heading from Perth to Adelaide, in South Australia.
Faye Knowles had decided to move from Perth to Adelaide with her children. As a single mother, she was seeking new opportunities and wished to start a new life.
She and her three adult children decided to travel by car, undertaking a long journey of about 2,700 kilometers through one of the most remote and desolate areas of Australia, the Nullarbor Plain. Fortunately, the family car was in excellent condition. Faye had recently purchased a new Ford Telstar, and the four of them could take turns driving along the way.
The Nullarbor is a vast expanse of arid land, covering about 200,000 square kilometers, situated between the Great Australian Bight and the Great Victorian Desert.
Around 4:00 AM, while driving along the Eyre Highway, Sean was at the wheel, and Patrick was in the passenger seat. Suddenly, an intense light appeared ahead of the vehicle on the road. Astonished, the driver asked his brother if it could be a spacecraft. Patrick, skeptical, dismissed the idea.
Still intrigued, Sean tried to get closer to the light to observe it better. When they were about 20 meters away, an intensely lit, egg-shaped object suddenly crossed in front of the car, descending toward the ground. Instinctively, Sean swerved the vehicle to avoid a collision, narrowly missing a truck coming from the opposite direction.
The strange object was moving alongside the right side of the Knowles family car and apparently followed a truck passing in the opposite direction. Sean decided to chase the UFO but soon gave up and resumed the journey. Shortly afterward, they all heard a loud noise, like knocks on the vehicle, while the car seemed to become heavier. Then, the vehicle was apparently lifted off the ground, floating slightly above the road.
Mrs. Knowles opened the window and placed her hand on the roof of the car. She felt something soft, elastic, and slightly warm. When she withdrew her hand, she noticed it was covered in a very fine, dark dust with a nauseating odor, similar to decaying flesh, which caused panic among everyone in the vehicle.
Soon after, an intense noise was heard coming from the top of the car. The family’s two dogs went into a frenzy, while the passengers began to feel that everything around them was becoming slow and distant, as if they were in an altered state of consciousness. None of them could determine how long the vehicle remained in the air or how long this peculiar state lasted. They only remembered the car being violently placed back on the road, hard enough to burst one of the rear tires.
Sean quickly drove the car to the shoulder, pwhere they all got out and hid in nearby bushes, staying there for a few minutes. After checking that the object had disappeared, they changed the tire and continued to the nearest town.
At one stop, they met a truck driver named Graham Henley, who reported seeing a flying object emitting a bright light through his rearview mirror while driving on the same road. He stated that the object remained visible for about five minutes.
Upon inspecting the car, the family and the truck driver identified four marks on the roof, damage to the tire, and the presence of the fine black dust, both inside and outside the vehicle. Later, they all returned to the sighting location, where they found skid marks, footprints, and other signs that corroborated the Knowles family’s account.
The family continued their journey, arriving in Ceduna, where they gave statements to the local police, who confirmed the emotional shock of the witnesses. The police also inspected the vehicle, confirming the strange marks and the presence of the fine dark dust.
Encounter Left Evidence
After reporting to the police in Ceduna, samples of the black dust were collected for forensic analysis. However, the police tests were never conducted. Nevertheless, at least half of the material was obtained by ufologists Keith Basterfield and Ray Brooke from UFO Research South Australia, who took it to a laboratory.
The analysis revealed common materials such as sodium chloride, sodium, aluminum, magnesium, sulfur, potassium, silicon, chlorine, clay particles, and calcium.
Seven Network, an Australian television broadcaster, hired the Australian Mineral Development Laboratories (AMDEL) to test the vehicle for radioactivity, but no anomalies were found above historical levels. AMDEL, an organization specialized in material and mining analysis, stated that the car’s tire failure was due to insufficient pressure, and that the dust, smell, and smoke were caused by the blowout.
Another set of samples was taken from the car by the Victorian UFO Research Society and sent to two different laboratories, again with results deemed common.
However, an analysis conducted by Dr. Richard Haines in the United States concluded that the dust inside the vehicle was different from the dust outside, containing a possible trace of astatine, a radioactive chemical element. Additionally, Faye’s hand became red and swollen in the days following the event.
Richard F. Haines was an important investigator in the field of ufology. In 1967, he began working as a research scientist at NASA, where he worked on several projects, including Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and Space Station Freedom. He was appointed Head of the Space Human Factors Office at NASA-Ames in 1986, where he led research and development efforts on the rigid EVA (Extravehicular Activity) suit AX-5, habitability design research for Space Station Freedom, and spacecraft window design. He retired from public service in 1988 and taught at San Jose State University as an Associate Professor of Psychology while working part-time as a scientist at the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science. Afterward, much of his effort was focused on documenting and studying UFO sightings around the world.

Haines’ interest in UFO research was separate from his professional work at NASA. He worked with various UFO/UAP investigative organizations, such as Chief Scientist for the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), a field investigator for the Center for UFO Studies, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), and he founded the Joint American-Soviet Aerial Anomaly Federation (JASAAF). His work primarily focused on cases involving military and commercial aircraft sightings worldwide, beginning in the early 20th century with World War I and continuing into the early 21st century. Through the use of photographs, videos, interviews, and testimonies from pilots and passengers, military and media reports, and secondary research, Haines fully documented hundreds of UFO sightings over a period of one hundred years.

Below see a rare interview with the family: