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More than 90% of all reported alien abductees are American.

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It's a statistic that skeptics use to argue that the abduction phenomenon is simply a product of our own pop culture and pop psychology.

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Abduction experts counter that the numbers are skewed because abductees in other countries don't always feel free to come forward.

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That was certainly the case for an Australian family who were forced underground after their experience was ridiculed in the press.

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On the afternoon of January 20, 1988, Fay Knowles and her three sons set out from Perth in Western Australia to visit relatives several hundred miles away.

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At dusk they were crossing the Nullarbor Plain, a desolate stretch of road through the Australian desert.

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It was here, as day turned to night, that the Knowles encountered something terrifying that remains unexplained to this day.

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We drove on and this object kept me falling on us and somehow, I don't know how to tell it, but it wasn't actually flying, it was just hovering.

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It didn't have wings or anything like that, it was just hovering.

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We nearly died, we thought we were dying.

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And the faster we went, the faster this object went.

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The Knowles had experienced abject fear at the hands of an unnatural force.

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Police offered no explanation and when the family turned to the media for help in finding an answer, the media turned on them.

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Would you please welcome a couple of people who've seen the life, Fay and Patrick Knowles. What was your first reaction?

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I thought we were going to die, you know.

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Did you know what it was?

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I didn't know.

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It didn't look like anything you'd ever seen before.

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No, that's right.

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The object picked the carer up and mum wound in her window and put her hand out in the roof.

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So you've been picked up by an alien craft and you've wound down the window, Fay, and put your hand on the roof.

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I was curious to see what was happening.

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So you're way off the ground, you've got the alien spacecraft picking you up and you've virtually patted it, haven't you?

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As this was going on, it was like a really loud sound on top of the inside of the car and it was like a material.

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It was like a fog that was coming into the car and when the material came in...

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It was like mum's skin burning.

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And the media treating the Knowles family was ruthless.

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I don't think one person honestly asked sensible questions and tried to console these people and seeing the state of anxiety that they were in.

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People would say, you know, you saw things, you're making it up.

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That's not true.

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A lot of the interviewers I find and have found make a bit of a joke of it and don't really approach it seriously.

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Some staining due to soot from outer space, others staining due to terrified passengers.

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The impression I got on the Knowles case that it was a serious and definite event that happened, experience that they had.

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Here for the first time outside of Australia and without reprisal or ridiculed is the story of what happened on that January night in 1988 as told by the Knowles in their own words.

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I was next to Sean, he was sitting in front driving and I was asleep in the passenger side and Sean goes, wake up, look at this.

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And he goes, what's the matter? He goes, it looks like a earphone.

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I said, can't you drive up to it and approach it.

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And this thing was, at first it was just stopped in the road and we approached it.

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Yeah, it was more like an egg shape and it had like a yellow center.

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Next to it, you know, this object appeared back behind us and I said to Sean, come put your foot down, let's get going.

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And that's when I decided to put my foot down and it just caught up within a matter of seconds.

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This box hit the back tire like something was trying to blow out the tire like the object behind us.

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It blew the tire out with like a beam of light.

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Before we knew it, she just went clunk on the roof of the car.

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It jumped on the roof of the car and took us up near like that.

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And as it picked the car up, the car lit up like a microwave.

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It lit up really bright inside.

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We heard this great big enormous sound like a motor or something.

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I don't know what the kids had really had to describe.

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Like it made us feel like our heads were going to explode.

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Yeah, we're frying and like our brains been sucked out.

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Yeah, it was hot.

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All this junk come inside the car and you know, and at that time it was hard to explain

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because I kind of barbed length out.

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As the car was dropping through this object, object slipped off the car.

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Not long after, you know, it dropped the car.

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That's when I come out of it and I took off from the car and told them all to jump out.

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We jumped out the car, ran out to bushes, hit into bushes.

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And you could see the sting. It was still looking for us.

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And at the same time, I turned the lights off in the car.

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And somehow it could not focus on that car.

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Somehow it was working with our lights.

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Soon as I turned those lights off, it just could not find us.

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According to the Knowles family, it was at this point that they experienced

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what ufologists referred to as missing time.

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I think we lost about an hour and a half in time.

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And it's really hard to explain, you know, how long it did take.

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Local police investigated the incident and found several eyewitnesses

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who corroborated the strange events on the Nullarbor Plain that night.

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They were travelling along the road.

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A bright light appeared in front of the car.

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Shortly after, the lights appeared behind the car.

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The car was picked up, on the road, shaken violently.

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The car was covered in ash.

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Black ash.

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What about the people? Were they harmed at all?

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They weren't harmed, but visibly shaken up.

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Many people witnessed the Knowles event.

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And they were from all professions and walks of life.

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And then they were travelling in different vehicles.

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So we had people in spotter planes for the tuna boat people.

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We had the tuna boat people experiencing the urethral light above them.

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Police investigators and scientists examined the car

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and analysed the sooty residue found inside.

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Although their findings were inconclusive,

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most of the investigators insisted the damage to the vehicle

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and the tires was caused by some unexplained but natural causes.

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A lot of the powers that be put it down to the rising sun or Jupiter

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or these other things which they think ordinary people mistake these things for.

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But it's their way of getting around it and not having to do anything about it, I think.

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We just want people to know what happened to us now.

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We weren't after anything, you know.

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We just thought it was amazing ourselves.

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We thought we'd like people to know what happened because it's...

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To us, you know, it was exciting, plus very frightening.

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You can't really explain what it's like unless it's actually happened to you like people say.

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People used to laugh before they made a joke, but now they don't.

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Since the Knolls experience in 1988 there have been many anonymous reports

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of mysterious lights hovering over the Knollarber plane.

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But so far, no one since the Knolls family has been willing to come forward

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and tell their story publicly.