UFO Seen By Bus Driver Peter Chapman, Australian Nullarbor 1988

EUCLA, Australia -- An interstate bus driver and seven of his passengers reported a close encounter with a mysterious 'ball of fire' Thursday on the remote Nullabor Plains, police said.

Constable Don Blackshaw said driver Peter Chapman reported being 'frightened out of his wits' by a 15-foot unidentified flying object that buzzed his bus and followed it for four miles early Thursday near the border of Western Australia and South Australia.

Blackshaw said the sighting was in same area where a Perth family claimed their car was lifted off the road by a white light in January.

He said seven passengers supported Chapman's story.

The latest sighting prompted Australian UFO researcher Colin Norris to claim extra-terrestrials are using the remote, sparsely-populated Nullabor Plains to study humans.

He said the report supported claims by the Perth family that their car was lifted from the ground by a space vehicle in January.

Blackshaw told United Press International that police had been to the scenes of both sightings, but had found nothing 'untoward.'

'We have investigated as much as we can, but we didn't find anything,' he said.

In a television interview broadcast Thursday night, Chapman said he saw the strange light approaching and woke the passengers at the front of the bus.

'It was about 60 feet above the ground and was about 15 feet round. It was very bright,' he said.

'It passed around the back of the bus and I looked in the rear vision mirror and it followed us for about four miles. We went around an S-bend and I looked across and it just disappeared completely.

'I can't explain what it was. All I can say is it was a big ball of fire.'

Norris, director of the Australian UFO Research Group, said 'the remoteness of the area gives extra-terrestrials the opportunity to use their equipment to analyze people.'

He said recent tests on the car claimed to have been lifted by a UFO 'have found deposits on the vehicle, a curious substance in the desert dust, which could authenticate' the family's story, he said.

'Public scepticism ... incensed them and pushed them into recluse. But I hope the bus driver and passengers stick to their guns and don't accept any unreasonable excuses from the authorities,' Norris said.