By Natalie Myers
The sightings of crop circles has been one of jest and mocking for many years now. People talk about people creeping around a farmer’s field in the dead of night with a rope and a plank of wood. No doubt, those people do exist.
Patterns in cereal crops usually appear overnight, thus increasing speculation of a prank by the mass public. They form intricate designs and very little in the way of scientific study has been completed around them. Famously in 1991, two English hoaxers admitted to creating several crop circles around England and even had one described as being “impossible” to have been created by humans. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley confessed to being the artists behind the circles.
The origins of crop circles begin in folktales that many centuries ago, claiming that the circles were not man made. Stories of fairy rings and balls of lights creating the structures were debated. As early as 1678, an English pamphlet depicts the ‘Mowing Devil’. Though thought to be a dig at the cost of having a field sown, researchers believe this not to be an early example as the crop was cut down not bent.
The Brothers’ Grimm mention crop circles in their 1948 novel ‘Swan Circles’ The story describes how a farmer would find a flattened crop circle each morning in his field. The book depicts princesses dressed as swans making the circles by dancing around the crops.
There is no doubt that a crop circle is real. It is tangible and you can see it physically. There are many suggestions that have been offered up for their causation such as localised wind patterns, ley lines and even down to the mating activities of hedgehogs and crows.
So could they be caused by extra-terrestrials as a way of communication? Molecular biologist Horace Drew thinks the link is in time travel. His theory states that the crop circles are in fact caused by human time travellers from the future. He believes the circles encompass messages which he believes need to be decoded. He lists the phrases “Believe”, “Beware the bearers of false gifts”, “Broken promises”, “There is good out there” and “We oppose deception” having all been communicated using this method. It could be argued that an advanced alien civilisation surely would want to communicate something more detailed or more profound given the long distance they will have come to leave such a message?
There are groups that believe the marks are made by the alien spaceships themselves, physically altering the crops. Others believe that the patterns are created using energy beams from crafts. Yes we know that there have and will continue to be countless hoax circles created by humans, but even if only a small few are left by our friends in outer space, that would be amazing. Even those few who investigate the phenomenon say that a “tiny percentage” can’t be explained.
It’s interesting to note that there are some folk who think there are inconsistencies to the famous case of Bower and Chorley. It is claimed by some that the pair were hired by the Government to deflect the fact that the crop anomalies were in fact unexplainable.
The men clearly liked the media attention that came with their claims of “fooling the world”. In 1991/92, they would both give demonstrations on how they made their crop circles, but people began to notice their crude and somewhat rudimentary efforts that bared no comparison to the art from early in 1991. The demonstration circles had crops that were broken, not bent, no evidence of scorch marks as made previously and were mostly piled up rather than flattened on the ground. Curious?
Bower appeared on BBC’s Country file in the late 90’s and was asked to recreate a simple circle from one of his previous hoaxes. To the surprise of the producers, he mistook the radius of the circle to the diameter and ended up with a circle twice the size he was trying to complete.
They purported to be inventors of crop circles, however records, although not widely discussed at the time had been observed for a number of years, long before the pair claim they began to make them. In interviews, Bower claimed he used a steel bar to make the patterns for the first couple of years, but this then changed to a wooden plank, claiming they had made every crop circle since 1978.
Upon further scrutiny, they couldn’t account for crop circles that appeared elsewhere in the world, meaning thousands of recorded cases were not accounted for. Their circle making was described as “crude” and “amateur” by their critics.
The men claimed a fee of £10,000 from the Sunday Mirror for their story which was rejected. The men then stated that in fact the Daily Mirror paid them £3000 each for their story and that they received further payments for more media appearances and stories.
There are many accounts of strange appearances of crop circles, or circular patterns in general being formed that can’t be explained. Let’s take the case of a circle that appeared in a dry sand lake bed in Oregon, US in 1990. The location was an isolated area, patrolled by the Air National Guard training corridor. A Sri Yantra mandala “appeared” one day. None of the pilots that flew over it on a regular basis ever saw it being constructed or anything else suspicious. So how could this happen without anyone observing it?
The phenomena seems to have many occurrences in the UK, in particular the South of the country. The UK has also led the way when it comes to scientific analysis of the crops themselves. Results gathered by investigators, in some cases showed the formation of the circles generated intense heat, causing the cells of the crops to swell and bend. They hypothesise that in these circumstances, the circles themselves would have to appear within a few seconds, otherwise creating huge fires across crops. This is due mainly because the crops have turned to straw and are combustible.
The Discovery Channel attempted to solve the crop circle mystery in past years by gathering a group of MIT students, giving them four weeks prep time and access to a wide array of tools and gadgets. Even with brains, preparation and equipment, they were simply unable to recreate anything close to an intricate crop circle. One student said of the challenge “It’s pretty clear with the evidence they have given me, and samples that I’ve looked at, that this isn’t just a couple of old guys with a board wandering around in a field. Someone put a lot more effort into it than that.”
There are also the links to animals that we can see in many crop circle events. Often small animals and insects can be found in the location within the circles themselves. People have reported birds purposefully avoiding the air above crop circles and actively breaking formation when flying over. In 2013, over 100 Moose were found dead in a crop circle in the US. Autopsies showed no evidence of disease, leaving their deaths a mystery. Earlier this year, Sheep were discovered in a field in East Sussex. The sheep were found by a passing cyclist standing in perfect concentric circles. The cyclist said of the sighting ‘At that point, I was about half a mile away, which made me think that whatever it was, it was huge. It was saucer-shaped, like an alien ship. It was beautiful, but also in 2021 a bit too weird for comfort.’
He went on to say he passed the sheep every morning and was used to their loud noises, but on this day, they were eerily quiet, in almost a trance-like state.
So how mathematical are crop circles? A common theme is the use of fractals. This is when the same pattern is taken and repeated on smaller and smaller scales.
A circle that appeared in 2008 near Barberry Castle depicted Pi to the first 10 digits. The fact the decimal point is included into the circle baffled investigators. Such complex mathematics are fine if you are working on a calculator or computer, but to depict something so accurate on a massive scale is extremely impressive. The degree of intellect needed to pull of such a show would rule out many of the human population.
Whatever your belief in how crop circles are formed and who forms them, there is much evidence to review and digest. Yes, we can certainly say some have been a hoax, but can we really ignore some of the things that appear to be communicated to use? Probably not.
Other examples
