Crop Circle

Text by Freddy Silva.

Crop circles are not a modern phenomenon. They are mentioned in texts as far back as 1678, and almost 200 reports, including eyewitness accounts, have been reported up to 1970. It was first witnessed during modern times in 1972 by Arthur Shuttlewood and Bryce Bond, who had been sitting on the slope of Star Hill near Warminster, England, hoping to catch a glimpse of the strange unidentifyed flying craft that had made this part of England a UFO Mecca for almost a decade. But what they witnessed on that moonlit night was something more extraordinary: a hundred feet away they saw an imprint take shape, a large circular area of plants that collapsed like a lady opening a fan. Since then some eighty eyewitnesses from as far away as British Columbia have reported the formation of crop circles, which occur in under twenty seconds, often accompanied by sightings of unusual balls of light, shafts of light or structured flying craft.

The designs appeared primarily as simple circles and variations on the Celtic cross up into the mid-1980s. Then they developed straight lines and created pictograms. After 1990 they exploded exponentially, and today it is not unusual to come across designs mimicking computer fractals, some occupying areas as large as 200,000 sq feet. To date there have been over 9000 reported and documented crop circles throughout the world, with some 90% emerging from England. While many still go unreported each year, the emegence of the phenomenon in the world media and the internet has allowed more reports to be lodged.

If you happen to buy the story that all crop circles were originated by two sexagenarians with planks of wood, string and a weegie board, you are not in the minority. Once in a while, governments like to control public interest in unexplained phenomena by generating a disinformation method called 'debunking', a technique invented during the Cold War for the sad purpose of controlling mass opinion in the face of unexplainable phenomena (this was the prime motive of the 1953 Robertson Panel, details of which are obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act). This method is very effective because the media provides little or no scientific or factual data with which the public can form an educated opinion on the subject. This absence of evidence is then replaced by ridiculing the subject through association with other 'fringe' topics; so-called experts are brought-in to explain away all the events as freak weather conditions or the work, general pranksters or sexually excited animals.

According to TV documentaries, all crop circles up to 1992 were made by two simple, elderly men called Doug and Dave. It has since been discovered through undercover work by researchers such as George Wingfield and Armen Victorian that the D&D story was tied to the British Ministry of Defense- in collusion with the CIA, among others. Evidence supplied by a high-ranking informant in the M.O.D suggested that the government had every intent to discredit the phenomenon by putting forward two hoaxers in an effort to quell growing public interest in crop circles (for a fuller story see Crop Circles History 1991). When confronted to provide evidence on certain claimed formations, Doug and Dave changed their story and admited that "no, we never made that one" or would simply remain silent when asked to explain the list of features found in the genuine phenomenon; when they claimed making all the formations around the English county of Hampshire it was pointed out that half the known formations had occured in another county- "Er, no, we didn't do those either," they replied. In the end, not even Doug and Dave knew which ones they had made. And although they claim to have made hoaxes since 1978- the published date of the first design- evidence witheld confirms crop circles dating back into the 1930s. The public has never heard these retractions, nor been given the opportunity to compare the mess created by D&D with the mathematical symmetry of the real phenomenon.

In 1998, however, the surviving member of the deceptive duo did make the incredible admission to British newspapers that he'd been guided by an unknown force.

Since Doug and Dave's inauguration many copycat hoaxers have appeared on the scene. Some do it to disprove or derail researchers, some for profit, some because they are sociopaths, some because they genuinely believe they can communicate back to the phenomenon (with very interesting results, I may add). Prior to 1989 the hoaxing problem was virtually unheard of. After 1990 designs of man-made origin vary by year- in 1992 and 1998 it was as high as 90%, in 1996 as low as 20%.

That people with a good amount of training can go into a field and eventually create a coherent pattern has never been the issue- recently, a group of known hoaxers was paid to go to conveniently out-of-the-way New Zealand to make an elaborate formation for NBC. The deceptive tactics used to trick a viewing public into accepting the hoax theory are dealt with here.

The issue is that no man-made crop circle has satisfactorily replicated the features associated with the real phenomenon which has baffled scientists and researchers.Worldwide, some 4000 crop circles have been created by a force totally at odds with modern science. Central to the hoax angle is that a physical object is required to flatten the crop to the ground, resulting in the breaking of the plant stems. In genuine formations the stems are not broken but bent (left), normally about an inch off the ground at the plant's first node. The plants are subjected to a short and intense burst of heat which softens the stems to drop just above the ground at 90ª, where they reharden into their new and very permanent position without damaging the plants. Plant biologists are baffled by this phenomenon and farmers, who know how the land ticks, are baffled by this. It is the singlemost method of identifying the real phenomenon. Research and laboratory tests suggest that microwave or ultrasound may be the only method capable of producing such an effect.

Crop circles are sometimes accompanied by trilling sounds, since captured on tape and analysed by NASA as artificial in origin.

Other features that cannot be replicated by hoaxes are the plants' expanded epidermal walls, and drastically extended node bends in fresh formations (normalright, crop circle far right); also observed are distortions of seed embryos, and the creation of expulsion cavities in the plants as if they have been heated from the inside.

In genuine formations there is also a disruption of comparative analysis of the plant's crystalline structure, as these microscope photos demonstrate (left). Yet in all cases, the plants are not damaged and will continue to grow and ripen if left untouched. This would not be possible had they been trampled by force.

Genuine crop circles are areas of gently laid and swirled plants which create a floor in the same spiralled logarithmic proportions as the Fibonacci Series or Golden Mean, the vortex nature uses to create precision organisms such as shells, sunflowers, the bones on the human hand and galaxies; the floor of crop circles can have up to five layers of weaving, all in counterflow to each other, with every seed head intact and placed beside each other as if arranged in a museum case; the centres can either contain nested, woven, crested, or wreathed swatches of plants- sometimes the center will consist of a single standing plant. They are not perfectly round but slightly oval (a hoax, requiring a fixed central rope, cannot achieve this adequately). Their edges are crisply defined from the flattened crop as if drawn with a compass and incised with surgical precision. Hoaxes, by comparison, bear a stylistic resemblance to tuffs of greasy, uncombed hair- and, of course, all their plants have been trampled, bruised and crushed.

Other anomalies indicate the ability of the Circlemakers to increase infra red output within and around a new formation, indicating that both the heat content of the plants and the watershed have been affected. Evidence of four non-naturally occuring, short-life radioactive isotopes in the soil inside genuine crop circles as been detected (these dissipate after three or four hours), and the soil in around them apppers to have been baked.

Mathematically, genuine crop circles encode obscure theorems based on Euclidian geometry as well as the unalterable principles of sacred geometry. They have the capacity to alter the local electromagnetic field so that compasses cannot locate north, cameras, cellular phones and batteries fail to operate, and aircraft equipment fails whilst flyingover formations. Then there are the geiger counters recording levels of background radiation up to 300% above normal, radio frequencies falling dramatically within their perimeters, animals in local farms avoiding that particular area of the field or simply acting agitated hours before one materializes, and car batteries in entire villages failling to operate the morning after one is found nearby. In some of the major events, local power outages are reported.

Genuine formations also materialize at crossing points along the Earth's magnetic energy currents, influencing the energy pattern of local phehistoric sites. They often reference local Neolithic features in size/shape/direction, and are dowsable upon entry, with as many as 150 concentric rings of energy outside their physical perimeter. In fact, a year after they have been harvested and the field ploughed and re-sown, the energy imprint of the formations will still be dowsed in the same location, long after its physical traces have vanished.

This area of research has allowed for the possibility of crop circles as a healing force, and they are already being successfully employed in resonance therapy around the world, either using people or environments in distress.

They are generally formed at night between the hours of 11:30 PM and 4AM, traditionally during the shortest evenings of the English year when darkness lasts but four hours, in fields eagerly watched by farmers, military, laser alarms, scientists or hundreds of enthusiasts in their sleeping bags hoping to be the lucky ones to witness a crop circle forming. Some of those lucky few have witnessed large balls of brilliant colour project a beam of golden light into a field which next morning displays a new crop circle.Yet despite many stakeouts and fields rigged with top surveylance equipment, crop circles have appeared out of the mist right under the noses of those looking for them. On one occasion, the Circlemakers even materialized in full of the British Prime Minister's heavily-guarded country residence.

At Stonehenge in 1996, a pilot reported seeing nothing while flying above the monument, yet 45 minutes later this huge 900ft formation resembling the Julia Set computer fractal, comprising 145 meticulously layed circles, lay beside the heavily guarded monument. It took a team of 11- including myself- no less than five hours just to survey this formation.

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