Crop Circles

The term crop circle refers to any design, not necessarily a circle, that has mysteriously appeared in a field, formed by the flattening or twisting of the plants’ stalks. In many cases the plants’ stems are bent without being broken, and they appear to have been heated from the inside. Plants droop toward the earth, yet the seed heads of the plant remain undamaged. The affected plants are woven into layers, twist intricately around one another, or remain upright to form an outward swirling pattern. People who have seen crop circles find these patterns particularly amazing when viewed from the air.

Early Reports

The earliest reports of mysteriously appearing crop circles date to the late seventeenth century. These were either simple circles or variations on the symbol of a cross first used by the ancient Celts and therefore known as the Celtic cross. During the mid-1980s, however, straight lines and more complex images started showing up, and today crop circles can be so intricate that their construction would require the continuous use of very precise measurements.

For example, a 1997 Wiltshire crop circle in a wheat field resembled a snowflake within a snowflake and had 192 small circles as part of its overall design, which measured 234 feet (71.3m) across. A 1999 crop circle formation in the same area was a spiral 300 feet (91.4m) wide.

Another intricate modern crop circle, which appeared in 1999, was approximately 640 feet (195m) long and depicted what seemed to be the stages of a solar eclipse; a series of circles showed the Moon gradually covering the Sun. Interestingly, it appeared at a time when the news media were carrying reports about an upcoming solar eclipse. That same year, a crop circle in England pictured a serpent whose image was identical to one used by the ancient Aztecs of Mexico to symbolize the end of the year in the Aztec calendar, and a celebration related to that event was taking place in Central America the night the crop circle appeared.

The incidence of crop circles appears to be on the rise. Up until 1970, only about two hundred crop circles had been reported. Between 1970 and today, however, there have been more than nine thousand additional crop-circle reports, many near the sites of ancient temples and monuments. More than 90 percent have appeared in England, many in the Wiltshire area, and the remainder have primarily been found in America, Canada, western and eastern Europe, Japan, and Australia. At least four thousand of these crop circles have no apparent explanation, and they display the unusual characteristics, such as internal heating, that have baffled researchers. The remaining five thousand or so crop circles, however, appear to be hoaxes perpetrated by pranksters.

Mysterious Origins

Researchers who have studied crop circles say it is fairly easy to tell a human-made crop circle from one of more mysterious origin. They have noted that in hoax crop circles, the plants are bruised, trampled, or crushed, whereas in genuine crop circles the plants appear to have been gently laid and swirled, undamaged, in well-defined layers. In addition, genuine crop circles often appear in areas where the earth’s electromagnetic field is uneven: compasses used near these crop circles are unable to locate north; cellular phones will not work; and the instruments of airplanes flying over the circles typically fail.

Because of the electromagnetic aspects of the phenomenon, some researchers suspect that the earth’s magnetism is responsible for the circles. Others have suggested that the circles are the result of some unknown natural phenomenon related to the earth’s orbit around the Sun because most appear between 11:30 P.M. and 4 A.M. on the shortest nights of the year. Still others—including Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s most renowned physicists—have theorized that the crop circles are made by natural vortices, or wind currents, in the earth’s atmosphere. Some blame a combination of changes in wind patterns and the electrical effects sometimes produced by those changes. They believe that winds sweep through the crops in a way that causes opposing electrical charges to build. This, they say, could produce not only the unusual plant formations but also flashes of light. Proponents of this theory say this would explain why some witnesses report seeing strange lights in an area just before a crop circle appears.

Many people, interpret these lights as being from alien spacecraft, under the belief that extraterrestrials must be creating the crop circles. Such people argue that the speed with which the circles are produced—some seem to appear within seconds, during a brief time when the Moon went behind a cloud—means that no human could be responsible for them. Moreover, whenever people camp out in fields where crop circles are known to occur, hoping to be the first person to observe one in the process of forming, nothing happens. The same is true for stakeouts using sophisticated surveillance equipment, suggesting to some that an intelligent being, rather than a natural phenomenon, is responsible for the circles.

Some crop circle researchers, however, have suggested that the intelligent beings are not extraterrestrials but humans whose minds are somehow producing the phenomenon, particularly since the images portrayed in crop circles represent symbols that are part of the body of human knowledge. Under this theory, people’s thoughts are somehow being transmitted to the crops to make these images appear. Under an alternate theory, Earth itself has a life force and is creating the pictures in an attempt to communicate with humans.

Skeptics’ Explanations

Skeptics, however, believe that human beings are creating the circles not with their minds but with ordinary tools, as pranks. This would explain, skeptics say, why the circles only appear when no one is watching. Skeptics also say that the notion that some crop circles have unexplainable characteristics, such as unusual layers or evidence of odd heat exposure, is a myth. In support of their belief, many skeptics point to an incident that occurred in September 1981. At that time, two elderly men, Douglas Bower and David Chorley, claimed that they had been faking crop circles in England for years. They insisted that they had created the designs using wooden boards and twine to depress the crops without leaving any footprints behind. In reporting on this technique, the international media promoted the idea that the mystery of crop circles had finally been solved.

However, when Bower and Chorley were asked, during various interviews, how they had accomplished specific effects in specific crop circles known to have unusual properties, they would typically answer that they did not fake that particular circle. They claimed to have never traveled outside of England for their pranks, and they did not take credit for any crop circles that appeared prior to 1978. Consequently some believers in the extraterrestrial origin of crop circles suggested that the British government was behind this hoax story, hoping to use it to end concerns about all crop circles.

Believers have further suggested that government agencies and skeptics actually fake crop circles themselves in order to discredit those who attribute the phenomenon to extraterrestrials. Indeed, during a 1992 British circle-making contest organized by Cerealogist, an independent journal that focuses on crop circle studies, an American named Jim Schnabel proved that he could create a crop circle while working alone and with only the simplest tools. Schnabel wrote a book, Round in Circles, that convinced many people that all crop circles were human-made.

No human being, however, has yet taken credit for any of the crop circles made between the late 1990s to the present, despite the fact that during the early 1990s many people were eager to make such claims. This has caused a resurgence in the belief that the phenomenon is not of human origin. Skeptics counter with the suggestion that a secret club of circle makers is creating the circles for fun, but without hard evidence of this, the origin of crop circles remains a mystery.

SEE ALSO:

• Earth energy;
• ufology

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning