Contrary to popular perception, crop circles are not a modern phenomenon. They are mentioned in academic texts of the late 17th Century, and over 200 cases have been reported prior to 1970. Some eighty eyewitnesses – as far flung as British Columbia and Australia – have reported crop circles forming in under twenty seconds; these witnesses describe sightings of incandescent or brightly-coloured balls of light which either precede a crop circle or are actively involved in its creation; in some cases shafts of light have descended onto a field and swirled the crop into a geometricshape in less than fifteen seconds. Such reports are often described by farmers.

Only around 1980 was serious attention was finally given to the phenomenon, primarily in southern England, where 90% of designs are reported. The designs appeared primarily as simple circles, circles with rings, and variations on the Celtic cross. By the late 1980s they had developed straight lines, creating pictograms not unlike the petroglyphs found at sacred sites thoughout the world. After 1990 the designs developed exponentially in complexity, and today it is not unusual to come across crop glyphs mimicking computer fractals and elements expressing fourth dimensional processes in quantum physics.

Crop circles have also increased increased in size, some occupying areas as large as 200,000 sq ft. To date there have been over 10,000 reported crop circles.

If you happen to buy the media-fed misrepresentation that all crop circles were originated by two sexagenarians called Doug and Dave, you are not in the minority. Once in a while, governments like to control public interest in unexplained phenomena they cannot control by ‘debunking’ – a technique developed by the US government after WWII for the sad purpose of controlling mass opinion (as stated in the 1953 Robertson Panel, details of which are obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act). This method is very effective because it makes use of two extraordinarily simple tools of mass control – ridicule and fear. But only if you are prepared to believe everything you are told on television and newspapers, particularly when TV programmes suppress 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 events as tricks of the imagination – freak weather conditions, drunk students, even sexually excited animals!

According to many media reports, all crop circles up to 1992 were made by two simple, elderly men called Doug and Dave. However, it has since been discovered that the D&D story appears to have originated at the British Ministry of Defense. Evidence supplied by a high-ranking informant in that government institution suggested that the British government had every intent of discrediting the phenomenon by putting forward two pranksters in an effort to quell growing public interest in crop circles (the full story appears in Secrets In The Fields). But when later confronted to provide evidence of their alleged creations, Doug and Dave changed their story, even reversing previous claims; they could not even explain the unusual features found in the genuine phenomenon.

When they claimed making all the formations around the English county of Hampshire, for example, it was pointed out that the majority of known formations had actually 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 – at the time the published date of the first design – unpublished evidence revealed how crop circles had been manifesting since the 1890s. The public has never heard D&D’s retractions, nor been given the opportunity to compare the mess created by D&D with the mathematical elegance and anomalies of the real phenomenon.

In 1998, however, the surviving member of the deceptive duo did make an incredible admission to British newspapers that he’d been “guided by an unknown force”.
Prior to 1989 the hoaxing problem was virtually unheard of. Yet since Doug and Dave’s inauguration, many copycat hoaxers have appeared on the scene. That people with a good amount of training can go into a field and eventually create a coherent pattern has never been the issue in crop circels research – in 1998 a group of hoaxers called Team Satan/circlemakers was paid to go to conveniently out-of-the-way New Zealand to make an elaborate formation for The Discovery Channel. The deceptive tactics used to trick a viewing public into accepting that crop circles are human made are dealt with here.

A hoax is a forgery, and forgers require a genuine from which to copy. So, what exactly lies behind the genuine crop circles?

In genuine formations the stems are not broken but bent (right), normally about an inch off the ground and near the plant’s first node. In special cases, the stems are bent six inches from the top of the seed head. Such features defeat the hoax argument, since a plank or garden roller is required to flatten the crop to the ground, resulting in clear damage to the plants.

The plants appear to be subjected to a short and intense burst of heat which softens the stems to drop just above the ground at 90º, where they reharden into their new and very permanent position without damage. Plant biologists are baffled by this feature, and it is the singlemost method of identifying the real phenomenon. Research and laboratory tests suggest that infrasound (sound below 20 Hz) is capable of producing such an effect: High-pressure infrasound is capable of boiling water inside the stems in one nanosecond, expanding the water, and leaving tiny blowholes in the plants’ nodes. The pressure applied also causes the water to steam, and it is reported by farmers that when they stumble upon a new crop circle they see steam rising from within the design. This process creates surface charring along the stems.

The tremendous application of local heat is also responsible for altering the local water table, as millions of gallons of surface and sub-surface water is evaporated. With the heat and electro-magnetic frequencies applied, it has been scientifically documented that soil samples taken from within crop circles show changes to its crystalline structure and mineral composition. Expert analysis concludes that such a process requires temperatures of 1500º C and sub-soil pressure typically found in strata thousands of years old. Evidence even exists of four non-naturally occuring, short-life radioactive isotopes in the soil inside genuine crop circles (these dissipate after three or four hours, causing no adverse side effects); in fact, the soil in and around them appears to have been baked. Hardly the kind of anomalies created by pranksters with planks!

Crop circles also show existence of ultrasound –sound above the human hearing range – and such frequencies are known to exist at ancient sites such as stone circles, long barrows, tumuli, dolmens and menhirs. And like all sacred sites, temples and places of worship – such as Gothic cathedrals – the crop circles appear at the intersecting points of the Earth’s magnetic pathways of energy; thus the size and shape of a crop circle is typically determined by the area of these ‘node’ points at the time of their appearance.

This electric and magnetic energy can interact with brainwave patterns, and because the human body is itself electro-magnetic, crop circles are known to affect people’s biophysical rhythms. Consequently, it is not unusual for people to experience heightened states of awareness and healings in crop circles – a situation also common to sacred sites and holy spaces. People may also experience dizziness, disorientation and nausea. All these effects can be caused by prolonged exposure to both infrasound or microwaves, which also interact with the water in the body.