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This article ran in "Mufon UFO Journal", December 1990. Back copies of
the issue may be requested by writing to: Mufon, 103 Oldtowne Road,
Seguin, TX 78155. Minor corrections have been made in this online
version. The bibliography has been updat-ed to March 1991. Online
version created and released by Michael Chorost.
THE SUMMER 1990 CROP CIRCLES
by Michael Chorost and Colin Andrews
Aerial photographs by Colin Andrews
Diagrams by Richard G. Andrews
(All paragraphs marked [CA] are by Colin Andrews; the rest are by
Michael Chorost.)
Summer 1990 brought an explosion in the complexity, size, and number
of the crop circles in England. About six hundred were discovered,
double the number of 1989. One intriguing early shape was discovered at
Longwood Estate on June 6, and dubbed a "quarter-arc" formation
(picture and diagram 1). Another early shape was the first "dumbbell"
formation, discovered on May 23rd near the foot of Telegraph Hill
(diagram 2). In its external shape and internal crop lay, it was the
most complex formation ever seen up to that time.
Many more dumbbells like this followed (see pictures 2-5, and
diagrams 3-5.) Later in the summer, the "double dumbbells", complex
formations several hundred feet long, began to appear. They sported
odd-looking forklike extensions, and entourages of smaller circles
nearby. Three of them were discovered in all.
The new formations were a shock to everybody. Much more than the
circles, rings, and quintuplets of earlier years, they seemed to mean
something, though no one knew what. They seemed both part of the earth
and detached from it, as if they would slide away along the tramlines
once their anchor-lines were cut. They looked at once cryptic, fragile,
and luminous.
Discussion of one "dumbbell" formation
--------------------------------------
On July 3, six days after it was made, I examined the formation in
picture 4 (and Diagram 4) in detail. It was 48 meters long, so large
that people walking around in it looked like marbles rolling around a
plate. It was made of two circles of wheat flattened along the ground,
one with a ring. They were connected by a bar, inside which the
flattened wheat plants pointed toward the unringed circle. There was a
sort of "tail", more technically called a spur, where the plants
pointed in the opposite direction from the bar. Four rectangles flanked
the bar. In the inner two rectangles, the flattened wheat plants
pointed toward the unringed circle; in the outer two, they pointed the
other way.
The most complex part of this formation was where the bar intersected
the ringed circle. The bar crossed the ring and the band of standing
plants, but stopped at the perimeter of the inner circle. In this area,
the plants in the ring lay on top of the bar, meaning that they had
been flattened after the bar was formed (see picture 10). Hence the
formation was made in at least two stages. Also, whatever formed the
ring did not affect the plants already laid down in the bar. While the
ring was being formed after the bar, the bar's plants stayed put; they
were not realigned to become part of the ring.
The same kind of thing was evident at the other end of the bar, where
it met the unringed circle. The plants in the circle overlapped the
plants in the bar by a few inches, showing that the unringed circle was
also made after the bar. This is a small clue about how these things
are made. They aren't stamped out all at once, cookie-cutter style;
instead, something forms the parts in a definite sequence.
Most of the plants seemed to be alive and green (young wheat is
green.) However, a friend with me saw that about a third of the plants
whose stems were next to the tramlines had turned yellowish. We could
only speculate that those plants, having gotten less fertilizer, were
less hardy than the rest.
Strangely, some of the plants inside the formation were not affected
by whatever force flattened their fellows. On either side of the
tramline running through the formation, many plants remained upright
(picture 10). This also occurred in the ring, where isolated individual
plants remained stand- ing here and there, completely unaffected, like
lonely survivors of a massacre. (See also "Circular Evidence", p. 133.)
Colin speculates that the formative force may work like a paint roller,
flattening plants in strips and swathes, and thus may miss a plant here
and there between passes.
I was fascinated by the giant rectangles (see picture 11.) Rectangles
of a sort have been seen in earlier years, as spurs extending out of
circles (see "Circular Evidence", pages 54 and 42.) These, however,
were true rectangles. From the ground, they looked like giant bathtubs.
In each rectangle, three sides looked as if they had been cut with a
razor. However, the "forward" end of each rectangle --the end to which
the plants pointed--was not straight but jagged, or "notched" (picture
12). Whatever made the rectangles faced a challenge here: how to
flatten the plants right at the end without also knocking down the
standing plants making up that end. It solved the problem by pushing
the flattened plants down in bunches between the plants at the end. The
standing plants apppeared unharmed; they stood perfectly upright,
and their leaves were not stripped off.
This "notching" effect was also evident at the end of the "tail." It is
a characteristic feature of virtually all rec- tangular elements.
1990's surveillance operation: Blackbird
----------------------------------------
[CA] Operation Blackbird was the largest surveillance operation ever
conducted to discover and film the cause of the circles. Between 23rd
July and 10th August, 1990, twelve special cameras were focused on a
corridor of land about one mile long and 700 meters wide at Westbury.
The cameras ranged from thermal imaging to low-light, with sensitive
listening devices for good measure.
[CA] Blackbird netted two significant results. One was the Army's
filming of a "ball of light" above Silbury Hill, near Avebury. The film
shows an orange ball of light in the sky south of Silbury Hill. Its
scale and height are difficult to gauge. It was initially stationary,
then moved slowly to the east, then descended behind a hill, where it
shone through the trees before it was lost to sight.
Orange balls have been seen before. Richard Beaumont writes of an
orange ball reported on June 29, 1989:
In the early hours of the morning, a most reliable source
spotted an orange ball of light, about thirty feet in
diameter, descending into a field well known for circle
formations. The eye witness said that it appeared to bounce
slightly as it touched the ground. He also said that it
appeared to have a flat bottom, but assumed that it must
have looked flat because of its descent into the cereal
crop. The ball appeared brighter at the periphery, although
at no point was it a brilliant light. There was no noise
whatsoever. It then took on a hovering position for about
seven to eight seconds, and simply disappeared, as if one
had just turned off a light bulb...[Colin Andrews and the
witness] could reference where the ball of light must have
been exactly. The next day the local farmer and others rang
Colin. A new formation had formed exactly where the ball of
light was seen! (Beaumont, "Kindred Spirit", vol. 1, no. 8,
p 27.)
[CA] The other result of Blackbird was the BBC's filming
of a set of circles forming at Westbury during the night of
3rd-4th August. The film is of poor quality, even after
enhancement, but it shows a darkened shape relating to the
largest circle's size and location. In the morning, the
formation was seen to be a large circle with a looping tail
pushing out of it and terminating in a smaller circle about
10 meters away. Two other, smaller circles were also formed
some distance away.
[CA] The BBC had promised to show both the Army's and its
own films on a special programme, but they now inform me
that somebody has decided that they are not compatible with
the "Daytime UK" programme. The BBC have stated, in fact,
that they do not plan to show the films at all. It is not
clear why. [Chorost: Colin has since told me that the BBC
plans to air the tapes on "People Today", BBC 1, March 21,
1991.]
[CA] Blackbird also suffered from a cruel hoax. During the
early hours of 25th July, several of the 50-strong observers
witnessed unusual lights on one of the monitors. Key
researchers, as well as members of UK and Japanese TV crews,
were summoned. As the sun came up, the watchers and press
could see that a large and intricate formation had been
made. Breakfasttime TV was on the air, and pressured me to
make a statement. I agreed to do so, and stated on live
national television what the observers had seen and that
circles had appeared on the same spot. Within two hours over
30 TV networks were on the site and the news was bounced
around the world that a UFO had been seen forming the
mystery circles. Later, we walked into the field to view the
circles firsthand. We found that they were all hoaxed, and
that the lights on the monitors were from the hoaxers. Also,
crosses and Ouija boards had been left in the circles by the
hoaxers. Lively debate is still heard in the streets and
pubs of the UK about this whole episode; however, genuine
formations continued to form throughout the rest of the
summer.
Other observations and discoveries
----------------------------------
The number of circles reported has risen steadily in the last few
years. Much of it is due to the rise in monitoring, but the number of
circles per given area also appears to be increasing. According to
Terence Meaden's "The Circles Effect and its Mysteries" (p. 14) and his
article in the Oxford conference proceedings (p. 22), 75 formations
were discovered in 1987, 110 in 1988, and 305 in 1989. In 1990,
according to Colin Andrews, there were about 600 formations. [Footnote:
These numbers should be treated with caution, since I am not familar
with how researchers count circles. Is a quintuplet formation counted
as one "circle" or five? Are "grapeshot" circles (very small circles
less than a meter in diameter) counted separately? Do the various
researchers count circles in the same way? These questions need to be
investigated.] The rate of increase presents obvious problems for the
researchers, whose resources were already strained by the number of
formations which appeared in 1990.
[CA] HSC Laboratories in England have analysed plants taken from a
Celtic-cross formation type found at Blackland, Wiltshire, on 1st June
this year, using a distillation process which crystallizes the plants.
Electron microscope observation showed that the pattern of the crystals
was dramatically different from those of the control samples. A great
deal more work must be done before these early results can be confirmed
as significant. Suffice it to say that three trials have shown similar
results (see "Crop Circles--The Latest Evidence".)
Electrical equipment continues to malfunction occasionally inside the
circles. Busty Taylor reports that video cameras sometimes fail to
record inside them; the tape advances, but the magnetic head records
either erratically or not at all. Terence Meaden reports that a camera
consistently refused to function while pointed down to photograph the
center of a circle, but worked in every other orientation tried (Oxford
conference notes, p. 41).
[CA] Electromagnetic effects have been experienced on a number of
occasions, not least on Thursday, 10th August 1989, at 3:30 p.m. when a
BBC television crew was filming myself and Pat Delgado in a 100-foot
diameter circle near Avebury, Wiltshire. The troubles began when the
camera refused to function correctly each time it entered the circle
and several smaller circles nearby. Even when elevated on a crane over
the edge of the circles, it wouldn't work. It was agreed to start the
next shot by holding the camera outside the circle, while we went
inside with the sound engineer. As the camera rolled and sound began
taping, suddenly a loud, shrill, warbling noise blasted into the sound
engineer's headset. This was a noise we had heard before at circle
sites. Pat stood near the center of the circle and felt the effects of
an energy field around him. The cone-shaped energy field was so clearly
felt by him that the edges could be easily defined. Each time Pat
walked out of the cone the buzzing noise cleared up from the engineer's
headset. The noise was recorded and sent to the BBC's sound experts in
London; they, as well as experts at the Birmingham studio, were baffled
by it. The camera was found to be completely defunct and had to be
rebuilt.
[CA] The event was shown on the BBC's "Daytime Live" programme.
Presumably by coincidence, as the transmission went on air, the
electric supply into the whole studio complex was momentarily lost and
seconds later all telephones were put out of operation.
There are anecdotal reports of positive and negative health effects
on people who enter these formations. Busty Taylor reports that he
sometimes feels the fillings in his teeth hurt in a circle, and he says
other people suffer headaches and back pains. He and one other person
once encountered a blob of strange white jelly in one circle, and came
down with severe colds three to six hours later. A third person who was
also there, however, remained healthy. There are also reports of dogs
becoming ill when in or near circles (see "Circular Evidence", p. 65).
When I entered the formation in picture 4, I had a friend with me who
had had a severe headache for two days. Upon entering the formation,
she felt it go away. It returned soon after she left the formation. (I,
myself, felt nothing in any of the formations I visited. Nor did I hear
anything in the hearing aids I wear.) There are fields of an electrical
or ionic nature inside the formations, and they could affect sensitive
humans in the ways mentioned. Tooth fillings, for example, are metal
wet by saliva, and might become electrically charged by induction.
Terence Meaden writes of four eyewitness reports of circles forming
in daylight before the eyes of surprised onlookers. In one event, a
witness saw corn in a small area violently buffeted, then rapidly laid
flat in a circle 50-60 feet in diameter (Oxford conference notes, p.
123). Meaden interprets these as the effects of stationary whirlwinds,
but it is equally possible to postulate a force which either operates
from a great height or acts invisibly.
As a graduate student in literature, I watch for mention of circles
in the 15th and 16th-century texts I read. Robert Burton, in his book
"Anatomy of Melancholy" (1621), writes: "These are they [fairies] that
dance on heaths and greens, as Lavater thinks with Trithemius, &, as
Olaus Magnus adds, leave that green circle, which we commonly find in
plain fields, which others hold to proceed from a meteor falling, or
some accidental rankness of the ground; so Nature sports herself" (p.
168). It could well be, however, that Burton's only talking about fairy
rings, fungal infections which blight plants in circular patterns. It's
hard to draw firm conclusions from this report.
Update on the hoax theory
-------------------------
The evidence against hoaxing is compelling. The absence of physical
trampling, the precision of the crop lays, the rapidity of manufacture,
the great numbers and immense sizes of the formations, the plants'
biological changes, the electromagnetic phenomena of flashing lights
and crackling/humming sounds, the "cones of force" sometimes felt by
observers within the formations, the malfunctions in equipment, the
health effects, the eyewitness reports of circles forming "by
themselves," the apparent human inability to reproduce a "genuine"
circle--all these observations argue against the hoax theory.
The Oxford conference
---------------------
The first conference on the circles was held at Oxford Polytechnic on
June 23, 1990. Organized by TORRO (Tornado and Storm Research
Organization) and CERES (Circles Effect Research Group), its speakers
focused on the theory that vortices of spinning plasma in the lower
atmosphere are responsible for the formations. There were over 150
people attending, among which were professional scientists, circle
investigators, journalists, and members of the public.
The primary figure at the conference was Terence Meaden, an Oxford-
educated physicist specializing in the study of atmospheric plasma
vortices. He argued that highly electrified, rapidly spinning vortices
of air have enough energy to flatten large areas of crops. Grains of
dust and pollen trapped inside the vortex rub together and generate a
substantial electric charge, which increases the total energy borne by
the vortex. Crucial to his theory is the presence of hills large enough
to create wind lees--turbulence--in their wake. Under the right
meterological conditions, air moving past hills whips into spinning
vortices, which travel for some distance before touching the ground.
Their energy dissipates upon contact, leaving behind a perfect circular
formation, broken up into satellites or rings according to the internal
structure of the vortex.
Both Colin and I, and many others, find the theory of natural origin
improbable in view of the complexity of the formations. However, the
circles might be made by intelligently controlled vortices of the kind
Meaden describes. For this reason, I think Meaden's physics shouldn't
be dismissed out of hand.
Meaden also showed slides of a new and rare occurrence - a raised
"cone" of braided plants discovered at the centers of some circles. The
cones appear to be several feet high, and rule out, Meaden argued,
theories involving physical (as opposed to meterological or electrical)
compression from above. Cones were discovered in 10 of the
approximately 300 circles found in 1989.
Another speaker was Dr. John Snow of Purdue University, who gave an
informative lecture on the physics of atmospheric vortices. He showed
that under certain circumstances, spinning vortices can spontaneously
break up into two or three vortices. This, Snow suggested, was the
mechanism behind the "triplet" formations of a large circle and two
satellites in a straight line, and, by extension, a potential answer to
the problem of the gigantic quintuplet formations (a large circle and
four satellites.)
A physicist from Japan, Dr. Yoshi-hiko Ohtsuki, discussed plasma
vortices in nature, which are already well documented as "ball
lightning." His research focuses on the attempt to create spinning
plasma vortices in the laboratory. He showed films of short-lived (2.5
seconds) but energetic spinning plasma balls he had succeeded in
generating.
Other speakers were Tokio Kokuchi and Hiroshi Kikuchi (Japan), David
Reynolds (England), and Paul Fuller and Jenny Randles (England.) Fuller
and Randles argued that plasma vortices can account for virtually all
still-unexplained UFO sightings, and proposed that UFO studies should
be considered a branch of meteorology.
But many thought the most important speaker was Busty Taylor. He
showed slides and videotapes of recent formations he had filmed from
the air. They were so new that most of the people in the audience had
not seen them. Their impact was sensational. For many, they made the
carefully phrased arguments for a natural cause disintegrate.
Events outside England
----------------------
North America has "caught" the circles. MUFON's April 1990 issue
reports a 7-foot, 8-inch diameter circle discovered in Gulf Breeze,
Florida in November 1989. A 46 1/2 foot diameter circle was found in
Milan, Illinois, on October 16, 1990 (Chicago Tribune, Oct. 28, 1990,
p. 1). I have a letter from a farmer which sketches a May 31, 1989
discovery of a 20-by-18 foot diameter circle of uprooted tall grass
found near Anderson, Indiana.
The October 1990 issue of the Dakota Farmer reports a formation
discovered in Leola, South Dakota, in early August 1990, consisting of
a "reversed question mark" surrounded by three rectangles arranged on
the points of an equilateral triangle. The "question mark" is about
thirty feet wide and eighty feet long, and consists of plants bent over
exactly two inches above the ground. The width of the affected areas is
a consistent five feet.
There was highly concentrated activity in 1990 around Winnipeg,
Canada. Chris Rutkowski of Winnipeg has submitted a preliminary report
to MUFON noting at least seven formations. One circle was 59 feet in
diameter, and appeared on August 18, 1990, near a town called St.
Francois Xavier. Another, 62 feet in diameter, was discovered in
Niverville on August 29, 1990. Most of the reports are of simple
circles, though a triple-ringed circle is said to have been found.
The TV series "Unsolved Mysteries" keeps a listing of callers'
reports. One caller, from Naples, Florida, reported a 10-foot circle in
a field of tall weeds. Other reports come from Oregon, Minnesota, Ohio,
Tennessee, California, Pennsylvania, and New York State. Most are
recent, but some go back as far as 25 years.
There is considerable variation in the types of formations reported
in North America. Many are of flattened plants like the English
circles, while others are of burned plants. In others, the plants are
uprooted entirely, leaving a bare circle of dirt. No one knows whether
these formation types are related.
Finally, in the UFO literature, going back at least twenty years,
there have been reports of circles in Australia, America, Canada, New
Zealand, Japan, and the Soviet Union. MUFON's October 1990 issue
reports a 35-by-45 meter circle found on June 21, 1990, near the town
of Yeisk (near Krasnodar) in the Soviet Union.
One of the most interesting questions at the present time is whether
the circles phenomenon in other countries will follow the English
pattern. So far, the majority of nonenglish formations are simple
circles, with a handful of more exotic shapes. Will the same English
shapes as seen in 1990 appear in Winnipeg in a few years, or will the
phenomenon take a different direction? The South Dakota "reversed
question mark in a triangle" suggests that the latter may be the case.
A Coded Message?
----------------
Do we have a coded message on our hands? Nobody knows, but much can
be done to try to find out. In this section I will propose some
guidelines for such an effort.
The first thing to consider is whether the circles are a message. As
I see it, there are three possibilities.
1. The circles might not be a message. They could be the side-effect
of some intelligently directed process, the way tire-tracks and
footprints are. In that case there would be no meaning to decode,
only a process to discover.
2. The circles could be an anti-code, a null code. They could be
intended to convey a message merely by their presence, like
"2001"'s monolith. Their variety and complexity might be meant
only to convince humans of their non-natural origin. If so, there
would be no content to decode, only a awe inspiring calling-card
to contemplate.
3. The circles could be a positive code that we can crack. This is
the most interesting idea, and the only one that can be developed
at any length. For the rest of this discussion, let us abandon the
foregoing possibilities, and assume that the circles are a code.
How can we crack it?
We can apply various kinds of coding strategies to the formations to
see if any work. For convenience, I'll divide the possible codes into
three broad types: "linguistic" codes ("words"), "figural" codes
("pictures") and "logical" codes ("sequences"). If we look for
linguistic codes, we try to find ideograms or alphanumeric characters.
If we look for figural codes, we try to find schematic diagrams,
pictures of objects, maps, or works of art. And if we look for logical
codes, we look for mathematical or logical sequences. Let's look at the
particular challenges of each kind of code.
Linguistic codes
----------------
A linguistic code is, of course, either a natural alphabetic language
like English, a direct isomorphism of it (like a cryptogram), or an
ideographic language (like Chinese.) To crack such a code, we would
need a "Rosetta stone" establish- ing equivalences between human and
alien languages. So far, of course, we have none. We would have to be
given one, or we would have to find that the formations are adopted
from an obscure or forgotten human language (like Mayan, which they do
superficially resemble.)
Lacking a Rosetta stone, we might be able build a grammar of the code
on the order of "x always follows y, z is always part of q", though
this would not be a "decoding." But even a purely relational grammar
would be a significant advance. We may have its raw elements at hand.
The circles are composed of a limited number of elements which are
combined and recombined to make a wide variety of formations. So far,
the simple elements--the building blocks--seem to be circle, the ring,
the rectangle, the straight spur, the curved spur, the partial arc, and
the "fork" of two or three prongs. (The "fork" may be decomposable into
overlapping rectangles.) The elements might be semantically modified by
variations in size and floor lay. The position of the formations
relative to the tramlines, and to the countryside as a whole, could be
additional modifiers. It is certainly possible to look for a grammar.
Personally, I am skeptical about the linguistic approach. The circles
are growing increasingly complex, but compared to human language, they
still seem simple. There are many variations, but they are relatively
restricted (take the three double-dumbbells). Furthermore, if they are
linguistic, the language is an inefficient one. The shapes are highly
symmetrical, hence highly redundant. If most of the formations were cut
in half lengthwise, they would still convey the same amount of implicit
information; some could be cut in quarters. If one looks at human
language, one will see that nearly all words and ideograms are
asymmetrical. This also holds for letters; most fonts are serifed,
making even "i" and "l" asymmetric. Symmetry wastes space. Asymmetry
maximizes information content and transmission in a limited space.
Still, this does not eliminate the linguistic code theory, for
inefficiency can be overcome by length. DNA has only four base units,
but it is very long. The circlemakers, like Tolkien's Ents, might not
care about brevity or efficiency.
All this being said, we are still left with a basic question: Why
would the circlemakers use such a code at all? It would have been easy
to start with something simple like a sequence of primes, and build up.
The circles may be inscrutable for subtle cultural and political
reasons, rather than out of any deficit of sense. Or perhaps we have a
deficit of sense: the circlemakers could be sitting around (so to
speak), scratching their heads (so to speak), and wondering, "What is
it with these humans? All the other planets got it right away." But I
prefer to believe that our only deficit is in the attention we have
given to decoding strategies.
Figural codes
-------------
Turning to the second broad approach, the formations could be
"pictures." They might be schematic diagrams, say of molecules,
electronic circuits, or constellations. To explore this possibility,
people ought to distribute the pictures as widely as possible, hoping
that somebody somewhere will recognize the code.
Or the formations might be literal images. They could be pictures of
spacecraft, or alien physiologies, or body markings, or natural
phenomena. As "pictures", however, they seem rather limited. There is
no apparent effort at perspective or shading. Perhaps they are meant as
two-dimensional images, like projections or shadows. Or perhaps there
is a form of perspective at work, but one quite foreign to our
conventions. (Consider how the Egyptians and the Cubists drew the human
form.)
Of course, the formations might be diagrams of wholly unfamiliar
objects, in which case we would have no chance of recognizing them. A
more unsettling possibility is that they are diagrams of quite familiar
objects, but drawn by unfamiliar conventions.
Another possibility is that they are symbols of cultural
significance, akin to our crosses and flags. There do appear to be
motifs, such as the quintuplets and dumbbells, which appear repeatedly
with variations.
Finally, they might be works of art. Certainly some of them are
beautiful enough to be. We could try interpreting them as such. The
double dumbbells look like meditations on mechanical fluidity; the eye
spills from circle to circle, simultaneously drawn along and slowed
down by the forklike extensions. The overall impression is of arrested
motion. One can visualize the forks spinning round, the dumbbells
gyrating like molecules around centers of gravity.
If the circles are art, the point is not to produce the "correct"
response; it is to respond, period. Thus a dialogue opens. It could be
that the response to our amazement and wonder is the creation of even
bigger and more beautiful formations.
Logical codes
-------------
The third approach is to look for patterns in the forma- tions. There
do seem to be some. For instance, each double- dumbbell has a three-
pronged "fork" sticking off the largest circle, with a short spur on
the other end of the circle. Each formation has a two-pronged fork on
one of the other circles. And many of the single dumbbells have either
two or four rectangles flanking the bar. And so on. The question is:
Can we find a logical pattern? If we can, the crucial test would be to
predict subsequent formations. It would be even better to make a new
formation following the rules, and see if there is a response.
Program of Action
-----------------
"Cereology"--the study of the circles--is proceeding (or, sometimes,
not proceeding) along four fronts: publicity, data collection, data
distribution, and data analysis.
Publicity is crucial, for only when people become deeply aware of the
situation will they be moved to do something about it. Much has already
been accomplished, on TV and in a number of articles in the mass media
(see bibliography). But more needs to be done in America, since the
people who have the resources to do something--scientists,
policymakers, academics--have not been given enough information to
convince them to act. Nor is information being targeted to the right
places. Thus books need to be distributed to American bookstores and
placed in the science (not New Age, not occult) sections, and indepth
articles need to be published in journals like Scientific American and
National Geographic. So far, many upper-rank magazines are unwilling to
get involved, but hopefully this will change as the dimensions of the
phenomenon become more widely known.
Data collection is being done by a relatively small band of people in
England, most of them amateurs. They mount nighttime surveillance
operations like Blackbird, drive around looking for new formations, do
aerial photography, make surface measurements, mount weather stations,
analyze plants, and dowse. (The largest data base of information is
held by Colin Andrews.) But as said before, the number of circles far
outstrips their collective ability to keep up. As for North America,
things still depend on the farmer or reporter who is willing to take
pictures and make measurements, though Winnipeg seems to be gearing up
fast.
The state of data distribution is difficult to assess from America.
Certainly America gets little of the English data, though lines of
communication are beginning to open. The CCCS in England is working to
establish a clearinghouse of information. Within North America, people
are beginning to find each other and correspond. But there is still an
urgent need to create a North American and international network of
data distribution.
Data analysis (mathematical, linguistic, chemical) is just beginning.
Serious work can only take place when the three other fronts are
functioning smoothly.
There may come a fifth front: response/action. If the formations
constitute a message and we decode it, we may want to answer, as I
suggested above, by tromping plants down to make patterns ourselves.
(Interestingly enough, several days after the Blackbird hoax, genuine
circles appeared in an adjacent field parallel to the hoaxed
formation.) Or if they constitute blueprints or instructions, then we
may want to start making or doing something. And this, too, would need
organization.
If the readers of the MUFON journal want to get involved, the best
way is to pick a clearly defined goal for one's locality. For example,
ask local farmers if they have seen circles on their land, or get the
area bookstores to order some of the books, or persuade the paper or TV
station to run a story, or start giving information to people with
resources, or do data collection, or try to decode the circles oneself-
-there's no lack of things to be done.
There is much to be done, but there is also the need for strategic
patience. It's hard for people to accept that these luminous forms are
truly part of our world. The concept takes time to sink in. And new
concepts often get harsh treatment at first. Galileo's Ptolemist
contemporaries, presented with a telescope to look at Jupiter's moons,
dismissed what they saw as illusions, or refused to look. Since this
kind of rigidity still exists today, it will take persuasion,
publicity, and patience to convince people to look at them with a more
open mind. And if the circles do lead to a conceptual revolution, the
task will be to manage it wisely.
Send circle reports to MUFON
----------------------------
If any readers of this journal know of new formations, please report
them! Document them with photos and measurements if you can, and send
the data to MUFON, 103 Oldtowne Road, Seguin, Texas 78155-4099.
Acknowledgements
----------------
The authors would like to thank Walt Andrus, Paul Bone, Grant Cameron,
Malcolm and Maureen Gilham, Jerrold R. Johnson, Ludwig and Kathleen
Lowenstein, John Salter, Dennis Stacy, and Don Tuersley for all their
help and encouragement.
Bibliography and Ordering Information
-------------------------------------
Americans have to pay high prices for publications available only from
England, since the dollar is weak. There are two options: make out a
check in pounds at a bank, adding two pounds to cover the extra cost of
overseas postage if not already included, or send a check in dollars at
the current exchange rate, factoring in an extra pound to pay for
currency conversion, and two more to cover postage. These are only
guidelines, based on what's worked for me.
Citations are alphabetical by first author.
Books
-----
Circular Evidence. Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews. London: Bloomsbury
Press, 1989. 190 pp. US price $29.95. One can order from at least three
places: (1) Phanes Press, P.O. Box 6114, Grand Rapids, MI 49516, tel.
(616) 281-1224. (2) Arctu-rus Book Services, P.O. Box 831383, Stone
Mountain, Georgia, 30083-0023, tel. (404) 297-4624. (3) Trafalgar
Square, Ver- mont, NY, tel. (802) 457-1911.
The Crop Circles: The Latest Evidence. Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews.
London: Bloomsbury Press, 1990. 80 pp. UK L5.99. Ordering information
as above.
The Controversy of the Circles. Paul Fuller and Jenny Randles. UK
L4.20. Order from BUFORA, 103 Hove Avenue, Walthamstow, London.
Crop Circles: A Mystery Solved. Paul Fuller and Jenny Randles. UK
L13.95. Robert Hale Ltd., 45-47 Clerkenwell House, London, EC1R 0HT.
The Circles Effect and Its Mysteries. George Terence Meaden. Bradford-
on-Avon: Artetech Publishing Company, April 1990 (2nd ed.) 116 pp. UK
L11.95. Order from Artetech, 54 Frome Road, Bradford-on-Avon, BA15 1LD;
tel. 02216 2482.
Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Circles
Effect. Ed. George Terence Meaden and Derek Elsom. Copyright TORRO-
CERES (Tornado and Storm Research Organization-Circles Effect Research
Group). 134pp. Conference held at Oxford Polytechnic on June 23, 1990.
Meaden plans to publish the proceedings in book form, as Circles in the
Sky.
The Crop Circle Enigma. Edited by Ralph Noyes. Bath: Gateway Books,
1990. 192 pp. $29.95. One can order from at least four places: (1) The
Great Tradition, 11270 Clayton Creek Road, P.O. Box 108, Lower Lake, CA
95457, tel. (707) 995-3906. (2) New Leaf Book Distributing Co, 5425
Tulane Drive SW, Atlanta, GA 30336-2323, tel. (404) 691-6996. (3)
Inland Book Co, P.O. Box 261, East Haven, CT 06512, tel. (203) 467-
4257. (4) Bookpeople, 2929 Fifth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710, tel. (415)
549-3030.
Periodicals
-----------
Circles Phenomenon Research (CPR) Newsletter. Editor: Pat Delgado. 1-
year subscription (4 issues) $24.00. CPR Satellite Office, 117 Ashland
Lane, Aurora, OH 44202. Make checks payable to D.S. Rulison.
The Crop Watcher. Editor: Paul Fuller. 1-year subscription (6 issues)
UK L13.00 (overseas airmail price.) 3 Selborne Court, Tavistock Close,
Romsey, Hampshire SO51 7TY, England.
The Circular. Editor: Bob Kingsley. Circulated free. 58 Kings Road,
West End, Woking, Surrey GU24 9LW, England. The editor requests
donation of stamps; American subscribers ought to send checks for a few
dollars.
Journal of Meteorology. Editor: Terence Meaden. 1-year overseas
subscription (10 issues) UK L55 surface, L65 airmail. 54 Frome Road,
Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, BA15 1LD, England.
The Cereologist. Published by CCCS (Centre for Crop Circle Studies).
Editor: John Michell. 1-year subscription (3 issues) UK L7.50, US $18.
11 Powis Gardens, London W11 1JG, England.
Selected Bibliography
---------------------
"Prepare to Meet Thy Drought." Anonymous. Today, July 20, 1990.
(Suggests the multiple pictograms resemble the Sumerian language or
weather-map symbols.)
"More Circular Evidence." Richard Beaumont. Kindred Spirit, vol. 1, no.
8, pp. 25-28. (Interview with Colin Andrews. Discusses electrical,
psychic, and historical events associated with the circles. This is the
best single article I've seen.)
"Crop Circles: The Mystery Deepens." Richard Beaumont. Kindred Spirit,
vol. 1, no. 12, pp. 32-37. (Summary of the key developments of the
Summer 1990 season, with aerial photos. Another good article by
Beaumont.)
"UFO Report to Farmers." George Brandsberg. Farm Profit, July-August
1975. (Discusses scorched patches and long swathes of sliced-off corn.)
"Around and Around in Circles." Sally B. Donnelly. Time Magazine. Sept.
18, 1989, p.50. Letters of response in Oct. 9th issue, p. 14. (Overview
of the phenomenon; three color pictures.)
"Mysterious Circles in British Fields Spook the Populace." Craig
Forman. Wall Street Journal, Aug 28, 1989, p. A1. (Basic overview.)
"Circles in the fields inspire talk of UFO's." Maria Goodav- age, USA
Today, November 15, 1990, p. 6A.
"Daylight Close Encounter." Stan Gordon. MUFON UFO Journal, July 1989,
pp. 18-21. (Discusses Pennsylvania UFO sighting and related circular
landing trace.)
"Retrospective Investigation of a Possible Trace at Mt. Gar- net".
Holly Goriss and Russell Boundy. UFO Research Austra- lia Newsletter,
March-April 1981 (Vol 2. No. 2) pp. 4-6. (Investigates a 1977 ground
marking which looks like a crude quintuplet.)
"They never yet could find my measure." Wendy Grossman, New Scientist,
December 1, 1990, pp. 61-2. (Review of The Crop Circle Enigma.)
"A Sighting in Saskatchewan." Hynek, J. Allen and Vallee, Jacques, in
The Edge of Reality (Appendix A). The Henry Regnery Co., 1975.
(Discusses Canadian UFO sighting and related circular flattened areas.)
"Experts Can't Square Explanations of Circles." Gregory Jensen.
Washington Times, July 27, 1990. Page A1. (Reports the Blackbird hoax
incident. Photo of one of the pictograms.)
"Circles in the corn." Terence Meaden. New Scientist, June 23, 1990,
47-9. (Argues for the plasma vortex theory.)
"The Beckhampton 'Scroll-Type' Circles, The Beckhampton 'Triangle', and
Strange Attractors." Terence Meaden, Journal of Meteorology
(Trowbridge, U.K.), October 1990, pp. 317-320.
"And Now...Cornfield Circles in Australia!" Paul Norman. Flying Saucer
Review, vol. 35, no. 1 (March Quarter, 1990), pp. 7-8. (Briefly
discusses nine 1980's crop circles in Beulah, Victoria, between 3 and
16 feet in diameter.)
"And More Cornfield Circles in Canada." Paul Norman. Flying Saucer
Review, vol. 35, no. 1 (March Quarter, 1990), pp. 8-9. (Briefly
discusses 1989 circles between 6 and 24 meters in diameter in Manitoba;
2 photos.)
"Mysterious circles." Andrew Phillips, Macleans, Aug. 13, 1990, pp. 46-
47.
"The Hertfordshire 'Mowing Devil' Woodcut: A 17th Century Circle
Report?" Jenny Randles. UFO Times, no. 5 (January 1990), pp. 30-32.
(Presents a 1678 woodcut showing a devil "mowing" a pattern which
Randles suggests may be a crop cir- cle.)
"Swirled Landing Trace?" Carol and Rex Salisberry. MUFON UFO Journal,
no. 264 (April 1990), pp. 3-7. (A Gulf Breeze crop circle.)
"Field Of Dreams?" Dava Sobel. Omni, December 1990, pp. 59- 128.
"Graffiti of the Gods?" Dennis Stacy. New Age Journal, Jan/Feb. 1991,
pp. 38-103. (A thorough overview.)
"Hoping Some Furry Little Creatures Crop Up." Calvin Trillin.
Syndicated newspaper column, August 13, 1990. (A humorous look at the
circles.)
Multiple stories, multiple authors, Fortean Times, issues 53 and 55
(sorry, dates not known.)
Studies
-------
"North American Crop Circles and Related Physical Traces in 1990."
Released February 1991. 18pp. Conducted by NAICCR (North American
Institute for Crop Circle Research.) For information, write to NAICCR,
649 Silverstone Avenue, Winni- peg, Manitoba R3T 2V8, Canada.