Not Man-Made

Why I Still Believe that Aliens Created Crop Circles
By Colin Wilson

The mystery of crop circles is now solved according to Colin Andrews, the electrical engineer whose investigations first made the British public aware of this bizarre phenomenon. In 1989, his book Circular Evidence (co-authored with Pat Delgano) became an enexpected bestseller, partly because if contained dozens of beautiful photographs of crop circles taken from the air. In conclusion, the authors admitted that there was a strong possiblity that crop circles were connected with flying saucers, which had often been seen in fields where circles had appeared. Now, it seems, Andrews has changed his mind. After 11 years of research, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, he has come to the conclusion that the circles are 'simply formed by the earth's magnetic field.' This magnetism somehow 'electrocutes' the wheat, causing it to lie down in a neat cirlce. But what about the elaborate patterns that have been appearing during the past few years: the triangles, concentric circles, the exotic spirals, or even the enormous key shapes? These, say Andrews, are all fakes, made by hoaxers who use short planks to flatten the corn and create the patterns. Only one fifth of all the crop formations - the perfect circles - are, he says, genuine.

If he is correct, millions of people are going to be disappointed. In the past 20 years, crop circles have become one of the earth's great mysteries - like the lost city of Atlantis, the Loch Ness monster and the curse of Tutankhamen. They seem to hint that we are living in a stranger and more mysterious universe than scientists and cynics belive, and that tomorrow our lives might be transformed by some discovery that will astound us us all. I believe that our instict is right. Scientists seem to be possessed by an urge to short-change us, and to reduce all mysteries to the level of the commonplace. And I am pretty certain that, whatever the final explanation of crops circles, it is not going to be commonplace. There is one simple and obvious objection to Andrews' theory about earth magnetism. If crop circles really are caused by some form of electricity, then why have they appeared only in the past 20 years or so? England, Canada, America, Australia, have been full of gigantic cornfields for centuries, and there have always been chroniclers to record strange events. Why do we not hear about crop circles in the time of Chaucer or Shakespeare? Because, I am fairy certain, they did not exist. Whatever is happening began in the mid -20th century. On September 1, 1974, long before anyone had heard of the crop circle phenomenon, a Canadian farmer named Edwin Fuhr, who lived near Langenburg, Saskatchewan, was driving his tractor in a field of rapeseed when he saw a round, shiny disc, about 11-ft across, whirling above the crop and causing it to sway. Then he saw four more in different parts of the field. For 15 minutes he sat frozen with fear, until suddenly the discs took off, rising in a kind of grey vapour. There in the grapeseed were five circle, 11ft across. Hoards of journalists rushed to photograph and report on them.

Other circles began to be reported: from Manitoba, Canada, from Victoria and Queensland, Australia, from Ibiuna, Brazil from New Zealand, the Soviet Union, France and Switzerland. It was not until 1980 that the first crop circles were reported in England. A Wiltshire farmer, John Scull, found three of them, each 60ft wide, in his oat field near the famous White Horse land-mark at Uffington. A meterologist named Terence Meaden lost no time in providing a commonsense explanation. The circles, he said, were by summer whirlwinds. But Farmer Scull's circles would have needed three whirlwinds, each 60ft across. In fact, they would have to have been tornadoes. In August the following year, crop circles near the Cheesefoot Head beauty spot in Hampshire refuted Meaden's theory. There were three of them, one 60ft across, and the other two, placed symmetrically on either side of it, 25ft across. They were far too neat to have been made by a whirlwind - it was as if some gigantic pastry cook had leaned down from the sky with one of those metal cutters for stamping out biscuits. And the corn around them had not been broken or trampled. So it went on for year after year, with the British Press growing more and more exited. Then in 1991, two Southampton artists named Doug Bower and Dave Chorley announced that they had made all the crop circles, using a short plank. They obligingly demonstrated their trechnique for photographers by making a pattern like a dumbell in an hour and a half. But they also trampled down the wheat, and left broken stalks all over the place. Genuine circles had bent stalks that were unbroken, and no trampled wheat. And although Doug and Dave claimed they had made all the British Crop circles, even they admitted they had not travelled to Canada, Australia or the Soviet Union.

Again and again, observers noticed odd phenomena associated with the circles. In June 1990, six observers at Wansdyke, near Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, heard a high pitched trilling and saw 'black rods jumping up and down' among the wheat; next day there were crop circles. A radio ham in Devon had his listening spoilt in June 1991 by a series of high-pitched blips and clicks; the next day, a 70ft circle was found nearby. Astronomer, Gerald Hawkins was so fascinated by Colin Andrews' book that he began to study the precise measurements of all the circles in it. He soon noticed that these circles - often with patterns inside them - had been constructed very precisely according to the geometry of Euclid, the Greek mathematician who lived around 300BC and compiled what was the standard text on geometry until the 19th century. So if the 'circle makers' were hoaxers, they must also be first-class geometers too. Then Hawkins noticed something even odder - that a large number of the circles also had complex musical ratios, rather like the simple fractional relationship that exists between the pitch of different notes on a keyboard.

None of the circles made by Doug and Dave, or other self-confessed hoaxers, had been made with this musical code. As a scientist, Hawkins was naturally cautious in announcing his conclusions. But he admitted to me that he believed that these complex patterns were made by extra-human intelligence. Their purpose was not to convince the whole human race of the really of extra-terrestrials, but simply to convince a few intelligent scientists and philosophers that there are intelligences apart from our own, and that they are attempting a breakthrough in communication. When I started to study crop circles and UFOs in the mid-nineties, I was convinced that they were due either to hoaxers or to over-heated inmaginations. It took less than six months to leave me in no doubt: that something or someone is trying communicate with us, but with the exaggerated caution of beings trying to get us slowly and gradually accustomed to the idea. That is why I am convinced that Colin Andrews will fail in his attempt to provide a neat and down-to-earth explanation of crop circles. So far the circle makers have managed to keep one step ahead of the 'explainers', and they I strongly suspect that they will continue to do so.