The History & Mystery of Crop Circles

Crop circles are patterns created by flattening crops (e.g. wheat, rye and barley), some of which are known to be man-made while the creator of others is not known with certainty but is speculated upon.

One of the earliest cases of crop circles was reported in 1966 in Queensland, Australia.  A farmer reported seeing a large saucer-like object rising from the ground then taking off with tremendous speed.  Upon reaching the area where the object had taken off from, the farmer is reported to have found a large circular area of water where reeds had been distributed in a radial clockwise pattern, about 30 feet in diameter.

This event received considerable media attention – including accusations of fakery - however; it wasn’t until the 1970s that crop circles truly began to get the public’s attention. By the mid 1970s crop circles had begun to appear regularly around England and by the 1980s crop circles had become a widely known global phenomenon.

In 1991 Doug Bower and Dave Chorley announced that they had created the idea of crop circles as a prank in 1976.  They claimed to have created their crop circles using a variety of tools such as planks, wire and ropes.  They had intended to keep their prank a secret, but Bower’s wife had noticed all the extra miles being clocked up in their car and suspected him of adultery.  Bower then confessed to her what they had been doing in order to create crop circles and then Bower and Chorley together confessed to a national newspaper.

Although there are many crop circles that are undoubtedly man-made, many believe that certain crop circles show evidence that they have been created in a way that would be impossible for man.  There are suggestions that tiny fragments of iron have been found at crop circle sites and that they are sometimes bent or marked in such a way that could only be the result of rapid electromagnetic bursts or rapid microwave bursts. 

The Discovery Channel made a documentary in 2002 where a team were challenge to create crop circles using the three criteria used to distinguish between man-made and “real” crop circles (elongated stem nodes, expulsion cavities in the stems, the presence of 10-50 micrometre diameter iron spheres in the soil).  The team used props such as a portable microwave emitter and a device that sprayed iron particles through a heated ring. This, combined with night-vision goggles, allowed the team to re-create at least 2 of the 3 criteria in a single night.  However, this result was criticised for being too difficult for an amateur hoaxer to achieve, since the equipment was too complex and hard to come by (especially in the 1970s, when crop circles first became more frequent).

The difficulty with crop circles is that many have been described by experts as definitely NOT man made, only for those experts to be confronted by the people who made them – complete with video footage of the crop circle creation in progress.  Doug Bower stated that, had his wife not become suspicious of his activities, he and Chorley would have taken their secret to their graves. So can we ever be truly confident that a “definitely not man-man” crop circle wasn’t actually made by a hoaxer using their own ingenious technique that they never intend to share?  Unfortunately, unless the “little green men” one day drop by with their OWN footage of alien spacecrafts creating crop circles, this one will always remain a dubious mystery.

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