Of all the name cerealogists from the past, Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado adopted the most media-friendly method of presenting their theories. Whilst never quite saying extraterrestrials were responsible for the circles of the 1980s, and avoiding the ridicule that would probably follow, they still managed to leave their readership with little doubt as to their suspicions of the phenomenon’s origins. It was within the pages of Vol.32, No.6 (1987) that Andrews came closest to publicly laying his cards out on the table. Dismissing ‘man-made aircraft’ as a cause of the circles, he talks of the ‘paranormal’ and links a number of crop circles to UFO sightings in the Hampshire area. The article Circles in the Corn: Strong Evidence of a ‘UFO Connection’ is reproduced below (accompanied by scans of the article).

Readers with knowledge of the personal relationship between Andrews and fellow cerealogist Terence Meaden at the time will note how the latter’s meteorological theory is the focus of some very clear barbs by Andrews.

Enjoy the innocence of the speculation that accompanied the circles phenomenon in the mid to late 1980s…

 

CIRCLES IN THE CORN: STRONG EVIDENCE OF A ‘UFO CONNECTION’

On July 14, 1986, at a BUFORA [British UFO Research Association] meeting in London, I was astounded to hear the statement made that ‘No reported UFO sightings have ever been associated with these circles at Goodworth Clatford‘.

My own interest in these matters had started a year before, on the night of Saturday, July 6, 1985, after returning with my family from watching the local Carnival Procession. I am a Local Government Communications Officer and, having entered the house, I switched on one of my radio monitors, and found myself listening to the Hampshire Police Control at Winchester. At approximately 11.30 p.m. I heard them instruct two Police cars to go to the A272 (British highway) at Stockbridge Down, just east of Stockbridge, where a couple travelling in their car towards Winchester claimed to have seen a UFO hovering above the hedgerow and close beside the road. So I told my wife, who was also listening to the message, that I proposed straight away to take a ride too, out there to Stockbridge Down, which was about five miles distant from my home.

As I drove out there, I now had my radio monitor on in the car, and heard Control insisting to the Police Officers that they must treat the report seriously. Control said: ‘We have the couple here in Winchester with us now. They are very shaken up by what they saw’.

When I got to Stockbridge Down, I watched the Police Officers with torches, searching the Downs, but they neither found nor saw anything.

A few hours later, just over the hill towards the north-west, a five-ring set of circles was found, near Goodworth Clatford! And indeed, during that very same night, another set of five rings is known to have appeared about the same distance away towards the south-east. This was at Matterley Farm, on the east side of the A31 road, near Arlesford.

Can it be mere coincidence that this UFO sighting and report which were taken so seriously by the Police should have occurred on the very same night, and at that time, and at a spot lying on a line between these two reported ‘five-ringer’ sites.

Having heard the Police giving their directions, and having read the published accounts of the ‘Goodworth Clatford Circles’ in the local press a few days later and, of course, being myself resident but a short distance from the site, I went to see the newspaper reporter who had written the story. He listened to what I had to say, and them, in my presence, he began to telephone around and make enquiries. First, he asked the Andover Police Station whether they had sent anyone out to Stockbridge Downs to look for a UFO. They replied that yes — they had sent Officers to the Downs after somebody had reported seeing something unusual there, but there had turned out to be nothing in the story. He then telephoned to the Press Officer of the Hampshire Police, in Winchester. This official also admitted that a Police vehicle from Andover and another one from Romsey had indeed been found at the time. And this of course was true. But it is also true that sets of mysterious circles were found in a field close by, the very next morning, and that, several days later, more were found. The Press Officer also spoke with the Army Air Corps, at Middle Wallop, who replied: ‘We had nothing flying that night.’

The Eyewitness Traced

Eventually, a persistent press-reporter managed to trace the couple who had had the UFO sighting on the night of July 6, 1985. I give below an extract from their story as it appeared in the newspaper Southampton Reporter for July 19, 1985:

‘Shaken pensioners Jack and Pat Collins spotted a brilliantly-lit object hovering over desolate down-land as they drove home at night. Jack, of Fox Lane, Stanmore, Winchester, described it as ‘a perfect circle‘. And Pat added: ‘It was a huge circular thing, and it was divided out like the spokes of a wheel. Around the outside of it there were very bright lights like huge light-bulbs, and other lights in the sections. It was so bright — like something out of a fairground.’ Jack, who was driving the car, put his foot down when he spotted it hovering about thirty feet above the open fields. The couple were so shocked at seeing the fiery circle that they called the Police…’

I interviewed Mr and Mrs Collins, and requested them to give me a sketch of their UFO, indicating as well as they could recall the positioning of the lights on it…

Other UFOs Seen Near Circle Sites

In any case, this is no isolated eyewitness account of a UFO observed near a spot where, and about the time when, rings or circles are found.

For an even more startling account was given to me in April of this year by a farm-hand whom I met while travelling around surveying and listing the circle-sites. This man, who asked me not to reveal his name, told me that he had been a passenger in a car driven by his wife on the night of Friday, July 4, 1986. They were travelling from Winchester towards Petersfield on the A272. At about 11.45 p.m. they were approaching Cheesefoot Head (one of the most famous ‘ring and circles sites’ for some years past) when, as they turned right around a bend on the western side of the Head, he saw a chain of lights over the top and slightly behind the fir trees on the eastern side. He said they looked ‘like a string of molecules — about seven of them’.< Each one of them emitted a white light which was bright at the centre but diffused before it reached the light from the next centre, and so on, along the chain.

[A sketch of the sighting location] was made for me by this man when I interviewed him. And he told me that, when they got home that night, he had said to his wife: ‘THEY WILL FIND SOMETHING IN THE BASIN TOMORROW!’

AND THEY DID … AT ABOUT 3.30 A.M. ON THAT DAY, PAT DELGADO FOUND THE FIRST CIRCLE OF THE 1986 SEASON! AT CHEESEFOOT HEAD!

And I have records of other cases too where the UFOs have been seen over fields where rings and circles have been found soon afterwards. These include Findon, in West Sussex; Fonthill Bishop in Wiltshire; and Childrey in Oxfordshire.

All the evidence that I possess so far indicates that AN AERIAL COMPONENT is at work. And our research goes on.

Farmers Interviewed

Since that first night, July 6, 1985, I have spent literally hundreds of hours researching the rings and circles. My companions, almost daily, have been Mr Fred Taylor (known to all as ‘Busty Taylor’), who is a licensed civilian pilot, and the meteorologist Dr Terence Meaden. Together we have scoured the countryside in search of clues to this most extraordinary mystery, often in a helicopter piloted by Mr Taylor. And I have also spent much time with FSR Consultant Pat Delgado. My files now contain details of 108 separate ‘events’ (rings and circles in fields, etc.) since I started my investigations in July 1985.

During April 1987 I spent many days interviewing farmers, who have been good enough to fill in questionnaires distributed to them. (Questionnaires issued by the T.O.R.R.O. — Tornado And Storm Research Organisation.) And the sad, sad fact is that many of the most stubborn ‘believers’ in the ‘Tornado and Storm Theory’ are now beginning to see that, in fact, their theories won’t work and won’t hold up!

The questionnaires went out to more than 400 known cereal farmers in the County of Hampshire, some thirty in the County of Wiltshire, and one or two in Oxfordshire. All of the returns indicating circles on farms have been dealt with by me by a visit to the farm, and an interview with the farmer. Full results of this survey will be published in due course. Interestingly, some new formations have been reported, namely a set of four, and also a set of three arranged in a triangle. Several of the farmers told me that they themselves had been the first to discover the circles, and confirmed that when they did so there were no tracks of any kind in the fields concerned. (And that involved cases relating to the period before the use of the tractors which leave the now familiar ‘tram-lines’ visible in the cornfields.

The Recurrent Rings at Headbourne Worthy

In August, 1986 there appeared, in a wheat field at Headbourne Worthy, in Hampshire, the only (so far) reported anti-clockwise circle, and I had the fortune to be one of those who took part in the first-known scientific investigation of a circle, namely that one. The information and construction details secured by us were quite staggering.

Most ring or circle sites are now known to the general public, and Headbourne Worthy is one of these. It is also one of the areas of high activity, and therefore one of major interest to us.

Circles started appearing in the cornfields at Headbourne Worthy during the summer of 1976. This first event was just off the A34 trunk road, near the Winchester Bypass. And was it by mere coincidence that the famous ‘close encounter’ of Mrs Joyce Bowles (see FSR 22/6), occurred at a spot also just off the Winchester Bypass and only a little further along the road from this first circle site at Headbourne Worthy!

And from that time on, there have been many more rings in this same area, and some highly interesting UFO reports have been gathered by us from people dwelling near by.

UFO Seen by Author

I myself, while waiting in 1986 for the meteorologist Dr Terence Meaden to join me at the Headbourne Worthy site, saw a very small grey disc stationary overhead. Just as I caught it with my eye, the disc suddenly darted sideways very rapidly. In one jerking movement, it entered a small isolated cumulus cloud a short distance away. I waited to see if it reappeared from the cloud, and took care not to blink. But the disc did not reappear!

Headbourne Worthy falls within a fairly well defined ‘corridor’ from which many circle reports have come.

The whole phenomenon of these circles in the fields seems to be evolving at an accelerating rate, and the swirl details I discovered at Headbourne Worthy are of particular significance… On my first and following visits there in August 1986, I made a thorough study of the circle along with the other members of our team. Then I returned there on October 8, 1986, after the farmer had finished harvesting the corn, to see what sort of features were now to be observed. Very heavy germination of the barley had taken place within the circle, as was quite normal in all these cases. But, as a result, the circle was now more easily visible from the outskirts of the city of Winchester than it had been been when first discovered in August.

On this later visit in October 1986 I noticed the remains of the barleystems laid down positively in their primary contours in such a way as to resemble the ‘skeleton’ of the circle. Now that all the surface barleystems had been removed by the combine-harvester, only the ‘bones’, as it were, remained. Much other valuable information was to be secured now in comparison with my earlier visits. We have learned over the years to take full account of the lower layers of plants as well as those on the surface of the circles, since all these features help to form the picture of how the plants had fallen and what had happened at the site and how the circles had been made.

(At this point I might add that, while we continue to use the term ‘circles’ in general, very few of they are actually perfectly round. Most of them are in fact elliptical — some more so than others. And this in itself indicates either a horizontal movement in the energy field or — more possibly — perhaps an angled aerial approach.)

The surface plants, when I inspected the site before the harvest, were laid out along the same veining contours that we had already come to associate with all the cornfield circles. When I viewed the site again after the harvest (in October 1986), with the full co-operation of the interested farmer, I discovered that there was a sine wave pattern running around the outer edge of the circle. The position of the plants at ground-level lay along sine-waves similar to what one finds in A.C. voltage. Also heavy pressure-veining was to be seen, running in an anti-clockwise direction into the centre. The veining flow was very unusual, and had not been seen before. Two sine waves appeared to be at work here, each spiralling around its own axis, as well as rotating around the centre in a perfectly balanced formation…

Scientists Interested and Surprised

While attending the Home Office College at Easingwold recently, I took the opportunity to discuss my findings with scientists on the College staff, and they were most surprised. Looking at the sketch that I had made, they noted the great similarity to recent findings associated with the effects produced by the detonation of a nuclear device.

Very great interest is now being displayed in the phenomenon of the rings and circles, and coming from individuals at all levels — scientists, farmers, engineers, press, members of the ordinary public, and indeed, even the Ministry of Defence itself.

A Few Hoaxes

One or two formations are known to have been hoaxes. But these have been very easily discernible, and have been on publicly known sites. But Headbourne Worthy is a prime example of a genuine and very complex force-field which leaves marks on the ground such as we are beginning to see in increasing numbers throughout my area of Southern England.

During recent years it has been my pleasure to eliminate a number of alleged or possible causes for this phenomenon. These include: hoaxers; animals; man-made aircraft; weather and meteorological conditions; and chemicals. We are then left with some highly interesting and indeed bizarre possibilities.

One thing remains certain. There are ever increasing indications that the source of this phenomenon is paranormal.