As 2023 draws to a close we have one more installment of Croppie Gossip to share with you all. True to form, you can guarantee that the hive of imbecility that is Facebook group Crop Circles UK continues to provide us with a never ending game of whack-a-mole…

We’ll just leave this screenshot hanging for the agricultural community, given that Deiniol ‘Dan’ Davies has recently attempted to reincarnate himself as a ‘professional circle maker’. We imagine that these ‘peasant farmers’ are the same individuals whose fields Davies will be looking to work in next year. 

As for his ‘contacts on the deepest levels in security services’, Davies’s probation officer and the local pub bouncer don’t count. 

The Croppie was tickled to read a suggestion by Team Ten Watt’s Dene Hine that those responsible for this website also run the wonderful Miles Challett blog (which we heartily recommend).

We hate to disappoint you, Dene, but you are spending far too much time looking under your bed at night. Nobody connected to The Croppie has contributed anything to the Miles Challett blog at any point. Can you not understand how many people you have agitated through the years? We know of more than a few — and it seems that some of them are quite happy to record and analyse what you write. Don’t blame us … although we love a lot of what the mysterious Miles Challett writes. Perhaps you should go back and look at the date that website began. 

Team Ten Watt fringe member Frank Smithland seems to hold the outfit’s pot of braincells, so we took the time to read the latest installment of his pointless arguing with people who just want to believe crop circles are made by a supernatural force and won’t change their minds any time soon. We won’t reproduce the whole thing as it’s a bit tedious, but there are some points he makes that need to be addressed:

Fact: the UK crop circle world is ‘governed’ not by MI5, or any other ‘corrupt’ political body. The main hold is the Crop Circle Connector. Whenever a circle is made, the makers then inform the Connector who informs their drone operative where the circle is and they get the shots on the morning of creation, weather permitting. That is why the same operative gets all of the first shots.

Myth: aliens make the circles in well hidden places but because there are so many dog walkers and farmers ‘calling in’ the circles that is how the system works. I bet 90% of you reading this weren’t even aware of the Crop Circle Connector, let alone had them on speed dial ready for when you find something.

There are three things to be addressed here.

One; the Crop Circle Connector does not always get ‘all the first shots’ of new crop circles. The majority, yes, but not all. 

Two; nobody governs or is a ‘hold’ on the crop circle phenomenon. The crop circles will appear where and when they do. Nobody tells circle makers what to make or where to make it. If they choose to report their work to any third party, that is their choice and done for their own reasoning. 

Three; let us repeat in exactly the same words as we’ve said before to your friend Robin Knight:

Those of us who have followed crop circles online for the past twenty five years know that the overwhelming majority of crop circle reports have been made to the Crop Circle Connector. We also know, for a fact, that members of the public have reported crop circles to other outlets in recent years including Monique Klinkenbergh’s Crop Circle Exhibition and Information Centre, together with the website you are reading right now and our Instagram account Crop Circle Explorer. Alternatively, some people do post photographs of crop circles they’ve found on Facebook … This isn’t 1990 where you had to get to The Waggon and Horses at Beckhampton to speak to George Wingfield, or find someone who had the telephone number of Busty Taylor, Pat Delgado or Colin Andrews.

Interestingly, I know one team who made a circle which went totally wrong. So much so the team didn’t call it in to the CCC. Guess what… It was NEVER found. It was pretty close to some houses too. Not found, because the maker didn’t want it to be! This is one reason why as a choice of communication crop circles are the least worthy of mediums.

There have been circles not reported to the Crop Circle Connector or any other third party which have subsequently been found. We can think of a good number of examples, including those from 2023 and 2022. Mainly, these have occurred in Wiltshire and Hampshire because they are circles prone locations. There are the places where individuals will actively scout certain locations in the hope of finding something new. These are the locations where people will look out of the car window in the distant hope of seeing a fresh circle. We’ve done this ourselves and have been rewarded. Of course, circles made away from those hotspots may well remain unnoticed, though not all. Take the ‘dove’ formation of 2015 that was organically discovered by a pilot above Hampton Lucy in Warwickshire.

Hampton Lucy, Warwickshire; August 2015. Photograph by Steve Alexander

Fact: Energy. I have visited many crop circles and was on the team making the commissioned razor this year. For me there is definitely a change in residual energy when you enter the formation. It almost like it has become a portal for the energy to evolve there. It is not that the energy made the circle though. It is just a powerful feeling I have felt every time once I’ve entered the circle.

A ‘change in residual energy’? A ‘portal for the energy to evolve there.’ Huh? Frank, you’re talking as much ‘woo’ as the people you’re arguing with. 

Myth: Crop circles can cure illnesses. Although there can be a tangible change in the energy (aura?) within a circle, there is no proof that cc’s heal, and anyone saying they do is a charlatan and fraud. I got a sense of well being in the circles, but my asthma has not improved!

There is evidence that visiting crop circles can lead to a brief lessening in the symptoms endured by people with various illnesses. Having read the testimony in Lucy Pringle’s ‘The Energies of Crop Circles’, we’re inclined to suspect there is some form of placebo effect occurring.

I look forward to the usual suspects, but also really would welcome anyone with sensible, logical answers to reply here, to explain how else supposed ‘mysterious’ events are discovered so readily by the same person pretty much every time, and why such an ambiguous, vulnerable method of communication limited to just 3 months of the year is being chosen by these much higher entities.

Suggesting crop circles ‘are discovered so readily by the same person pretty much every time’ is simply false. No photographer — you’re on about Nick Bull, Frank — is claiming to have discovered new crop circles. We’ve stated above and on previous occasions how crop circles come to public attention. 

In the subsquent discussion, Smithland went on to write:

Also, there are circle making teams that not only want to keep the mystery, they actively promote it… preferring to use it to maintain interest. 

We’re not sure where you get your information from, Frank, but there are exactly zero active circle making teams seeking to ‘actively promote’ any mystery. Rather, there are circle makers who follow the principle of silence and anonymity as part of their artistic philosophy. They aren’t saying the aliens did it. Rather, they are saying nothing.

Our Circle Makers Speak series has featured makers talking about their views towards deception and promotion of a mystery:

One: ‘I’m making a pattern for people to interpret as they see fit. They can say it was the work of aliens, humans, Earth energies, whatever they think. In that sense I look at my work as a series of large Rorschach tests. I’m essentially asking the audience what they make of a particular crop circle. I’m not telling anyone my work was the product of alien intervention. It is up to us as individuals how we choose to interpret the world around us, whether it be the meaning we find in a book, the faces we see in the clouds or a pattern in a field.’

Two: ‘We’re simply making circles and leaving them authorless for others to make what they want of them … Crop circles are an invitation and a question mark. It is entirely up to croppies what they make of the evidence in the field and in the public arena. Whatever one’s view as to the circles’ origins, one can find evidence out there to support it.’

Three: ‘I’m in this for the art aspect, mainly. Yes, I know I’m also creating mystery but that’s not really my aim, it’s the challenge of getting everything right in a pitch black field. There’s no other agenda. Of course I love the fact that many people get a hell of a lot of joy from the formations, but that’s a by-product of them. Believers choose to believe what they believe without any influence from myself, and as one who would never shout about what I do, I can’t control that side of things in any way.’

Clearly, Frank, you think you know better than the people who are out in the fields covertly. You don’t know them or have any idea on their views beyond nonsense you may have been told, imagined or have conjured up for your own ends. The only person you are deluding is yourself.