Janet Ossebaard

The Croppie is saddened to learn of the apparent death of former crop circle researcher Janet Ossebaard by suicide.

A video released by Ossebaard’s former partner Cyntha Koester on 24 December 2023 states:

Janet has been found dead after a period of five weeks in which she was missing. She died of suicide by taking an overdose of medicine on November 16 2023. Janet has had a lifetime of struggling against severe depression and death wishes. A few times a year she would experience a deep emotional episode. This last time was one too much. She was in the process of dealing with her [childhood] issues which she wrote about in her blogs, and it seemed like a neverending story to her. 

At time of writing there has been no official confirmation of Ossebaard’s passing. As such, it should be viewed with some reservations, particularly as she spent the last five years deeply embroiled in the shadowy realm of conspiracy theorists. 

Born in Deventer in the Netherlands in 1966, Ossebaard experienced her first crop circle on Dutch soil, in the Assen municipality during 1994. In subsequent years she became a regular visitor to Wiltshire in the summer months, leading tour groups and becoming a well known — some may say infamous — figure on the croppie scene for her relaxed, devil-may-care attitudes. Her own research was heavily influenced by the work of WC Levengood and focussed on the discovery of plant abnormalities and anomalies inside circles. Away from her on-the-scene presence, Ossebaard was best known to croppies as an author, film producer and the owner of the Graancirkelsite.nl website. She also maintained her own YouTube channel and was a staunch supporter of controversial circles mystic Robbert van den Broeke.

At the back end of the 2017, Ossebaard drifted away from crop circle research to reinvent herself as a conspiracy theorist. She embarked upon an unusual, possibly paranoid lifestyle, frequently moving from house to house and avoiding mobile phones in case she could be tracked by the authorities.

In 2019 Ossebaard became widely known among far-right Americans with the release of her documentary series Fall of the Cabal. This work reflected many of the views expressed by prononents of the QAnon conspiracy theory and was called out as ‘anti-semitic’ by the Anti-Defamation League. 

Ossebaard’s most recent contribution to croppiedom was her appearance as an interviewee in the 2023 documentary The Chilbolton Incident.