On the night of 5 August, a Facebook account called Shortdude Bob began to spam crop circle groups. His posts were simple, announcing a ‘new crop circle in Wiltshire’ and accompanying this with a direct, overhead photo:

No further details, such as a location were given.

We aren’t going to mention any names when it comes to the suspected origin of the circle, but looking at its size and the type of design, it reminded us very much of this year’s formation at Odstone, together last year’s (2025) relative at Sutton Veny. All feature knotted, minimal designs. All are relatively small compared to the larger circles we’ve seen in recent years.

Now, had this circle been made public through the usual channels we would have let it pass as normal. Yet, rather than going through the Crop Circle Connector, this formation came out through a fake Facebook account.

The Shortdude Bob account isn’t new. We recall seeing it in various groups at least half a decade ago. But why would this individual return out of the blue to announce the discovery of a new crop circle and provide no additional information? Usually, in such situations it is because they have something to hide. In fact, it reminded us of the old Crop Circle Disconnector. This was an ill-fated venture to feature circles made by friends of its owner, Matthew Williams, with the aim presumably having been to leave the Connector empty-handed.

Matthew Williams? If you are a croppie you will at least know the name as he always gets a few column inches each year. He’s best known as being the circle maker who got himself prosecuted in 2000 for making a seven-pointed star formation at West Overton. More recently, he’s been on the receiving end of prosecutions for harassment and impersonating a police officer. Plus he’s a two-times winner of our very own Top of the Croppies award and was a major player in the fuss and drama that surrounded a Chinese television show on crop circles in 2019. To the outside world he’s seen as a knowledgeable crop circle rebel, but some of us on the ground see him rather differently. In 2026 he’s been remonetising his drone channel on YouTube, filming crop circles after a long break. Anyhow…

We did wonder if there was a link between Williams and Shortdude Bob. So we did some digging on Facebook Messenger and wondered what would happen if looked at his details:

Shortdude Bob, account handle WiltshireWerewolf.

We asked around and learnt that Williams has the alter-ego of a werewolf that sometimes arises on his livestream videos. Plus there are other mentions of them in his video titles. Here are just a couple:

Of course, none of this is proof that Shortdude Bob and Williams are one and the same person, but you can understand our intrigue, particulaly as Williams and the likely maker of the mysterious new circle have a longstanding friendship and had an in-field working relationship.

Again, this is conjecture, but we notice that Williams is speaking in a debate with another former circle maker, Rob Irving, on the subject of ‘the secrecy of the circles’ at a forthcoming Fortean conference. Does this have anything to do with the restriction of details on the new circle? Could a resurrection of the Disconnector be back on the cards? Or, is it simply the case that the new circle has been harvested?

Whatever the truth, we aren’t fans of the occasions when details of new circles are withheld. Rather than doing that, just keep the whole thing under wraps and see if it gets discovered naturally.