Podcasts: Confessions Of A Crop Circle Maker

Universal Disclosure Podcast: Confessions of a Crop Circle Maker

Featuring ‘Citizen D’
Available on YouTube

‘I do feel as if we are being guided, but what, I don’t know, genuinely, is whether there is a telepathy between the crop circle makers themselves using the collective consciousness or whether there’s something triangulated and it’s us talking to each other; but there’s something above us, and the reason I say that is because it’s the proliferation of synchronicities and dream driven events that can’t be scientifically looked at.’

It’s dead easy running a podcast themed along paranormal lines. You know there’s a whole load of individuals peddling their own pet theories who are absolutely desperate for whatever exposure they can get, so you wait for them to get in touch. Once you’ve got your guests, throw them some softballs, let them talk and share their anecdotes without challenge. All you need to do is interject with the occasional ‘wow’, gasp and whisper of ‘how do the skeptics explain that?’ Follow the path of least resistance, everyone can go home happy and you’ve got a show. There are so many of these podcasts now that YouTube is heaving under the weight of unchallenged nonsense.

I used to be a podcaster too, also along Fortean themes, at a time when the landscape was emptier. I like to think I had a little more integrity. I ignored interview requests, concentrating on the guests I wanted. Certainly, I would then let them speak and share their frequently outrageous ideas. However, towards the end of each episode, I would usually say something along the lines of, ‘I can see you really believe in [insert pet theory] and I have been very interested to hear all of the remarkable stories you have been kind enough to share with me. Now tell me, how can we go forward to prove, beyond doubt, that your belief is a factual truth?’ Some guests would go on to discuss the means by which an objective, fair and well thought out scientific experiment could be conducted. They were few and far between, though. More often, a guest would be greatly offended because I had not accepted their bank of stories as being weighty enough to count as factual in their own right. Some would then try and turn it on me, suggesting I have a closed mind and if I opened it I’d experience the wonders they were reporting. Ego is a fragile thing.

And so we come to the Universal Disclosure Podcast’s interview with Citizen D of the It Can’t Be People Substack. We’ve discussed him here before, a retired circle maker who probably hasn’t been out in the field for ten years. For whatever reason, he’s seen fit to start sharing stories related to the peculiar events he and his mates experienced in the fields. Now he’s embarking upon some grand tour of the tumbleweed strewn end of the parapods, like he really does have something to offer beyond a succession of unrelated tales that, either through ignorance, laziness or deliberate choice, he apparently can’t explain and has labelled paranormal. Birds breaking formation, strange lights in the sky, synchronicities. And because they’ve all happened around crop circles they must be paranormal. It goes without saying that there’s a huge element of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy going on here, events clustered around one specific point — crop circles — whilst ignoring all of the data from elsewhere. I’ve seen birds break formation and reform over woodland. I’ve seen lights in the sky in the middle of winter in Berkshire. I’ve experienced plenty of synchronicities. But these aren’t important because they didn’t occur at the right place at the right time. Only those that happen in and around the circles are relevant.

My favourite fragment in the whole, tortuous interview comes when it becomes clear Citizen D really does seem to think that everything is ‘weird’ beyond the methods by which crop circles are made. How odd is it that the questions asked by the interviewers always seem to lead to where D is going next? It’s not unusual in the slightest. Interviewers aren’t bound by a list of questions. They often just follow where the guest is going and ask the obvious. Whatever next? It’s weird that day follows night, follows day? I recall a similar interview he did in which he states he told other former circle makers that he was collating strange stories from the fields. It was ‘weird’ that others then got in touch with him. There’s nothing weird about word of mouth. This is where we are at.

Another golden nugget comes when Citizen D (seriously, this is the last time I’m calling him this) is asked whether strange events are encountered by all circle makers. Apparently not, because some of these unlucky souls are ‘clinical’ in their outlook. You know, like I said earlier, these people apparently don’t experience weird stuff because they don’t have spiritual intentions. What nonsense. I’m sure Francesco Grassi’s team of land artists have had more than a few moments of strangeness out in the fields. They just don’t feel the need to attribute these occurrences to something paranormal.

Then there’s the moment when the guest splits circle makers into two camps: those with the aforementioned ‘spiritual’ intent and the others whom he labels ‘bad’. Yet, just like Enzo Brabazon in his stunning interview with Croppie Coffee a couple of years ago, D isn’t special or one of the chosen ones. Yet it’s him and the white knights against the ‘bad’. A binary dichotomy for the fields. Is he so overconfident he actually believes he knows the intentions of other circle makers? If so, he is mistaken or badly informed.

Ultimately, this interview is just another piece of fluff from the New School of crop circle thought who are doing no more than replacing one dubious mystery with another that makes themselves the focal point of attention. It’s surely not a coincidence that D openly keeps the company of those who were first with this silly game of ‘my woo-woo is bigger than yours’. If there’s any consolation, it’s that knocking around on the bottom rung of the podcasting ladder isn’t going to change the world.