You liked our piece Ten Crop Circle Myths That Won’t Go Away so much that we’ve decided to run with an imaginitively titled follow-up. Read on for more tall tales on higher intelligences, Doug and Dave, Colin Andrews and the bottomless wallet…

It was going to get mentioned, wasn’t it? The lingering myth of people making a living from crop circles. Usually these are named as photographers, conference organisers, painters, film makers and merchandise sellers. They profit and live in luxury from the designs of others whilst the poor old circle makers scrape by in poverty. Maybe that did happen once upon a time, but since 2011 the crop circle world has become a less fruitful and rewarding place. As a rule the circles are rarer, smaller and their origins better understood. Combine this with farmers who are quicker to lower the blades onto any new formation and you’re picking over scraps. There simply isn’t the money to be made. Nonetheless, that doesn’t stop the usual suspects pointing fingers at the same old names. Weirdly, Colin Andrews is held up by the accusers as some light of virtue; as if he really wasn’t someone who sold a myth to the public and made a few quid from it.

It’s obvious that the circles were around before the researchers, but who were the first cerealogists? One common response suggests Pat Delgado, Colin Andrews and Frederick ‘Busty’ Taylor were first. Taylor may be aggrieved to know he’s sometimes omitted from the story, especially as he introduced Andrews and Delgado to each other, although it’s ultimately irrelevant.

The first circles researchers were ufologists NUFOR (South West), otherwise known as PROBE, who were on the case of crop circles in Westbury, Wiltshire, at the end of summer, 1980. They immediately turned to Terence Meaden, a physicist in the local area, for his views on the matter. By comparison, It was in 1981 that Pat Delgado saw his first crop circle, whilst Colin Andrews came to the fields two years later.

If you’re of a conspiratorial mindset you may believe that Doug Bower and Dave Chorley represented at least one incarnation of an ongoing campaign to muddy the waters of crop circle ‘truth’. Followers of this one suggest that hoaxers only began to make themselves known to the croppie world around 1990. It simply isn’t true.

BUFORA’s Mystery of the Circles was published in 1985 and mentions the appearance of two quintuplet type formations around the Westbury area some two years previously. According to the report’s authors Jenny Randles and Paul Fuller, the Daily Mirror newspaper had paid farmer Alan Sheppard to take on the help of his son and journalist Chris Hutchins from the tabloid in creating the second of the quintuplets. Using a rope and chain, the team created the formation in less than half an hour.

BUFORA’S 1989 Controversy of the Circles contains a short chapter of known hoaxed circles. Amusingly, it mentions the message ‘WEARENOTALONE’ that had been flattened into the crop at Cheesefoot Head, Hampshire in 1986. This formation was eventually claimed by Bower and Chorley as a rebuke to the makers of a rough circle at the same location earlier in the season.

Historian Greg Jeffreys suggests there is photographic proof from 1945 showing crop circles in the fields of England. His conclusion was reached using old RAF aerial photographs that have been pieced together on Google Earth (available as an overlay). Jeffreys believes there are approximately twelve unexplainable, circular ground markings to be found on the images which cover around 65% of England. Unfortunately, Jeffreys seems to have made very little attempt to place the markings in any context or offer rational explanations for their appearance in the images. It’s near enough impossible to tell if the circles contain any flattened plants at all!

In 2010 Richard Taylor from the University of Oregon, contributed an article to Nature titled The Crop Circle Evolves. In it Taylor speculated that circle makers may be using GPS and ‘masers or magnetrons from microwave ovens’ in their work. Presumably, the GPS is used for the positioning of a circle, the maser or magnetron to heat up plants in order to flatten them. They’re cute ideas but they simply don’t happen. GPS is currently too inaccurate to be of use whilst flattening plants with a stomper is certainly much quicker than heating them up. (It’s worth noting the idea that crop circle creation involves some kind of microwave energy comes from the discredited research of the late WC Levengood.) Nonetheless, this myth seems to be sticking around.

Lucy Pringle has written extensively on the negative physical effects some people claim to have experienced after going inside a crop circle. Given these formations really are just flattened plants it’s likely these negative occurrences arose either as a placebo effect or through unrelated events.

This begs another question: could widespread use of agricultural pesticides make the fields potentially dangerous places to visit? Through long term exposure, maybe, but likely not enough to cut down tourists and circle makers who have considerably less contact with these chemicals than agricultural workers and residents of rural localities.

Whilst Doug Bower and Dave Chorley are widely considered to be the initiators of the modern phenomenon, they admit to having created their circles in order to fool ufologists. Bower said he was inspired by the UFO nests (supposed landing marks left by flying saucers) found at Tully, Australia, during 1966. Whilst the Tully nests were a circular mat of reeds floating on a swamp, there are reports of circular markings in English fields as far back as 1880. The best evidence of any one event comes from 1932 at Bow Hill, near Stoughton in West Sussex. A photograph shows what appears to be a ring in a field of barley. The circle was described by archaeologist E.C. Curwen as being ”lodged’ or beaten down’. Whilst it is possible the ring could have been groundmarks caused by ancient enclosures, they do not feature on current satellite photographs of the location.

This is a common misunderstanding still used to discredit Doug Bower and Dave Chorley following their September 1991 confession to TODAY newspaper. The pair never claimed to have made every single crop circle that appeared in England, never mind other locations around the world. As stated above, Bower and Chorley concluded that other circle makers were definitely active in Hampshire during the 1986 season. By the end of summer 1991 there were numerous circle makers operating in neighbouring Wiltshire, including UBI and Jim Schnabel, as documented in the latter’s book Round In Circles. There was also the unresolved matter of the wonderful Mandelbrot fractal that had appeared in Cambridge.

Seemingly anomalous, airborne phenomena resembling balls of light have been spotted and filmed in the vicinity of crop circles. That said, and to the best of our knowledge, only one piece of footage exists supposedly showing a crop circle being made by lights. This is the Oliver’s Castle footage of 1996 which has been shown to have been a hoax perpetrated by a film maker called John Wabe. You can read more about what happened by clicking here.

Not too long ago, we discussed the belief held by some people that whilst crop circles are madmade, their makers are influenced by mysterious powers. The basis of this belief seems to have come from original circle maker Doug Bower once contemplating if he had possibly been guided by an external hand. Other makers, alongside the likes of cerealogist Colin Andrews, have offered similar musings, using them to rationalise some peculiar events which occurred under the stars in a field. Unfortunately for proponents of the theory, a lot of the events are very woolly. For example, making a crop circle that holds unexpected meaning for a third party. This is a particularly naive thing to say, especially as we know some circle makers view their work as Rorschach Tests; they want to see the interpretations others place upon their circles. 

All in, we don’t feel there is anything in this belief. You can read the full article by clicking here, but we added our own perspective, suggesting it represents ‘the last stand of otherwise disenfranchised crop circle ‘personalities’ who are desperate to remain relevant. What better way to achieve this than to appeal to both the believer and the non-believer? These individuals attempt to cast a semblance of mystery over the phenomenon in a fashion that suits their personal agenda.’