Chapter 4. Crop circles

Made by UFOs

The earliest crop circles were no doubt made by alien craft which had landed in a field and left a circular impression with grasses bent down and burned. These early circles were made in grass or swamp reeds, not in cereal crops as they are made today, and only the flying saucers made them, never craft shaped like cigars or triangles. Modern crop circles happen in grain fields, nothing is burned, and the pattern can be complex, featuring mathematical arrangements of circles of different sizes. Modern circles are not just saying “We were here.” They are trying to communicate more complex messages, such as “We hope you didn’t feel alone” and “Let’s give up nuclear weapons, eh?”

Bower and Chorley

Doug Bower and Dave Chorley might have been the first cereologists. They planned their first circle in a pub in Winchester in 1978 and put it down with four-foot sticks. After people came to see their circle on Cheesefoot Head, crop circles, increasingly complex, appeared in Canada and elsewhere. Bower and Chorley wanted people to think the circles were made by flying saucers. That was part of the fun. They were doing 20 to 30 a year, anonymously, but grew tired of so-called experts profiting from wacky explanations for their circles.

Cereology

Experts agree Bower and Chorley couldn’t do it. True crop circles are radioactive. Human beings aren’t smart enough and don’t have the means to prepare the field in this precise way. When a crop circle is claimed by humans, the hoax is that there’s no mystery or unknown cause.