It's been a while since I last wrote an article for the Repository. It's not a case of nothing weird happening to me, weird stuff always seems to happen to me, just that I've been sidetracked by other things - moving house, juggling a career, reporting on the latest Amiga situations and trying to compile an 'alternative' Space: Above and Beyond episode guide. Y'know, everyday things which don't get debunked or make you the subject of jokes about little green men from Mars.
My introduction to crop circles, like most of the general public, was from the great media hype during the late eighties. Corn circles were everywhere, literally, and they weren't always circles. There were vast pictograms, religious and new age symbols, diagrams and patterns - even Mandelbrot sets, no doubt due to the similar late-eighties interest in fractal maths. You'd be forgiven for thinking, even now, that crop circles started in the eighties, like mobile phones and the file-o-fax.
You'd be wrong.
Crop circles have a long and illustrious history, there are records from the 17th Century, I believe, accurately recording devilish circles of swirled corn. Surely not even the old tricksters Doug and Dave could have hoaxed them? In fact, Doug and Dave admitted that they were influenced by a genuine circle they encountered in Australia in 1966 - one surrounded by fearsome swampland, and guarded by snakes. Local aborigines refused to enter the area. It would've taken a hardy hoaxer to go out into the middle of nowhere, risk life and limb creating a circle which would probably have never been seen. Nope, Doug and Dave's inspiration was the real thing.
My only experience of a crop circle was from a car window on the way to Bath. I've no idea of the actual location, but I do recall it was on a particularly treacherous looking hillside slope. It was bland and average - a standard, no-frills circle. If it had been hoaxed, the people involved were obviously experienced hill walkers and climbers - Doug and Dave's planks of wood would've caused them to topple over.
I've no idea if it was genuine, but I can safely say that if only one type of crop circle is a genuine, non-hoaxed creation, it's the standard circle. Which is what leads me to believe the theory of some kind of natural phenomenon - plasma vortices, perhaps? While I feel comfortable with the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis for many unexplained UFO sightings, I have never seen any evidence to suggest that an extraterrestrial has come all this way to wow the natives with a neatly geometric swirl of wheat stalks. It just doesn't make sense to me.
Cerealogy has mirrored UFOlogy in many ways, with often extreme points of view - from fanatical scepticism to new age beliefs. Hoaxing, petty squabbles between rival points of view and media derision (particularly in the UK press) contributing to a poor public image. I was actually spurred into writing this short piece because of a recent question from a reader of the UK's Daily Express - "Why is it that when some moron makes a circle in a field, everyone says it was made by little green men who go beep beep?". That kind of comment really gets me going, and shows just how much work dedicated researchers have to go to prove that the paranormal isn't about cranks, weirdos or even the X-Files (and I'm an X-Phile saying this!).
Just as with UFOlogy, the truth is more than likely to lie somewhere in between the extremes... and it'll be far stranger than any fiction.
