Crop circles

Pathetic Earthlings! Your mighty intellect is no match for our puny weapons! Behold! how we bend your stalks of wheat without breaking them! Resistance is futile!

 * In a message forwarded by Garrison Hilliard ,
   "someone" wrote:

> # the uninvestigated".  Many of the circles have intracately interwoven
> # strands of crop >underneath< the flattened crop on top.  How do you
> # suppose that is hoaxed with ropes and poles by a couple of old geezers?

We don't really need to "suppose" anything; crop circles/pictograms can
be made with ropes and poles (and the odd garden roller).  It's a fact.

> # I highly suggest watching "CROP CIRCLE COMMUNIQUE" a video by Linda
> # Moulton Howe.  She can be reached at P.O. Box 538, Huntingdon Valley, PA
> # 19006 or by phone at: (215) 491-9840.

Even better, I'd suggest watching the sequel,_CROP CIRCLE COMMUNIQUE II:
REVELATIONS_, a recent video documentary from  John Macnish of
"Circlevision".

Briefly, John Macnish was a BBC-TV producer who gave Colin Andrews and
Pat Delgado their initial television exposure in the late 1980s.  Later
Macnish joined with them to produce some crop circle videos.  By the
early 90s, Macnish began to suspect that there was "another" side to the
circle story, and that "hoaxing" was a far bigger component of the circle
"phenomenon" than the crop circle "experts" were admitting.  It seemed
fashionable to mindlessly denigrate Doug and Dave - the two old
"cornfield codgers" - and the very idea that mere mortals could be
responsible for the exquisite field formations dotting the English
countryside.

So Macnish set out to settle this question once and for all.  He filmed
several circle-makers at work throughout 1992 in their element, at night,
using their standard equipment of ropes, planks and garden rollers.
Using low-light tv cameras he captured formations as they were being
made.  Later, he filmed the self-assured crop circle experts as they
proclaimed these _same_ formations to be "genuine"!

Such was the effect of this video on the crop circle community that
Colin Andrews delayed his Winter '94 CPR Newsletter for three months
while he checked and double-checked the claims made in 'Crop Circle
Communique'.  On page 2 of his Newsletter he wrote:

  ''I was shown very convincing evidence with names of the people who
   WERE making circles.  Some of the people named were Jim Schnabel,
   Robert Irving, Pam Price, and the two retired men Doug Bowers and Dave
   Chorley (D&D), who Macnish gives most of the credit to for the hoaxing
   phenomenon.  I was shown infra-red photos of many circles in
   production, one very impressive, made in Sutton Scotney.  All in all,
   it was an overwhelming evening.''

   ''...  When you have seen such convincing evidence of crop circles
   being made by these people, you have to wonder.  How long has this
   been going on and how many have they made?  Have we really all been
   duped?  There are a disturbingly high number of man-made formations in
   1991 and 92 based upon these discoveries.  Disturbing when we consider
   some of the well published scientific evidence supporting the
   phenomenon and some of the anecdotal evidence which appears clearly
   false.''

Based on the evidence presented in the video Colin Andrews also declared
that his "plant wizard", Dr W.C.  Levengood, whose work supposedly
provided "the cornerstone of authenticity" (for proving "genuine
circles), should reevaluate his work since: "Many tens of formations
which Dr.  Levengood has felt showed the signs of authenticity, are
proven man-made formations." (!) Andrews also admitted that he should
have taken Doug and Dave's claims about being able to make "real"
formations more seriously.

To lend further weight to the evidence of massive hoaxing exposed in the
video, Andrews made his by now (in)famous statement that all along he
only believed that "there was a hand full of patterns that I would, hand
on heart, say 'these are genuine.'"


legion@WERPLE.MIRA.NET.AU (John Stepkowski)

Subject: S.A.'s first hieroglyphic circle!

Hello All,

South Australia has had its first hieroglyphic crop circle.

I was contacted on Sunday 11-12-94 by a woman claiming to have seen a crop
circle whilst on descent to Adelaide airport on a flight from Brisbane.

Subsequently, using an Adelaide road map, she found the circle in a
Northfield paddock belonging to the Dept. of Agriculture. She then
contacted Channel 10 TV News, and Mr Colin Norris (of AFSRS) whom attended
the site on Wednesday morning. The 10 evening news aired the story, during
which Mr Norris declared the circle to be "genuine" and "created by
extraterrestrials".

The circle was well defined, and clearly "artificial". (ie. _somebody_ made
it. It was not one of the simple circles that some have attempted to
explain away using the "vortex" hypothesis.)

Both Mr Norris and myself were interviewed by ABC radio just after 10:00am
Thursday. Mr Norris again pontificated about our space brothers being
amongst us, declaring that the circle was created by the extraterrestrials
in an attempt to communicate with us.

In short, I said that in my opinion it was a prank by humans. I stated that
there is simply no reason to invoke "aliens" to explain a pattern in a crop
field. Ample evidence from the UK suggests that the vast majority of
circles are made by (human) pranksters. Noting that even Colin Andrews now
agrees that "only a handful" of circles are "genuine".

Local self proclaimed "psychic", Danni Morena appeared on Channel 10 news
tonight (Thursday) stating that the State Government should "preserve" the
circle! (I understand that they actually _agreed_ to delay harvesting the
field until a decision is made!!)  he he he he he  :-)

I have not been able to go to the site myself yet, but if the opportunity
arrises, I will.

Thursday evening, (15-12-94) I received a message (second hand) advising
that local radio station "SA-FM" had claimed responsibility for making the
circle.

Subsequently, (again second hand) I hear that when police were called in,
(the Dept of Agriculture don't take to kindly too pranksters stomping on
their wheat!) SA-FM have retracted their claim. Stating that they only
claimed they did it for a joke!


bye for now,

Jim Atwell 

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