SVAHN: Some people say you were paid for (making) all these
circles.
BOWER: We had a small sum but not a great deal of money, no,
no. We had lots of interviews over the telephone, we did chat
shows and we did TV interviews (and) we did two demonstrations.
The TODAY newspaper wanted us to do a demon- stration in a
field of corn at Sevenoaks in Kent, and when that was complete
they telephoned Mr Pat Delgado, who was the leading researcher at
that time, they telephoned him and asked him if he would care to
come down to Kent that afternoon and tell the farmer whether he
considered it a genuine circle or not; and Mr Delgado walked into
the field - we were in hiding , we were up the road about 4 miles
out of the way - and Pat Delgado walked into the field,
apparently - the farmer told me afterwards - and he said
"Its the finest thing I've ever seen in my life", he
said, "its absolutely genuine", and he didn't really
want to leave it for quite a while; (but) eventually he did leave
to go home, and we were brought back in view, the helicopter took
the photographs from the air, and on the following Sunday we all
agreed that we would go round to his home, which was the day
before the news was to break in the newspaper on the Monday,
(and) we would break the news gently to him so that he wouldn't
have a heart attack because of all the hard work that he'd put in
for many many years; and this was decided on, so the photographer
and journalist went round to his house first, knocked on his door
and told him that "We've got some News about the corn
circles for you, we've got two chaps outside in the car..",
we were round the corner, so when we eventually arrived at his
house he immediately recognised us because David (Chorley) and I
had always met them, shaking hands with them up on the hills each
night for years, and of course we were gleaning information from
them for many years and he immediately recognised us and asked us
in, and he gave a bit of a speech and he said, "To be quite
honest," he says, "... I'm quite relieved its all
over", and (then) his daughter interfered and she said,
"I think we'd better ring your partner", which was Mr
Colin Andrews, "... and get him over here". He came
over and, of course, when Pat Delgado broke the News to him he
was absolutely furious (but) within 2-3 days Pat Delgado had
retracted all his statements and said that it was so dark when he
arrived at the field [at Sevenoaks] at half-past four in the
afternoon that he didn't know what he was looking at - or words
to that effect - and (that) "... Everybody makes mistakes so
it wasn't a genuine circle afterall", but up until that time
Pat Delgado said it was genuine and he thought that the TODAY
newspaper was going to quote him as being the expert once again
to looking at one of the finest circles and patterns he'd ever
seen, but little did he know that in 2 days time that the whole
world would know that it was Dave and I that had done all the
circles... [correcting himself] ... not ALL the circles, as I
say, (but) SOME of the circles -but that particular one we did
[sic], and then of course we did a demonstration for the media at
Chilgrove in Sussex, where there were so many people trampling
over that after we did it that they called it 'a pathetic mess',
which was a bit unfair really.
SVAHN: It was a typical circle (in) the beginning ?
BOWER: Oh yes, that was the pattern - the ladder circle - that
we were doing, yes...
SVAHN: But it was not 'a mess' when you made it ?
BOWER: No, not really, no. The only thing is that the corn was
over ripe and instead of the ears of the corn being straight up
they were curled over, consequently when the corn was (laid) down
the ears of the corn were coming up; but of course everyone was
trampling over (the corn), there were about 20 film crews there
trampling over it - I mean this is what's done the damage over
the years, you see the methods that David and I used to put these
circles down with the sticks did not damage the crops in any way
whatsoever. The only damage that was done to the crops was the
hundreds of people that would go into the farmer's fields,
trampling on it and destroy-ing it. In fact the farmer at
Sevenoaks when we did the demonstration there, the next day he
put his combine harvester in and he salvaged every grain of corn,
but no one had walked on this you see.
SVAHN: Did you at any time leave tracks straight into the
circle that later on was explained as early viewers entering it ?
BOWER: What do you mean ? The underlying paths?
SVAHN: No, sometimes you can see a circle and a track leading
in from the road.
BOWER: Yes, well instead of the general public walking down
the tramlines, the tractor lines, to look at the circle, they
were walking through the growing corn, so consequently when the
photographs were taken a week or two later there were all the
pathways leading into it and the farmers were getting very
annoyed about it.
SVAHN: And this you must have been aware of ?
BOWER: Oh yes, but there was nothing we could do about that.
SVAHN: But I mean you didn't take advantage of this and
sometimes leave a track by yourself ?
BOWER: No, no. We went in without any damage whatsoever. We
didn't want anyone to know that we'd been into that field at all.
We wanted to let them think that either something had come down
from above without no tracks whatsoever ... [sic]
SVAHN: I'm very curious about Barbury Castle and the
Mandelbrot formation.
BOWER: Well the Mandelbrot set was Cambridge students wasn't
it. Its obvious really, that's what that was - and I should think
people along the same sort of lines were doing the other
complicated ones as well. I think it was getting a little bit
out-of-hand really, 'cos I mean Dr Terence Meaden completely
disbanded the pictograms in the end.
SVAHN: Have you done any circles this year ?
BOWER: No. We're retired now [laughs].
SVAHN: And you're not planning to write a book or something ?
BOWER: Well yes, we'll probably write a book. Its taking time
but I suppose its just as well that we didn't launch a book on
the market in September because there's not very many people that
have accepted our story, so I think [sic] and if we can prove, I
suppose one day we will have a meeting with these people to show
them and explain to them. You see, at the demonstration we did at
Chilgrove, we offered them a meeting with all of them - in camera
- to show them everything that we'd used - show and tell them
everything that we'd done - but they refused !
SVAHN: Which ones ?
BOWER: That was Mr Colin Andrews and Mr Pat Delgado. They said
they didn't want anything to do with it in camera at all, but I
suppose really, when you think about it, I suppose really they
didn't want egg on their face really, did they, because this is
what it will amount to, its what they've made of it over the
years. I've no objection to what people can find in the circles,
if they say there's energy there or they get some bit of pleasure
from it; but its the conning of the people out of all this money
- I mean its a very lucrative industry now, with all the books
that have been published and the meetings and things. I mean we
have a three day [CCCS] seminar in Winchester shortly,
that's # 160 each to attend that, but I mean its a lot of money,
and you get people coming from America and overseas, there's all
their air fares, their hotel expenses, because they've been made
to believe that this is something genuine. We've tried to tell
them that its NOT something genuine at all its US, this is US
that's done it !
SVAHN: So how do you feel about the accusations that you are
agents and government spies ?
BOWER: [Incredulously] Yes ! I know, its incred-ible what we
hear and what we read about I mean its a ... its given me a good
insight into the human being since this has all taken place
because I really didn't expect anything like this, with all the
remarks that have been passed and the lengths that they've gone
to. And I hear that they even got in touch with the CIA in
America and all this business, its ridiculous really isn't it !
But there you are, its what THEY'VE made of it, not what we've
done. We've not conned anyone out of any money whatsoever and
we're very sad to think that its reached these proportions, and
its even getting greater by the day isn't it really. But no one
wanted to accept our story simply because being a lucrative
industry they were a little bit reluctant to let go of it I
suppose.
SVAHN: What about this curious little thing the 'MBF Services'
here (that) I've heard about ?
BOWER: That was just a joke as far as the Editor was
concerned. It was just something that he put on the bottom of the
story.
SVAHN: Do you know what it stands for ?
BOWER: No !
SVAHN: I've heard (that) it stands for Not Another Circle on
My Bloody Farm.
BOWER: [Laughs] Oh is it ! Well that could be, but They won't
believe that.
SVAHN: Its fictitious ?
BOWER: Yes, oh yes, of course it is, yes. But They don't want
to believe anything at all, I mean to take for instance the story
of the grasshopper warbler, which is a bird - a bird that sings
in this country - you might have them in Sweden I don't know -
but I'm also a wildlife sound recordist, and I've spent many
years going out in the evenings recording the sounds of wildlife
for posterity, and I'm quite conversant with different sounds
that birds and animals make. Well David and I attended a meeting
in Winchester one evening which was being put over by the so-
called researchers, and during the evening's programme after
showing some slides and things, one man [George Wingfield, PF]
related the story of how he heard this strange sound, which he
thought was alien, and I knew immediately what he was listening
to, he didn't play the tape at the meeting he just spoke about
it, and I've been in the countryside at night and I've heard
grasshopper warblers - which is a trilling noise - and this bird
sings all night in the cornfields, and I've also heard it at
Cheesefoot Head, where, apparently, these researchers heard it at
the time, but the story goes that several members of the society
walked down into this cornfield this night and they heard this
sound and one man [George Wingfield] actually spoke to this bird
and asked the bird for him to make a circle for him: "Will
you please make me a circle". Well, I mean its absolutely
ridiculous really isn't it, but anyway they went back and they
got a tape recorder and they made a tape recording of this bird
song and at this meeting in Winchester, when it was question time
at the end of the meeting, I went up to the stage and I
said"If you don't mind me saying so, " I said,
"... I'm a wildlife sound recordist and I think the sound
that you heard that evening was a grasshopper warbler."
Well, they almost threw me out of the hall 'cos they didn't want
anything to upset what they thought it was. Anyway, since then,
this chappie [Ken Brown] has written away to the British Library
of Wildlife sounds in London and asked them for a copy tape of a
grasshopper warbler song, and he asked these researchers to have
a meeting one afternoon to bring their tape that they'd recorded
and play it alongside the tape that he'd got from London, and of
course they're identical, its the same bird; and they STILL
wouldn't believe that, so they said they'd have to have it
analysed properly, which he did and they STILL don't believe it
at all !!
SVAHN: Are there any people in the circle research business
that you think are doing a good job ?
BOWER: Well they're all doing research but I mean if they were
to listen to us they wouldn't need to bother anymore would they
really. It seems ridiculous for me for it to carry on, but as I
say, if they're happy doing that and they're not conning people
out of a lot of money OK, let them carry on, but I'm a little bit
sad to think of the proportions its got to over the years and
little did we think when we made that first circle that night
that it would ever get to these proportions, and I don't know
where its going to end.
SVAHN: What about the Australian circles, I understand that
you lived in Australia ?
BOWER: Well I lived in Australia from 1958 to 1966, which was
eight years, and of course there was a report of some UFO nests
in Tully in Queensland I think, and I've always been interested
in that sort of thing and of course when Dave and I were on the
hill at Winchester one evening I remarked about the saucer nests
that were found in Queensland and I said "Let us put a
circle in the cornfield" and of course there it was...
SVAHN: But you never made any circles in Australia ?
BOWER: No, no, it didn't even enter my head then.
SVAHN: It was an inspiration for you ?
BOWER: That's right, yes.
SVAHN: The first one, the very first one in 1978, where was it
?
BOWER: That was at the bottom of Cheesefoot Head near
Winchester, that was the first one, that was quite a bit of fun
on our hands and knees that night, wondering the next day whether
it would be in the newspapers but it was 2 years before we got
any publicity at all.
SVAHN: Do you understand people that ask you for evidence all
the time, they want to know proof of what you are saying ?
BOWER: Well of course this is what they are asking, we would
have been able to tell them a lot had they accepted the meeting
we offered them last year at Chilgrove, which they refused, but
we will eventually have a meeting with them so that we CAN show
them once and for all, but it seems to me the type of people that
we're dealing with they're not going to believe anything at all !
I think WHATEVER proof you give them, you can give them a
demonstration, which we've done, and they say "That's
rubbish", but you can show them all the items of tools and
things you've used, the sticks and the so-called things, and they
still don't want to believe that. They only want to believe what
THEY want to believe - which is bringing them in lots of money.
SVAHN: But you say you can remember nearly every single circle
you have made, or most of them ?
BOWER: I can remember, even to this day, every location that
we went to over the thirteen years.
SVAHN: So you could produce a list ?
BOWER: I've got a map, I've got a map with a red spot for
every location and if we ever do have a meeting with these people
I shall ask them to bring the same map and for them to put a red
spot on every location that they know of - they've got records of
all this - and then someone can compare the two maps.
SVAHN: Would it be possible for us to see the map here ?
BOWER: No, I don't want to show that because I've not shown
anyone at all yet. It will be eventually shown, when we have a
meeting with these people, because we're not going to take this
laying down so-to-speak. We're going to show and convince these
people, if we can, that it WAS us that started this and the story
that we broke to the world last September [1991] is absolutely
true ! We can answer any question they would like to put to us,
we've got nothing to hide. Had we been making this up - which a
lot of them said it was a hoax story - had we been making this up
we'd have to be the finest actors in the world ! How can we be
confronted on TV and asked all sorts of questions if we didn't
know what we were talking about ? We've got nothing to hide at
all.
SVAHN: But of course the map may be useless if you wait too
long, you have also have the chance to accumulate facts about the
circles...
BOWER: Well no I'm sure there's lots of formations whose
location has never been published in the books. Its no good
saying that you could have looked at all the books that we've
published because every circle that's been recorded hasn't been
put in the books. There's been lots and lots more and we know for
a fact that there's lots of circles that we've done that there's
never been any mention of at all in any of the books that have
been published.
SVAHN: How many could that be ?
BOWER: Well I don't know off hand. I haven't really gone into
it really, but there are quite a few, there must be. I mean Colin
Andrews has got a databank in his home of all the locations of
everything that they've looked at, we don't know of that
[information], but we know what we've done and we can show what
we've done eventually and if they don't want to believe it, well,
what can you do ? We've got to show them, all we can do is answer
their questions, show them these things that we've used. If they
don't believe that well I mean you can see what sort of people
we're up against.
SVAHN: But you never brought a camera or anything else to
record what you were doing ?
BOWER: We used to go up the following evening to look at what
we'd done the night before, because you couldn't see in the dark
of course. We were quite thrilled when we were getting towards
Winchester to have a look at the punchbowl to see what we'd done,
and then of course if it was useful we'd take a photograph of it.
SVAHN: Were there any circles that you were NOT satisfied with
?
BOWER: Sometimes they would go wrong and sometimes it was so
dark - there were only two occasions in the thirteen years that
we were doing circles - that it was so dark that we couldn't see
our feet - and we got into the field and we couldn't see our feet
- and we got into the field and we just couldn't see what we were
doing and we gave it up - but that was only two occasions. The
rest of the time, when we started doing some of the complicated
pictograms, you'd have to think a little bit more what you were
doing then; and sometimes you would go in the wrong direction and
you would realise then, once the corn was down you couldn't pull
it up anymore, and then we would either have to tread it down in
some sort of a pattern - but there were several occasions when
that happened.
SVAHN: Can you mention any sites ?
BOWER: Well there was one at Pepperbox Hill near Salisbury. We
were doing the flower pattern then, which was the petals...
SVAHN: Which year was that ?
BOWER: That was last year [1991].
SVAHN: And what went wrong ?
BOWER: Two of the petals went wrong I think so we had to more-
or-less tread it down and we weren't very happy with that; and on
another occasion I think we were doing the four satellites when
the string got caught up with the top of the corn and gave us a
false reading on the string and we finished up doing five
satellites instead of four, but when you go back to look at it
the next evening you're pretty disgusted so you get away as
quickly as you can really.
SVAHN: What about the Celtic Cross ?
BOWER: That was the Wiltshire chappies did that [the United
Bureau of Investigation], we did the four satellites - North,
South, East & West, but the Celtic Cross - I don't know
whether they refer to that as the Celtic Cross do they ? I think
its just three [outer satellites], or just four ?
SVAHN: [Showing Bower a photograph] I meant this one.
BOWER: Oh, that's what they refer to as the Swastika.
SVAHN: Oh yes the swastika. Was it by your hand ?
BOWER: Yes, we were the first ones to do that, but that
......... and we found the field in Wiltshire, we waited there
and we made the mark around first of all with the string, and we
put four markers in a cardboard cut out on the end of a stick,
which was the North, South, East & West, and then we had to
go directly to cross it, and the first way we went we went
crooked, and we said we've got to do something about that now, so
we just trod it down into sections, and then after that when the
crop circle book 'The Corn Circle Enigma' [sic !] was published,
lo and behold the circle that we did was on the front cover ! But
we were told later than that that there were two of these
[swastika] circles of the same design in that field and we
assumed then that the photograph that was on the front cover of
the book was the people from Wiltshire [the U.B.I.] that had
copied our first attempt and they made a better job of it than us
and that was what they used, but our first attempt went wrong.
SVAHN: The most famous - at least abroad I think - is the 1990
Alton Barnes [formation].
BOWER: Yes it was quite large it generally consisted of
corridors and circles really and outcrops, but I've a funny
suspicion that the farmer that charged a pound to go in to that
field two years running had something to do with that. I won't
say for sure but it seems very strange to me that he would charge
a pound to go into the same field two years on the trot. Whether
anything is going to happen this year I don't know !
SVAHN: So you didn't make that one ?
BOWER: No, we've done nothing in the Beckhampton area at all.
SVAHN: This year [1992] (there's) a snail in the Alton Priors
field....
BOWER: Is there ? No, we're not doing anything like that.
We're not doing anything this year.
SVAHN: And they are charging a pound [for entry]
BOWER: Are they ? Already ? Oh, I didn't know that. That's
news to me. I think its looking a little bit ridiculous isn't it.
Once yes but not twice or three times. I mean the year the farmer
at Alton Barnes charged a pound to go in we went up the road
three quarters of a mile, there was another farmer charging a
pound to go and see some triangles, and another mile up the road
from him was another farmer charging a pound to go and see what
he had in a field, so it was becoming a bit of a racket really.
SVAHN: You never made (any) triangles of such things ?
BOWER: No. We didn't go much on triangles really [laughs].
SVAHN: What about the eye witnesses who are seeing - in broad
daylight - wind coming in over a field and making circles ?
BOWER: I've been on the middle of a hot air whirlwind, which
you get on summer days. In fact only this last year I was on top
of Pepperbox Hill near Salisbury, the corn had already been cut
and it was layered in layers of... streams of corn/straw... and
(on) this very hot day, and this hot air whirlwind came right
across in front of me, it picked up the straw - larger than a
motor car - and it took it up to about two thousand feet in the
air, going round and round and round, and it was twenty minutes
before the last of that bit of straw fell down, and I think
anyone that remarks about being in the centre of a whirlwind, I
think its a hot air whirlwind which you get in summer months,
I've seen the whirlwinds pick up bails of straw and they're quite
heavy and this is what happens really., but there's no such thing
as a genuine crop circle.
SVAHN: Isn't that too much to say really ?
BOWER: No, we started it in 1978. Where's the photographic
evidence of anything like our circles before 1978? When you
consider all the thousands of aircraft that flew over this
country during the war years where are any photographs of any
circles that looked as clear cut as what we were doing. There's
plenty of circles that look like circles, but the storm damage,
the wind and the rain create those that looked like circles. Even
today there's been a lot of damage in the past few weeks with the
heavy rain, and a lot of them look like circles, but they're not
clean cut (like) what we were producing, and the walls of the
corn are perfectly straight all the way round you see, but a
whirlwind doesn't act like that, its ragged edges and rough.
SVAHN: You sometimes see a little pyramid in the middle [of
the circle]...
BOWER: Yes, yes. We can leave all those, yes.
SVAHN: And you've made them ?
BOWER: Yes, we've done the little bits in the middle, yes. You
just go around with your stick, and instead of the ... going
round all-the-way, you just leave a little clump. We've left
sometimes just six stalks of corn standing. Yes, there's all
sorts of things you can do really. Its been quite a lot of fun
over the years, we've had a good laugh about it. We've had a good
laugh making them and we've had a good laugh at the so-called
experts and what they've made of it buts its become a little bit
overdone I think - as the years have gone by. I don't like to see
people conned out of money and taken for a ride because we know
what it is, its only flattened corn afterall, isn't it !
SVAHN: You sometimes regret starting all this ?
BOWER: Um, not really. No, no. We've had a lot of fun out of
it, but as I say... I appreciate the amount of research and work
and expense that a lot of people have gone to, but we didn't ask
them to do that, its just what they've done on their own you see.
I'm just wondering whether after seven years - we'll say half-way
through the programme of doing circles - I'm just wondering
whether if we'd revealed it then, because I can remember saying
to David "One day, when we've got to release this News that
its US that's done it, I can tell you now, they're never going to
believe it"....
SVAHN: And you were right ?
BOWER: Yes !! And they're not believing it now. There's going
to be a lot of proof, somehow or another that we've got to
produce. We're putting our thinking caps on, there's got to be a
lot of proof shown to these people, 100 per cent proof its got to
be, and I'm just wondering what their reaction's going to be in
our attempt because we're not going to give up. Although I say
we're retired we are not going to give up, we've got to convince
these people and the people that have been taken for a ride -
they're the people I'm more concerned than anything - not the
researchers, the researchers have done all this themselves. Its
all their expense for travelling around the countryside measuring
them up or when they start charging people exorbitant amounts of
money to go into meetings, and all this sort of thing. I think
its very unfair to think that people are believing what they [the
researchers] are saying and... its just not on, and I don't like
that. And so we've made up our minds that whether it takes one
year, two years or five years we are going to eventually knock
these people down because we've just got to, because it was us
who started it and we would like to finish it nicely.
End of Interview
Readers will no doubt be interested to learn that in February
I finally met Doug Bower, the man who claims to have
"invented" the crop circle phenomenon in 1978. Doug and
his wife Irene visited my flat to review the video of Svahn's
interview in the light of Ken Brown's proposed book about the
Doug and Dave story. As this was the first time I'd ever met two
M.I.5 agents I must admit to being a little nervous beforehand,
but I needn't have worried - despite the despicable way he has
been treated by the "cerealogists" Doug Bower was
friendly, amicable and every bit the gentleman he has been
portrayed by the press. There is not the slightest doubt in my
mind that Doug Bower is just the sort of person to perpetrate a
thirteen year UFO hoax and that he is telling his story as he
remembers it. His knowledge of the crop circle story is so
convincing that there can be little doubt that during the mid
1980s myself, Meaden, Delgado and Taylor modelled our concept of
what a "real" circle looked like on the basis of Doug
and Daves' creations. This, of course, has very serious
implications for our claim that there is a genuine
naturally-produced crop circle. During this revealing interview
Doug Bower repeatedly made clear his intense dislike of what the
"cerealogists" have been doing. His references to the
"so-called researchers" and "experts" only
serves to demonstrate how much the cerealogists' have to explain
to those people who bought their books and the farmers whose land
has been repeatedly invaded by true believers in the crop circle
mythology that Flying Saucer Review's
"consultants" created in the 1980s. Doug's vow that he
and Dave started the phenomenon and they would finish the
phenomenon must strike fear into the hearts of those researchers
who consistently denied a prosaic explanation and instead led the
public to believe in a damaging supernatural mythology.
It was clear too that although Doug and Dave attended BUFORA's
1987 Crop Circle Seminar at the London Business School neither
man had any idea that some researchers had consistently argued
for a rational solution. I was very surprised to discover that
Doug and Dave really had little concept of the
"politics" of what was happening during the 1980s. Doug
Bower was quite astonished at the vicious tactics that had been
employed by the "cerealogists" to silence their
opponents and deceive the public.
There are a number of claims made in this interview which
require proper comment. Firstly, Doug gives a graphic account of
the cerealogist's Waterloo - the Sevenoaks demonstration and the
Chilgrove media circus. This account doesn't seem to differ
substantially from anything that has been published elsewhere. Of
course, Pat Delgado's claim that it was "too dark" to
reach a proper conclusion about the Sevenoaks formation is quite
untenable. Even on a stormy summers day at half past four in the
afternoon it would have been perfectly light. More controversial
is Doug's claim that his hoaxing caused "no damage" to
the crops. Readers will know from our previous issue that some
farmers believe that they suffer significant loss of income as a
direct cause of the crop being laid down. Doug Bower disagrees,
claiming that it is the hundreds of subsequent sightseers whose
trampling causes the damage. This sightseeing, according to Doug,
is due to the cerealogists leading the public to believe that
circles are a genuine anomaly. Perhaps readers might like to
comment on this claim ?
A more interesting revelation concerns Doug and Daves' offer
to meet Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado after the Chilgrove
demonstration to prove their case. This would have included a
showing of Doug's scrap-books, the map they have which proves
their claim as well as their circle-making equipment and designs.
Andrews and Delgados' refusal only lends added weight to Doug and
Daves' astonishing claim.
Clas Svahn was well briefed prior to visiting Doug at his home
in Southampton. I had already told him that according to John
MacNish the mythical MBF Services "press agency" was
simply an office joke at TODAY Newspaper. Allegedly MBF
stood for "Not Another Circle on My Bloody Farm". This
is strangely contradictory to the explanation offered by Lloyd
Turner in The Circular (April 1992 page 31). Despite this
it is clear from Doug's manner that the mythical MBF Services was
just a joke as far as he was concerned - further proof that
George Wingfield's allegations of a government conspiracy were
desperate fabrications based on flimsy evidence.
Throughout my eight years of research I have learnt time and
time again how the most committed "cerealogists" treat
people who dare to oppose their bizarre but lucrative fantasies.
Doug Bower paints a graphic picture of the way George Wingfield
reacted when he tried to point out that the Operation Whitecrow
sound was nothing more innocuous than a small bird. Doug Bower's
description of this event and the cerealogist's denial of the
facts is also discussed in Ken Brown's article "White Crow
& Grasshopper Warbler" (The Cerealogist, issue 6,
pages 3-4).
I just love the story of the "swastika" on the front
cover of the CCCS book The Crop Circle Enigma. We
hope to check with the U.B.I. whether or not they were
responsible for the formation or whether it was Doug and Dave's
original effort that was used. We know that the U.B.I.
sometimes copied Doug and Daves' circles because in Schnabel and
Irving's article in The Independent magazine (29 August
1992) they recount the story of how Doug and Daves' suspicions
about a rival group of Wiltshire circle-makers in the Avebury
area led to their creation of the message "COPYCATS"
during 1990.
Finally Doug makes the claim that wind-produced vortices
cannot be sharply defined and that there are no photographs of
pre 1978 crop circles. Of course this is really the critical
issue for the survival of the phenomenon, for if no photographs
or contemporary accounts of pre 1978 circles existed Doug would
be fully justified in suggesting that he and Dave Chorley
actually invented the phenomenon in 1978. As Doug Bower admits to
basing his hoax on the 1966 Tully event (which, according to the
evidence uncovered by Jenny Randles in her recent trip to
Queensland, was certainly not the first circle to appear in the
Tully area) this claim is immediately shown to be suspect. It
also makes assumptions about whether or not historical circles
exhibited the same morphology as their modern-day counterparts
and whether or not historical crop circles would attract the same
degree of attention prior to the development of the UFO myth in
1947.
More intriguingly Doug queries the similarity between circles
seen forming by witnesses and those that he and Doug created. The
latter, he claims, were always sharp edged, whilst the former
were always poorly defined. This, too, can be challenged, for it
could be argued that if Doug and Dave mimicked a natural sharp-
edged anomaly, then their fakes would be very difficult to
distinguish from "real" vortex-produced circles. I have
shown Doug the three pre 1978 photographs I have of crop circle
events (Wokurna, Bordertown and Rossburn) and Doug had to admit
he was both curious and surprised. I also described some of the
historic eye witness events listed in previous issues of The
Crop Watcher, cases which have been repeatedly suppressed by
other research groups. Doug Bower was totally unfamiliar with
this evidence or the consistency of what the eye witnesses claim
to see. It will be interesting to see if Doug changes his mind
about having "invented" the phenomenon or whether he
will continue to claim that naturally-produced circles exhibit
poorly defined edges and/or no swirl pattern.
If you want a copy of this 45 minute interview send US $ 30 to AFU,
P.O. Box 11027, S-600 11 Norrkoping, Sweden. Payment preferably
should be by IPMO or to Swedish giro account 49 07 14-3. I can
guarantee that you will be impressed. Clas Svahn comments on this
interview and his 1992 visit to England in the AFU Newsletter,
36, available from the same address.