[PF: A slightly longer version of this article was
first published in International UFO Reporter,
September/October 1992, Vol 17, no 5]
I had just settled into bed, and was going to forego watching
the late news. I was bone-tired; the kind of tired only a parent
with an eight-month-old baby can appreciate. It was about 10:30
PM, Sunday, August 16, 1992.
The phone chirped (telephones don't "ring" any
more). It was Roy Bauer, an associate and good friend who has
accompanied me on many an investigation, and vice versa. He told
me that a teaser for the news had a story about new crop circles
in Manitoba. Film at Eleven. Several days earlier, he and I had
gone with another NAICCR associate to Friedensruch,
Manitoba, where we investigated the claims of a crop
"triangle" in a pasture surrounded by an electric
fence. We had concluded that the Unexplained Ground Marking (UGM)
there had been caused by cattle accidentally herded within the
fenced area. Still earlier in the summer, various NAICCR
reps had visited other crop formations closer to Winnipeg, which
were heralded by their discoverers and the media as being
communications from the space aliens. As soon as we had seen
them, we knew they were lodging, a common field effect created by
a combination of wind, rain, and weak plant stems.
But the story on the news that night spoke of actual
formations; circles with arrows and rings. Now these were more
unusual, and sounded more like their better-known British
cousins.
NAICCR (North American Institute for Crop Circle
Research) was formed as a sister group of UFOROM (Ufology
Research of Manitoba) in 1990, in response to requests from
British cerealogists wanting information about crop circles in
North America. We had realized that, although there were a number
of people in North America who were independently investigating
crop circles, there was no comprehensive gathering of data
underway. Furthermore, like most UFO or Fortean groups, UFOROM
members had been studying crop circles for decades, long before
they were popularized in Britain. Ted Phillips' catalogue of
physical traces [associated with UFOs] listed many such swirled
circles, along with other traces, going back before the turn of
the century. These UGMs had been cropping up (pardon the pun)
from time to time in North America, sometimes in association with
an associated UFO sighting.
So, NAICCR began investigating Canadian crop circles
and soliciting information on American cases from other
investigators and groups. (The phrase "pulling teeth"
comes to mind). With the co-operation of several researchers, NAICCR
has published reports and an annual review of North American
UGMs, a feat still lacking on the British scene. (Sure, they
publish lots of pretty pictures, but what about the data?). But I
digress...
After Roy called me, I turned on the TV and flipped channels
until I found a provincial newscast. Sure enough, there was a
short blurb about crop circles near a town named Strathblair. I
thought hard about where that was in relation to Winnipeg. I had
a funny feeling I was going to be driving a long, long way.
There was little more that could be done that night, so I
jotted down a few notes, and turned in. Again.
The next morning, I drove to work early, fearing that a
barrage of phone messages from the media would await me. On the
way in, I heard a brief clip of a radio interview with a woman
who had observed a UFO at the circle sites. This was a rarity in
cerealogy, and was a supporting datum for the ETH [extra-
terrestrial hypothesis] with regards to crop circle creation.
Colin Andrews would be pleased, I mused.
There were surprisingly few media calls at work, and I dealt
with them quickly. Curiously, the local TV networks were not
really interested in the new cases. I had hoped to get their help
in obtaining aerial videos of the formations, as NAICCR
hardly has enough material for gas, let alone airplane rental.
But it turned out the media were gun-shy; they had been
"burned" by their coverage of the previous non-events,
and were not going to do anything further on the story. This was
OK, since it would mean we could carry out an investigation
without the cameras following us around, as in other years.
I phoned the editor of the Strathclair area newspaper, Greg
Nesbitt, and got more details about the cases. There were said to
be seven separate sites, plus a handful of UFO sightings. Since
they had been found, at least two or three hundred people had
visited the formations. Well, so much for finding any useful
clues. But, because of the unique shapes involved, we still felt
it was worth a look. I told Greg that a NAICCR team would
be out the next day.
On Tuesday morning at around 8:00 AM, Roy Bauer, Guy Westcott
and I left Winnipeg for Strathclair. The town is about 275
kilometers northwest of Winnipeg, and it took us exactly four
hours to reach the area. We had been told that one of the sites
was clearly visible from the highway, but we didn't notice it on
our way in. We arrived in the town of Shoal Lake, where we were
to meet Greg, at around noon.
Greg was going to be our guide, but we had an hour to kill
before he was ready to lead us out. So, being hard-working
investigators, we went to the local bar. During lunch, we made
casual enquiries about the crop circles. Everyone had at least
heard of them, and some people admitted visiting the sites. We
went over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police headquarters and
inquired if they had received any official reports. The
commanding officer barely contained his amusement with the
situation. He joked that he had the aliens in a jail cell. He did
admit, though, that they had received some calls about some
bright lights that weekend.
We met Greg around 1:00 PM in his print shop cum newspaper
office. He grabbed a tape recorder and we headed for our
vehicles. This was big news. Not only had the aliens landed, but
investigators had come all the way from the "big city"
to see them !
Greg led us back down the highway to a patch of field halfway
between Shoal Lake and Strathclair, just outside a hamlet named
Ipswich. (It was interesting how the first crop formation in the
area was at a site named for a British city). We had missed it
because from the road, the site looked just like a patch of
lodging. We had seen many such patches on the drive out, and in
fact had stopped to examine one closely.
But this wasn't lodging. Once we were led in on the
well-trodden path, the shape of the formation became quite clear.
Slightly elliptical, the site had a diameter axes of 26 and 24.5
feet. On a northeasterly heading of 65 degrees, an arrow
protruded away from the crop circle, giving the effect of the
symbol for Mars, or "male". The wheat was about four
feet tall outside the formation, and was neatly bent and swirled
counter-clockwise inside the circle. The wheat was bent away from
the circle inside the arrow, and toward its end points. The width
of the arrow corridor was about 28 inches. While we measured,
took samples and photos, two truckloads of visitors arrived. They
trampled through the neatly-woven grain, and added to the
disturbed state of the site.
The site was only 40 feet away from the nearest access road,
and about 100 feet from the highway. It had been found on
Saturday, August 16, 1992, by the owner of the land, and reported
to the media the following day. By that time, word had spread
anyway. Once the circle news had got out, a woman reported that
she had seen a UFO over the field on Friday evening. She had been
driving from Shoal Lake to Ipswich, and had been passing the
field when she observed a dark object with two
"headlights" and a flashing "tail-light". The
UFO moved slowly over the field at an estimated height of a
telephone pole, and about 250 feet away from the witness. After a
minute or so, it moved out of sight behind some trees. Two other
people driving along the highway also glimpsed the object before
it disappeared.
After we had finished our work at the Ipswich site, Greg led
us to the next site, nearer Strathclair. This formation was
visible from the highway, situated on a slight hill so that it
was visible to eastbound travellers. It, too, was a Mars symbol.
This time, the main circle was thicker than the one at Ipswich,
and pointed on a bearing of 120 degrees, away from the highway.
Guy, Roy and I began musing about how one would go about
making such a formation. Greg made a comment about how skeptical
we seemed to be. After all, wasn't it obvious that only aliens
could have made the formation ? He related how one of the first
people on the scene had found a "dinosaur footprint" at
the point of the arrow, and how it had been suggested that the
arrow could have been made by a ramp extended from the landed,
circular UFO. Of course, the numerous visitors to the site had
eradicated any sign of the print.
I thought about the arguments which were raging on the other
side of the Atlantic, one of which was about whether or not it
was possible to hoax a crop formation. On impulse, I sat down
abruptly in the field. I was completely out of view of my
colleagues, a few feet away. "Let's try making a
circle," I offered. Greg was doubtful. No human could make
such a formation, surely ? (I told him not to call me...)
I looked at the wheat closely. It was planted in neat rows
about four inches apart. I got up and walked about thirty feet
away from the site, carefully stepping between two rows. I looked
back. There was no sign of my entry. I began walking in what I
thought was a circle, met my own path and began spiralling
inward. Roy joined me, and we performed a triticale pas de deux,
trampling the wheat in a circle twenty feet in diameter. In five
minutes, we had made a fair copy of the "real" circle.
Stems stuck up here and there where we had missed them, and we
did some touch-ups. I was surprised to find that our effort was
almost exactly circular.
Grey and Guy compared our handiwork with the "real"
site, and declared it a reasonable facsimile. ("Maybe
someone could have made it," Greg mumbled). I bent down to
look at the newly- trampled wheat, and was greatly surprised. One
of the points of contention in debates over "real" and
hoaxed British circles is that wheat stems in "real"
circles are bent, not broken. When one crushes wheat underfoot
while walking in a field, it is assumed that the wheat stems
would show numerous kinks and breakage. Virtually none of the
wheat in our new crop circle was broken. Somehow, the stems were
neatly bent over in a counter-clockwise direction, swirled into
the center, and showing no evidence of having been trodden upon.
I never intended to show that hoaxers had made the formation
this way. Indeed, I would expect that there would have been some
basic tools used instead of one's own feet. But this formation
had been made a few days after a full moon, and the wheat was
tall enough to afford cover if a car had chanced to pass on the
highway ...
There were still a few other questions about the formation,
though; the hoax theory wasn't completely fleshed-out enough to
my satisfaction. What was the motive ? How was it done, really ?
Why would anyone bother ? And what about the UFO sightings ?
We headed for the other sites. They were all approximately
three miles south of the main highway, along a farming road. Two
were directly across a road from one another. As we drove up, we
saw that some boys were standing in front of a formation,
wielding a hand-painted sign. As we walked over, it became
readable: "A LOONEY A LOOK". ("Looney" is a
Canadian slang term for a dollar coin, because of the image of a
swimming loon on one side).
The boys turned out to be a gold mine of information. Contrary
to what we had been told earlier, this particular formation
(another arrowed circle) had appeared over a week before. The one
across the road had appeared first, a week before that. After the
second had been found, the boys had thought to make a ringlike
path around the whole formation, so that visitors could examine
the site without disturbing it. Unfortunately, their idea didn't
work, and what's more, the ring had been assumed to be part of
the original formation. The arrow from this circle pointed on a
bearing of 260 degrees. When we later plotted all the formations
on a map, we were disappointed to discover that the directions
indicated by the arrows didn't converge. Furthermore, none of the
arrows pointed toward a significant local feature such as a
native midden, burial mound, mountain or new age mystic site.
(Now, if I was going to make an elaborate hoax ...)
The fifth site was clearly lodging. However, because it was
only a mile from the two nearest formations, many people had
visited it. While there, more visitors came by, and we asked them
about other sites. We were given directions to other fields where
formations were said to have been found, but we were unable to
verify any others.
On the drive back to Winnipeg, we stopped in at a TV station
in Brandon. The news director told us of another circle site in
the area. As it was already late, we decided to ask another NAICCR
rep, Jeff Harland, to investigate. He lives in Brandon, and had
investigated some UGMs in the area a few years ago. We dropped by
his house (by some remarkable timing) exactly at dinnertime, and
found ourselves graciously invited for supper. During the meal,
we compared notes and swapped ideas about the crop circle scene.
We drew up some maps of the formations, and talked for hours
about our findings.
We learned that a TV special on British crop circles had been
aired on the Friday night that the Ipswich circle was probably
made. It could be that someone got the idea to hoax a circle from
that show, but then, two circles were found before the show was
aired. Other than that programme, there had been very little
media attention given to crop circles. There was no national or
international coverage of the North American circles during the
summer, and the media were staying away from the British
formations in droves.
We had taken both VHF and AM/FM radios in the formations. No
interference was heard. A compass was not deflected by any
magnetic anomaly. A tape recorder worked fine, and there were no
beepings or strange signals left on the tape. Animals were not
wary to enter the sites, and there was no lack of insects at the
sites. None of us felt any "bad vibes", unlike some
circle investigators at other formations. All of these effects
were checked because some cerealogists are insistent that
anomalous phenomena plague such sites. Apart from the fact they
were there, there was nothing particularly unusual about the
sites. ("Another mysterious crop circle. Yawn".)
The wheat samples we collected will be sent to various
researchers for testing. Now that cerealogists have finally
conceded that spagyrical analysis (the "tests" which
showed a change in the "crystalline structure" of the
plant cells) is spurious and unscientific, and the supposed
radionuclides found in crop circles have been shown to be
glitches in the data, the only remaining anomalous effects
associated with crop circles are the growth studies by Dr.
Levengood at the Pinelandia Biophysical Labs. he claims that
wheat from crop circles will grow more readily than control
samples. This is easy enough to check, since we now have more
seed samples. of course, these will be double- blind tests.
Since our expedition to the Strathclare formations, we have
kept abreast of the British scene, and read with interest the
reports of investigations by the Project Argus group. North
America has only had one complex crop formation [in 1992, PF],
and it was distinctly different from the British experience. My
biggest concern with the British circle scene was the
over-abundance of formations in southern England compared with
the rest of the world. Why does Britain have so many crop
circles, and why do they look as they do ?
From my correspondence with other researchers, between 50 and
75 per cent of all British formations are suspected to be hoaxes.
I would suggest that the actual fraction is much higher -
probably around 90 percent. Either way, there is no question that
the British data is badly contaminated. What is needed is a
comprehensive list of the British sites with indications of which
ones are likely or proven hoaxes. It seems that people are
delving into mystical philosophy and Gaiean premonitions without
first sorting out the "good" data from the
"bad" data, whatever the two sets may be. (Paul Fuller,
editor of The Crop Watcher, a British circlezine, has just
reported that many "expert" cerealogists have
grudgingly begun considering the fact that most, if not all, crop
circle formations are likely hoaxes).
So far in 1992, less than two dozen North American crop circle
(rather, UGM) sites have been investigated. Despite low media
coverage and a number of hoaxers' admissions, about two hundred
sites have been found in Britain this year. What gives ? The
infamous circle hoaxers Doug and Dave probably made less than ten
formations, despite their earlier claims which were accepted
wholeheartedly by the general public. Two NAICCR
investigators caught a hoaxer here in Manitoba. Big deal. We know
that crop circles can be hoaxed, and that cerealogy
"experts" cannot tell a "real" circle from a
hoaxed one. Why haven't the circles gone away ? And a better
question: Why is there still so much interest in these peculiar
UGMs ?
Cerealogy has attracted at least as many loonies as UFOlogy,
unfortunately. We seem to be looking at another sociological
phenomenon, perhaps a reaction to our confused technological age.
I'm not particularly convinced that crop circles are alien
hieroglyphics, plasma vortex traces or patches left by mating
hedgehogs. Actually, I'm more fascinated by those who think that
there is enough evidence to adhere to a certain theory.
So with that, at least until I get my next phone call, I will
lay back and reflect on all this circular reasoning. Pun
intended. (Again).
Chris Rutkowski.
NAICCR.
Our thanks go to Chris and his NAICCR colleagues for
providing such an important case study. Chris' superb article
reinforces the fact that all the major crop circle
"experts" (myself included) failed to fully examine the
effect of mechanical depression on cereal crop at every stage in
its growth cycle. If it can be so easy to make a convincing
looking crop circle on your very first attempt what can
experienced crop circle hoaxers do after 200 practice runs ? This
central theme - that mechanical depression actually damages the
crop - was the fundamental corner-stone that protected the crop
circle myth from allegations of hoaxing for many years. The
disproving of this myth and the exposure of numerous groups of
hoaxers means that we have little choice but to accept Chris
Rutkowski's argument that the crop circle data is heavily
contaminated by hoaxing - and by heavily contaminated I agree
with Chris' estimate that at least 95 per cent of our data is
corrupt (a bit like UFO reports). Sad words but true. Thanks
again to Chris Rutkowski and his NAICCR/UFOROM colleagues.
