It is an amusing exercise - for those with an inquiring mind, a degree of patience and a well-honed sense of the ridiculous - to put the words " crop circles " into a search engine and see what comes up. It's OK, you don't have to bother - I've done it for you. The sites are, as you would imagine, strange and in many cases only very tangentially involved with what the concensus would deem reality. Still, someone's got to do it. First up, and I blame my search engine for questionable bias, is one Busty Taylor. Stop sniggering at the back - this is no silicone enhanced starlet but, to judge from the picture, a middle-aged man. Not only that but one who follows such butch pursuits as parachuting, hang gliding, flying, gliding, sailing, snorkeling, and archeological digging. Here we find a link with another of 80's interests as Busty, when a young boy, " witnessed on a clear day in England hundreds of bright shiny spheres flying in a line and playing tag with each other."
Since then he has witnessed many other UFOs. He has also lectured worldwide and claims on his website to be " one of the leading authorities on the crop circle/UFO phenomenon." Do check out the picture links on his page for whatever the supposed origin of crop circles they do make beautiful patterns. One last thing, in his spare time Busty owns and runs a " drivers training school". Given his UFO interests I would be disappointed if he limits himself to just automobiles.This next site, Crop Circles Intelligence Mighty Companions, is the work of Suzanne Taylor. She believes crop circles are signals from an " unseen presence ". She sees the phenomenon as more widespread than many observers, also claiming they occur in rice paddies, crab grass and (somewhat puzzlingly) in iced-over rivers. Taylor certainly appreciates the circles " for their extraordinary artistry, their technical wizardry, their inspired choice of canvases..." but chooses to attribute them not to human intelligence but to some supernatural agency. She calls this agency the Circle Makers but I don't for a moment think she means the artists mentioned above. The various quotes on her site link back to other supposedly paranormal effects such as UFO encounters (again!), near-death experiences and, of all things, spoon bending - as made famous by self-publicist and conjuror Uri Geller. A link takes you to a piece on how to curve cutlery. I naively expected a page on how to do this fairly basic piece of misdirection and stage magic - but no, apparently it is all down to unspecified energy fields. This page, quoting Jonathan Margolis, explains that " you have to find the energy of you on the inside.......I suggest you use the instructions first with a light teaspoon, and progress through the cutlery drawer." After which presumably you eat with your fingers. The Mighty Companions website itself encapsulates Taylor et al's message " Let this site be a focal point to pulse the vibe of an awakened humanity. " And presumably increased profits for the cutlery industry.
This last site is aptly entitled On the Brink and is a three part overview of the meaning and purpose of the circles by Rodney Michael Carr-Smith. A lot of his rhetoric has a familiar sound, we are " squeezed in a vice between a barrage of prophecy and dis-information, uncertain as to how to protect and prepare ourselves for End Times as our systems and institutions start to become overwhelmed." (Yes, he also mentions UFOs, just in case you were wondering.) Carr-Smith has not himself seen UFOs but uses another of 80's favorite research tools - dowsing. (Remember the wonderful Dowsing for Landmines?) We seem to have yet again a case of using one unproven phenomenon to investigate another. There is a link to a page on dowsing but sadly no mention of John Living and his " bobber " as featured in Cranks Landmines Headless Chicken. Carr-Smith also tackles the ratio of " genuine " to " hoax " circles but arrives at a very different conclusion from Colin Andrews. " There have, of course, been a few midnight pranks perpetrated by students, ........ but over 10 years of dowsing, studying, measuring and communing in the wheat, it is apparent to my meager consciousness that the vast majority of these formations are quite beyond the capability of human construction." I rather think that even a cursory examination of the artwork of the Circlemakers would show that they cannot be dismissed as "a few midnight pranks". As to the method of construction I recommend Carr-Smith look here, a page which refers to a BBC documentary, Country File, which shows circle construction! (What a lovely phrase that is though - " communing in the wheat ".)
If the above has not sated your appetite for things circular have a look at Crop Circles! which not only has many more sites but also links to UFOs (natch), Alien Abductions, Ancient Astronauts (presumably not John Glenn), Area 51, Bermuda Triangle, Cattle Mutilations (why always cattle, not penguins or wombats?) and other other assorted so-called mysteries, thereby proving humankind's interest in gobbledegook (including mine) is unquenchable - depressing is it not? To cheer you up or if you found the above maunderings too lowbrow I suggest that you visit a website that is more intellectually challenging , with not a circle in sight - thanks Janey!
