Crop Circles: The Art of the Hoax

They may not be evidence of UFOs, ancient spirits or secret weapons, but there is something magical in their allure

  • By Rob Irving and Peter Brookesmith
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Crop Circles Crop circles are seen by many to enchant a mystical landscape: here, a circle pattern from 2009, 200 feet across, in a Wiltshire wheat field.

Rob Irving

 

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    Crop Circles: The Art of the Hoax

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    When Doug Bower and his co-conspirator Dave Chorley first created a representation of a “flying saucer nest” in a wheat field in Wiltshire, England, in 1976, they could not have foreseen that their work would become a cultural phenomenon.

    Almost as soon as crop circles became public knowledge, they attracted a gaggle of self-appointed experts. An efflorescence of mystical and magical thinking, scientific and pseudo-scientific research, conspiracy theories and general pandemonium broke out. The patterns stamped in fields were treated as a lens through which the initiated could witness the activity of earth energies and ancient spirits, the anguish of Mother Earth in the face of impending ecological doom, and evidence of secret weapons testing and, of course, aliens. Today, one of the more vigorously promoted ideas is that they are messages, buried in complex numerological codes, concerning a Great Change connected to the pre-Columbian Mayan calendar and due to occur in 2012.

    To appreciate how these exotic responses arose, we need to delve a little into history. Before today’s circle-makers entered the picture, there had been scattered reports of odd patterns appearing in crops, ranging from 17th century pamphlets to an 1880 account in Nature to a letter from astronomer Patrick Moore printed in 1963 in New Scientist. In Australia, the mid- to late-1960s saw occasional reports of circles in crops, and they were often ascribed to UFO landings. At around the same time in England, the Wiltshire town of Warminster became a center of UFO-seeking “sky watches” and gave birth to its own rumors of crop circles, or “saucer nests.” None of these, unfortunately, was photographed.

    It was such legends that Bower had in mind when, over a drink one evening in 1976, he suggested to his pal Chorley: “Let’s go over there and make it look like a flying saucer has landed.” It was time, thought Doug, to see a saucer nest for himself.

    Since then, crop circles have been reported worldwide in a multitude of crops. In southern England, which sees most activity, circle-makers tend to concentrate on canola, barley and wheat. These grow and are harvested in an overlapping progression: canola from April through May, barley throughout May and June, and wheat from June until early September. In recent years the occasional rudimentary pattern has been found in corn, extending the crop circle season as late as October. Since Bower and Chorley’s circles appeared, the geometric designs have escalated in scale and complexity, as each year teams of anonymous circle-makers lay honey traps for New Age tourists.

    A crucial clue to the circles’ allure lies in their geographical context. Wiltshire is the home of Stonehenge and an even more extensive stone circle in the village of Avebury. The rolling downs are dotted with burial mounds and solitary standing stones, which many believe to be connected by an extensive network of “leys,” or paths of energy linking these enchanted sites with others around the country. It is said that this vast network is overlaid in the form of “sacred geometries.” The region has also given rise to a rich folklore of spectral black dogs, headless coachmen and haunted houses.

    Crop circles are a lens through which we can explore the nature and appeal of hoaxes. Fakes, counterfeits and forgeries are all around us in the everyday world—from dud $50 bills to spurious Picassos. People’s motives for taking the unreal as real are easily discerned: we trust our currency, and many people would like to own a Picasso. The nebulous world of the anomalous and the paranormal is even richer soil for hoaxers. A large proportion of the population believes in ghosts, angels, UFOs and ET visitations, fairies, psychokinesis and other strange phenomena. These beliefs elude scientific examination and proof. And it’s just such proof that the hoaxer brings to the table for those hungry for evidence that their beliefs are not deluded.

    False evidence intended to corroborate an existing legend is known to folklorists as “ostension.” This process also inevitably extends the legend. For, even if the evidence is eventually exposed as false, it will have affected people’s perceptions of the phenomenon it was intended to represent. Faked photographs of UFOs, Loch Ness monsters and ghosts generally fall under the heading of ostension. Another example is the series of photographs of fairies taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths at Cottingley, Yorkshire, between 1917 and 1920. These show that the motive for producing such evidence may come from belief, rather than from any wish to mislead or play pranks. One of the girls insisted till her dying day that she really had seen fairies—the manufactured pictures were a memento of her real experience. And the photos were taken as genuine by such luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—the great exponent, in his Sherlock Holmes stories, of logic.


    When Doug Bower and his co-conspirator Dave Chorley first created a representation of a “flying saucer nest” in a wheat field in Wiltshire, England, in 1976, they could not have foreseen that their work would become a cultural phenomenon.

    Almost as soon as crop circles became public knowledge, they attracted a gaggle of self-appointed experts. An efflorescence of mystical and magical thinking, scientific and pseudo-scientific research, conspiracy theories and general pandemonium broke out. The patterns stamped in fields were treated as a lens through which the initiated could witness the activity of earth energies and ancient spirits, the anguish of Mother Earth in the face of impending ecological doom, and evidence of secret weapons testing and, of course, aliens. Today, one of the more vigorously promoted ideas is that they are messages, buried in complex numerological codes, concerning a Great Change connected to the pre-Columbian Mayan calendar and due to occur in 2012.

    To appreciate how these exotic responses arose, we need to delve a little into history. Before today’s circle-makers entered the picture, there had been scattered reports of odd patterns appearing in crops, ranging from 17th century pamphlets to an 1880 account in Nature to a letter from astronomer Patrick Moore printed in 1963 in New Scientist. In Australia, the mid- to late-1960s saw occasional reports of circles in crops, and they were often ascribed to UFO landings. At around the same time in England, the Wiltshire town of Warminster became a center of UFO-seeking “sky watches” and gave birth to its own rumors of crop circles, or “saucer nests.” None of these, unfortunately, was photographed.

    It was such legends that Bower had in mind when, over a drink one evening in 1976, he suggested to his pal Chorley: “Let’s go over there and make it look like a flying saucer has landed.” It was time, thought Doug, to see a saucer nest for himself.

    Since then, crop circles have been reported worldwide in a multitude of crops. In southern England, which sees most activity, circle-makers tend to concentrate on canola, barley and wheat. These grow and are harvested in an overlapping progression: canola from April through May, barley throughout May and June, and wheat from June until early September. In recent years the occasional rudimentary pattern has been found in corn, extending the crop circle season as late as October. Since Bower and Chorley’s circles appeared, the geometric designs have escalated in scale and complexity, as each year teams of anonymous circle-makers lay honey traps for New Age tourists.

    A crucial clue to the circles’ allure lies in their geographical context. Wiltshire is the home of Stonehenge and an even more extensive stone circle in the village of Avebury. The rolling downs are dotted with burial mounds and solitary standing stones, which many believe to be connected by an extensive network of “leys,” or paths of energy linking these enchanted sites with others around the country. It is said that this vast network is overlaid in the form of “sacred geometries.” The region has also given rise to a rich folklore of spectral black dogs, headless coachmen and haunted houses.

    Crop circles are a lens through which we can explore the nature and appeal of hoaxes. Fakes, counterfeits and forgeries are all around us in the everyday world—from dud $50 bills to spurious Picassos. People’s motives for taking the unreal as real are easily discerned: we trust our currency, and many people would like to own a Picasso. The nebulous world of the anomalous and the paranormal is even richer soil for hoaxers. A large proportion of the population believes in ghosts, angels, UFOs and ET visitations, fairies, psychokinesis and other strange phenomena. These beliefs elude scientific examination and proof. And it’s just such proof that the hoaxer brings to the table for those hungry for evidence that their beliefs are not deluded.

    False evidence intended to corroborate an existing legend is known to folklorists as “ostension.” This process also inevitably extends the legend. For, even if the evidence is eventually exposed as false, it will have affected people’s perceptions of the phenomenon it was intended to represent. Faked photographs of UFOs, Loch Ness monsters and ghosts generally fall under the heading of ostension. Another example is the series of photographs of fairies taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths at Cottingley, Yorkshire, between 1917 and 1920. These show that the motive for producing such evidence may come from belief, rather than from any wish to mislead or play pranks. One of the girls insisted till her dying day that she really had seen fairies—the manufactured pictures were a memento of her real experience. And the photos were taken as genuine by such luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—the great exponent, in his Sherlock Holmes stories, of logic.

    The desire to promote evidence of anomalous and paranormal events as genuine springs from deep human longings. One is a gesture toward rationalism—the notion that nothing is quite real unless it’s endorsed by reasoned argument, and underwritten by more or less scientific proofs. But the human soul longs for enchantment. Those who don’t find their instinctive sense of the numinous satisfied by art, literature or music—let alone the discoveries of science itself—may well turn to the paranormal to gratify an intuition that mystery dwells at the heart of existence. Such people are perfectly placed to accept hoaxed evidence of unexplained powers and entities as real.

    And so, the annual appearance of ever more complex patterns in the wheat fields of southern England is taken by “croppies”—the devotees who look beyond any prosaic solution for deeper explanations—as signs and wonders and prophecies. The croppies do, however, accept that some people, some of the time, are making some of the formations. They regard these human circle-makers as a nuisance, contaminators of the “evidence,” and denounce them as “hoaxers.” The term is well chosen, for it implies social deviance. And therein lies the twist in the story.

    In croppy culture, common parlance is turned on its head. The word “genuine” usually implies that something has a single, identifiable origin, of established provenance. To the croppy it means the opposite: a “genuine” circle is of unknown provenance, or not man-made—a mystery, in other words. It follows that the man-made circle is a “hoax.”

    Those circle-makers who are prepared to comment on this semantic reversal do so with some amusement. As far as they’re concerned, they are creating art in the fields. In keeping with New Age thought, it is by dissociating with scientific tradition that the circle-makers return art to a more unified function, where images and objects are imbued with special powers.

    This art is intended to be a provocative, collective and ritual enterprise. And as such, it is often inherently ambiguous and open to interpretation. To the circle-maker, the greater the range of interpretations inspired in the audience the better. Both makers and interpreters have an interest in the circles being perceived as magical, and this entails their tacit agreement to avoid questions of authorship. This is essentially why croppies regard “man-made” circles as a distraction, a “contamination.”

    Paradoxically, and unlike almost all other modern forms of art, a crop circle’s potential to enchant is animated and energized by the anonymity of its author(s). Doug Bower now tells friends that he wishes he had kept quiet and continued his nocturnal jaunts in secret. Both circle-makers and croppies are really engaged in a kind of game, whose whole purpose is to keep the game going, to prolong the mystery. After all, who would travel thousands of miles and trek through a muddy field to see flattened wheat if it were not imbued with otherworldly mystique?

    As things stand, the relationship between the circle-makers and those who interpret their work has become a curious symbiosis of art and artifice, deception and belief. All of which raises the question: Who’s hoaxing whom?


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    I for one believe that those crop circles are pure public opinion manipulation. The term hoax is too weak for such a propaganda operation. It is clear that the ones behind it work by an agenda, in order to strengthen certain beliefs and weaken others. On thing is sure, those circles cannot be the haphazard traces of so-called ufos. The patterns are intended a little bit like logos. It is clear that the religion to be propagandized is the new age thing, not any form of Christianity (despite the fact that an even richer visual symbolism is already available in the Norman cathedrals very nearby), nor any form of Islam (whose symbolic geometry would be ideal for such patterns), nor any form of real hinduism (which has little to do with the new age counterfeit of it), nor any religion of the kind of those simple people having a devout faith in God and invisible forces without the help of any media or book-learning past and present, like the Breton peasants used to be, like many Haitians still are. The crop circle symbolism can only appeal to half-learned and ill-bred people already in quest of curiosities, and that is most contrary to real faith which demands persistence in simple activities such as traditional agriculture, as for instance is recommended not only by the Gospels but even more so by Zen monks. A real believer in things spiritual would not marvel at those patterns but deplore the suffering caused to the plants themselves supposedly done by evolved beings. On the other hand it is not an amateur's work, considering not only the sheer number to those patterns, but the necessary technology to achieve such an elaborate result, including the molecular transformation of the plants involved, but such a technology is available to great earthly powers, albeit costly. I don't buy that extra-terrestrial thing : real extra-terrestrials would either keep perfectly unnoticed and abstain from such ego-showing pseudo-artworks, or go and talk directly to people.

    Posted by Miville on January 22,2011 | 02:10 AM

    To view an article written by aliens, see the large field near Winchester...

    Posted by ZedzDed on August 9,2010 | 09:58 AM

    Have any of you people read even one of the many published books on crop circles? No one is speaking of the SCIENTIFIC lab analysis between the hoax circle plants and the "real thing" plants. The hoax plants are crushed and show no chemical to cell structure changes, nor do they have uniform 90 degree angle bends of all the plants. "Hoax" circles have flattened areas of crop, while the "real thing" has consistent evidence of vortices, nesting phenomena in the center of circles, and a precise weaving of all the stalks that could never be done with ridiculous clumsy use of boards. Also, crop circles have been reported since the 1700's all over the world. People who refuse to accept that there is an unseen force that is capable of making this happen are stupidly ignoring the fact that an unseen force also makes your heart beat, your fingernails grow, the sun heat our world,the planet spin, the ocean tides happen...get the idea? If you believe in "God" and that with God all things are possible, you insult that very same God's ability to BE by saying "no aliens, no UFO's, no crop circles, no invisible forces, no anything that my puny little human brain can't understand..." Be the believers you say you are when you go to your church, synagogue or other place of worship, and believe that whatever made you can do whatever it pleases, and understand that it has, it does, and it will even without your arrogant approval. Crop cirles have been made by man and they have been made by invisible forces. Have you ever heard of any forgery without first having an original to copy? People who cannot accept this idea are afraid. Just simply afraid... Of accepting that they are not the masters of the universe.

    Posted by Lin Nowicki on June 12,2010 | 09:19 AM

    What a disappointing story. Any science writing student who turned in this as an assignment would get an F from me. No substance. No new information. Just sneering attitude supporting commonthink.

    Posted by Diana Somerville on May 18,2010 | 03:23 PM

    CROP CIRCLES are awesom beatiful sacred geometri thanks to who madeit they are ENCANTADORES

    Posted by David Vega on May 1,2010 | 01:27 PM

    Another example of amazing man made art in the fields: http://www.hemmy.net/2007/09/23/rice-field-art/

    Posted by Tessy on April 23,2010 | 04:40 AM

    this stuff is all crazy.............first of all aliens?! come on now get serious people. ant anybody can make a crop circle all you need is the right tools and the time to do all that work.....but the other ones who kee talking about UFO's, ALIENS, WARNING SIGNS, AND ETC... yall need some prefessional help

    Posted by lola on February 22,2010 | 08:49 AM

    I love crop circles and the discussions about them. Their scale and beauty and mystery is undeniable. Since they are abstract symbols they seem to be communications. If all of them have been made by humans, a large organized skillful group with resources has been active in many places at once through history to create them. Why would people do this is? The answer to that question has to be just as weird as any explanation of the circles coming into creation by non-humans. Searching for their origin should be given as much scientific rigor as researching other natural phenomenon. We know so little about the nature of existence that the most mature stance is to remain curious and instead of having beliefs, entertain possibilities.

    Posted by melinda on February 18,2010 | 02:01 PM

    Some of the people who have commented here, seem to trust National Geographic as a "reputable source", more than the hundreds or thousands of people who inspect or research crop pictures directly every summer!

    But here is what happened last summer in August 2009: National Geographic commissioned some outside team to do a TV show on crop pictures, so a bunch of novice photographers showed up in Wiltshire. There they hired some locals in need of money to make several obviously "fake" crop pictures (very badly done), while those so-called N.G. "researchers" hardly or never looked at several real, amazing crop pictures that appeared mysteriously at the same time nearby.

    Finally they went home with lots of TV footage to imply that "crop circles can be made by local hoaxers", as the author of the article above implies, without much or any factual evidence there either.

    My wife and I went into one of those bad N.G. hoaxes, and could easily find holes in the hard-packed dirt where heavy poles had been inserted, thick plank marks, etc. Just about as good a "fake" as someone taking a $100 bill, and running it through an old mimeograph machine!

    I do not know whether N.G. ever ran that 2009 footage, but "reputable" is not a word that I would use to describe their so-called "research" into this subject. By contrast, several independent filmmakers from the USA spent three months last summer in Wiltshire, staying up all night on hills, interviewing everyone, inspecting everything, etc. and plan to release their factual documentary at Cannes in the spring (so they told me).

    Now that is what one would expect from a company like National Geographic, but the hard yards have had to be done by other independemt filmmakers, who are not in the monetary service of anyone. "By their works, you will know them".

    Posted by Red Collie on January 18,2010 | 02:47 AM

    Thanks, Den! I was actually beginnig to worry!
    So, as I just read on another comment "no offense intended", here´s the equation I think lies behind all this "mystery":
    Lots of folks with way too much spare time + crop fields + web acces = the most hilarious comments I´ve read in a long time.
    Seriously, I´d love to start my investigations into the whole UFO phenomena, but I´m still much too busy trying to find signs of intelligent life here on Earth!

    Posted by Juan Rizzo on January 5,2010 | 02:22 AM

    I just don't understand how some of you nice folks get sucked into this.

    Crop circles have been demonstrated, filmed and thoroughly explained in broad daylight (and night time) by reputable (Nat. Geographic) sources. They use tools and math that have been readily available for thousands of years. Just because you have not done due diligence in your research does not mean they are made by aliens.

    There's also a guy that has proven on film and with many other witnesses that he can move and manipulate (tilt, turn, stack, etc) huge granite monoliths weighing several tons, sometimes using things as simple as another stone the size of a large marble as a tool, but with no other human assistance. He is not an athlete of any kind either. It is absolutely amazing to see. His research and developed methods proved other monoliths and such around the globe could in fact be manipulated by only a few men and in some cases just one.

    And to think that famous men in our history such as DaVinci and Jules Verne have had incredible insight to man's genius regarding aircraft, space flight and underwater transportation, among many, many other magnificent thoughts. Yet, many of you dolts still can't believe someone can make geometric designs with rope and wood while stepping on wheat stalks.

    For you folks that insist we are visited by intelligent aliens, I have a couple of bridges for sale.

    Posted by Den on December 29,2009 | 05:03 AM

    No offense intended, but I'm thinking that what we are seeing in the comments section is what the authors may have meant by "a gaggle of self-appointed experts".

    Posted by hillman on December 28,2009 | 02:51 PM

    In the words of the immortal prophet, Bob Dylan, "don't criticize what you don't understand." The doubts of the ignorant have no power whatsoever to contradict the direct experience of those who know. Crop circles are to date a true mystery. If they had been made by the hands of men it would be known by now. The one undeniable fact is that they exist in and of themselves. Until such time as they are witnessed during their creation no theory holds up.

    We must all remember that the entire universe and everything in it was descended from, coalesced from, was expressed from invisible forces. Crop circles may fall into that category. Meanwhile the wonder of their beauty is known only to human beings. We alone have the ability to appreciate them. They are absolutely divine. They also may communicate knowledge not available to us in any other way.

    Posted by Jennis Strickland on December 26,2009 | 07:58 PM

    Its interesting from a psychological perspective that some try to explain away the currently unexplainable by contending that they're hoaxes. I'm not sure whether its insecurity created by the fear of the unknown or whether its just hubris.

    Whatever it is that motivates some to not be able to accept that there are very mysterious aspects to this existence we term life lives a very sequestered existence. A case in point is the escalating annual phenomenon of crop circles. Their increasing complexity and intricacies leads one to believe that they may indeed be some sort of an attempt to communicate albeit on a more esoteric basis than most are accustomed to. The ability to manifest these beautiful creations in so short a period of time, some in less than an hour, is currently beyond any known technology that we could muster. And to say that they're hoaxes created by jokesters for amusement is authored by those that have not really looked into the phenomena with any intelligence.

    Crop Circles and other unexplained phenomena are part of the wonder of life and all its various manifestations. Some contend that crop circles are manifestations of an earth consciousness attempting to lift humanity to a higher plain of consciousness. A consciousness that will allow us to move past this time of conceit, greed, self interest, nationality, destruction and war into a new paradigm. A paradigm defined by doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. One where there are no others and we recognize all as one.

    Posted by Steven Carter on December 26,2009 | 02:38 PM

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