Crop Circle Mania
By Cindy Voetsch

I have to admit, crop circles are fascinating and really cool. The beautiful and intricate designs especially impress me because I would have a hard time drawing these on paper, let alone by stomping in a grain field. In the 70′s and 80′s when they first started really becoming the rage, unbalanced individuals looking for attention and a new “cause,” jumped on the croppie bandwagon as fast as they jumped on alien abductions, cattle mutilations, and magic crystals.

Everyone loves a good mystery and these were very mysterious. Like magic, ever increasingly intricate and mystical patterns appeared overnight in the corn and wheat fields of Old England. Nutjobs flocked to the sites eager to put their own brand of insanity and powers of intrepretation on the spectacle. Unfortunately, the farmers who were growing the crops were not as thrilled with the “cereal killers.” Many of these farmers lost thousands of dollars in trampled crops first, by the vandals who did the work and second, by the lunitics who trampled on the rest of the field trying to look at it. Some enterprising land owners made up the funds lost in ruined crops by catering to the ever present visitors by adding their own tall tales and sightings to the lore. Hey, if you can’t beat’um, join’um.

The croppies started coming up with additional stories and urban legends and it created a vicious circle (no pun intended.) Books, images, research grants, science projects, careers, souveniers, and tours all added up to a whole new cottage industry and pseudoscience called cerealogy.

Eventually two men, Doug Bower and David Chorley admitted to hoaxing over 250 of these circles over the span of many years. They even showed us how they did it and gave demonistrations but it didn’t matter, the croppies were convinced with every fiber (again no pun intended) of their being that there must be more to this.

UFO Theory

One of the more popular theories, which goes hand in hand with the UFO and alien abduction theories that became popular, was that space aliens from another planet or galaxy were making these patterns or crop circles into the fields to guide their spacecraft. Another twist on this same theme is that these aliens are using the patterns to communicate with us. Some feel that the patterns is caused by the spaceship landing craft crushing the plants.

Now my personal feeling is, IF you are a highly advanced spacefaring civilization, advanced enough to travel the vastness of space and time to get here…….if you have been able to successfully navigate your way through theoretic worm holes, black holes, meteor showers, and our space junk, you can probably land without a pretty picture trampled in some wheat.

IF you are a highly advanced spacefaring civilization who has been observing us for thousands of years (theoretically,) you would probably be observiant to know that as a means of communication, if you trampled some design in a corn field, we might not “get it.”

It’s interesting that the space alien theory came about right smack dab in the middle of the UFO craze. My theory is that if crop circles happened a couple of hundred years ago or more, the croppies would be blaming them on the Devil or even witches. There is a woodcut image from the 1600′s depicting a devil cutting down crops in a circular field. Many use this image as “proof” that there have been crop circles in the history of our planet. If so, it just proves to me that people down through the ages had a sense of humor and liked to “punk” their friends. Looking at the woodcut I see a devil cutting grain….perhaps he is punishing the farmer, perhaps the Devil is a part time field hand, perhaps Hell was having a corn shortage….really, who knows but no one saw space aliens then because they chose a nemesis they were comfortable with, Satan.

Right now I wish I had my own wheat or corn field because I would pay someone big bucks to secretly do a crop circle and then haul in the cash from the oddball visitors and scientists too dumb to realize they’ve been punked.

But, it gets even stranger because there are a lot of bizarre theories about crop circles out there. Some have the psyco babble bullshit sounding language most pseudoscience claims have. Impressive sounding words and ideas that have so actual scientific basis or meaning but fool the croppies into thinking the babble makes sense. Let’s take a look at some of these theories just for fun:

The Plasma Vortex Theory

Apparently a biophysicist names Dr. Levengood came up with the theory that a crop circle is a “complex energy system” he describes as a “spinning plasma vortex of ions and microwave frequencies.” The affected plants have “components which suggest the involvement of rapid air movement, ionization, electric fields and transient high temperatures combined with an oxidizing atmosphere. One naturally occurring and organized force incorporating each of these features is an ion plasma vortex, one very high energy example being a lightning discharge.” There have even been “claims” of balls of light swirling over the fields making these creations. One enterprising man actually faked a video of this “phenomenon” and really hoaxed everyone.

Sorry, but I am not buying it. It would take a lot more proof that psyco babble and scientific words to make believe this crap.

Ley Lines

According to some theories, crop circles are often created near ancient sites, and according to some along ley lines. According to this theory, crop circles would be the result of abnormal burst of electro-magnetical energy from the Earth. I think they were created there because of the already high consentration of nutjobs in that area. If there were a lot of large fields in Sedona, Arizona I suspect crop circles would “appear”there too.

In 1936, the British occultist Dion Fortune wrote a fictional book, a novel, called The Goat-Foot God, in which she put forward the notion of ‘lines of force’connecting megalithic sites such as Avebury and Stonehenge in southern England. In 1938, Arthur Lawton, a member of the Straight Track Club, wrote a paper in which he claimed that leys were lines of cosmic force which could be dowsed. (This may explain why so many of these people run adound the fields where crop circles were found holding their dousing rods.) Through the 1970s and the 1980s, the idea of energy lines grew and grew and became a part of the New Age movement.

I feel that the earth’s magnetic field was to cause a field of crops to flatten (for some unknown reason) it would not make an obviously human pattern.

Whirlwind Theory

What can I say, this theory claims that whirlwinds or tornados swirl over the fields and create the patterns. There are many obvious flaws in this theory one being that there has never been any reports of crop circles left by tornados in the midwest Tornado Alley.

I lived in Arizona for several years near a large field. When it was particularly dry (which was most of the time) we often had dust devils or whirlwinds. I was even caught in a few by our barn and all ther did was throw dirt and trash around and make me have to go take a shower. In the field across from my house a whirlwind never left a geometric pattern or other design, which is too bad because I would have made money off of the nutjobs wanting to see it.

Gaia Theory

This particular theory adopted by some croppies is perhaps one of the most bizarre. The Gaia theory claims that the Earth is a “consious, intelligent object communicating with its inhabitants via crop circles.” Colin Andrews, one of the main proponents of this idoiocy explains that “crop circles may be a way for nature or some unknown intelligence, to redirect our focus back to the environment.” Colin claims that this is why crop circles appear in plants that are to be harvested for food.

Wow, talk about losing touch with reality. This is such a stretch of the imagination. The really scary thing is that there are people out there who believe this nonsense. Remember, these are people walking around, voting, driving, and perhaps even in leadership positions believing in something so obviously insane. Frightening.

Music Theory

This theory is such a reach into the crazy that you have to wonder how on earth a seemingly sane individual reached this conclusion. Some theorists believe that crop circles are a visual representation of sounds, especially music, specifically notes of scales.

Well, I think there is one way to prove this lunicy. Go out in a corn field with a musical instrument, play scales, and see if a crop circle appears. I think the only thing that will appear is a some men with a straight jacket to haul you away to a padded cell…..where in my opinion, most of the croppies belong.

Conclusion

What about all of the croppies who go out into a circle and “feel” the special energy, magnetic waves, or even the powers of the crushed wheat or corn? What about the people who claim their cameras or electronic equipment “behave”(I am using this word loosly) differently in a crop circle?

I think if you are nuts you can go anywhere and feel “special.” I also feel that if you WANT to believe something bad enough and WANT to be part of something bad enough, you can convince yourself of a lot of “special feelings and powers.”If you try hard enough, imerse yourself in enough insane ideas and theories and surround yourself by enough weirdos, you can believe almost anything no matter how impossible or idiotic.

My theory is that these two men and others, started a hoax that fed right into the culture of a region, already saturated with mystics, Stonehenge, and other ancient mysteries. The more they punked everyone, the more they created copy cats, croppies, and people making money on the crazies. Really, it’s just plain “corny.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Science vs Pseudoscience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.