The Circle, Unbroken.

Love letters from another dimension?

All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small. All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all.

Cecil Frances Alexander, 1848.

It’s almost Harvest Festival! Be honest - this probably isn’t marked on your calendar, snd although it’s part of the upcoming October ‘Season’ it doesn’t really get a look in what with Halloween / Samhain or Thanksgiving. Harvest Festival held annually at the beginning of October was an ancient celebration of gratitude for earth’s bounty, arising from times when a good harvest meant the difference between life and death. Yet it’s evolved into one of the more mundane and forgettable festivals in modern times.

A chance reminder about this seasonal feast got me thinking about one of my favourite recent rabbit hole explorations; the humble, common or garden crop circle, and I would like to share my findings here with you.

It strikes me that it’s a field (ha!) of esoterica / paranormal that doesn’t get as much traction as the latest trendy ascension, angels, light codes, quantum whatever, Pleidians blah di blah. As a genre, it’s lost its sexiness, if indeed it ever had it.

I put it to you dear reader - perhaps our beautiful British agricultural landscape, seasonally ripe and golden with wheat and barley from May to September offers a much wilder, otherworldly experience than previously imagined?

There is every indication that the rolling hills of Southern England might just be a portal to other dimensions! An epicentre of extra-terrestrial / paranormal contact! And home to inexplicable geomagnetic anomalies. So bear that in mind next time you’re stuck in traffic on the A350 Chippenham By-Pass.

In 1974 a group of scientists beamed a message into space.

The message, meant to be received by an intelligent alien species, described life on Earth.

Written in simple binary code, and using the most powerful radio telescope on the planet, the message was broadcast to a dense cluster of stars in the constellation of Hercules.…nobody was really expected to receive it. And even if they did, it wouldn't be any time soon. The nearest star in the direction of the broadcast is 25,000 light-years away.

But 27 years later, something very unexpected happened…

We got a reply.

The Why Files, Aliens & Espionage: Crop Circles and the CIA Coverup.

The story you are about to read will weave together the CIA, Margaret Thatcher, Carl Sagan, Pensioners on Polevaults, John Lewis (the grocer), oh and silicon-based advanced life forms trying to warn us of an existential threat.

It is worth saying that I have only recently started to delve into this and have tried to disentangle threads of a story spanning centuries, continents, perhaps galaxies.

It is a vast subject and many people have done serious research in the field (sorry this pun crops up a few times) (see what I did there?!) so I will link to their websites and articles throughout this piece. Click on the hyperlinks and images to explore further if they spark your interest.

This video from the Why Files is a great watch, incredibly thoroughly researched and well structured, despite being delivered by a guy in a CBBC-style broom cupboard (reference for UK readers of a certain age) and a rude, talking goldfish.

I had always brushed crop circles off as, in the main, probably man-made, even slightly boring, due perhaps to the blandness of the cereal-based medium and some vague recollection of them being proven to be hoaxes.

I’ll admit there is a cute, English folksy feel to this Fortean genre. It summons up visions of rosy-cheeked farmers, high on home-brew cider in the bucolic Wiltshire countryside, having a good time on a Midsummer’s night. Or the likes of Theresa May letting rip as she giddily cantered home from Sunday School on her pretend pony, trampling wheat underfoot and clip-clopping in precise concentric circles.

There are plenty of instances in which designs have been created in fields by people.

However, there are many which seem very unlikely to have been made by human hand, or foot.

Let’s start at the beginning – what is a crop circle anyway?

In short, they are imprinted designs on fields of crops that appear quickly, mainly overnight under cover of darkness but not always, check out this one which appeared in broad daylight near Glastonbury in 2008. They often comprise complex mathematical information and involve beautiful and elaborate designs stemming from really hard maths, like squaring the circle, Fibonacci, Pi, stuff that very few of us could grapple with using paper and compass, let alone in a field in the dead of night.

Eye-witness reports from those lucky enough to spot one being made consistently mention the circles are accompanied by flashing lights and orbs in the sky above and these have occasionally been captured on shaky camcorder.

The infamous 1996 Oliver’s Castle video (named after the location in Devizes, Wiltshire where it was filmed) is the first and only video of one being made in real time. Many crop circle afficianados believed this to have been digitally enhanced, but many do not. Those in the know have deliberated over this video for years. It was filmed by a man called John Whayley or Wheyleigh – a pseudonym.

John had camped overnight after being tipped off by locals that this was a crop circle hot spot. He apparently ‘confessed’ to National Geographic that it was faked, and then disappeared soon after.

For what it’s worth, I started working in TV three years later in 1999, using state-of-the-art digital video, linear and early non-linear editing systems and I don’t think this was achievable given the simple camcorder equipment that seems to have been used here. The crop circle actually happened, so he would have had to film the field before it was made, fallen asleep and missed it being made, or perhaps he went and quickly made the circle himself / or some other people did, he then filmed the finished article, went to an edit suite, and spliced it together using a gradual transition technique I don’t believe existed at the time (not outside of Hollywood anyway) then laid down flying orb effects and voicoever. His before and after footage would have to have been filmed within about an hour to avoid any light changes or filmed over two nights. Perhaps he did all this, although analysis of the original tape is said to have shown no evidence of being digitally altered.

But real or fake, it illustrates what centuries of eye-witness reports have observed and is worth watching to get a feel of how it might look if you were lucky enough to be there.

But, let’s be super sceptical for a moment and assume that there was some digital fakery involved in this instance. Where does that leave examples of crop circles from hundreds or even thousands of years ago?

Here’s a little brief history of Ye Olde Crop Circle occurrences.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Book of Enoch from 300-200 BC, describes lightning leaving marks on the earth.

9th Century Abogard, Bishop of Lyon, France complained about villagers cavorting in crop circles and eating seeds from crops as fertility rituals. They were often referred to as ‘fairy rings’ although this was a term also used to describe formations of fungi.

In 1678 a pamphlet made from woodcut was published, appearing to be a news report of strange happening in a field of oats. It told a cautionary tale of a farmer, too stingy to pay the mower the going rate who said he would rather pay the devil himself to cut the crop.

And so it fell out, that very Night, the Crop of Oats shew'd as if it had been all of a flame; but next Morning appear'd so neatly Mow'd by the Devil, or some Infernal Spirit, that no Mortal Man was able to do the like.

The Mowing Devil, 1678, Hertfordshire

17^th Century professor of Chemistry at Oxford, Robert Plot visited over 50 such occurrences on farms in southern England, analysing the soil, finding white sulphurus residue and dehydration, and observing that animals stayed away from these unusual imprints. He noted that their creation was often observed along with flashing lights and that future crop yields on these sites was increased by about 30%. His was the first scientific research and his findings are echoed by modern research – more on that shortly!

19^th Century missionaries in the newly formed United States of America observed Native American tribes both engaged with naturally occurring circles and tried to replicate them for ceremonial use.

Englishman John Rand Capron writing for Nature Magazine in 1880, mentions circles in wheat, he attributes them to "cyclonic wind action":

The storms about this part of Surrey have been lately local and violent, and the effects produced in some instances curious. Visiting a neighbour's farm on Wednesday evening, we found a field of standing wheat considerably knocked about, not as an entirety, but in patches forming, as viewed from a distance, circular spots.

Throughout the later part of the 20^th Century there are countless hundreds maybe thousands of circles recorded from the late 1960’s to the mid 1980’s it became a cultural phenomenon.

People were starting to take notice, scientists traveled from all over the world to study these events. Circles appeared everywhere from Australia to Alton Barnes (the site of the Led Zeppelin album cover design, pictured above).

There were plenty of column inches and TV news items devoted to the subject - but were they real – wasn’t it all a load of rubbish?

If you do a basic internet search on Crop Circles you will undoubtedly come across, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two characters who shot to fame after claiming they were responsible for every single design spanning 23 countries and several continents from the mid 60’s onwards.

Astonishingly, the media seemed to believe their tall tale, reporting it as fact, in lockstep, declaring the age-old mystery solved. The story seems to have filtered down into the public consciousness to this very day, with many discounting the idea of crop circles as a hoax perpetuated by eccentric old geezers. However when the fellas were asked to replicate their work on a variety of TV shows their work was messy, geometrically inaccurate, and lacked complexity.

Similarly, no explanation was given as to how they navigated secure areas next to historical monuments like Stonehenge and Avebury without being detected. The circles they made for TV crews also showed where they had accessed the field on foot and trampled the crops. When asked to explain the more impressive designs which appeared to have no such giveaways, they explained that they pole-vaulted their way around. Hilarious. I mean … you’ve got to love ‘em. Their story was also full of inconsistencies and changed over the years as more crop circles were discovered.

But they did make some and they definitely inspired a lot of copycats.

But stunning examples of crop circle art, like the famous Milk Hill Spiral (2001) covered 700,000 square feet and was made in about 4 hours of darkness on a summer’s night in Wiltshire. This is clearly beyond the skillset of even the most seasoned prankster.

So how do we tell a Doug n’ Dave inspired DIY job, and a real Crop Circle, apart?

Well, ‘real’ circles appear to be constructed in a very different way.

Crops are gently bent and almost gently laid down, sometimes plaited and depressed in multiple directions  (so they continue to grow and even spring back.  Man-made designs are bent, move in one direction, and they break and damage the crop.

I won’t get too technical here because what the hell do I know about molecular biology?! But basically, large free-standing plants like barley have nodes that allow them to stand tall and vertical. In the real deal versions, these will be ‘fused ‘and ‘blown’ like someone’s microwaved them. Closer analysis reveals them to be undamaged and have an increased protein content.

Likewise, seeds taken from crops involved in ‘real’ circles grow faster and are said to be more potent. (Remember those 9th Century French folks frolicking in the fields, eating the seeds?!)

Eye-witness reports of circles appearing include floating lights as previously mentioned, and mist or steam rising from the crops suggesting some heating process is involved.

The core observable difference involves the changed structure of the crop, suggesting that they have been exposed to some sort of radiation. This would explain the heat and increased protein content and yield.

Some formations are dusted with a ‘glaze’ of magnetised iron found usually on meteorites and the particles have been melted into perfect spheres, which suggests they were formed in a highly magnetic field.

People who spend time in crop circles observe unusual effects on their skin and bodies and there was a case of someone with a thyroid tumour who sat in one for a couple of hours, under medical supervision, and the tumour shrank considerably. People report that electrical equipment breaks or goes haywire, and medical advice is not to go in one if frail, or pregnant.

Similarly, the effect of the design on the crop is sometimes so intense that it remains as a ‘ghost formation’ long after mowing and subsequent crops several seasons later. One theory for this could be the land itself. The vast majority of circles deemed to be not man-made are found over Chalk aquifers, notably Silbury Hill and Stonehenge, which suggests that the electromagnetic capacity of the land itself is key to the occurrence of the phenomenon.

Something else to ponder when considering real vs fake: there are some undoubtedly made by people and others for which there is no rational explanation.

Aside from Doug n’ Dave the pole-vaulting pensioners, there seems to have been significant effort made by those ‘in charge’ to investigate the occurrences.

Crop Circle researcher, Nick Pope, dubbed the ‘real Fox Mulder’ says that he was researching crop circles (and UFOs) for the British MOD from 1985 - 2005.

Shortly before leaving office in 1990, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher requested an ‘official’ in-depth investigation, and Operation Blackbird was conceived. You can get the full story on this joint project involving the British government, the BBC, and researchers Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado from the Why Files episode linked here. It was clear from the outcome of this that a significant effort was made to engineer a hoax and capture it on live television before a global audience. All the while the MOD were running a covert counter operation that reportedly captured a real circle complete with flying orbs at another site nearby.

So this begs the question, if crop circles are obvious fakes - why would they bother investigating and trying to muddy the waters in this way?

Colin Andrews stayed in the field (yup!) of crop circle research after the humiliating episode, and is one of the most well-known experts on the subject. He has been interviewed for several documentaries and books and maintains that post-Blackbird he was courted by British and later US intelligence after moving to the States.

He claims to have been offered large sums of money to publicly renounce his beliefs and secretly work for the CIA on crop circle research. He also alleges that many in the ‘hoaxing’ community are paid by intelligence agencies and offers detailed proof of this. Again something the Why Files explores in detail.

So if it is another intelligence trying to communicate with us - what are they trying to tell us?

They often demonstrate mathematical concepts, could they be instructions or directions? Could extra-terrestrial life be following some kind of Star Trek ‘prime directive?’ They might not be able to interfere or assist us – but they can leave helpful little clues. Presumably, once we’re clever enough and have advanced sufficiently, we’ll figure them out?

Some theories point to a link with sound and frequency as the designs often closely resemble cymatics, others link them with magnetar stars and wormholes. There is a theory that they could be a blueprint for something like a plasma fusion device producing zero-point energy or enabling anti-gravity propulsion. If engineering and Area 51 / Nazi UFO lore is your bag, I highly recommend the second half of this video for some fascinating info.

By far the most mindblowing story for me concerns the Arrecibo Message.

This was a 1974 communique sent from the Arrecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico to the Hercules Star Cluster. It was authored by a team from Cornell University led by astronomer Frank Drake and science icon, Carl Sagan. The aim was to demonstrate advances in radio telescopes but it served as a sweet gesture towards future intergalactic relations to boot.

The message comprised 1679 binary digits which could be converted to a pictographic image, explaining to those in outer realms who we were, and what we were about.

The top line: features a key with numbers 1-10, next are the atomic numbers for the elemental make-up of life on earth; hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorous which make up DNA. Carbon at the top as it’s most prominent.

Then more illustrations of our double helix structure DNA, a representation of a humanoid body, our average height, global population (around 4 billion at the time).

It also included the position of Earth within our solar system and an image representing the radio telescope that sent the message.

The nearest star in the system for which the message was intended was over 25,000 light years away so the ETA for a potential reply was in, oh, about 50,000 years time.

But as Sweet Brown once said, “ain’t nobody got time for that!”

Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait that long. A mere 27 years later, on August 14^th 2001 we received what was deemed the first of several ‘replies’ next door to the Chilbolton Radio Telescope in Hampshire, England.

It didn’t arrive via the telescope (as far as we know anyway) but in a neighbouring field owned by the John Lewis Partnership. The ETs clearly know how to strike at the heart of Middle England!

Observed from the ground, it was obvious that someone had tried to make a crop circle imprint but It was a very different kind of design, messy and unusual. But when it was observed from above by legendary crop circle researcher and photographer Lucy Pringle (who took out a helicopter to grab a shot) it was revealed to be a face.

What does this remind you of? Try slanting the screen you’re reading this on.

Then three days later, in the same field, this appeared next to it.

It was a glyph, eerily similar to the original message, and was named the Chilbolton Glyph, or the ‘Arrecibo Answer.’

It starts off with the same numbers 1-10, but shows silicon not carbon as the main basis of life, a third strand of DNA, a smaller body 4 feet tall, with a large head, a population of 21 billion, home planet consists of three planets in their solar system.

Rather than a picture of a telescope they include a representation of a previous fractal-style crop circle made in the same place a year earlier. Meaning, that this is the medium through which they communicate?!

Let your mind boggle around that for a moment.

A direct answer to an initial message in the form it was originally sent.

We can deduce that this purports to be from a non-human / off-planet life form who knew of the original Arrecibo project.

Either that or from a team of scientifically educated hoaxers wanting to create a stir.

But the logistics of creating complex designs like this, undetected by passers-by and security cameras in the few hours of darkness that we have in high Summer in the UK, would make this a gargantuan and highly skilled task.

And whoever sent this reply … they weren’t done!

A year later, another message appeared … and if you don’t get chills looking at this, take off that thermal vest!

The disc this fellow is holding (which reminds me of a Fisher Price toy record) contains another message in binary code but this time it’s words, not pictures.

Want to know what it said?! Of course you do!

Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts

and their BROKEN PROMISES,

much PAIN but still time.

BELIEVE.

There is GOOD out there.

We oppose DECEPTION.

Conduit CLOSING\

Arrecibo Answer, 2002.

Thrilling, right?!

The Arrecibo Incident is also interesting to me as someone with little knowledge doing some research, because there is precious little about it on the internet. And that’s unusual for any event that gets worldwide attention.

There is one article from The Independent (from 2018) referring to it as a hoax, but it never explains why it’s a hoax. Wikipedia also refers to it as a hoax and gives no explanation other than an official rebuttal of sorts by the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute who were presumably contacted for a response at the time. They issued a comment which is no longer available on their website, but I found it on the Wayback Machine, you can read it here. Notice that it simply states the theory that it was made by non-human intelligence is ‘highly improbable,’ and that’s really it. Okay then!

Rather than offer any proof of it being a high concept prank, the SETI response cites the Fermi paradox as the main rationale behind their argument. But isn’t this Fermi ‘excuse’ a bit dated, now? Isn’t this thinking boringly linear? (Please don’t @me I have a ‘C’ in GCSE Physics and an altar full of crystals!)

Do we really think space travel can only happen when a lifeform invents a fast enough, powerful enough ship? Pictute this advanced civilisation having to get in some rinky dink vehicle, and travel tens of thousands of light years to visit us, ‘‘third rock from the sun, turn left at the moon!”

Most currently trendy theories of quantum mechanics seem to agree with enough high fallutin’ knowhow, it’s probable that space and time could be bent, folded or manipulated to make travelling through space time feasible and speedy.

Also why would the recipients have to come from that star cluster 25,000 light years away? Who’s to say they didn’t intercept our signals from receptacles (?) stationed nearer to us? Perhaps they’re already here, watching our dear little attempts to contact them with wry amusement?

Another stone cold reason for it being a hoax (according to SETI) was that it was found NEXT TO the Chilbolton Telescope. They ask why wasn’t it sent to the telescope itself? Duh! Maybe it was SETI, maybe it was?! Would they tell us, if so?

Or did the ‘senders’ leave it in the field next door so that the world could see and those clever enough to decipher would share it with the rest of us?

Any intergalactic observer of the human race would know not to trust our leadership to be completely transparent. Why does this world famous scientific organisation simply dismiss it as a hoax and not even engage with the idea it might be real?

More open-minded scientists have analysed the messages and concluded that it originated from another intelligence. Here’s a very thorough analysis to assauge your inner boffin.

Perhaps the possibility that it originates from a consciousness outside of our own is simply too mindblowing and destablising to be permitted by those who govern us, and whom I’m sure have our best interests at heart? God bless ‘em!

SIDE NOTE – what if ‘they’ did intend on replying to the original signal via the Telescope in Arrecibo, Puerto Rico? Well we wouldn’t know because this iconic structure, made famous in films such as ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘Contact’ was destroyed in 2020 when it crumbled to the ground. While researching this I read comments from countless astro-nerds who said they had wept upon hearing the news. The radio receiver is apparently still working, but deep under rubble – some scientists are trying to get permission to recover it. Strange, but sadly true.

In the past couple of years, there has been plenty of chat about disclosure, gathering momentum after the recent congressional hearings and David Grusch revelations.

But haven’t otherworldly beings tried to communicate with us, for hundreds if not thousands of years, as demonstrated in culturally diverse myth and folklore?

This is the thesis of UFO-logist Jaques Vallee’s seminal book ‘Passport to Magonia’ which draws parallels between little grey men, angels, demons and the fairy folk.

Is it possible other intelligent life has been here all along, hanging out in overlapping dimensions and we’re just, unable to see them most of the time?

Whatever the truth – this is a fascinating subject and as we get closer to official admissions of ‘contact’, I believe that the science and theory of crop circle communication will garner even more interest.

What do you make of it all? Have you ever seen one IRL?

There are still plenty of crop circles appearing mainly in the summer months across the UK and plenty of other countries. Websites like this one keep track of them and advise on access. You can even do organised tours with Lucy Pringle which I really fancy doing next Summer.

Maybe I’ll see you there?

I’ll be wearing socks and sandals, tinfoil hat, and travelling by polevault – just to be on the safe side.

Remember, there is GOOD out there. BELIEVE.