Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal

10. Riddle of the Circles

~ Chapter 10 Fliddle of the Circles For years a mysterious phenomenon has been plaguing southern English crop fields. Typically producing swirled, circular depressions in cereal crops, it has left in its wake beleaguered farmers and an astonished populace-not to mention befuddled scientists and would-be "investigators "-all struggling to keep apace with the proliferating occurrences and the equally proliferating claims made about them. The Mystery and the Controversy The circles range in diameter from as small as three meters (nearly ten feet) to some twenty-five meters (approximately eighty-two feet) or more. In addition to the simple circles that were first reported, there have appeared circles in formations; circles with rings, spurs, and other appurtenances ; and yet more complex forms, including "pictographs" and even a crop triangle! While the common depression or "lay" pattern is spiral (either clockwise or counterclockwise), there are radial and even more complex lays (Delgado and Andrews 1989; Meaden 1989; "Field" 1990). In most cases, the circles' matted pinwheel patterns readily distinguished them from fairy rings (rings oflush growth in lawns and meadows, caused by parasitic fungi) (Delgado and Andrews 1989). The possibility that they were due to the sweeping movements ofsnared or tethered animals, or rutting deer, seemed precluded by the absence of any tracks or trails of bent or broken stems. And the postulation of helicopters flying upside -down was countered by the observation that such antics would produce not swirled circles, but crashed helicopters ("England" 1989; Grossman 1990). Riddle of the Circles A "scientific" explanation was soon attempted by George Terence Meaden, a onetime professor of physics who later took up meteorology as an avocation. In his book The Circles Effectand Its Mysteries, he claims, "Ultimately, it is going to be the theoretical atmospheric physicist who will successfully minister the full and correct answers." Meaden's notion is that the "circles effect" is produced by what he terms the "plasma vortex phenomenon." He defines this as "a spinning mass of air which has accumulated a significant fraction of electrically charged matter." When the electrically charged, spinning mass strikes a crop field, Meaden contends , it produces a neat crop circle (1989,3, 10-11). Variant forms, he asserts, are also allowed by his postulated vortices. However, as even one of Meaden's staunchest defenders concedes, "Natural descending vortices ... are as yet unrecognized by meteorologists" (Fuller 1988). Meaden himselfacknowledges that"some from among my professional colleagues who have expressed surprise at the discovery of the circles effect and questioned why it has not previously attracted the attention ofscientists, prefer to deny its existence and reject the entire affair as a skillful hoax" (Meaden 1989,15). In contrast to Meaden's approach is that of Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews (1989), two engineers who have extensivelystudied and recorded the crop-circle phenomenon. The pages of their Circular Evidence are filled with digressions and irrelevancies-all calculated to foster mystery . Overall, Delgado and Andrews hint most strongly at the UFO hypothesis -perhaps not surprisingly, since both have been consultants to Flying Saucer Review (Grossman 1990). Although they profess "guarded views" about whether circles and rings have an extraterrestrial source, they frequently give the opposite impression. For example, they go out of their way to observe that a 1976 circle "appeared about seven weeks before a Mrs. [Joyce] Bowles had seen a UFO [and a silver-suited humanoid ] just down the road:' Again, after visiting one circle Andrews met two teenagers, one of whom had earlier seen "an orange glowing object" nearby. Other mysterious lights and objects are frequently alluded to in connection with crop circles(Delgado and Andrews 1989, 17,63,98). Almost predictably, a hybrid of the main theories has appeared in "eyewitness" form. Late one evening in early August 1989, or so they claimed, two young men witnessed a circle being formed near Margate, Kent. One of them, a nineteen-year-old, described "a spiraling vortex of flashing light" (a nod to Meaden et aL), which, however, "looked like an 71 ~ 72 ~ Real-Life X-Files upturned satellite TV dish with lots offlashing lights" (a gesture to flying saucer theorists). The youth kept a straight face while posing with the circle for a news photo ("A Witness" 1989-1990). As the crop-circle phenomenon entered the decade of the ninetiesbringing with it the emergence of ever more complex forms that earned the sobriquet "pictograms"-the main circular theorists rushed into print...