It was 1976, and the world went into a tizzy when media outlets transmitted the news that crops in a wheat field in Wiltshire, England, had been inexplicably flattened in a circular pattern. Soon, other mysterious circles of flattened crops, in increasingly elaborate patterns, began to crop up in other fields throughout Britain. Eventually, it spread to other parts of the world. Once the phenomenon became widely known, it attracted self-declared experts who offered mystical, magical, and pseudo-scientific explanations for the mystery. The phenomenon captured imaginations and captivated minds for decades. As seen below, the whole thing was a hoax.
Are Aliens Trying to Communicate With Us in Code Using Crop Circles?
Various theories tried to explain the crop circles and patterns. They included secret weapons testing, restless spirits and ghosts, and Gaia, the primal Mother Earth, expressing her distress at what humanity had done to her planet. One of the explanations that gained the greatest currency was that the circles were created by space aliens to communicate with humanity in some as yet un-deciphered code. Quite a few people were eager to accept the theory that aliens were behind the crop circles. Only a decade earlier, mysterious circles had appeared in Australian crops. Many had attributed the Australian circles to UFO landings, and labeled them “[flying] saucer nests”.
Wiltshire, where the first British crop circle appeared, is located near Stonehenge. It is an area rife with burial mounds and ancient marker stones. New Age types had long claimed those landmarks were linked to others throughout Britain via “leys” – mysterious energy paths. On top of that, the region had been a hotbed for UFO watch parties for years. Wiltshire was like England’s Roswell, if you would. So it seemed apt that the first crop circles, or saucer nests, would appear in its vicinity. Soon, theories that included Stonehenge, ancient Druids, mystic energy paths, and the recently revealed crop circles, were combined in a complex explanation for the phenomenon. The circles themselves became magnets for New Age mystical tourism.
A Hoax Started by a Pair of Drunk Pranksters
In reality, the crop circles were the brainchild of Doug Bower, an English prankster. One night in 1976, he had been drinking with his friend Dave Chorley, and the two began to talk about UFOs, aliens, flying saucers and the mysterious Australian circles. Midway through the conversation, Bower suddenly said: “Let’s go over there and make it look like a flying saucer has landed”. As they confessed in 1991, when they finally revealed the mystery to journalists, it had been incredibly easy.
As they demonstrated to print and TV journalists by creating other crop circles in just minutes, all it took was rope, a wooden plank, and a wire to help them walk in a straight line. A “cereologist” – a crop circle “expert” who had made a living for years by writing and lecturing about the phenomenon, was called in. He declared the circles authentic. Then the hammer was dropped, when it was revealed to him that it had been a silly hoax and prank all along. As Bower and Chorley explained, they had created all the crop circles up to 1987 – about 200 of them throughout England. After that, other pranksters discovered how to make their own circles and patterns, and joined in on the fun.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
History Halls – Hoaxes: The Keely Engine Proved that Gibberish Sells if it Sounds Like Science
JSTOR Daily – Pssst, Crop Circles Were a Hoax
Smithsonian Magazine, December 15th, 2009 – Crop Circles: The Art of the Hoax
