Posted on 08/15/2002 7:14:38 AM PDT by aculeus
'Tis the season for crop circles. And the Mel Gibson film, Signs, has renewed interest in who - or what - might make these mysterious markings. Here, controversial crop circle maker John Lundberg tells of his nights in the Wiltshire fields.
I don't regard myself as a hoaxer - I'm not interested in rug-pulling anybody. Yet the assumption is that if I make a crop circle, it must be because I want to undermine the beliefs of people who think they are not man-made.
But the myths and folklore that build up around crop circles are what fascinate me. The key thing for my art collective - myself, Rod Dickinson and Will Russell - is propagating this belief system.
We've always tried to have as good a relationship as possible with the crop circle research community, even though we're at odds with it.
It's like with politics - there are the moderates who are happy to coexist with us and the extremists who won't even admit that one crop circle might be manmade. They're the ones who have really demonised us. They regard us as heretics.
So some really weird conspiracy theories have grown up around us. The most amusing is that we're with the government or the secret service, that we're disinformation agents who get sent out to cover up genuine circles made perhaps by extraterrestrials, time travellers, ley lines, whatever.
I get thousands of abusive e-mails through our website. We've had attacks on our property, and one of my team had bricks thrown at him. But at least this is not America - people don't carry guns here.
Following long tradition
My group, Circlemakers, now describe what we do as art practice but at first it was just curiosity.
When in 1991 Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted that they had been making circles for the past 13 years, interest plummeted.
We wanted to crank it up again by making formations so huge and so complex that people would once again start asking the question: 'Is it possible that these things are manmade?'
As we're all based in London, we spend a lot of money on petrol and a lot of money driving up and down the M4 to Wiltshire.
The season runs from April, when the first crop is oil seed rape. In June it's barley and by mid-July it's wheat. That's the best crop to work in, that's when the most spectacular circles appear. Because each stem is upright, you can get pin sharp clarity.
We used to design the circles on paper, but because the formations have got so big, it's easier to use a computer. I could just come up with a pretty pattern, but that's not a crop circle - a crop circle is something that's feasible to construct in four hours, even if it spans 1,000 feet.
It's all very low-tech once we get into the field. We use surveyor's tape measure and a stalk stomper, which is basically a plank of wood. To make a circle, one person stands in the middle as a pivot and another holds the end of the tape and walks around them.
Unexplained experiences
It sounds slightly embarrassing, but I have had a UFO sighting while making circles in Wiltshire.
It was a black cigar shape with very fast strobing lights. It appeared on the horizon and slowly arced over us, completely silent. It was a classic UFO sighting in that we didn't know what it was.
I've seen balls of cracking light at the edge of the field, which is slightly unnerving. But what I see most often is flashes of light, as if someone's holding a flashbulb in front of my eyes.
Twice this has happened while we've had journalists with us. One, from The Face, was very sceptical of that side of it. About halfway through making the formation, he came rushing up to me shouting: 'Did you see that flash of light?' He's a believer now.
Speaking of property, do these people ask the farmers' permission before cutting down their crops?
He is also telling people that aluminum foil hats are useless as well so that the aliens can invade our minds as they did his.
. The caption to this photo (from BBC) reads "Farmers often charge spectators an entrance fee" suggesting to me that some circles are made with farmers' permission.
Of course the "real" circles are made by aliens who don't give a rat's patootie what any earthlings think.
"Hi, my name's John, and I...make crop circles."
(in unison) "Hi, John..."
Got it. I wonder, though, if they're at all worth seeing from ground level.
Don't forget the "viagra effect" claimed in the crop circle show on the History channel last weekend.
Rrrolll, rrrroll, rrrroll...
Wouldn't it be a hoot if whoever is behind the REAL crop formations gave these hoaxers a little "surprise" one night. And I don't mean just giving them a little light show...
Why now, when stalks close to one another are falling over, and in mostly the same direction, are we getting excited about it? Could it be that now there is a direction to it? A plan? An Evolution of plants, so to speak??
Why, schools of fish make amazing balls and whorls and sprials in their flight of fright from predators: why not plants, too?
Man will even COLLECT large amounts of these seeds: to study and plant and test. The poor ol' seeds in the PLAIN fields, not getting this attention, will merely give up THEIR lives for sustanence of animals and humans, and thereby REDUCE the amounts of them.
Yup, it's finally an example, in the wild, of Evolution at work!
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