CROP CIRCLES: THE 1992 COMPETITION

An important milestone in crop circle history, another event that happened during the key years of Operation Blackbird, and Doug and Dave, at the beginning of the 1990’s. It is 1992 and biologist Rupert Sheldrake, best known for his theory of morphic resonance, and crop circle researcher John Michell organised a crop circle making competition which took place in a field in West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on the estate belonging to Sir Francis Dashwood. The link above gives an overall description of the event and its outcomes.

At the bottom of the page in this link there is another to a YouTube film where Rupert Sheldrake recounts the contest in a Trialogue with Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham. This short film is interesting as it demonstrates how intelligent, scholarly, and broad-minded individuals reacted to crop circles during the early years of the phenomenon. Listening to Terence McKenna expressing his opinion that the crop circles are ‘tailor made for the English mind’ and also that the phenomenon ‘should be considered largely confined to the British Isles’, and that ‘claims of crop circles in remote parts of the world are absolutely fraught with the specious’, I would be inclined to agree with him. Although he is speaking here before the crop circle phenomenon really got underway around the middle of the 90’s, and rapidly spread to other countries across the world including France, Germany, Italy, and the USA, we believe that the genuine non-mechanically made crop circles have been almost exclusive to the English counties of Wiltshire, Hampshire and Kent.

Robert Hulse and David Cayton in Richard D. Hall’s excellent film from 2009, ‘Crop Circles: The Hidden Truth’, have stated that the crop circles are not confined to England and have been occurring all over the world and, judging by the way they expressed this observation, we are given the impression that they believe many of these formations to be manifestations of the same genuine phenomenon one would expect to see in England. We are aware that the crop circles have for years become a worldwide event, but we feel these are in the very large majority of cases man-made hoaxes. England, and particularly Wiltshire, and to narrow it down further, the area around Avebury and the Vale of Pewsey, is the true home of the genuine, non-mechanically made crop circles.

Covering the globe with hoaxed crop circles waters down the genuine phenomenon and takes the attention away from that part of Wiltshire mentioned above, which could well be the objective.

To add a caveat to this, we accept that as we have not been able to visit any of the non-English crop circles we open ourselves up to the criticism that as we have not been in them we cannot be 100 percent sure of their provenance. We appreciate this, however we feel we have had enough experience to tell whether a crop circle is man-made when looking at an aerial view. Once again this is only our opinion, but based on many years of observations. What is missing in the majority of the non-English crop circles is good quality ground photos. Either way we believe, and Robert and David would probably agree with us, that with very few exceptions, all crop circles, in England or elsewhere, from after the first decade of this century have been man-made hoaxes.

Spending hours in the dark of night flattening and crushing wheat, barley and oilseed rape must have been a thankless task, especially in oilseed rape, so the remunerations, pay-back, would have had to have been substantial. And the justification for all this effort? It’s just a thought though wouldn’t the initial plan to juxtapose hoaxed formations amongst the genuine be done to confuse and to discourage researchers. If that was the plan it does seem to have worked as some study groups folded after being fed up with all the hoaxing. But if, as we believe, the true phenomenon withdrew towards the end of the first decade of this century, why continue to spend all these years since then creating more and more hoaxed circles. The only plausible answer is one of history. Were the hoaxing to stop more or less around the same time as the genuine crop circles, then at the cut-off point the story would continue to carry genuine crop circles as amongst the last arrivals ever to grace the fields. By continuing the hoaxing for another 15 years after the demise of the genuine it put such a distance between the last genuine crop circle and the final end of the hoaxing program, which, with just seven recorded in 2024, appears to be slowing down dramatically, that when in the future people look back to research and understand the history of the crop circle phenomenon, they will have to wade through 15 years of fakes to get to that last genuine formation. So the smothering of the true story would be active in space, and time.

It does seem strange don’t you think that some French people of a sceptical nature who have no geographical, cultural or emotional ties to English crop circles, should get so carried away to the extent that they do.

The Shakespearian quote, ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much’, seems to fit well here.

And yet in Wiltshire the very people whose property is habitually visited by these formations appear to offer no response, and leave it to the farmer to whom they lease the fields to engage with the public.

By right these two positions should be inversed. These sceptics, if they have a genuine interest in crop circles, and hoaxing, would do better to concentrate on those which appear in France first, where they would have a greater opportunity of actually visiting one. They would certainly have plenty of material to be getting on with there. And as for the Wiltshire landowners, if my ‘back garden’ was being habitually visited by a phenomenon of an unknown provenance I would be out there like a shot, and I would be exchanging my discoveries with others in an effort to further an understanding of what was going on. We are not aware that this has ever been the case here.

So, to sum up, the people the least competent to express an opinion on crop circles appear to be the ones who have the most to say, and those who ought to be amongst the go-to authorities on crop circles seem to prefer to remain silent.