Paranormal Studies 313: Crop Circles

Professor Grimes walked into the classroom precisely five minutes before his lecture was scheduled to begin. He picked up the student roster off his desk, glanced around the room, and placed a checkmark beside six names. He then sat down in the chair behind his desk and waited. The students in the room chatted with each other in low tones. Surprisingly, there were no cell phones in sight. My students are finally starting to catch on, the professor thought with satisfaction.

At precisely ten o’clock he got up and walked in front of his desk. “Good morning, class,” he said cheerfully. “This morning we are going to talk about–”

“Crop circles!” Ashley called out.

“Yes. That is correct, young lady. Today we are going to talk about crop circles.”

“We are?” she asked, confused. “I mean – what? Like, seriously?”

“Of course I am serious. Did you not see today’s topic listed in your syllabus? The topic of each lecture was set down long in advance and has not changed. If you would simply read the papers that I handed to you on the first day of class you would know everything that we’re going to discuss this semester, along with when we’re going to discuss it.”

Dan spoke up. “Hey, you know, speaking of that, what’s up with our semesters? This class started in December and has gone over into the next year. What’s up with that?”

“This is a paranormal class, young man,” the professor replied. “Why are you surprised that it has a paranormal schedule? Is that not to be expected?”

“It’s just so wrong,” he grumbled. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

The professor shrugged. “It makes a great deal of sense to me. If you did not like the schedule then you did not have to enroll. It was entirely your own choice. But, as I was saying earlier, today we are going to talk about crop circles.”

“That is just so weird,” Ashley commented. “I mean, you know, I kind of thought you were going to skip it. Crop circles are, like, kind of freaky.”

“The whole point of this class is to take a look at matters that are ‘kind of freaky’ and attempt to make sense of them. I will admit that when I first began my investigation into this topic I had grave concerns about it. It did not look promising.”

“Of course not,” Max replied. “Aren’t they all a hoax? I thought two guys came forward and said they were behind them all. It was a Dan somebody, I think. This has all been debunked, hasn’t it?”

“I believe you are referring to Doug Bower and Dave Chorley. It is true that in 1991 they came forward and claimed to be responsible for hundreds of crop circles that appeared between 1978 and 1991, including virtually all of the ones that were made before 1987. Ordinarily that would be enough to dismiss the phenomenon altogether. Then I discovered something rather intriguing: while there are many fake crop circles, there are a number of real ones as well.”

Max spoke up. “I don’t get it. A crop circle is a crop circle, right?”

“Not at all. In fake or hoax crop circles, people use boards to flatten the crops to the ground and create the designs. This breaks the stems of the plants and kills them. In some crop circles, however, the stems are bent, not broken, and the plants remain alive and continue to grow. This bending was caused by an intense burst of heat, which softened the stems and caused them to bend under their own weight. The heat also altered the plant’s crystalline structure. In fact, the difference in the plant’s chromosomes was so striking that in blind tests researchers were able to differentiate normal plants from crop circle plants.”

“Blind tests?” Max asked.

“That is correct. Despite what you may have been told, scientists have conducted serious research into crop circles, and research papers like Anatomical Anomalies in Crop Formation Plants have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Analysis has been conducted by trained biophysicists who worked in nationally-recognized laboratories. For example, the Signalysis laboratory in Stroud, England analyzed some samples and discovered some fascinating things. One example of a serious crop circle scientist is Dr. W. C. Levengood, who has spent years looking into the phenomenon and has performed laboratory trials to determine the differences between normal plants and crop circle plants.

“The results are quite interesting. In genuine crop circles – unlike the hoaxes – the chemical composition of the soil beneath the crop circle shows a significant change. The local water table in the vicinity is depleted, and the crystalline structure of the soil is altered as well – as if it had been subjected to tremendous heat for a short period of time. Not only is the soil baked, but short-lived radioactive isotopes have also been found. Moreover, the nodes of crop circle plants were enlarged and expanded, as if the water inside the plants had boiled and the steam had forced its way out of the plant, causing trauma. This could even be seen on a cellular level, where cell walls had been ruptured as if internal liquid had heated and forced out. Hoax circles had none of these characteristics and, in fact, have not been able to duplicate them.”

Lora spoke up. “I don’t really get all that biology stuff. This is, like, a history course, right? No one said that I would have to know biology.”

The professor sighed. “Then I suppose I need to simplify this discussion. Since the internal cellular structure of the plant itself had been altered in a repeatable and statistically significant manner, scientists were able to create a test to determine if a crop circle was genuine or a hoax. Roughly speaking, plants in hoax crop circles were crushed to the ground by boards, whereas plants in genuine crop circles appear to have been superheated by microwave radiation operating in the infrasound range – somewhere around 20 hertz. The radiation damaged the cellular structure of the plants and caused them to bend without killing the plant. In fact, in some cases the change was beneficial and the plants actually grew more rapidly than they had before. These changes have been confirmed by multiple groups in blind tests.”

Max started to say something, but the professor cut him off. “I am quite serious about all of this. If the work of Dr. Levengood is not enough for you then you may find the X-Ray Diffraction Study that was done by the BLT Research Team interesting. It was reported in The Providence Journal, among other places. These results are documented and reproducible. It is true that there are a great many hoax circles – but there are also many real circles as well, and science can actually tell the difference between them using objective tests.”

“So are we done?” Dan asked.

“We have only just begun!” Professor Grimes said enthusiastically. Dan sighed and slumped in his chair. The professor ignored him. “Now that we have established the existence of genuine crop circles, we can begin to explore the subject. Contrary to what the infamous Doug and Dave would have you believe, crop circles are not a new phenomenon. Accounts of crop circles date back to the late 17th century, and 200 cases were reported before 1970 – well before Doug and Dave claimed to have began the hoax. One odd thing about crop circles is that while they have appeared in 29 countries, 90% of them appear in southern England.”

“Which is where Doug and Dave live,” Max pointed out.

The professor sighed. “There are a great many problems with the stories of those two men. First of all, Doug and Dave were elderly men, not young men. If you have ever seen a crop circle show on television you may have seen people demonstrate how the hoaxed circles are made. It takes many hours of difficult work to produce even a simple design. The idea that these two elderly gentlemen ran all over southern England, making hundreds of complex formations in the dead of night all by themselves, is rather difficult to believe. It takes a dedicated team of people, working under well-lit conditions, quite a few hours to produce even a simple design. The manpower that would have been required to produce even one of the more intricate designs – let alone all of them! – is staggering. And that is setting aside the proven differences between the hoax circles and the real ones.

“The larger problem with their story is that, despite what the news media may have told you, they did not claim to make all crop circles everywhere. What they claimed was that they had made all of the ones within Hampshire County, England. However, when questioned, they could not tell people which of the Hampshire circles they had created or how they had made them. In fact, when asked about the crop circles outside Hampshire – and most circles did occur outside that county, not within it – the two men admitted that they had nothing to do with them. So, at the end of the day, these two elderly gentlemen claimed to have made some of the crop circles within a specific county in England, but they could provide no corroborating details and denied knowledge of the countless circles that appeared elsewhere.”

“But they did make some of them,” Max said.

“Oh, there are certainly countless hoax crop circles – of that there is no doubt. However, as I said earlier, there is a scientific way to differentiate genuine circles from hoax circles. No one has ever stepped forward and demonstrated how to make a genuine crop circle. However, people have reported seeing genuine crop circles suddenly come into existence. Eighty different eyewitnesses, scattered all over the world, have reported seeing shafts of light descend onto a field, flatten the crop, and create the design in less than thirty seconds. Pictures have even been taken of this, which are included in your textbook.

“In fact, one of the key pieces of evidence in favor of ‘real’ crop circles is the amount of time it takes to make them. Beside the dozens of eyewitness accounts, airplanes have photographed fields that were perfectly normal one moment but had an elaborate crop circle in them just fifteen minutes later. It is simply not possible for a team of hoaxers to produce a complex crop circle that quickly. Every year timed contests are held in which people race to make amazing man-made crop circles, but no one can even come close to making one that quickly.”

“So where do they come from?” Lora asked.

Max spoke up. “Probably freak weather conditions or something. I would guess ground lightning.”

Professor Grimes laughed. “Have you actually seen pictures of modern crop circles? The complexity of them is simply staggering – and there is actually an interesting story in that. Up to the end of the 1970s crop circle designs were just that – circles. They were very basic and rather boring shapes. In the 1980s the designs became more complicated, forming pictograms and petroglyphs. In the 1990s they increased in complexity again, and began depicting complex fractals, patterns from higher mathematics, and even patterns reflecting fourth-dimensional patters from quantum physics. The patterns were so incredibly intricate that scientists actually discovered five new mathematical theorems from looking at these complex crop circles. These are not simply round shapes. If you had actually done your assigned reading you would see what I mean – the pictures are all there in your textbook.”

“Fourth dimensional quantum physics?” Max asked. “Is there such a thing? What are the patterns now – fifth dimensional designs?”

“That is the interesting part,” the professor replied. “Over the past few years genuine crop circles have pretty much disappeared altogether. There are countless hoaxes, of course, but the hoaxes are easy to spot. Very few new circles appear, and the ones that do appear are quite basic. The crop circle phenomenon has pretty much stopped.”

“Really?” Ashley asked. “But why?”

The professor paused a moment, thinking. “Before we can answer that we must determine where the crop circles are coming from. As I said earlier, there are hoax crop circles and there are genuine crop circles. The hoax circles are done by teams of hoaxers and can be dismissed. We also know that the genuine ones are made by a complex microwave process that has never been successfully duplicated. The genuine ones are, therefore, not man-made.”

“So they’re naturally-occurring, then,” Max replied.

“That seems unlikely. When the designs were simple circles that was easy enough to believe. However, once the designs began reflecting principles of higher mathematics, including entirely new mathematical theorems, that explanation became unlikely. Look at it this way. If a pool of water on the ground forms a circle, well, that is easy enough to believe. But if it spells out the letters HELLO THERE LORA then I would begin looking for an intelligent designer.”

“But crop circles don’t actually talk to us,” Max said.

Professor Grimes shook his head. “That is where you are wrong. That very point is actually what piqued my interest in crop circles in the first place. In August 1991 an American named Erik Beckjord decided that some intelligence must be behind crop circles, and decided to try to communicate with it. He tramped the words ‘TALK TO US’ in a wheat field and waited. A week later a new crop circle appeared in the area – a design composed of letters. However, there was a problem: no one could recognize the script or read what it said. If you take a look at your textbook you’ll see why they were so confused – the font is rather cryptic.

“An effort was launched to decipher what came to be called the Milk Hill script. The letters resembled Hebrew but the language was eventually determined to be a form of Latin. The message was APPONO ASTOS, which means ‘We are opposed to cunning and deceit.’”

“What?” Ashley asked. “I don’t get it.”

“It does seem odd, until you think about it,” Professor Grimes replied. “Here is how one researcher put it:”

One of the most interesting recent developments involving crop circles is that they have begun responding to what is being said about them in the press! When it was hypothesized that the patterns were being done by pranksters in balloons, the patterns subsequently appeared directly under high-tension power lines, where balloons could not operate. When it was surmised that the strange geometric patterns on hillsides were the result of freak winds, the patterns moved again to flat fields.

When it was supposed that the patterns could be the result of some kind of refraction of microwaves, the patterns moved to areas where no microwave relay towers existed. When it was suggested that the patterns were the result of hoaxes perpetrated by humans, and some individuals actually claimed responsibility, the patterns were done in fields of canola, which is extremely brittle and difficult to bend.

(Bob and Suzanne Hamrick, Ufos – Demonic Deception, chapter 16)

“In other words, the crop circles responded to what was being said about them – which no natural process would ever do. Rain clouds will not move elsewhere if you write scathing letters to the editor about them, but that is precisely what happened here. When the circles first appeared people derided them as hoaxes, and so subsequent crop circles appeared in places designed to refute the hoax allegations. It was very much as if there was some intelligence behind them who didn’t like the fact that his work was not being recognized. APPONO ASTOS simply meant that he was tired of not getting the credit he deserved. There he was, doing something beyond human ability, and people simply did not believe it.”

“You think aliens were doing it?” Max asked incredulously.

“No, I do not,” the professor replied. “I find it difficult to believe that an advanced alien civilization, capable of traveling thousands of light-years across space, chose to reveal themselves to us by drawing pictures in wheat fields, and then became upset when people thought the designs were just hoaxes by bored teenagers. They would have to be utter morons to decide that that would be the best way to communicate with us, and if they were utter morons they never could have reached us in the first place. No, I do not think aliens are responsible. Nor do I believe it is some secret government conspiracy. I think there is a much simpler explanation. In my opinion, after carefully examining the evidence, I think it is quite likely that demons are responsible.”

“Demons again?” Max asked doubtfully. “I thought you said that ghosts were demons.”

“And I stand by that claim,” Professor Grimes replied. “The question we must ask is this: where does the evidence lead? We have established that men cannot make them, and it is highly unlikely that aliens or natural processes are responsible. If all natural explanations are ruled out then we are left with supernatural explanations, which takes us directly to angels and demons. Personally, I find it hard to believe that angels spend their free time flattening people’s wheat fields. When they have a message to deliver they deliver it in person and then leave. They do not play hide-and-seek games while destroying thousands of dollars of valuable plants that represents a farmer’s livelihood. Angels are very serious beings that are not to be trifled with. They do not play games.

“This does fit comfortably within the realm of the demonic, however. It’s worth noting that some crop circles do contain occultic and Satanic designs. On top of that, the language that was used in the Milk Hill script is quite noteworthy. If the intelligence behind crop circles was able to understand ‘TALK TO US’ then it was certainly capable of replying in English – but it did not do so. Despite the fact that the question was asked in English, by an English-speaking person, in an English-speaking country, the response was written in an obscure script and language that is only used in modern times in the occult world.

“It is probably impossible to know with certainty exactly why demons bother to create crop circles, but it’s quite possible that they were intended as a form of mass advertising, to get people interested in the occult. When people mocked them as hoaxes the demons ramped up production, spawning them in difficult locations and creating designs that reflected principles of higher physics. When even those were ignored they eventually gave up, realizing it was a lost cause. Western Civilization is so entrenched in its materialistic beliefs that even overt demonic activity such as this cannot break through our denial shields.”

“So crop circles are evil?” Lora asked doubtfully.

“That’s an interesting question,” the professor replied. “Think of it this way. Suppose that you were a farmer and you woke up one morning to find that your crop had been smashed flat by some unknown entity, and what little hadn’t been smashed was trampled into the ground by a crowd of onlookers. Wouldn’t that seem rather evil to you? Does that really strike you as a way God would communicate with people?

“You see, we already have a message from God – it’s called the Bible. It contains the complete, infallible, and perfect words of God, and it needs no further additions. It has everything we need to equip us to do all good works. Other cults may look for additional revelation, but Christians have no such need. God has already spoken to us and His message has been completed. The next time He speaks to us again it will not be through crop circles, but through His Son, telling us it is time to go home.”

The professor glanced up at the clock. “Dan, you can wake up now – you’re free to go. I will see all of you next week! Class dismissed.”