I love the way the preface of this book is written. Basically, he points out exactly what I’m thinking when I hear about Crop Circles – they were this big sensation in the 90s. People were really going crazy thinking that aliens were here and leaving messages in crops. And then Doug and Dave came along and said that they’d been leaving their beds at night to go out and create these crop circles as a laugh–even without their wives knowing…for 10 YEARS. I’m sorry, but if my husband had been sneaking out regularly with another woman’s husband for 10 years…the last thing I’d be thinking would be crop circles.
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These two dudes, were sneaking out for 10 years to brokeback mountain with each other, when some man in black deep state official used this info to bribe them into telling a story about how they were the dopes who were creating these crop circles.
But after this, the stories about crop circles just went away. Anyone who continued to talk about crop circles after this was considered a looney. This is precisely what I thought as well. Crop circles were a hoax, move on with your life. Then, I started evaluating why I believed what I believed; and, as I started realizing that reality might be much stranger than I’d originally thought, crop circles “Cropped” back into my awareness.
The author, Lucy Pringle, acknowledges that some of the crop circles which were spotted were actually hoaxes – maybe Doug and Dave’s creations or some other person’s good work. But she brings up several reasons why the hoaxes don’t necessarily disprove the existence of real, unexplained, crop circles. One was the fact that several people remembered crop circles way back in the 1930s. One woman said she played in the crop circles with her friends during the war. And she said there were two fields where the circles would show up; and it went on for 3 – 4 years…I’m guessing before they just stopped showing up…?
One of the biggest questions I have is why are crop circles so heavily concentrated in the UK? Of course, they’ve been spotted all over the world, but the UK seems to just get tons of them. Pringle points out that the majority of crop circles are in this spot – the “chalk lands of the Wessex triangle.” She says that underneath this area are aquifers or pockets of water. She thinks that the water is “attracting” the electricity which is forming the circle. Now, how that actually works, i have no idea; but I imagine it’s just a theory anyway, since no one really knows how crop circles are formed. She also points out:
There are also many energy or geodetic stress lines here. These lines move in harmony with the earth’s tectonic plates, and release electromagnetic fields when they shift. All genuine crop formations appear on these energy lines.
Crop Circles by Lucy Pringle
The other point that she makes is the nature of disturbance to each plant in the crop circle. She describes how the plants in a genuine crop circle will have evidence of explosive cavities in the stem joints–similar to what happens when you heat a potato without pricking it. Just one exploded cavity or several? I was unclear about this. The stem also falls over – it doesn’t break; whereas fake crop circles, however, have crushed stems–because someone is just stepping on the plants with wooden planks, I guess. Now, if this is true, exactly as she states it, then this should be verifiable – are there really exploded cavities and is it true that we really have no explanation for how these explosions happened. IF it’s true that we have no explanation for this, then it should be pretty solid proof that real crop circles have unexplained origins…or aliens which is how I categorize all unexplained phenomena.
The other point about crop circles she makes is how they all seem to display these perfect mathematical or geometric patterns; and there are several diagrams of circles in the book which have lines and numbers and equations written on them…but I didn’t see an explanation of what patterns were being identified. Now this isn’t to say that there isn’t any, and Pringle most likely left out this bit from her book because it would have been devastatingly boring, but it’s another piece of evidence which would be compelling. Are there really representations in these circles of perfect mathematical proportions and ratios; and, if so, what mathematician is designing these things and then going out in the middle of the night with wood planks to create them?
The speed with which they are created is also one of the nails in the coffin of the debunkers – who should all be put to death (kidding). Aside from the multiple eyewitness accounts of them appearing in real time right before their eyes, there have been cases of multiple eyewitnesses taking note of an empty field at one moment, and then a crop circled field only a few hours later. Meanwhile, when the debunkers attempt to fake a crop circle, way more time and manpower are required One example is a formation called the Julia set. I’ll leave a photo in the shownotes or you can google it. It’s stunning; and it was close to stonehenge. So at 5:30 pm, a pilot flew over an empty field; then at 6 pm, another pilot flew over – and there was the Julia Set.
Meanwhile, a gamekeeper and a security guard were able to confirm that nothing was there in the morning; Pringle claims also that a police report (arrest the aliens) concluded based on the eyewitness accounts, that basically the formation appeared within 15 minutes. So again, we have evidence to suggest that human beings with wooden planks are not necessarily behind all crop circle formations.
Throughout the book, Pringle has all sorts of beautiful photographs of the various crop circle formations. I think I only saw 2 or 3 which were of hoaxes, and I wish that she’d added a few more since it’s interesting to compare the man-made crop circles with the ones that are authentic. One of the man made ones was of a Mazda car; and Mazda apparently commissioned the crop formation to be created as a marketing campaign. Pringle claims that the two men hired to do this were heard to be arguing with each other and really putting up a fuss trying to get this car finished. Now she might just be saying this to support her case, who knows; but if it’s true, then it definitely begs the question how are the rest of the formations done, and consistently created year after year – when it’s that much of a pain in the ass.
I have a link to her website btw in the shownotes:
And there are so many photos of crop circle formations. Hilariously, after the description for each photo, she mentions what the crop was. So it’s like ,”The Julia Set, Wiltshire, 7 July 1996 919 ft x 508 ft, 151 circles, Wheat. It would be funny if she’d left the crop type out of the description, and someone reading the book is like, “wait, was this found in wheat or oats or barley? Seriously, does this woman know anything about these crop circles?!” this is bullshit!
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the half mile (over 2500 feet) long pictogram crop formation which appeared in Oxfordshire on the 26th of July 1994. This massive formation appeared within the span of minutes as unknown electromagnetic forces streamed through each individual plant knocking them over at their stem joints, resulting in a massive work of art which reflects mathematical and geometric patterns of utmost precision. But if you thought this was impressive, get this, the crop was russet potatoes.
I just made this up
Pringle also discusses crop circle phenomena – so in addition to the crop circles just forming, there are also strange phenomena which occur when people encounter the crop circles. What I love about the way she’s written this book is that she had little title headings for each anecdote; and the headings are sort of understated for the stories behind them. For example, Pringle reports findings from a man named Andre Tong, a farmer, who was called by a fellow farmer to investigate something unusual…a four pointed star, roughly the size of an acre had formed in his crop overnight. Moreover, this was a crop of carrots; and all of the carrots had just disappeared…there weren’t even holes where the carrots would have been; and these carrots were the size of a man’s fist. Andre said that the farmer was really pissed that someone had taken his carrots; meanwhile, Andre was thinking that hundreds of people would have been needed to remove all of those carrots overnight. Pringle decided to title this particular anecdote, “Some of our vegetables are missing.”
Another section of her book is devoted to some of the physical effects – and even healing effects – which have been observed by people entering the crop circles. And I’m going to talk about some of the anecdotes which people shared with Pringle in a sec, but I have to point out–again, with her understated titles–a man entered one of the formations, and immediately had an erection until the following day. What does Pringle title that subsection of the chapter? “An uplifting experience.”
So the way that Pringle first discovered that crop circles might have effects on our physical bodies was through her own experience as well as that of a friend’s on the same day. So she and a friend were going to check out this formation; and as she was on her way, she was noticing this shoulder pain she had from playing tennis the day before; but then, when she got to a particular part of the formation, she felt this energy rippling through her shoulders, and the pain went away. But she also just enjoyed the sensation, so she stayed where she was. She called her friend Margaret over as well, but didn’t tell her why. She wanted to see if Margaret noticed anything. Well, she did – immediately. She suffered from Raynaud’s phenomenon, and straight away noticed tingling in her fingertips where the circulation was often blocked. Margaret also suffered from scleroderma which led to many issues, including really bad acid reflux in her esophagus, so she usually couldn’t lie down; but she ended up lying down for 20 minutes straight in the circle because the reflux was just gone. And even when she left the formation, she continued to experience well-being.
After this, Pringle decided to pay attention to stories about the healing effects of the circle; she collected quite a few stories about people with really bad arthritic pain receiving great relief when they step in the crop circle formations; but some people would be relieved for a few days after only, while others’ experienced well being for a year after. It’s interesting to think about what the differences between these two groups of people might be.
Disappointingly, there have also been reports of people experiencing healings in crop circle hoaxes. Now this could be due to the fact that the hoaxes are created in the natural energy vortices in which we find genuine crop circles, but it does suggest that some placebo effect may be playing a role in some of these cases.
But the other interesting thing she noticed was that sometimes, the crop circles actually made her feel awful. There was a formation which they called the Insectogram. It’s not an insect shape, but it kind of looks like one. She says that she and her friend were just walking around it, feeling peaceful when Sarah, her friend just ran out to the car. She was nauseous, but when she got out of the formation, she was fine again. Maybe this was due to Sarah not eating that morning, who knows, but the next day, Pringle brought another friend, Michelle, to the same formation. Michelle didn’t even make it within 20 yards of the formation before she just stopped short, like she’d hit a wall. Then, I guess she moved past the wall, when she just fell down, lying prostrate on the ground. She told Pringle she was fine, and just needed to lie there, but she stayed there for quite a bit. Pringle said she went to what she referred to as a “Safe spot” in the formation. I Have no idea what that means, but when she saw Michelle finally kind of peel herself up from the ground, Pringle started feeling really nauseous and actually had to run out. I wonder if she just feels like it’s impolite to say “and then I puked,” because all she ever says is that someone or another felt nauseous.
One guy visited the formation and he experienced some of the unpleasant sensations, but they were familiar to him since he was a molecular biologist. He said they were similar to UV and gamma radiation; and I’m thinking, “safety precautions, buddy. Just because your job involves radiation, doesn’t mean that you have to get exposed to it. What are you just taking a bath in the lab?”
A lot of people experience all sorts of emotions, from well-being to anger; and it’s easy to pass all of this off as some sort of placebo effect, but she does tell one story which I found to be compelling; and this is of Ralph Noyes. Now Noyes was actually the undersecretary of State in a division which actually handled UFO reports, so he has some credibility. But in 1990, he went to visit a triangle formation, wheat; and what happened to him in that formation stunned him so much that he didn’t speak about it for 2 years after – because he was trying to find some sort of rational explanation for what happened to him. To begin, when he entered the formation, he saw a vision of a flow of bright particles from one side of the triangle to the other, but when he asked his friends, they didn’t see it. But more mysterious, and even slightly disturbing to him, was that he and his friends were just enchanted by the area. They stayed there for an hour and a half, standing at first, and eventually sitting down.
Now, if your friend came to you and asked if you wanted to go to a field, and just stand there for an hour and a half…you’d be like, “is there cotton candy?” “no,” “ah, but is there a ferris wheel?” “no. there’s nothing but a triangle, and we’re going to stand in it for an hour and a half. I just don’t think that would seem very appealing. But he found it disturbing because he really felt like being inside the formation was addictive, like if he stayed there any longer, he’d just let go of all the responsibilities of his normal life.
But other unusual occurrences have transpired in connection with crop circles. One story is about Ray Barnes who witnessed a crop circle being formed in 1981. Barnes claimed that he saw a line go through the field…which is difficult for me to imagine. But the line started at one point, and moved in an arc-like pattern through the field. There’s a diagram in the book which is how I’m able to describe this. At the point where it ended, it created just a single circle–that’s it. I would say that, as crop circles go, this is a pretty boring one. But maybe that’s all he could take witnessing because some time later, he started losing vision in his right eye, and a few years after that, his left eye. Basically, he developed these cataracts, and the ophthalmologist said they were “fluorescent sclera.” The only case of this the ophthalmologist had ever seen; and usually, this is a result of radiation exposure.
To make the story more interesting, Ray claims that two weeks before his cataract surgery, he had these dreams which were prophetic of the actual surgery. He saw in his dream being wheeled into a room with a green ceiling, and that’s exactly what happened – not sure how he could have known that the ceiling in the surgery room would be green. But what was more interesting was that after the surgery, he had this superhuman vision – he could see auras around everything, as well as all these intricate patterns – he says the kinds of patterns you would see in satins or silks. I’m guessing what he’s talking about is like the paisley designs, but it’s not clear from the book. Honestly, what this sounds like is what you would see if you were on a psychedelic.
What happens if you eat seeds from within a crop circle? According to one woman, a crop circle formation just shows up in your hair. Just kidding, but one woman reported that she felt like she had taken speed. She felt lots of energy, sleeplessness, nervousness, loss of appetite. A couple of these side effects sound nice. This went on for a while, relative to other drug “trips” if you will because she ate the seeds, and didn’t even feel anything until the next day…then she kept feeling it for 5 days. On the fifth day:
I was flying and it happened very suddenly. I remember walking along a street in Glastonbury when I was overcome by a feeling of total cellular vibration. I stopped and stared at my hands because of what felt like streams of energy pouring out of my palms. It was like the tingling sensation one gets after a limb has “gone to sleep” and The blood starts to flow again. I found I could not focus on anything and was extremely disoriented.
Crop Circles by Lucy Pringle
See, at first when I’m reading this, I’m thinking “wow, that sounds like an amazing trip, give me some seeds!” but the second part of the story doesn’t sound so great. And the energy build up seemed to get even worse, to the point where Barbara got scared. She lay in the grass, and said that letting the energy pour out of her hands seemed to help a bit. Here’s the kicker, she was allergic to wheat! Why, you ask, did she eat it? Well, apparently, she was just struck by this unexplained compulsion to consume the seeds, so she did. Moreover, since the effects of eating the seeds didn’t come to her until the next day, she did not put it together that the seeds might have actually caused the issue. But she got back home, was feeling fine, and decided to eat some of those seeds again!! Once more, she had this rush of energy flow through her body to the point that she thought she was going to spontaneously combust. She also works with electrical equipment, and noticed that a lot of it was shorting out!.
Then, the sneaky little devil decided to give her coworkers the seeds…and they experienced the same thing! I wonder if she warned them before she gave them the seeds. Sneakier yet, the author claims that she sent Barbara some seeds from a non-crop circle formation, and Barbara ate those, and reported no strange side effects.
The last crop circle phenomenon I want to touch on is that of time slips. Time slips are a very intriguing phenomenon – perhaps you have seen the show Outlander in which a woman accidentally is thrown back in time, and falls in love with a hot Scottish guy – At first it’s this hot fantasy until you realize that there’s no plumbing. When she is returned to the future, she longs to go back to her hot Scot. Time slippage not withstanding, the most unrealistic part of this show is the idea that a woman can fall so hard in love with a man that she will forgo the conveniences of modern technology to be with him.
But I digress. Ron Russell, an American artist, was with his friend, John at a formation called the “nested Dragon,” in Avebury Trusloe in August of 1994. He realized when they got to the formation that he had left his film in the car, so he started the walk back, retracing his steps; but as he retraced his steps, he realized that the car wasn’t anywhere in sight. Moreover, the tram lines – which are fairly ever present in these crops – were no longer there. He was sure he was walking the same route back as he did on the way there, though, so he was really confused. Hilariously, the way he describes it is like he thought right away that he had just gone back in time. You know, as one does when one is walking around a crop circle late at night. Anyway, he sees these open fires off in the distance and walks towards them. There he sees these short people walking around them, as well as these thatched huts; so his mind is made up that he’s in the past. He wants to say hi, but realizes that he might get burned at the stake for his attire and camera, so he backtracks to the crop circle.
When he gets there, he tells his friend, “come with me, i’ve found a time door.” Again, this was before the show Outlander was out, so his friend just follows him; but this time around, the car is exactly where it originally was and the door apparently had disappeared. Anyway, he apologizes to John for being gone for so long, but John is like, what are you talking about, you were gone for like 5 minutes…
So that’s it for today’s episode. Thank you for listening, and see you next time!
