Are Crop Circles Only For Fun?

Crop circles are big business. Books, movies, countless prints and tee-shirts, not to mention the volume of tourists attracted by them, all add up to a phenomenon.

Yet, if you take the time to surf the web about these strange shapes and signs in crops, you will come across something quite strange.

Crop circle information falls into three main groups:

• Skepticism, either outright or toned down
• Uncritical recording of 'the latest' offerings
• Relatively uncritical theories, assumptions or assertions about how they are made and what marvelous messages they give us.

I don't know about you, but I find such approaches to be less than satisfactory.

And where, if anywhere, do aliens fit in to all this?

Crop circles in perspective

Crop circles appear in many places around the globe. The majority seem to appear in southern England.

There have been, apparently, sightings of markings in field crops back in the 1800's (although it is difficult to to find agreement as to which is the earliest one).

The present interest started in the 1970's, at the same time as people came forward to say that they had created them.

Now, it is clear to me that many of the crop circles are made by people as a hoax. How many is difficult to say. But, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out later that some farmers have been working with the human creators as a way of boosting revenue from tourists.

In other words, the whole phenomenon appears to be relatively modern (with the advent of aerial photography) and to have a high proportion of human input.

What are they?

Here, you have have the same problem as asking people about aliens. The answer will depend greatly on your beliefs.

If you happen to know some of the circlemakers, you'll tend to dismiss them all as hoaxes. If you prefer a more metaphysical approach, then you will bring in ideas of aliens.

For most people, I'm guessing it's somewhere in between these two. Something like: "Crop circles are pretty and also mysterious and some of them can't be explained easily".

Let me make it quite clear. I have seen a crop circle, but beyond that I am not an expert on their history or design or anything else.

What I am interested in, however, is how people react to them and whether there is alien input.

Alien messages?

For those who lean towards the non-earthly end of the belief spectrum, then these signs carry a lot of weight.

For some they supposedly show musical scales or are pictorial representations of mathematical formula. Still others talk of messages encoded in the patterns which they are able to decipher.

If they are alien messages, then they appear to be highly developed in actually drawing shapes in crops, but decidedly stupid in actually making the shapes easy to understand. I would have thought simple language would work well, or iconic images? Why the patterns if they are made by alien space craft?

Some observers claim to have seen craft above patterns as they suddenly appear in fields. But no evidence has ever been made available to support this claim, other than anecdotal.

But what of the research inside the circles?

This has pointed out anomalies in the biology of the stalk inside circles and those outside. These include such things as holes where (it is suggested) superheated steam has escaped under pressure, alteration of nodes in stalks and stunted or no seeds inside the circles.

It is difficult to discount such careful studies as no more than chance. Something certainly does happen inside some of the crop circles.

Electronic equipment such as cameras and cell phones do not work in such circles. This is a phenomenon we have had personal experience of.

We built a large labyrinth in our backyard once. We like them and wanted one. It looked good and helped out greatly in the landscaping. We invited several friends over to walk it and just generally visit. They all brought cameras with them. Not one photo was taken (batteries inexplicably died, even when replaced with new ones) and a video camera only worked in the house. The moment it was taken outside, the screen turned to 'snow'.

There were no aliens there. It was entirely man-made (we have the blisters to prove it), but strange things happened.

Other ways of seeing them

My question is this, why is it not possible to have crop circles coming from within the earth? From energies within the earth which come out in various ways which people can react to?

Or...is it not possible to think that aliens which are only energetic, not physical, could be responsible for such things?

As to why they are increasing in complexity, some of it is, no doubt, due to humans experimenting with better ways of making them. But also, some of it is, I believe, a reaction to how people perceive them.

In some way, I think that there is a two-way process in crop circles. They appear, we react and 'decipher' them and then they move on to the next stage of complexity to await decipherment. Once they are 'appreciated' they change again.

This only sounds strange if you disconnect from the Earth. We are part of the Earth. We live on it. It reacts to us as we react to it. It should not be difficult to believe that crop circles are a sign of that interaction.

One explanation I heard for crop circles was that it was the Earth's way of treating us homeopathically (by getting into our bread).

It's cute, I'm not sure I agree, but it is another viewpoint. And, let's face it, we need another viewpoint, instead of the tired ones we see everyday on the web.

If you are going to go for aliens as the cause, then at least let's think in new ways about aliens and what they might be doing. Perhaps pretty patterns in crops is the best they can do.

Back To Alien Technology

Back to Home Page from Crop Circles Page