Crop Circles, Are They Really Just Hilarious Human Hoaxes?

Cereology is the study of crop circles. It’s not a new endeavor, but there is plenty of disagreement over who or what creates these formations.

History’s first known crop circle was depicted on an English woodcut from 1678, which describes the “mowing devil of Hertfordshire.” Those were simpler days, when one would blame any weird happenstance on Satan. The demonic hordes seemed to have taken a two-century break, as the next recorded mention dates to 1880, this time in Surrey, England. No one understood what or who made these crop circles, but the finger was once again pointed downward.

In the 1970’s, crop circles made a big comeback in the English countryside and soon began showing up all over the world. At first, people thought aliens had landed. The basic disc shape of yore gave way to intricate designs that could be described as crop spiro-grams, crop mandalas, or perhaps crop snowflakes. Whatever they were called, they were obviously man-made, and paranormal explanations became a tough sell.

Let’s apply forensics, like detectives at a crime scene. Suppose your wheat farming friend Chuck calls about a big circular patch of crushed wheat in his field. Because Chuck keeps screaming about crop damage as opposed to alien intrusion, you figure this isn’t his attempt at a rural practical joke. There are no tractor tracks or boot prints, except where Chuck obviously clopped through the site. The wheat is crushed and matted, not cut. You and Chuck put your mind to what might have possibly caused it.

A cyclone, tornado, or dust-devil? It would have had to be a mighty precise one, not to mention stealthy.

An alien starship? Maybe one that wasn’t big enough to torch the entire wheat field.

A sign from Earth spirits? Looks like their alphabet only has one letter.

Secret intelligence projects? An intelligence agency that drew such attention to a “secret project” would be a stupidity agency. You can see why such mysteries created controversy.

When the patterns went beyond discs, someone was obviously doing crop art. In September 1991, two merry Englishmen, Dave Chorley and Doug Bower, finally admitted that they had created many crop circles. Their method made a perfect circle. Dave stood in the middle and held a rope attached to a board, while Doug stomped the board down in a fixed radius. Or vice versa.

Cereologists were embarrassed and felt that they had been played. Meanwhile farmer Chuck learnes that he could charge the curious cereologists and tourists a nice fee to view the damaged crops. So he stopped cussing and paid off his tractor loan with the proceeds. But not all crop circles have been positively identified as hoaxes, and some have been quite complex.

The fact is that no one has a definitive explanation for the crop circles that can’t be traced to hoaxers. Many of the delicate plants in these formations have been manipulated in ways deemed too complex for the average person. So does that point back to space creatures?

If alien ships made the crop circles, you’d think someone would have a credible photo of one, or that they’d show up on air defense radar. Then again, some people report having seen precisely these things.

Compared to aliens who could make the trip here, earthlings would be technological Neanderthals. Surely, such advanced beings could manage to sculpt away at some crops without farmer Chuck shooing them away with a shotgun or jet fighters intercepting them. But why in the world would aliens even want to doodle in our dirt? That’s a harder question to answer, because alien “thoughts and logic” could well be alien to our human “thoughts and logic”.

crop circles, are crop circles real, are crop circles a hoax, where are the most crop circles, is it illegal to make crop circles, what is cereology, how to make crop circles