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In a previous article, I showed how "BLT", the group of Burke, Levengood and Talbot, as well as the Dutch physicist Eltjo Haselhoff, fooled their readers about alleged "scientifically proven crop circles" in Hoeven, the Netherlands.
The so-called scientific evidence isn't one. But worse, the so-called witness of a luminous "phenomenon" which allegedly "created" this circle, Robbert van den Broeke, is quite simply a defrauder known for a long time as such in the Netherlands, caught for example when he tried to pass along a photograph of a Papua-New-Guinea native he cut off the Reader' S Digest as a photograph of an extraterrestrial being he took!
Of course, my article was never mentioned by any of all the "crop circles" website, their goal is to make you believe just anything, certainly not to help you to discover that behind the "scientifically proven crop circles" rest only perfectly ridiculous errors and lies.
Well, the story wasn't over, as we are now served with "snow circles", "crop circles in the snow" so to speak, again in Hoeven, allegedly "unexplainable", impossible to be done by people, "snow circles" whose "witness", "discoverer" is, once again, as by chance: Robert van den Broeke.
The story starts as usual with BLT, in the form of a web page by Nancy Talbot. BLT talks about "scientific investigation, but there isn't any science here, Nancy Talbot isn't a scientist, does not use a scientific approach and hides since the beginnings the frauds of her "favorite witness" Robert van den Broeke. William Levengood claimed he had a science PhD in the past, but it was soon discovered that it has not, and his work, in the form of "reports" published by the BLT and no true scientific publications, is made up primarily of interpretation errors, and claim to show that the "cause" of the crop circles, besides those done by men, are neither "aliens" nor "psychic powers" as Talbot thinks, but, amazingly, ionized plasma balls resulting from meteors!
http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert/snow09.php
She calls her friend Robert van den Broeke in the night of December 17 and they talk about various things during approximately half an hour, and finally van den Broeke tells her that he "feels" that crop circles could "appear", and Nancy Talbot then has "the feeling" that it might occur before Christmas.
Talbot says that the next evening about midnight, Van den Broeke "had a strong feeling", an "angst" or "disquiet" about crop circles that might appear in a field very close to his home, where he claims since years that "strange things" occur. Van den Broeke calls a friend so that she drives him to this field (which is however close to his home) to see whether a crop circle appeared there.
They get there the next day at one o'clock in the morning by -10°C whereas there are "6 inches" of snow on the ground, and Van den Broeke "immediately feels" a great calm, peaceful, a "holy" environment and hears, we are a told, a choir of singing angels (forget crop circles making aliens, we deal with circles making singing angels here).
Talbot said she asked Robbert's friend if she heard the singing angels too but guess what, she didn't hear a thing, (it might be said that is the proof that Van den Broeke has "psychic hearing" powers we ordinary people don't have, right?)
He and her friend go down towards the field and see "multiple rings dug in the snow-covered field". It is dark, so they do not look further, but Van den Broeke comes back in the day with a photographer friend, who takes photographs.
On December 22, Van den Broeke calls Talbot and tells her that that another "formation" was discovered in the same field, which Talbot comments, without laughter:
"I have known Robbert for more than 10 years now and have never known him to be mistaken about these 'intuitions' he has regarding new circles coming in his area. His experience of these 'energies' that portend, and then accompany, the appearance of new circles is very intense, as anyone who knows him well can attest."
Anyone with a common sense would understand that when a someone "announces" crop circles in advance in his area, this someone might well, rather than be gifted of "psychic" intuitions, quite simply be the person who made these crop circles... And thus, these allegedly supernatural or "mediumnic" "intuitions" would obviously appear... always correct!
When this person was caught in photographic frauds, to still believe in his alleged "power to predict crop circles appearance in his area" is just blind faith!
But for Nancy Talbot, there is no doubt, these "snow circles" could not have been made by people like you and me, they are made by unspecified "energies"... So what is the "scientific evidence" that allows her to claim this?
1 - Nancy Talbot believes that since there are no traces of footstep, nobody entered the field to make these figures. Yes, after more than 10 years thinking about crop circles, Nancy Talbot still has not realized that it there is no need to leave footsteps traces, as is the formation itself which was traced where the prankster passed, masking his own traces!
In reality:
That good old "there's no footstep traces" joke..."
All you need is to look at the diagrams of the 2 formations published by Talbot on the BLT website to see that the formation starts at the edge of a way, the prankster's entry point to the field!
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And of course, all these so-called "circles" and "ellipses" are contiguous. A step on a side, and there you go, you start the layout of the next circle...
And if it had been necessary to make believe in the absence of footsteps traces, all one needed to do is to cover its traces with a little snow behind oneself, obviously!
2 - Nancy Talbot believes that since there are no footstep traces in the layouts themselves, then they weren't made by feet, therefore they are no prank!
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Left: Talbot writes that there are no footsteps traces in the circles. Scratches in the direction of the layout are visible, also on the other photographs. |
How many times will it be necessary to explain that there is plethora of means to flatten either crop or snow? In fact, by looking closely at the pictures, they appear generally of the same width, relatively flat, and show furrows such as can be created by the corrugated back of some snow shovels, or some garden rollers, or maybe a weighed upside down doormat...
3 - Nancy Talbot believes that since there is no snow evacuated on the edges of the layouts, it must be an "energy" which did them!
Anyone who ever played in the snow knows that snow is not a compact solid and that it can be pressed down by various means, no "ejected snow" on the edges is necessary...
4 - What happened to the "crop circles' perfect geometry"?
How many times were we told that crop circles, "geometrically perfect", are thus not made by men, who would be too dumb to do some open air geometry?
But in this case the alleged "geometrical perfection" somewhat leaves to be desired:
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In reality:
The crop circles are seldom "geometrically perfect", on the contrary, they show errors, almost inevitable since they are made by human, not by supernatural, magical, psychic means, not aliens, and no sophisticated "technology" is used. Thus the "best crop circle" of Stonehenge in 1996 betrays its human making by, amongst other things, shoddy positioning of the external circles; the "best crop circle" called the bee, in 2004, shows that the side axes are not parallel, and so on.
But, why are these Hoeven "snow circles" not decent circles? The easiest to trace as regards crop circle, is the circle! Did the "crop circle making aliens" lose their talent when they work in snow rather than crop? Are the "psychic powers", the mysterious "energies" less effective in snow than in crop? Why, oh why?
Nope.
A priori, one could simply suspect that whereas in crop, two people, or one people using a stake, can trace a circle by tightening a rope from a central point to obtain the circumference, in the snow, if one is satisfied with circles, and not "filled" discs, it would leave footsteps traces, from the person walking to the circle's center to hold the rope or plant the stake...
But when Robbert van den Broeke is involved, it is a different thing altogether: he does not make "good" crop circles, quite simply!
Or then, if one wants to believe in his claims, it is necessary to accept the amazing obviousness: whereas the English countryside is covered of formations that are splendid, neat, increasingly elaborate with the passing of years, if in some other countries one valiantly tries to imitate the cereal art of well trained Englishmen, Robert van den Broeke is endowed with a gift of prediction which makes him only "discover" utterly pathetic figures, and in Hoeven only, such as this one:
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Left: This crop circle "discovered" by Robert van den Broeke "in his area" in Hoeven did not prompt any "scientific study". Was it made by drunken aliens? |
But after all, why care, since his friend the BLT expert is happy with such designs?
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Left: The first "snow circle discovered" by Robert van den Broeke in December 2009. Note the childish geometry of the so-called "circles". Note that there is all the same, logically, a weak portion of snow packed on the edges of the layout, and that a small area of concentric circles was probably made with the feet. And note that no photograph on the BLT website shows the entry point to the field neither for one nor for the other of the formations. |
Then, a German blog, devoted to "paranormal" news, decorated of advertizing for crop circles T-shirts, "esoteric" clubs and loads of "New Age" garbage, published an article on the case:
http://grenzwissenschaft-aktuell.blogspot.com/2009/12/niederlande-kornkreis-formation-im.html
The article is then translated into French by a one "Mykerinos" guy, the author of a website or rather a forum named "Touraine Insolite", "Unusual Touraine". The " snow circles " of Hoeven are nowhere near Touraine, but it is rather obvious that "Mykerinos" still believes there is an unsolved "crop circles mystery" and found it more useful to import foreign twaddle to France than to really inform his readers on the more trivial reality:
http://touraine-insolite.xooit.com/t571-Pictogramme-dans-la-neige-Hoeven-Pays-Bas.htm
And of course, the article on "Touraine Insolite" is announced in the "news" section of the French "Culture Crop" by Anne Moro, with a careful "truth or forgery?" note, but, as usual, without the least allusion to the many and various frauds of Van den Broeke:
http://www.culture-crop.com/news.htm
For once, I did not yet see hordes of French ufologists swallow this new and ridiculous story by the BLT; but the case, at the time when I write these lines, has just occurred, and perhaps it still has to spread?
The fact is that one speaks since years about "snow circles" and "ice circles". This covers many different things, claimed to be "part of" the so-called "crop circle mystery", such as the "Nazca lines", stone circles, rounds in the sand, and whatever else.
One of the perfectly natural phenomena is that ice frozen or melted in the rivers, the "ice circles", which occur naturally: in river turns, whirling waters can melt, erode, or freeze the water or the ice, possibly creating sometimes perfectly round figure, obviously without any "footsteps traces" nor "evidence of human hoaxing". Swirls can also create circular accumulations of ice, or "cut" out discs of drifting ice.
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There are also cases of traces in the snow or the ice which are this time more or less in connection with UFO sightings at the same place. Why would it be differently? Such traces, circulars or not, are observed, debated, in other seasons than winter, and there is no reason that there would be no such "UFO traces" but in the summer, it seems to me. But, whatever such traces are, it is just absurd to call it "crop circles" or to use it to give credence to whimsical crop circles theories, as crop circles have no real connection with the matter of UFO sightings reports.
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Left: Robbert van den Broeke showed the image on the left on Dutch TV in the "Dossier X" show in 2006, claiming he had photographed an alien. Alas, pesky Dutch skeptics found that the "alien" had been cut out from a picture of Papua-New-Guinea "Mudmen", practising a ritual dance, and published in Holland in "Wereld van het Ongrijpbare" by Reader's Digest in 1984 (on the right), which proved Robbert van den Broeke indulges in photographic hoaxing! |
