This video was published in VHS format by Marshall Cavendish, as part of a collection of UFO documentaries of very uneven contents, in which ufology treasures are mingled with hoaxes or confusions presented as "convincing", with the usual precautions, of the "convincing if it is true" type.
The hour long video was marketed in 1998 in France and shows a documentary realized in 1997 by the German team Clip Films Productions, of Munchen.
The documentary opens on landscapes of fields, "new age" flute music and a first sentence very significant of the line of thought in this type of productions. We are told that crop circle:
This is a typical sentence because this conservative "maybe" cancels the value of the claim. What the buyer would like to really know is whether the do exist for ages or don't exist for ages.
The sentence is then simply supplemented by the assertion that at during the 16th century, there were crop circles in Europe and nobody could say where they came from, but to some extent it was the work of the devil.
Verging slightly to common sense, the comment specifies that it is not known whether these were really crop circles. Indeed, they weren't.
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The "crop circles of the Middle Age" are indeed nothing better than effects of the wind in the fields, and the classically quoted "news" item as "case of crop circles in the Middle Ages". This item is a pamphlet that appeared on August 12, 1978 in Hartfortshire in England (right). The pamphlet explains that according to the story told by a farmer, one of his mowers wanted a raise of his wages for his mowing, and on the refusal of the farmer, promised him that it would thus be the devil himself who would come to mow the crop. The next night, the field appeared as "a Flame", and the following day the crop was mown. The news item allots that to the action of the Devil or some "infernal" cause but a sensible person should understand all the same that it was probably nothing more than the revenge of the frustrated mower. |
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It is said that "legend has it that crop circles reappeared later in a sporadic manner in the crop in Ireland." Actually, that was unrelated to crop circles: superstitious people interpreted as traces of footstep of giants - the documentary points that out - what was no crop circles, but pours of the crop by blasts of wind.
Crop circles appeared initially in Australia in the Sixties, as evoked in the documentary. But the documentary forgets to tell the reason:
Near Tully in 1966, there was a most interesting UFO sighting, which was investigated by civilian ufologists and the Royal Australian Air Forces, a well known classic case good because the landing of the UFO in Horseshoe Lagoon had left a very peculiar trace: inside a more or less circular area, reeds had been uprooted, as sucked up, and the other grasses were lying in spiral on the level of the surface of water.
The story, which does not have great a deal to do with crop circles, made great fuss at the time, and of the prankster of the area, Queensland, had started to flatten down circles in the crop as joke, for saying, "look there, a saucer must have lended the other night."
What one knows less, or what some do not like to recall, it is that a chap named Doug Bower who lived in this area at the time so learned how to make good pranks with these "circles."
Bower exported the idea to England when he moved over there later. He talked about it to his new friend Dave Chorley one evening at the pub, and they then started to make such circles, in 1975, and more and more other people understood how easy and funny it was and did the same, until the "phenomenon" extended in the whole world, starting with the United States and Canada. This is how a "mystery" was born, and this is the only true link between crop circles and UFOs.
The documentary then recalls the appearance of the simple formations in Wiltshire with accuracy. But a sequence showing graphic symbols originating in all kinds of civilizations is then presented with the comment that crop circles do not reproduce any of these known symbols.
Actually, the first crop circles were simple circles, and the 30 years of evolutions starting from these simple circles shows beautifully an inspiration which, when it is not purely abstract geometry, is indeed of well-known human symbols, such as Celtic crosses and pentagrams.
Beautiful aerial footage of crop circles are shown, and the comment points out that the figures are often located close to historical or prehistoric places, like Avebury, Glastonbury and the very famous Stonehenge stones circle.
We are then reminded that the "illusions of the worshippers" who came to admire the crop circles "were put down" in September 1992 when Doug Bower and Dave Chorley said that they were the makers of these formations (see my article here).
Unfortunately, the comment maintains the myths on this subject. Contrary to what seems suggested here, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley did not claim to have done all the crops circles in the whole world. They said to have done much of it in England, and they clearly specified what believers of the extraterrestrial origin of the crop circles don't want you to know: they said that they were certainly not the only one make these crop circles, and that many other pranksters were at work.
Instead of providing this information, the documentary repeats the myth and directs the reader towards an unfounded rejection of the human explanation of the crop circles by claiming that Doug and Dave "alone" could not have done all the crop circles from Japan to Australia to Canada.
It is indeed with this sort of errors, omisiions and false logic that the myth spread: crop circles are done by aliens because Doug and Dave could not have done all of them all overs the world, as the believers relentlessly repeated decades long.
Another myth is repeated: Doug and Dave are said to have been unable to recognize the crop circles that they made from others. To a certain extent, this is true. They did not "log" every crop circle they made, where and when, and it did happen on one cocasion that cereologist Colin Andrews showed them a photograph of a crop circle, asking if they did it. One of them said "yes", but in fact, he had only recognized the design as typical of their style, the formation had been made by others, and thereafter Colin Andrews issued much propaganda about this mistake to discredit them.
The problem became rather serious then, because Doug Bower, ageing, had slight memory losses, and was obviously unable now to remember each and every crop circle they made at each and every date and place. It went to the point when the two men agreed that only Dave Chorley would still answer the questions of the "experts" such as Colin Andrews and others who tried to discredited them by playing this little game.
The opposite opinion is briefly presented all the same, by way of assumption: "perhaps" there is an entire artitic subculture of crop circles makers inspired by Doug and Dave.
But it is then repeated again that it would be unexplainable that identical drawings would appear all over the world.
That naturally does not have anything unexplainable about it.
The comment still denies the existence of the land artists by claiming that "the newspapers do not even speak about it", or later in the documentary, that "the newspapers do not speak about it any more since 1991", and that this proves that there is no human crop circle makers since the newspaper are silent.
But on the one hand the newspapers are not silent and make abundant fuss on the crop circles, with sensationalist headlines at each appearance of even of the most rudimentary crop circles, on the other hand, there is indeed an artistic subculture which would exist without mentions in the newspapers. Making crop circles is art, with a great personal satisfaction in succeeding in creating the increasingly complex formations.
Here some examples of the "newspapers that silence crop circles". Let's first go back to the times before the coming out of Doug and Dave:
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In the North West Express newspaper, of Victoria, Australia, January 18, 1990, believers have their day, with "engineers Pat Delgado and Andrew Colins" who say that UFOs make the crop circles. And an Australian crop circles is shown. It is said a helicopter was seen just above it, but nobody realizes that the crop circle was perhaps quite simply caused the rotor of the helicopter which created this rough swirl. The newspaper links it to UFOs, because a lady saw a light in the night a few days later. |
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Here the anglophone edition of Asahi Evening News of September 28, 1990, a national daily newspaper of Tokyo, Japan. This crop circle was discovered in Fukuoka in Japan. Do they make fun of it? Not. It is said that crop circles that "puzzle the scientists" in England now also appear in Japan, and the reader is left with: "are they made by UFOS or pranksters?" |
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Let's go into the 1991 mood. Here is an article in the newspaper East Anglian Times for July 27, 1991, article published 3 weeks after the discovery of the "Julia Set" crop circle, of which I am told that the reason that not one "witness" is name is fear for ridicule due to the giggles in the Press. Not! At this time, the Press still sees y genuine mystery in crop circles, even in unimpressive crop circles, like this simple triangle, and the names of the dicoverers are given straightforward. |
Long after Doug Bower and Dave Chorley and wealth of others demonstrated how they made their crop circles, as opposed to what some believers claim, the Press continues to talk of a mystery, does not give the correct explanations, and by no means make systematic fun of the subject nor, fortunately, and as opposed to what believers told me to "explain" anonymous "testimonys," that never actually surfaced, of people who discover crop circles:
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When in 2001 formations appeared close to the radio telescope of Chilbolton, there was a huge media frenzy in the newspapers and TVs around the world, and in a "positive" way. A friend of mine, who does not "believe in aliens" showed me a full page of the Italian newspaper "La Stampa" for August 30, 2001, and told me, awestruck, "Gee, are you aware of that? Look at this! It seems that your UFOs exist after all, they say that there finally is proof that the aliens are here! They answered a message!" |
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In July 2002, a crop circle in the shape of an unfinished bicycle was found in Gongelfang where the cyclist competition Tour de France and their helicopters were du to pass by few days later. You would think that the Press would laugh at such an obvious prank, but no, on the contrary: whereas no UFO was even seen there, the Lorrain Républicain regional newspaper there, published two articles on this "mystery", and the second article goes with the headline "UFOs landed in Gongelfang." |
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Still in France, La Dépêhe du Midi for May 25, 2003, puts out a long article. No giggling there at all about "alien crop circles" but much fantasy: military secret agencies in balloons are possibly making these crop circles using laser beams "according to engineers and scientists." |
Human crop circle makers are still active, and regularly make demonstrations. The newspapers and TV still speak about crop circles, they do not make fun of people who discover them (why would they do that?) and do not discard the mystery, because the goal of the media is not to explain away mysteries but to get buyers, and for this reason whether "pro" or "con", all mysteries true or false are good news stuff.
"Englishmen always excelled in the cock-and-bull stories", says the commentator. That, is nicely observed.
An absolutely formidable sequence follows. Formidable, because the proof of the human manufacture of the crop circles is shown, but without the explanatory comment: this proof, it is the "hidden path", the crop that is flattened in a path idden under the subsequently flattened crop.
A person finding the "hidden path" of a crop circle is shown, lifting the layer of corn laid down to discover below, a first layer of corn laid down in another direction. That is the "hidden path", proof of humanconstruction!
In 1991, says the comment, 200 simple circles have appeared, but also formations of big sizes. The images show very simple formations, for example three rounds connected to each other by a line. The sizes are not given.
The commentator tells then that in 1992, there were 180 formations, "several are certainly hoaxed," but he does not say at all why those of 1990 or the others of 1991 should be "genuine". The documentary is filled up of this kind of contradictions and jumps: it is by no means a matter of solving a mystery but on the contrary, a matter of getting the attention of the viewers. Thus the explanations sometimes are evoked, but always called into question without particular reason a few moments later.
It is then said that it would be difficult to differentiate true from genuine crop circles. Not! It is sais that the difference is hard to make because it requires that nobody entered the crop and because nobody knows in advance where the next formations will appear. Not!
This is not true because real experts know very well how to find the evidence of human manufacture, even a beginner in cerealogy like I knows how to:
We then see Colin Andrews checking a field and we are told the following inaccuracies:
All that, claimed flatly by Colin Andrews, is fantasy. Actually:
An interview of George Wingfied, "one of the best specialists in this field," follows.
George tells that he saw his first crop circles in 1997, that he tried to find "a rational explanation" (for these people, aliens is supposed to be an irrational explanation!), because of his scientific background. He thought men did it, or the wind, but he had, says he, "the impression" that it was something else.
His wife, he says, saw small blue flashes at ground level during two or three minutes, and she had the feeling there was something in the field that you cannot see, some invisible power.
Colin Andrews then claims that nobody believed Doug and Dave, which is a blatant lie. He tells that "graphological studies" proved that they did not make even one crop circle!
He tells that the proof that it is not men who make the crop circles is that there are still crop circles found since the confession of Doug and Dave.
The crop circle making contest of 1992 is then evoked.
"The existence of crop circles is undeniable", (as if that was the issue, as if somebody disputed their existence), ensures Ruppert Sheldrake, one of the initiators of this contest which had been organized to prove once and for all that men are unable to make crop circles.
But, the contest having shown that the men can make the crop circles, he admits:
And Sheldrake states what I reported in another article mentioning this contest: it was asked that people come prove that they can reproduce crop circles considered impossible to make. Sheldrake tells it in front of the camera, and it is loud and clear:
Alas, the comment then tells stories contradictory with Sheldrake's conclusion: the "hoaxed" circles would not be as irreproachable as the "genuine", contours would not be also clear, stems "are detached instead of being simply lying" and "the spiral was not absolutely irreproachable" while the wasn't even a spiral in the contest, and while the spirals claimed to be genuine years later, show terrible errors when examined carefully!
George Wingfield then states that he is "ready to believe that some crop circles were done by men."
Whereas it was told that crop circles are still created "in spite of the fact that the newspapers make no mention of it", Wingfield says that it is because the newspapers reported cropc circles in 1991 that there are human crop circle makers now.
He says that he is convinced that there is indeed an unexplained phenomenon: Why? Because it occurs everywhere in the world.
Why is this unexplained? We are not told.
And so, by repetition of the same nonsense year in and year out, millions people remain convinced that there is a "crop circles mystery" or that they are made by aliens.
We are told that a cerealogist from the Sussex, Andy Thomas, works in close collaboration with PROFESSOR Levengood, biophysicist at the University of Michigan.
He was never a professor, but he claimed to have a PhD. Alas for his credibility, it proved years later than he does not have a PhD: he has just written so on his CV.
Andy Thomas gives information that clearly point at man made crop circles, but they are neither evaluated, nor commented on: he points out that the designs differ from country to country. For example in Germany, Gothic inspired crop circles are found, in Ireland, they are of Irish inspiration, in the United States they are inspired by the thin drawings of the Native Americans.
But instead of suspecting what that this is merely a quite foreseeable consequence of the various cultures of the men who make the crop circles, Andy Thomas claims that it is due to mysterious "forces whatever they are" that he says haunt each area while adapting to specific local folklore!
The documentary says a word about "operation White Crow" of 1989, when Andrew Colins recorded "strange electronic noises" in the fields while watching for crop circles to appear.
Nothing more is said, which is quite regrettable. I think that the true story deserves to be told:
The story according to Colin Andrews is that in June 1989, he organized "White Crow", a survey of the fields in Cheesefoot Head in Hampshire. During eight days nothing happened, then, in the morning of June 18, when the sun rose, a crop circle was found. 9 people who were at several hundreds meters from there saw nothing in the night, but they heard "weird sounds" and these sounds were recorded on a tape recorder, and the testimonies recorded in writing (for once) and signed. Colin Andrews then had people listen to this "unexplainable" sound, proof of a paranormal or extraterrestrial origin of the crop circles.
The true history is that he met members of French rather skeptical ufologists of the CNEGU group who were in England also, in Cheesefoot Head also, at the same time than Colins, in the search of an explanation for crop circles. He had them listen to the strange sounds that he had recorded there. CNEGU guys were puzzled enough: they too heard and recorded these strange sounds in these fields at that time!
Colin Andrews then makes them sign a written testimony.
The CNEGU guys then lookoed for a natural explanation of the sounds, which Colin Andrews never did. They thought that it was perhaps an insect, a sort of cricket maybe. And they found the explanation: the next night, going towards the source of the sound, they found what produced it in a thicket: a BIRD!
The bird flies away in front of their eyes, in front of their cameras and tape recorders - one imagines their laughters afterwards. Back in France, they had two ornithologists listen to the recording, as theyx wanted to know the name of the bird, and both ornithologists recognize readily that the bird was the grasshopper warble.
They then wrote to Andrew Colins to inform hom that the weid sound mystery was solved. What did Andrew Colins do?
Instead of ackowledging the commonplace explanation, he continued to tell the story of the witnesses of unexplained noises, and gave their testimony to Ralph Noyes who published in 1990 in his book "The Crop circle Enigma", page 106, that the "noise" is unexplained, with testimonys of the CNEGU team, incorrectly dated. And Andrew Colins continued tell in his crop circles conferences, and to the Peess, as if nothing happened, that there are weird noises where crop circles appear, without saying a word on the grasshopper warble.
When he ended up believing that he found an argument to eliminate the warble, he started to mention it. He compared the "paranormal" recording that he had left at Pat Delgado's and finally recovered to recordings of the grasshopper warble, and showed nice Fourrier diagrams comparing the "paranormal sound" sampled using 8 bit 44Kz with a sound recording of the grasshopper warble sampled using 16Kz 16 bits, saying that "it is not at all the same sound." In fact one is just higher pitched than the other... But that was an argument without relevance: this weird sound, it is really the grasshopper warble, a bird named thus because it eats the insects of the family of grasshopper, i.e. grasshoppers, crickets, locusts and the bird is quite simply able to imitate their respective sounds, whatever diferent they are!
And today still, some ufologists and cerealogists continue to try to make us believe that Colin Andrews is The Expert...
Colin Andrews then tells a nice story of 20 highly qualified researchers who have studied "isotopes" that are decaying abnormally - ie radioactivity - found in the fields. He says, seriously, that radioactivity in fields is "unimaginable."
He tells: "they noted only in laboratory periods from 13 hours to 38 days" (sic) which he says is "proof that we are not in the presence of a natural phenomenon here."
Ralph Noyes then talks about operation Argus. He makes it clear that he does not want to give any conclusion before studies to come allow for that, but adds immediately that an "intelligence is obviously at work and you can bet that it is not a human intelligence."
Andy Thomas tells PROFESSOR Levengood discovered "biological changes" in the plants which "cannot be explained" by the mechanical flatening of the plants, which is false because they can.
He talks about the stem nodes and tells that only "a heating of a few seconds" can explain that they are "exploded", which is still in error.
He adds that Levengood has the capacity to differentiate hoaxex and genuine crop circles by that, the hoaxed being made by men and the genuine being made by a WEATHER PHENOMENA.
Colin Andrews speaks about discoveries of genetic changes, of polyembryonite, by Levengood.
It is then said that Hawkins and Spellman of the Simalisis laboratories (?) were asked for analysis, and that they proved that the bursting of the stem nodes results from a "very short radiation of heat."
Actually, Gerald Hawkins is an astronomer and rather well known physicist to whom Andrews sent crop circles plans and who found them "harmonious like diatonic music". And the new heights were reached when, from 10 crop circles selected from 1988 to 1996, Gerald Hawkins made "calculations" and found that these 10 copr circles designs give "the initials of the first 25 presidents of the Society for Psychical Research of London."
As for the analyses on radioactivity, they always follow the same line of thought. There is a certain anomaly, and instead of looking for a natural causes, speculation starts. For example, one forgets to check which chemicals were used by the farmer, one forgets the irradiations caused by transport of the samples by plane, or one forgets the Cernobyl incident, and of course one carefully refrains from seeking the traces of the hoaxers in the analyzed crop circles...
Thomas Roy Dutton is then introduced, as having used Einstein's Theory of Relativity to prove that crop circle plants were not flattened by men. He vers earnestly tells:
The concept that flattening plants with boards and garden rollers does not burn the plants either does not seem to have come to his mind!
He adds:
Admittedly, but he does seem to know more. He first adds this sort of potential self-evident truth:
Then he adds this incredible pataphysic nonsense without the least real relevance to the crop circles issue:
There is however another force at the origin of the crop circles. This force is a top to bottom an alternatively exerted movement, repeated in a cyclic and regular way, under the control of an intelligence, which is helped of the gravitational waves and is motorized by a highly sophisticated machinery, much more sophisticated than everything we can build. This technology is moreover completely compatible with the theories of Einstein: the force of the human foot directed by the human brain exerted on the plants using a plank!
After having commented on that scientists have thus validated that aliens make crop circles, the documentary takes then a more "New Age" tone. Patricia Murray visits crops circles, "the biggest enigma of our time" and says it is "a love story". She ensures that when one enters a circle, one has "the feeling of floating in interplanetary space." One does not know who made them, she claims, but they seem to come from "out there."
The documentary then deals with the famous crop circle "The Julia Set" of which I showed why it was made by men.
The comment says that it was probably made on July 7, 1996.
It has 149 circles. We are told that "several clue let it think" that it was done by day.
Colin Andrews is interviewed and says:
No hour, no name is given. It is rather interesting to learn that there is a pilot who saw it and called the control tower by radio, and that Colin Andrews does not consider useful to specify at what hour, or did not ask about that.
The next by Andrews is in conformity to what he wrote in a book:
300 meters length... Here are again feet changed to meters. You can read about the inflating dimensions of this crop circle in this article.
A ufologist I know who is convinced that this crop circle was made by aliens tried to convince me that it is impossible to be in a plane at Stonehenge at 17:30, then to land the plane, then to take a car and to arrive at Stonehenge by the road towards 18:00. I had suggested that he takes a map and checks this out like I did. But he would not check.
The documentary, after all, makes it useless, since Colin Andrews agrees with me: there is no problem in flying above Stonhenge at 17:30, then to land the plane¨, take a car, and reach the site towards 18:00.
The host continues:
My article shows the contradiction in the various versions of the anonymous pilot's say - all second hand or third hand - and I offer a speculative scenario, however much more logical than the various stories we are told.
He unfortunately did not want to testify in front of the cameras. After the contradictory reports and out of matter, that the local press made its first statements. We ran up against a wall of silence."
How very convenient.
Unfortunately, the witness did not even want to testify for saying that he does not want to testify. Actually, it would be very interesting to see what was published in the newspapers, that apparently deformed his story, in a direction that we can only guess!
At this time, the camera sweeps a page of a newspaper article about this formation, but alas, the text of the article is not shown, only the photographs are swept by the camera. This is all too unfortunate.
The commentator says that the guards of the Stonehenge monument had received orders not to make any statement, but "we all the same learned from semi-official sources that they had not noticed any unusual activity during that day." This is a central point of this case: from these famous guards, nobody was able to specify what they told, what they saw or didn't saw, where they were when they saw or din't saw, what time it was, how the discovery of that crop circle took place and so on. Instead of their testominies, we are "told" that they do not have freedom of speech... These stories of "silencing the witnesses" find their paroxysm in claims by Andrews about being threatened and silenced by the CIA, claims that he nevertheless repeats in conferences, interviews, and threats that do not prevent hom to claim that crop circles are unexplained, do not prevent him from selling books, advising the Hollywood movie industry, all in spite of the "CIA threats".
We are told: "to make a formation of this width requires several people and several hours."
I calculated the necessary time: 30 minutes for two people, or 25 minutes for three people. I showed that the formation by no mean was "300 meters long", not even 300 feet. I showed that the formation has obvious design faults that nobody seemed to have been able to notice in 10 years of "scientific crop circles research"...
Colin Andrews then states:
It is very interesting that Colin Andrews refrains from taking the problem in the correct sense. Instead of saying whether yes or no a crop cirle is noticeable from a road 150 meters away, he circumvents the problem by talking of seeing the cars on the road from the field!
The reason is simple: while it is obvious that you can see cars passing on the road 150 meters away of the formation, on the contrary, from the cars, all that you can see of the formation, it is a vague formless zone in the crop, a sort of shadowy trail like there is in any field seen horizontally.
Unfortunately, these alleged witnesses are said to be deprived of the freedom of speech. What would they say? that they watch the very visited monument and not a field 300 meters away from there that does not have anything of a historic place to protect? That crops circles in Stonehenge is all very usual, that it happens all the time in spite of their survey? That it isn't true that they have no right to speak? That you need to leave guard of the monument monument and wander in the fields to see the crop circle?
Or, that a farmer said he did see two "workmen" with "a farmer" who seemed to "repair the door of the field?" Something that the guards however did not see, which is quite natural since there is nothing "unusual" about that?
The documentary come back to this formation later, only to claim that it was made by day in a few minutes...
Why not, but it still requires about 20 minutes to create it. Is this too much of a few minutes?
Michael Glickmann is then interviewed:
That was in 1997. Only in 2006, I demonstrated that the formation has only an appearance of superhuman complexity, and that it has errors where men would make errors...
The documentary then shows of prehistoric paintings in caves, without relationship with the crop circles, and tells that these paintings "remained enigmatic even today", a very kiddish comment, out of matter.
Not a long time ago, someone told me: "crop circles are extraterrestrial, men cannot do this. Just like the Nazca lines."
Or the Eiffel tower...
In the same tone, we are being explained that the circle is a recurring motive that exists per thousands at the four corners [sic] of our planet:
But of course, the use of the most human symbols is not supposed to send us on the track of the human origin of crop circles, but on extraterrestrial or paranormal tracks.
Glicksmann talks about the use of the Goden Number in painting, "infinite system of proportions constituting a permanent self-confirmation."
"These guys know all these rules on the tips of their fingers", he adds, and talks about "numbers games" that "the authors of the crop circles indulge in".
I want to tell of a remarkable thing which I discovered about the elongated stem nodes issue; which is illustrated by images of seedlings samples show several time in the documentary:
The lengthening of the nodes occurs when the stem, after being bent, tries to stand straight again. One proof I found in my own garden studying bent stems, outside crop circles obviously. Then a believer told me that in crop circles, stems with elongated nodes are not bent. But of course, they are, and this can be seen on just about any photograph of crop circle stem samples shown on the Internet and believers books.
And of course, on those samples stems shown in this documentary, you see the same: plants from outside crop circles are not bent and show no elongated nodes, and flattened plants from within crop circles have often elongated nodes. Because they were flattened, not because of mystical alien or paranormal forces.
The documentary then show Colin Andrews in conversation with Steven Greer and his friends. Greer claims to enter in communication with aliens that make the crop circles. He tells that sitted in a crop circle, they saw some UFOs at the horizon, two of those at the same time "at an altitude of approximately 3000 meters but it is difficult to have a precise idea" (planes?) and then it rained, and there were gleams in the clouds.
Colin Andrews notes this down and tape records all that, and that is how, starting from the illusions of Steven Greer, that Andrews comes along with tales of witnesses who saw UFOs making crop circles.
So, an hilarious sequence of the documentary is due to Greer. He tells Colin Andrews that while his team sat in a crop circle, clouds came, with a light above the clouds which formed a luminous wheel which appeared and disappeared, and then the area became dark because of a large black cloud that covered the sky, then there was a break in the cloud and it started to rain through that break.
At this very moment, a woman friend of Greer tells her version of this so-called UFO sighting:
Whereas this lady has just told a story totally different from his, Greer answers, without a blink:
Listening this nonsense with concentration, Colin Andrews nods with a serious frown... He now even forgets to take notes!
Funnier still, in the sky background at this time you can see... the gleams of a storm!
The remainder is of the same stuff: other friends of Greer tell a story of "lights at midnight" and other "whatzit" and "saucer landing" for "it was impossible to explain this series of lights going from the red to the blue which turned from left to right around a structure", obvious description of a plane and its lights!
Greer wants to "make contact" with a "saucer" and flickers his flashlight at it, and the object "answered by a double flickering."
People on the opposite hill with their flashlights? These are the questions you are not supposed to raise.
A friend of Greer who saw the midnight UFO says to insist that it was alien:
Good logic and perfect description... of a plane at night.
A woman friend of Greer says "it has been a long time now that we do know how to make the distinction between a helicopter and a shooting star." Bravo. And she adds "until this sighting I had never been interested in UFOs". What is that all about? She was never interested in UFOs until now but she can make the difference since ages...
We then see a video clip of a helicopter flying above a field. We are told that RAF helicopters are watching crop circle appearances.
Then we see that helicopter far away. On the ground, in a path, there is something that produces randomly blinking luminous reflections, probably reflections on a car's window pane or a rear view mirror, a car following this path.
The whole is shown without any comment, but it is obvious that it is supposed to be an RAF helicopter witnessing a UFO crop circles maker... no crop circle at all, neither before nor during nor afterwards, but who cares, the trick works.
Who shot this "video evidence?" Colin Andrews...
Wingfied tells about Steve Alexander, a crop circle photographer, who videotaped "a saucer of a few centimetres of diameter" going into a field then slipping by in the distance. It is actually a small light or reflection or shining thing,that seem to fly above a path then fly into a field, or cross a path and enter a field. It does look interesting.
He says: "Nobody found an explanation to this incident so far." True, as far as I know.
A young man, farmer Liam Besant, says that the same day there on his tractor, he saw the same thing (according to Andrews Colins, but not according to other investigators), his tractor had an engine shutdown and started again spontaneously after the "thing" left.
And actually, on the video, one sees a tractor, stopped, then starting again when the small UFO moves away. However, the tractor shows its back to the UFO, and it seems stopped normally before a crossroads.
It is possible that there is an interesting UFO case here? Possibly. But what is sure is: nothing indicates that this thing makes crop circles.
Wingfield's comment? He says that the cases of people having seen with certainty a UFO making a crop circle are... rare!
But there is... none!
We then see the famous Oliver Castle, now known to be hoaxed.
Return of Andrew Colins who manages to tell that testimonys are credible because they are often in contradiction one with the other.
He says that there is only one thing on which all people agree, it is that crop circles appear in 10 or 15 seconds. The proof: the Oliver Castle faked video!
The documentary then honestly explains that this video shows evidence of hoaxing. It is suggested that it is a forgery, what we know now even better, but the comment adds flatly: it is likely hoaxed but it "helps to show the phenomenon in action."
The documentary then introduces another "paroxysm of mystery": in Germany, a crop circle "almost as large" as those in England appears on July 23, 1991 close to a tumulus in Hildesheim. (Grasdorf, close to Hildesheim and of the tumulus of Thierberg, July 22, 1991).
The formation is shown. It is very crude and without grace, circles and lines, nothing extraordinary. But one seems to think that mysticakl psychic powers did that because the drawing is like that on an ancient gold plate supposedly shown in a museum. A silver plate, discovered in Tibergsfeld (?), is said to have been analyzed by experts who are said to have found out that it is made of pure silver, a purity impossible to obtain then and that it must thus be of extraterrestrial or divine origin.
It is said that there are three specimen of those "famous Germanic cult plates."
The "mystery thickens" because in an 1890 edition of the Hedas of the old German, there is a text saying that the miraculous plates would be later discovered in the grass, and that the ancient German god Odin used this plate to communicate."
Then, we are told that certain astrophysicists refuted Einstein. (Sheldrake and his "morphic resonance theory"?) Von Butlar gives a rather long "new age" sort of speech: extraterrestrial UFOS come to see the crop circles, which are not extraterrestrial but materializations of cultural symbols by the action of the "collective psyche" of mankind. Andy Thomas says that these are the psychic forces that create crop circles indeed, and Wingfield concludes that "nobody knows what the crop circles really are."
The commentator echoes in conclusion: "nobody has an answer."
Of course there is, but not in the documentary.
