Crop circles are patterns flattened into fields of cereal crops such as wheat, barley and oilseed rape, best known from southern England from the late 1970s onward. The documented record shows that the modern phenomenon was started and largely sustained by human makers, beginning with Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, who admitted in 1991 to making circles since 1978 with a plank, a rope and a simple sighting device. What keeps the subject alive is a smaller set of disputed claims about plant changes, formation timing and design complexity that researchers still argue over.
The story matters because it is one of the clearest case studies in how an anomaly is born, investigated and partly explained. It involves folklore, farmers, physicists, artists, tabloid newspapers and a tourist economy. For anyone interested in UFOs and ancient mysteries, crop circles are a useful test: they show what solid evidence looks like, what weak evidence looks like, and how a question can stay open in the public mind long after most of it has been answered.
What is a crop circle?
A crop circle is an area of standing crop that has been pressed flat, usually in a geometric shape, so that the pattern is visible from the air or from high ground. The stalks are typically bent near the base and laid in a swirl or in a directional flow, while the surrounding crop is left standing. Early examples were single plain circles. By the 1990s they had become large pictograms made of dozens or hundreds of linked elements.
The people who study them call themselves cerealogists, and the field is known as cereology (a play on Ceres, the Roman goddess of grain). Cerealogists range from hobbyist surveyors and photographers to researchers who believe some formations are made by an unknown intelligence or energy. Crop circles should not be confused with archaeological crop marks, which are differences in crop growth caused by buried walls or ditches, visible from the air but not flattened.
Where crop circles came from: folklore and the first saucer nests
The earliest item usually cited is the Mowing-Devil, a 1678 English pamphlet from Hertfordshire with a woodcut of a devil scything a field of oats. In the story, a farmer who refused a mower's price said the devil himself could do the job, and the field was found cut overnight. The crop in that tale was mown, not flattened, and the pamphlet is a moral folktale rather than a field report, so historians do not treat it as a genuine crop circle.
The more direct ancestor is the Tully saucer nest of 1966. Near Tully in Queensland, Australia, a banana farmer reported seeing a saucer-shaped craft rise from a swampy lagoon, and a roughly circular patch of flattened, swirled reeds was found in the water. Newspapers called it a saucer nest, and similar reports followed in Australia. That event linked flattened vegetation to UFOs in the popular imagination more than a decade before the English circles appeared.
How the phenomenon grew in Wiltshire and Hampshire
Modern crop circles began appearing in southern England in the late 1970s and multiplied through the 1980s and 1990s. They clustered in Wiltshire and Hampshire, often close to ancient sites such as Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill. That setting mattered. Researchers already interested in prehistoric monuments, dowsing and earth energies saw the circles as part of the same landscape, and some tied them to ideas explored in [our guide to ley lines and earth energies](/ley-lines-explained-alfred-watkins-earth-energies-and-what-the-evidence-shows).
The designs evolved quickly. Single circles gained rings, then satellite circles, then long pictograms. Several formations became famous:
- The Julia Set (1996), a spiral of circles near Stonehenge, which witnesses said appeared in a short daylight window beside a busy road. The timing claim has never been independently verified.
- Milk Hill (2001), a galaxy-like spiral of 409 circles in Wiltshire.
- Chilbolton (2001), a pattern in Hampshire beside a radio telescope that resembled a modified version of the 1974 Arecibo message, widely nicknamed the Arecibo reply.
- Crabwood (2002), a Hampshire formation showing a pixelated alien face beside a disc read by enthusiasts as an encoded message.
The mathematical character of these designs is a big part of their appeal, and it connects to wider questions about proportion and pattern covered in [sacred geometry explained](/sacred-geometry-explained-the-shapes-the-history-and-what-is-actually-mathematical). Fractal and geometric designs can be planned on paper and laid out with measuring tapes, which is where the hoax record comes in.
Doug and Dave and the hoax record
In September 1991 two men from Southampton, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, told the Today newspaper that they had been making crop circles since 1978. Their kit was a plank with a rope attached at both ends, used to stamp the crop flat, and a sighting device worn on a cap to keep lines straight. Bower later said reports of the Australian saucer nests had given him the idea. The pair demonstrated their method for journalists, and a formation they made was examined by researcher Pat Delgado, who initially judged it genuine before learning who had made it.
The confession did not end the phenomenon. It professionalised it. Groups of makers began treating circles as land art. The best known, the Circlemakers, whose members included John Lundberg, Rod Dickinson and Wil Russell, produced formations on commission for advertisers and broadcasters, including work for the BBC and for Mitsubishi. Documentary crews, including teams working for National Geographic, filmed makers laying out complex designs overnight with surveyor tapes, stomper boards and, in some cases, lasers for alignment.
The legal record points the same way. In 2000 Matthew Williams was convicted of criminal damage for making a formation in Wiltshire, one of the few cases to reach court. By the same year Colin Andrews, co-author of the influential 1989 book Circular Evidence and one of the best-known cerealogists, estimated that around 80 percent of formations were man-made. That figure came from inside the research community, not from its critics.
The anomaly claims and how they held up
The anomaly case rests on physical traces that proponents say hand-flattening cannot produce. The most cited work comes from biophysicist W. C. Levengood and the BLT Research team, published in the journal Physiologia Plantarum in 1994 and 1999. Levengood reported elongated or blown-out growth nodes in flattened stalks, small expulsion cavities in the stems, and changes in seed germination, and he proposed that a rapid heating process was involved. Other reports described magnetic particles in the soil of some formations. In 2001 the Dutch physicist Eltjo Haselhoff argued that the pattern of node lengthening across one formation was consistent with a point source of energy above the field.
These claims have not survived controlled testing. The central problems are sampling and blinding: the studies were generally not run with investigators unaware of which samples came from suspected genuine formations and which from known human-made ones, and ordinary plant biology produces bent and lengthened nodes. Cereal stalks that are pushed flat naturally bend upward at the nodes as they try to regrow toward the light, a process called gravitropism. Skeptical investigators such as Joe Nickell, and the journalist Jim Schnabel in his 1993 book Round in Circles, documented how easily researchers could be fooled by formations made by known hoaxers.
The lights are a separate strand. Proponents point to videos of small balls of light moving over fields. The most famous, the 1996 Oliver's Castle video, which appeared to show lights creating a formation near Devizes, was later admitted to be a hoax. No ball-of-light footage has been verified under conditions that rule out editing or misidentification.
Natural explanations for simple rings
Some early, simple circles likely had ordinary causes. Fungal fairy rings can produce circular patterns of darker or damaged grass and crops. Lodging, where heavy rain or wind knocks crops flat, is a well-known agricultural problem, though it produces messy, irregular patches rather than clean geometry. In the 1980s the meteorologist Terence Meaden proposed that a rotating column of charged air, which he called a plasma vortex, could flatten simple circles. His idea attracted serious attention, but it could not account for the pictograms that followed, and it lost ground after the Doug and Dave confession.
None of these natural processes explains a 409-circle spiral or a pixelated face. Those designs are best explained by planning, measurement and teamwork, which is exactly what makers have demonstrated on camera.
Why the mystery persists
The mystery persists because the public question and the evidence question are different. The evidence question, whether any specific formation has been shown to be non-human in origin, has not been answered yes. The public question, whether every single formation has been traced to a named maker, will probably never be answered, because most makers work anonymously and many formations are never claimed.
Culture keeps the subject alive as well. M. Night Shyamalan's film Signs (2002) put crop circles in front of a global audience as alien markers. In Wiltshire, formations draw visitors each summer, and some farmers charge entry, so there is a local economy built around the circles regardless of who makes them. The subject also sits naturally beside broader questions about contact and visitation, the same questions discussed in [ancient astronaut theory explained](/ancient-astronaut-theory-explained-origins-evidence-and-criticism), where the challenge is always to separate the documented record from the interpretation placed on it.
Billy Carson's reading
Billy Carson treats crop circles as an open question in his conversations about UFOs and disclosure rather than as settled proof of anything. He engages with the phenomenon as part of a wider inquiry into non-human intelligence and what governments may know, a thread that runs through his discussions of [the secret space program and classified projects](/the-secret-space-program-explained-real-classified-projects-vs-the-conspiracy-claims). His position, as presented in those discussions, is that the subject deserves investigation rather than dismissal.
That stance sits alongside a record that should be stated plainly: the modern wave began with confessed human makers, commissioned formations have been built for television and advertising, and the physical anomaly claims have not held up under controlled testing. Readers can weigh Carson's openness against that record for themselves. His broader conversations on these topics can be found on [the 4biddenknowledge Podcast](/watch/billy-carson-4biddenknowledge-podcast).
Watch, read and go deeper
For Billy Carson's long-form conversations on UFOs, disclosure and unexplained phenomena, start with [the 4biddenknowledge Podcast on 4BK TV](/watch/billy-carson-4biddenknowledge-podcast). The full library of shows and documentaries is on 4BK TV. To place crop circles within the larger question of ancient contact and the Sumerian material Carson writes about, visit [the Anunnaki topic hub](/topics/anunnaki). For the neighbouring debates on landscape and geometry, read the guides to ley lines and sacred geometry linked above.
Frequently asked questions
Are crop circles made by aliens?
No formation has been shown to be made by non-human intelligence. The modern phenomenon began with Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, who admitted in 1991 to making circles since 1978, and teams of makers have since built complex designs on camera. Claims of physical anomalies have not held up under controlled testing.
Who were Doug and Dave?
Doug Bower and Dave Chorley were two men from Southampton who told the Today newspaper in September 1991 that they had been making crop circles since 1978. They used a plank, a rope and a sighting device, and demonstrated the method for journalists. Their confession is the foundation of the hoax record.
How long does it take to make a complex crop circle?
Experienced teams have made large, complex formations in a single short summer night, as filmed for documentaries including National Geographic programmes. They plan the design in advance and lay it out with surveyor tapes, stomper boards and sometimes lasers. Speed and complexity alone are therefore not evidence of a non-human origin.
Where do most crop circles appear?
The largest concentration has been in southern England, especially Wiltshire and Hampshire, near ancient sites such as Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill. Formations have been reported in other countries too. The English cluster is also where the best-known makers have worked.
What is the difference between a crop circle and a crop mark?
A crop circle is a pattern of flattened crop. A crop mark is a difference in how crops grow, caused by buried archaeology such as walls or ditches, and it is visible from the air without anything being pressed down. Crop marks are a standard tool of archaeological survey and are unrelated to the crop circle phenomenon.
Sources and further reading
- The Mowing-Devil, or Strange News out of Hartford-shire (pamphlet, 1678).
- Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews, Circular Evidence (1989).
- Jim Schnabel, Round in Circles: Physicists, Poltergeists, Pranksters and the Secret History of the Cropwatchers (1993).
- W. C. Levengood and colleagues, crop formation papers in Physiologia Plantarum (1994 and 1999).
- Eltjo Haselhoff, The Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles (2001).
- Joe Nickell, crop circle investigations published in Skeptical Inquirer.
- Rob Irving, John Lundberg and Mark Pilkington, The Field Guide: The Art, History and Philosophy of Crop Circle Making (2006).
