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24 September 2014
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Moonraking:Spooky Stuff: Crop Formations
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Crop Circle
What are crop formations? Does anyone really know for sure? One thing is certain, come to Wiltshire during the summer months and you can often be spoilt for choice.
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News imageCrop formations: symbolic
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• Crop Formations
Crop circle

Whether they're all manmade, a work of nature or the result of some alien life form, few will deny that the resulting patterns are extraordinary and some so complex that it seems almost impossible that they can appear so quickly - literally overnight.

There's no one place to go and see crop formations, although the Pewsey Vale seems a good bet. This fact is reinforced by those who frequent the Barge Inn at Honeystreet, where 'croppies' like to gather to discuss the latest findings.

Although most people show a fascination for these formations, a handful have dedicated time - and money - to their research. Professor Michael Glickman, Francine Blake, Peter Sorenson and Dr Terence Meaden are amongst those whose work has focused on the creation of crop formations and their symbolism.

Earth energies, ley lines, and the proximity of Wiltshire's prehistoric sites have also been researched by the experts, together with detailed studies of the formations themselves.

As well as research on the ground, thousands of airmiles have been clocked up as researchers fly over the latest formations to try and make sense of the symbology and pictograms that appear in the crops below.

However, while there are those who take the crop formations seriously, there are those who are less bent on scientific discovery and more intent on proving how easy these things can be created.

The Circlemakers is a secretive group but who seem happy to share their creativity with others - even giving people instructions on how to make their own crop formation!

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• Add Your View
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Name:

Comment:

Jandy
I have never met an artist on this planet that would not want credit for such beautiful art

Clara, 13
I've never seen a crop circle in person, but in pictures i have. To all those people who think its fake and that people made them think about this. How could people now what their designe looked like and plus most crop circles appear over night, how would people be able to do something that big in 1 night?

jonny H
i seen some crop circles in milbourne near malmesbury

Clyde
Crop circles have been announced as frauds. I am in my mid-forties and as a child reading stories of crop circles in Africa, South America, Australia. Are the poeplle who are behind the crop circles today, the same people who made the ones I read about that occured over 5o years ago (the books were old when I read them). I think not!

Joey
Hey Scara, I totally agree with you. I wonder if something wied happens when it snows in a crop circle. By the way, what is you favourite crop cricle?

Mr. Bob
I am scared anout crop circles! Are they made by aliens? I know some are made by humans.

vinoth
the cropcircles are mysteries at all times.other than humans there is some intelligent creature which may be responsible for the formation of the cropcircles.

Simon Potter
I think that most of the simple ones are man made but the more complex ones are more interesting and I know from personal experience that the circles can appear in just 2 hours even during the day.. Being a farmer a left a field which i had been spraying to fill up and returning appprox 2 hours later to find a circle had appeared! I think that nature is powerful and accept that I will have to suffer the loss of crops from her. But the men who make hoaxs should think of the farmers who untimately lose money from their childish and thoughtless activities

Roman K.
I think some of the cropcircles can be made by man but some of them are made by a more intelegent being, some of the figures are so complicated that humans couldn't of come up with em let alone make em. I think these are messages of some sorts that we should try to descifer. Maybe its what in store for us. Who knows.

Monique
Crop Circles are symbols which are transmission from the Great Central Sun...see http://ascendpress.org/LoOne-main.html

JESSANDHELEN
Aliens may exist although many crop circles are man made as a work of art.

len
it is a government acknowledged fact that they are made by forces unknown to us. All of the corn in 'real' circles is bent at 90 degree angles, and never ever broken. they will spiral out from centre to edge. they also have vastly increased magnetic properties, and radio isotope levels. No one knows, and still they go on, year after year, becoming more complex and larger.

Barbara
In reply to Scara, the difference between snowflake patterns and crop formations in that snowflakes are symmetrical like so much in nature, the formations definitely are not.

Gerard
The Earth herself creates the real crop circles.

Simon
I think the PEOPLE who create these are very clever and very organised. Why do we have this need to mystify everything and ignore any number of possible ways in which the crop circles could have been formed? Crop circles play on our in-built fear of the unknown and desperate longing to find out if there is a higher being. (I.e God, Aliens or what ever but alien 'life' may not be in the form we have assumed it to be, in fact ic could be unrecognisable!)

Julian Forbes
Amazing, those guys must be very busy at night, that's all I can say! Also they are most definitely sober when they make them!!

Antonia
crop circle are a natural phenomena. I think some of them a hoaxes. But they are really pretty!

thomas woodhouse jones
I think they mean something, but possibley not from aliens though. i believe they may be messages from the gods of nature and could tell us of whats coming up. i notice one looks alot like a large tree. maybe its a alien language of sings, or even their equivalent of rune stones. and alot of pranks of course, i think alot are real.

Matthew Spencer
I dont know whether or not we should be influenced by the media that causes us to be convinced about the facts of the truth of science and beyond. But whatever these crop formations are, I hope that some day we would know the real truth. I have no idea who made them and how. I only believe that someonelse did it for a purpose in our planet. The truth cannot stay forever!!

Jonathan
I think that the original purpose of crop circules (if you can say there is one) was to highlight the attraction that people feel for the earth, and particularly for our ancient historical monuments. A piece of art work can sometimes be dedicated to a person, a landscape, an idea, and emotion etc. whereas these artistic creations are dedicated to mathematics, geometry, geomancy, earth energies and the general pagan spirit of stone circles and the Earth. Whether the most recent formations are the work of aliens or locals, the fact is that they are beautiful and attract thousands to this part of the world every year.

sylvia butten
the crop circles are very fascinating and i believe they are formed by a much higher intelligence than us. crop circles are recorded in the bible. we should all be more open minded about them, after all the universe is so vast that there must be other intelligences, some primative and probably many much more advanced that earth beings

Sammy
wicked but how???

David Moore, Eddington
im sorry bbc i didnt read you whole report my i congratulate you on the amazing and informative report and i am sorry for doubting you well done :)

Brenda Jones
i belive we are alone the only culprit must be ghosts which are real or some strange animal artists who come out in their thousands.!!!

Alex Hallam
ive changed my mind i belive its an act of god and we are his creation, we are the only planet with life for we are gods creation.WWDJ2004

Fredrick Fallows(Farmer)
a new from of farmer art or possibly other peoples art?

Brenda Jones
Aliens drawn to the earth's energy lines may have created some of these circles. It might be one of their ways of letting us know that we are not alone in this universe.Why can't we see and pay attention to all of the signs that they give us?

Alex Hallam
I am an U.F.O believer because we can't be the only living things in the universe,the solar system is not the universe!Some of them maybe pranks but some can be real and I belive that they are real.But I also think that some are fakes.People have two choices you can think we're the only living things or you think we are not alone!

Alan
There was a German documentary last year about how a team of mischievous characters designed and made a crop circle overnight based on the pizza that they happened to be eating at the time they discussed it. After the circle was discovered the next day, the programme was shown on TV. It was very clever and very easy to make. Using a log, for example, to roll over the stalks. The really funny bit was listening to all the twaddle produced by the visitors about the shape of the details, which were scaled up bits of tomato and other bits of the topping from the pizza! How gullible can people be?

Julie Ann
The Cheekie cosmic monkeys did it

carol
intriging

Ben Price, Westbury
I think there is still much to be explained but they must be another amazing feature of mother nature

Matt
I am doin a huge speech for my highschool on conflicting topics and i realized that the only thing that is different between people who dont believe in crop circles and aliens with people who do is just the fact that most people who dont believe are scared of something that they dont know about. This is just a natural human reaction to conflicting topics

tytunka
freaky

Stewart Brockman
Interesting...

David Moore, Eddington
You never mentioned the anomolies associated with crop circles-- bent stalks, etc.. This fact, not the difficulty of faking a formation which looks good from a distance, is where the mystery lies. I think you must know this, but do not acknowlege it. This is not so silly a subject that it should be so poorly reported. Check your facts, BBC.

Mark Long, Toronto Canada
England is holy ground any way you slice it(circular etc.)

MR G Maggs/Bath
They can`t be man-made: nobody wants any money...

Scara
I am still unsure of what to think after having visited a circle near Avebury Ifeel there is a simalrity between crop circles and snowflakes another amazing freak of nature...

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• Multimedia
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video gif VIDEO: Click here to see crop circle discovered in a field of oil seed rape, near West Kennett. (Courtesy of BBC Points West)

video gif VIDEO: Click here to see the 1996 Marlborough Summer School course for people interested in crop formations. (Courtesy of BBC Points West)

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GALLERY:
Click here for The Moonraking Gallery

•Click here to add your images to The Moonraking Gallery.

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SPOOKY STUFF

•Crop Formations
•UFOs
•Leylines
•Earth energies

SEE ALSO

Mysterious circles keep cropping up

The Landscape

Spooky Stuff

The Folklore

What does it all mean?

The Gallery

Message Board

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WEBSITES

Circlemakers

BBC Space: Crop Circles

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CONTACT

BBC Wiltshire
Broadcasting House
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Swindon
Wilts
SN1 3RW
Telephone: 01793 513626
E-mail:wiltshire@bbc.co.uk



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Telephone: 01793 513626 | E-mail: wiltshire@bbc.co.uk


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