03/14/92
Montreal Gazette

-!- Confounding crop circles show up by the scores; Despite an
embarrassing hoax perpetrated in England last year, a
Winnipeg researcher insists there's still a lot of mystery
surrounding UGMs -unidentified ground markings. -!-
WINNIPEG - From Arizona to Alberta to Nova Scotia, those
confounding crop circles showed up by the scores again last year.
A new report says 87 sets of circles, rings and other shapes were
discovered, flattened or dug into fields across North America in
1991.
And despite an embarrassing hoax in England last year, the Winnipeg
researcher who compiled the report insists there's still lots of
mystery surrounding what he and his colleagues like to call "UGMs"
- unidentified ground markings.
Secret weapons
"People have suggested everything from aliens to some sort of
government secret weapons testing as theories," said Chris
Rutkowski, who founded the group he calls the North American
Institute for Crop Circle Research.
"We're not ruling anything out."
But he admitted that most of the crop circles are likely fakes.
Rutkowski, a University of Manitoba employee who designs school
science courses, set up the institute after requests for
information from British researchers of the crop-circle
phenomenon.
He gathered data for his report from UGM enthusiasts throughout the
U.S. and Canada.
The incidents include a 10-metre-wide ring discovered in a grassy
field at Fort Lawrence, N.S. A compass needle was said to spin
rapidly outside the ring but was unaffected inside it.
In Granum, Alta., witnesses reported a UFO landed in front of a
firehall. After it left, an area of "bleached" soil was found.
A perfectly circular ring of mashed grass was sighted in Dandridge,
Tenn. Cattle appeared to shy away and those that ventured near
were said to have become sick. A police officer says he filmed a
UFO in the sky not far from the site two months earlier.
Crop circles first gained notoriety in England, where numerous
rings have materialized over the last few years.
But a celebrated incident last year left many convinced they were
all a hoax. Two painters who claimed they were responsible for
making many of the circles crafted a new one and invited expert
Pat Delgado to investigate.
Delgado confidently declared that no human could have had a hand in
its creation.
Even Rutkowski, who also prepares an annual report on UFO sightings
in Canada, estimates as many as 90 per cent of the crop designs
are likely hoaxes.
The fakes probably include complex sets of circles and corridors
flattened into fields in Coalhurst, N.S., and Jonesboro, Ga., last
year, he said.
In 1990, an investigation discovered that a crudely made circle in
a field near Glenlea, Man., was the work - not of extraterrestials
- but of a rather earthly farm hand riding a garden tractor.
But Rutkowski noted some respected scientists believe that unusual
weather formations - called wind vortexes - could cause some of
the circles.
And if pranksters are responsible for most of the circles, there is
still the question of motive. Some researchers have proposed a
"conspiracy theory," Rutkowski said.
Messing with minds
"Somebody is trying to convince us that aliens are trying to
communicate with us through these markings in the fields," he
explained.
"Some rich group of businessmen are trying to mess with our minds
... It could be pure foolishness, it could be somebody is trying
to shape our thinking."
Just over half the incidents outlined in Rutkowski's 1991 report
occurred in the U.S.
Alberta led Canada with 34 markings, while Illinois, with 32, and
Oklahoma, with 54, were the American crop-circle heartlands.

U.S. sighting of "crop circles' renews debate
Are they a hoax or the work of advanced aliens?
09/20/92
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

TROY, Ill. - Large doughnut-shaped depressions have
mysteriously appeared in a marsh near Troy, and some
experts on "crop circles" say they bear similarities to
the odd designs and circles found in fields around the
world.
But they disagree strongly on whether there is some
strange phenomenon at work or just pranksters.
Joe Nickell, an investigative writer who has studied
paranormal matters, said last week that he had concluded
that the hundreds of circles reported in England, Canada,
Japan, Australia, the United States and other countries
were made by people - not weird space creatures.
"Crop-circle phenomenon, as we know it, is a hoax
phenomenon - pure and simple," he said.
Not so, says Linda Moulton Howe of Huntingdon Valley, Pa.,
an independent producer and writer who made a television
documentary for the Fox Network called "UFO Report:
Sightings" and wrote a book called "An Alien Harvest."
Howe, who was in England studying circles there earlier
this summer, said the charges that they all are hoaxes
have been discredited. She said the worst hoax was the
claim by two landscapers that they had made all the
circles for 13 years as a prank.
A businessman near Troy says two circular depressions 35
and 40 feet across appeared the past two years in a marsh
near his property south of Troy.
The businessman - Peter Bostrom, owner of the Lithic
Casting Lab - took pictures of the circles and had the
plants in them studied by experts. Scientists said there
was no apparent explanation for the significant
structural and chemical changes they found.
A biophysicist said he could re-create the effect only
with a rapid application of heat.
Bostrom said he was convinced the circles were not a hoax.
No natural forces such as wind or water could have swept so
uniformly over the tall plants - called sweet flag - while
leaving adjacent stands of cattails and sedge untouched,
he insisted.
But Nickell, whose books include an inquiry about the
controversial shroud of Turin and who teaches technical
writing at the University of Kentucky, said people have
re-created the circles that others claim were made by some
powerful force such as an alien space ship.
Those who believed in the circles held a contest in
England in July, Nickell said, and watched as hoaxers
faithfully re-created dozens of patterns.
He said the description of the circles at Troy offered
some unusual characteristics. But he said he would
classify them as hoaxes unless another explanation could
be found.
Howe, on the other hand, said scientific studies have
proved that the circles were caused "by some kind of heat
energy rapidly applied to these plants from outside." She
did not elaborate.
She has talked to Bostrom about the circles near Troy, and
she said they are similar to what she saw in England.
"I say you can't exclude the probability of a very
advanced intelligence here," she said. "None of us can
prove that yet. But these circles are not explicable as
human hoaxes. This is a serious global mystery."

END

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