Reports of Unidentified Flying Object: The English Corn Circles in 1988 – Eye-Witness Accounts
The elusive nature of the Circles has always been one aspect of the mystery which is most frustrating. Despite the increasing number of Circles that are found, no one ever seems to have seen one actually being formed, with two notable exceptions. This would appear to indicate that most Circles are formed at night, and also that they form extremely rapidly, within, say, ten to twenty seconds. On the two occasions when witnesses claim to have seen a Circle form, nothing was visible in the air above the site, though in one case a high-pitched humming sound was heard.
In the summer of 1983, Melvyn Bell , who lives near Bratton, says that while out riding a horse at dusk near there, he saw frenzied agitation in the corn some sixty yards away, and saw a thirty-foot Circle being flattened out. No noise was heard at that distance. The witness is an associate of Dr. Meaden, so it was perhaps inevitable that this event was described by Mr. Bell as a “stationary whirlwind. ” Despite subsequent reference to “dust, dirt and light debris spiraling into the air, ” which was not mentioned to Colin Andrews when he was first told the story, it does not seem that one can draw much conclusion as to what caused this Circle.
The only other reported observation of a Circle being formed in this country was when many people apparently saw one appearing in daylight. This was when a Circle formed in grass near Warminster, “just like the opening of a lady’s fan, ” and was observed by about fifty people skywatching for UFOs at a time when that town was the Mecca of UFO hunters in the 1960s and 1970s. ”A perfect circle was accompanied by a high-pitched humming sound. ” This event was reported by Arthur Shuttlewood in the magazine Now ! It is highly ironical that the meteo rologists who are anxious to debunk any UFO connection with the Circles should pick Shuttlewood ‘s report to sub stantiate their case. That what they saw was caused by a whirlwind was most certainly not Arthur Shuttlewood ‘s interpretation of the event, nor that of the other skywatch ers. Sadly enough, many UFO researchers have rejected as too unbelievable much of what he reported from War minster during that period, and it is high time that this was reappraised.
For some unknown reason we seldom now receive re ports of Circles in grass in this country, but nearly always of Circles in cereal crops. Nevertheless, it would be reasonable to suppose that the phenomenon described by Shuttlewood is the same as that we are dealing with today.
More significant is the fact that it is in just those places where we find the Circles today that Arthur Shuttlewood and the skywatchers of yesteryear were observing UFOs twenty years ago. And also some reports of close encounters with landed UFOs and their occupants-that rarest of UFO events-during the 1970s, are in exactly the places where today’s Circles occur.