Reports of Unidentified Flying Object: The English Corn Circles in 1988 – Close Encounters
Besides UFO sightings, it was intriguing to find that it was in the lane running beside that very field near Upton Scudamore where the Circles now appear, that German parachutist Willi Gehlen had a close encounter experience in September 1976. While sleeping in his estate car which was parked in the gateway to a field, he found that the car’s hatch-back had apparently unlocked itself and opened. After this happened a second time he heard a strange humming sound like a swarm of bees, and then saw a very tall figure, which he assumed was the farmer, standing near the gate. This figure did not reply when Gehlen excused himself for parking there, but shone a light at him then went away. Shortly after, he heard the humming noise again, and saw a large shape lift off from the ground. There was a “pink, pulsating glow” coming from it as it flew into the sky at an angle of 45°. 8 All this was recorded well before people became aware of the Corn Circles mystery, or that the Circles were appearing where these events had happened.
Mrs. Joyce Bowles of Winchester claimed to have had four separate close encounters with “aliens” in 1976 and 1977. These were at Chilcomb, where Circles have been found, two miles east of Winchester and a little over a mile from the punchbowl at Cheesefoot Head, and also near Head bourne Worthy, just north of Winchester, where Circles first appeared in the summer of 1976 close to where one of her encounters occurred during the same year. On each occasion she was accompanied by a second witness who supported her story. During one encounter she was taken inside what seemed to be a landed UFO. “Lights were blinking and flashing everywhere, ” she said. “The man told us this was his field, whatever that meant. One of his colleagues pulled out a paper which had all sorts of lines on it. In the middle was a circle with rings round it . “
Again, all of this was reported and published well be fore the Corn Circles became known. And it is not as if reports of close encounters with aliens were so common in this country that the coincidence of their extremely close proximity to principal sites where the Circles are found can just be shrugged off. Although the nature of the two UFO phenomena (those observed near Warminster and near Winchester in the 1960s and the 1970s) seems to have altered, there would appear to be very strong indications indeed that the Corn Circles of the 1980s are part of the same mystery. It is easy then to see why some have suggested that what we are looking at may well be “time travelers” from either beyond this planet or from the Earth’s own future. But obviously in our present state of knowledge such an explanation can only be treated as wild speculation.