Reports of Unidentified Flying Object: The English Corn Circles in 1988 – The Yatesbury Circles
At the end of June an aerial survey by the Circles Phenomenon Research group revealed no less than thirteen Circles in several large fields of barley at Yatesbury, just two miles west of the famous Stone Circle at Avebury. Many of these had been discovered earlier by local farmers, and they were all plain circles swirled both clockwise and anticlockwise in groups of two or three. Several other Circles were found a mile away near Beckhampton.
Further inquiries in the area led to some surprising new information which was volunteered by Mr. Roy Lucas, a farm worker. He had been cutting verges near Yatesbury between 7 and 8 a.m. on June 16, which was an overcast day, when he observed in an adjoining field about 400 yards away something like a “puff of smoke” rise from the ground and drift slowly upward. When about ten feet high it had suddenly billowed and swirled about. The center of this column of vapor then appeared gray and dense, and twisted very rapidly. Then, all within a few seconds, the “smoke” dispersed completely. Mr. Lucas said that his first impression was that a tramp had lit a small fire in the field. Then a few minutes later the same thing happened again further across the field, and five minutes later the sequence was again repeated.· When he went to investigate there was, needless to say, no tramp, no fire, and nor for that matter any holes in the ground. But neither were there any Com Circles, although some of these were found later that day in an adjoining barley field. Mr. Lucas admitted that the “smoke” could well have been steam, fog, or any white vapor for all he knew.
Naturally, Dr. Meaden interpreted this as a “descending atmospheric vortex , ” despite the fact that whatever was observed appeared to have risen up from the ground. Whether or not this phenomenon is what caused the Yates bury Circles, we cannot tell, but it does sound very similar to what was observed near Trowbridge, Wiltshire, in 1979.
Here the witness saw “smoke” coming through the hedge as he drove along the main road. “Whatever it was, ” he said, “I don’t want to see it again. Six feet of it came into the middle of the road. It stopped and tilted on end. I thought it was going to hit the van . ” The smoky column traveled ahead of the van, which was moving at about 35 m.p.h, for a short distance, then it “just went into a gate way. “