Crop Circles: The Human Angle

Matthew Williams – a former special-investigator with the British Government’s Customs & Excise agency – holds the distinction of being one of the very few people in the world arrested, charged and convicted for making a Crop Circle – although the actual crime was of causing damage to the field in which the formation was made.

I will be the first to admit that Matthew is a good friend of mine, and a great deal has been written about his reasons for making crop-formations that is either misleading or downright untrue. And, more importantly, the notion that people such as Matthew can be dismissed as mere hoaxers is an utter failure to understand and appreciate the philosophy and experiences of the human circle-makers.

In an extensive interview I conducted with Matthew, he began:

“In 1992, when I got involved in Crop Circle research, there were a lot of people who believed that Crop Circles could only be made by otherworldly forces. Admittedly, I didn’t know very much about Crop Circles back then; and hearing some of the arguments of ‘bent nodes’ and ‘blown expulsion cavities’ coupled with UFO sightings, made the whole subject seem extraordinary. Without researching the subject for myself, I was inclined to believe the so-called experts and their seemingly plausible theories about aliens making Crop Circles.”

“My early research efforts involved investigating areas where Crop Circles were expected to appear. I coordinated efforts with other friends and researchers via radios, and we patrolled fields in our cars, armed with night-vision equipment. Back in those hazy days, I used to think that people who made Crop Circles were trying to confuse us and lead us away from the path of discovering deeply encoded alien messages. I was on a mission to stop man-made Crop Circles appearing.”

Matthew explained to me the motivation behind his mission: “Many researchers I knew believed that the Crop Circles were alien in origin and felt there was nothing to be gained in trying to police human Circle-makers, as, in the opinion of the researchers, there were very few Crop Circles created by people anyway; and the researchers I knew were sure that they could tell the difference between a manmade Crop Circle and an alien-made Crop Circle.

“The standard method of researching Crop Circles generally involved going into them on the same day they had formed and studying what was present. My own motivation was to get closer to whatever was creating the Crop Circles, at night and when the Circles were formed. If we had caught any human in the act of making Crop Circles, then the plan was to scare them off or perhaps even call the police. In fact, our field surveillance activities were actually welcomed by the police as a form of anti-criminal vigilance. If we could be sure we had cleared a field of any human-made Crop Circles, then logic dictated that if a Crop Circle did appear, it must be genuine.”

Matthew admitted, however, that these plans were both “rather naïve” and “fruitless” with “none of us even getting close to a Crop Circle being created under weird or 100-per-cent confirmed fields-clear-of-hoaxers.”

He elaborated: “It wasn’t until about 1994 that I decided to seek out the human Crop Circle makers. What subsequently happened could be termed the ‘other side’ of the story. By this time, I had a good idea that many Crop Circles were made by humans; but was unsure if there was a level of disinformation being spread. It was then I met [Crop Circle researcher, maker, and personality] Rob Irving and heard his immortal quote, which I still use to illustrate the simplicity of the Crop Circle argument: ‘You’ll never be sure until you actually make one.’

“What I learned next was totally unexpected, as the Crop Circle makers I spoke to did not debunk the theories that paranormal events take place in Crop Circles, even if they are man-made. Indeed, there was much talk of strange lights and events happening to the Crop Circle makers while they made Crop Circles at night.

“I was given countless tales of UFO activity and even strange synchronicities which took place in the man-made Crop Circles, and which made the Crop Circle makers wonder if they were being influenced by a higher, guiding hand – perhaps at the design stage, or out in the field.

“I befriended a number of Circles teams and watched Crop Circles being made under various conditions. Back in the early days, I thought that speaking to the human Crop Circle makers would help me to determine which Crop Circles were made by unknown persons or paranormal forces. Later on, however, I became convinced that human-made Crop Circles made up the whole sum of the complex Pictograms, leaving only very simple Crop Circles as possible unknowns.”

Matthew makes an important point that – whether you agree with him or not – takes him just about as far away from being a mere hoaxer as it is possible to get: “I believe that the human Crop Circle makers may be guided by a connection to a higher intelligence, a gestalt or group mind; and the symbols that are put down are deep-routed subconscious expressions. This would explain why some telepaths or psychics claim to have seen Crop Circle designs before they appear – because we are all dialed into the same group-mind ‘internet.’

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