Mysterious craft have been passing over fields this harvest season.
A few times this summer, the craft have circled farmers’ fields, which then were discovered to contain crop circles. When the beings alight from these aircraft, they dash off to inspect the crop circles before other human beings have a chance.
They are part of Crop Watch 2001, an effort of the Vancouver-based Canadian Crop Circle Research Network.
“We’re still getting reports coming in,” said network director Paul Anderson, who scoured Alberta and Saskatchewan for crop circles in late summer.
Read Also
One Beer Market Updates Day 3 – Lentils and beef
Day 3 of the One Beer Market Update at Ag in Motion 2025.
“There have been 17 so far this year.”
Anderson’s journey was an attempt to capture as much information as possible about the mysterious circles, which have begun appearing with greater regularity in North America and England since first being spotted near Stonehenge, England, in the 1970s.
Anderson wanted to examine the circles before farmers, tourists, reporters and circle chasers got into them and contaminated the evidence.
Some of the ones Anderson found this year had no evidence of human manufacture, a key requirement for a circle to be considered a mystery.
“We’re still convinced this is a genuine phenomenon,” said Anderson, who has seen a number made by human hoaxers.
“In being able to separate the fake ones from the still unexplained ones, we’re making progress.”
Anderson doesn’t like to speculate on the origin of the circles. Some people have suggested that space aliens have caused the circles.
“I don’t want to jump to conclusions,” said Anderson.
“What is actually causing them, we don’t know.”
Anderson was lucky this summer when he visited the crop circle hotbed of Midale, Sask.
It was the site of a series of crop circles in 1999. More were found this year. So Anderson paid a visit to the town.
He rented a plane to observe the reported circles from the air. On a flight a couple of days later he discovered, to his excitement, more circles had appeared. He got there before any other people to record the phenomenon.
Last week a gigantic, 91-metre-wide crop circle collection was reported outside Red Deer.
Anderson said this phenomenon is interesting to study because it keeps developing. The first crop circles found in England were quite simple, but over the years they have become more complex.
In Canada, which began experiencing crop circling a few years later, the circles have tended to lag behind the English ones. But Anderson said they are evolving here too.
“Some of the ones in Saskatchewan are more complex than we’re used to seeing. They’re up a notch or two.”
Anderson said British crop circle researchers are frustrated by the number of fake crop circles being made by human jokesters.
There’s less hoaxing in Canada, Anderson said. He is convinced there is something more than human pranksters behind some crop circles. He just wants to know what it is.
“With most mysteries – UFOs, Bigfoot – it’s a question of do they exist. With this, there’s no doubt they exist. What’s causing them?”
Pictures of some of the Canadian crop circles this year can be found at www.geocities.com/cropcirclecanada.
