The expected wave of crop circle media coverage continues in the US and UK, but the debunkers are moving in fast, with something big in the offing, as ANDY THOMAS reports…
The huge wave of circle publicity generated initially by the ‘Signs’ movie shows little sign of dying down just yet. Though most of the numerous television programmes planned for the USA have now aired (some actually quite good, others less so), circle researchers are being kept busy by radio stations and newspapers around the world demanding quotes, though whether the quotes as finally printed in the press resemble anything originally said is another matter.
But an increasingly negative air is leaking into the proceedings, after such a surprising amount of coverage quite happy to accept at least some circles as remaining a mystery. Both the National Geographic and BBC News Online websites have recently given huge coverage to human circlemakers (in the case of the latter, yet again) and spreads such as the recent one in the ‘Sunday Express’ supplement ‘S2’, whilst attempting some balance (though not crediting their sources, such as the long conversation had with Swirled News!), lean heavily towards human circlemaking as the ultimate answer, despite all the other evidence. The August issue of ‘Scientific American’ also has a sceptical page written by an alleged one-time circlemaker, with no other voice allowed for.
One crew of plankers are also planning a secret but apparently significant crop-crunching event at the end of August, calling on e-mails via the clarion cry of “circlemakers unite!” for the plankers of the world to get together for some unspecified purpose. As they say: “You MUST be a circlemaker and be able to prove it. Believe us, you'll want to be involved in this piece of history!”. It isn’t hard to imagine that this will be some attempt to create many man-made formations in an effort to convince the world that they and their kind explain the whole phenomenon, and the results will probably be timed to coincide with the UK release of ‘Signs’ in the second week of September.
They’re unlikely to win the propaganda battle completely, though. Whatever the film’s artistic failings and ‘sinister’ connotations (see readers’ comments in our other current Headline), the reaction to ‘Signs’ has at least identified and provided a forum for many people who have hitherto been neutral over crop formations, but who are now ‘coming out’ to admit their belief in a non-human explanation, however many man-made efforts there may be. And there’s far more ‘believers’ (yes, that word!) out there than might have been previously thought…
However many casualties fall to the debunking, the crop circle mystery won’t be going away just yet.