Earlier in the year, a crop circle making competition was announced at Erich von Daniken’s Swiss ‘Mystery Park’, a theme park for the paranormal. In the wake of this subsequently abandoned idea, an apparently unrelated crop circle then appeared nearby, just before the planned human creation of a single demonstration formation. Genuine interaction from the phenomenon or a dubious PR exercise? ANDREAS MÜLLER investigates…
THE BACKGROUND
As previously reported on Swirled News, this spring Erich von Daniken’s ‘Mystery Park’ at Interlaken in Switzerland announced not only a special exhibition on crop circles, but also a hoaxing-competition. Due to the fact that no school-classes nor hoaxers replied to this competition, land surveyor and artist Vitali Kuljasov was asked to create a complex design within 48 hours on the weekend of August 20/21, 2005 in the field planted beside the park's entrance. The whole event would be documented by a webcam and this webcam was running on a test-modus already the night before - the night another crop circle
formation mysteriously appeared (August 18/19).
THE DISCOVERY
According to the Mystery Park, the new formation was discovered and reported for the first time by personnel, workers and delivery services at about 7:00am and a meeting by the park's management took the following decisions:
* All work on the weekend circlemaking event was stopped and cancelled.
* Researchers such as the organiser of the exhibition, Jay Goldner, the Swiss crop circle research group KORE’S, and myself were invited to investigate.
* The press were informed as well.
THE FIELD INVESTIGATION
As stated above, the park sent investigation requests not only to Jay Goldner, but also to the Swiss crop circle research group KORE'S (Werner Andehub, Thomas Peterlunger and Peter Jetzer) as well as to me.
Werner Anderhub was the first at the scene. Luckily he arrived just 12 hours after the discovery at about 7.20pm, just before heavy rain set in that lasted over the next following days. Already this very first investigation by a very experienced field investigator showed the presence of mechanical traces and damage to the plants all over and inside the formation, traces Anderhub had only found before in obviously man-made formations. Later that evening, other KORE'S members, Peter Jetzer and Thomas Peterlunger, arrived at the field. Peterlunger surveyed the field for radioactive anomalies by using a geiger-counter. No anomalies were found.
(At this time it was still not clear who caused this internal damage, as the park's management declared that there must have been visitors inside the formation before they blocked and closed the field to non-researchers. The park estimated the number of those people as likely to be between 50 and 100 people that could have been inside the formation before Werner Anderhub arrived.)
The geometrical performance also supports Anderhub’s assessment that the crop was manually flattened. What may look good on a first view from high above shows obvious mistakes and a crooked performance on closer inspection.
A geometrical analysis can be found at:
http://www.kornkreise-forschung.de/textMPformationGEOanalys.htm
Jay Goldner, from Vienna, arrived the following day, August 20, 2005. However, he now came to a completely different assessment, based on his own investigation. Goldner sees structures of Sacred Geometry and a "fractal hexagonal grid" behind the design - for him a clue that the formation is very likely more than a simple hoax.
He claims to have found bent stalks and elongated nodes here and there within the formation. Also he claims that characteristics of a 90°-bent weed points in a positive direction. However, the KORE'S investigators could not confirm Goldner's interpretation of the findings. Also the result of our geometrical analysis brings his "Sacred Geometry" into question.
Another claim, by local newspapers, that the formation shows the same design as the Mystery Park's blueprint, can be shown to be wrong, as comparison shows.
THE ANALYSIS OF THE WEBCAM'S PICTURES
For us researchers one of the most interesting aspects of the whole situation was the fact that the field in question was observed by a webcam that was already on a testing-modus the night the crop circle "appeared".
The analysis of its pictures done by Thomas Peterlunger of KORE'S does match the results of my own analysis:
1. Unfortunately the camera's resolution and light sensitivity was too low to show activities in the nocturnally dark field. Also the pictures show many digital artefacts. All in all those aspects were so strong that even computer-based enhancement work did not provide more information and data.
2. The so-called "Kornkreis (Crop Circle) Cam 1" started taking photos on "Thu. August 18 23:30:25 2005" and took one picture each minute. This created a total amount of 1622 single frame pictures on which our analysis is based - about 378 cover the night the formation was created.
3. Picture 00:15:25 on Friday morning shows the headlights of an arriving car that is driving along the disused airfield behind the Park's fields. This car is also visible on the following picture 00:16:25, a bit further along its way. But the next picture, 00:17:25, does not show any sign of this car - the only explanation: it stopped. This position is likely to be somewhere in the picture frame’s centre, which corresponds with a position from which the field in question is just an easy little walk away.
4. From now on, the pictures show nocturnal darkness again and no recognisable structures or activities. The only things slightly visible are parts of the building’s roof and a portacabin placed beside the field. Both structures do reflect the park's night-illumination. It was stated by the park officials that there were technicians working on this roof until between 00:00 and 01:00am, preparing the planned weekend event. At 00:32:25 it is very likely this technician (for whatever reason) changes slightly the position of the camera. But still the camera does point to the field, albeit now at a different angle.
5. At 04:50:28, again a car-generated cone of light is visible on the picture. It is clear that this time this is caused by a departing car, which takes the same way back as the other/same car, which arrived about 4:20.
6. At 05:38:28, the first structure of the roof becomes slightly visible in the first bits of the morning light. Still it is too dark to see anything else.
7. At 05.51:28, we see for the very first time a faint trace that something is already pressed into the field. This "impression" is then confirmed at the latest at 05:56:29, when we clearly see that it is a new crop circle formation.
8. The information we were told was that it was very likely that even before Werner Anderhub arrived, a large number of visitors had been inside the formation, but this is not confirmed by the camera. The opposite may be the fact: There was only one single person inside the formation, visible in picture 14:03:34. This person is not visible in the pictures before and afterwards (just the following picture, 14:04:34, shows what could be this person at the field’s end, likely already outside the field again), meaning that this person spends less than three minutes inside the field and formation. It seems very hard to imagine that this person could have caused all the above-described damage and mechanical features in this very short time.
Even if the pictures show very little about what happened that night inside the field, the presence of the car lights arriving, stopping and departing again after about four hours, matches with the time human hoaxers took in past public demonstrations of hoaxing formations like the relatively small one (60m / 100ft in diameter) in question.
FINAL ASSESSMENT
The field investigation showed obvious traces of a crude and mechanical flattening, resulting in untidy lay and damage to the plants as only human hoaxers produce. The assumption that this damage could have been caused by previous visitors is refuted by the picture taken by the webcam showing that only one person spent less than three minutes inside the formation before the first investigator (Werner Anderhub) arrived at the scene. Also, the formation's geometry shows obvious lack of precision in construction. And finally we have a very suspicious car that arrives near the field, stops and departs again about four hours later.
To cut a long story short: all discovered details and aspects of this curious situation at the Mystery Park point in just one direction: This formation is not an example of the genuine phenomenon, but a figure created by very human hoaxers.
However we cannot answer the remaining question of who is behind all this, how and why...