Mowing Devil

 Bower and Chorley have indeed cut hundreds of circles since 1978, but only in a small area of southern England. They have not admitted to fabricating any of the circles found before 1978. Terence Meaden, in his book The Circles Effect and Its Mysteries, describes an event that occurred in England as early as 1918. However, this case concerns a pea field, not a wheat field. The most important documented case of this type is the story of the "mowing devil" from 1678.

According to a four-page account from the time, in August of that year, a Hertfordshire farmer intended to harvest three fields of oats. He hired a poor harvester, but the harvester demanded too much, and an argument broke out between them. The enraged farmer growled that it would be better if the devil himself cut the oats. The account continues:

"That same night, when the poor harvester and the farmer parted in anger, the entire field caught fire before the eyes of several witnesses. In the morning, the farmer was informed of this. When he arrived at the scene, he was astonished to find that all the grain had been cut, as if the devil had truly decided to display his skill. He cut the grain and arranged each blade with such precision that it would have taken a human forever. The distraught farmer was afraid to gather the cut oats."

A circle found in the northeastern United States in 1967 was included in the infamous Condon UFO Report. The circle was 30 feet in diameter, causing waterlogging and creating a small swamp. "The stalks were crushed and spiraled counterclockwise," the report states. A woman reported seeing a light at the site the previous night. Another circle (13.5 feet in diameter) was discovered in April 1972 in Örebro, Sweden. Witnesses also reported seeing red lights. In the center of the circle, the cluster was arranged clockwise, while in the very center was a 10-foot-diameter ring, arranged counterclockwise. The entire structure was oval in shape.

In 1975, geologist Allan Wells photographed a series of overlapping, circular braids on a snow-covered hillside in a remote corner of Turkey. Each circle measured approximately 10 meters in diameter. In 1968, Wells found more similar circles in Mount Elbrus, near Tehran, Iran.

Similar shapes have appeared repeatedly in Japan. A noteworthy example is a radial circle in reeds, 3 meters in diameter, found on August 9, 1986, in Nishikawacho, which interfered with television signals. Another appeared early in the morning on the fenced lawn of a radio station in Nippon, causing radio interference. Many such phenomena were also noted before 1980 and in previous centuries.

It appears that the complex shapes are the work of forgers, while the simpler, more complex forms arose spontaneously. Among the latter, the most common pattern consists of successive layers of ears of grain tilted to the side, with the center usually intact.

In either case, one very important question remains: what causes these circles? We still don't know the answer