- Dear Jeff -
-
 The first USA pictogram-type
formation in Arkansas is getting quite a bit of media attention, at
least six news media outlets online have picked up the story, and countless
more offline. In my opinion, this is a double-edged sword for cerealogists. On
the one hand, it's great for the widest possible audience to have exposure
to the crop circles as a phenomenon, if only to challenge their strict
world-viewpoints.
-
- On the other hand, and I hate to sound a little paranoid,
but I am getting a little concerned with the amount of media attention
this event is getting. I have a few unanswered questions about the Arkansas
formation in terms of its authenticity, yet the media train is already
steaming down the hill.
-
- In my search to uncover more local details about this
formation, I came across an undated (but from the year 2002) article on
hoaxing crop circles that appeared in a Fayetteville, Arkansas publication.
Here is the link: http://aatonline.com/searchfinal.asp?ID=266
The article was fairly specific in the steps needed to hoax a circle formation.
This article's appearance and the comments attributed to the farmer that
he was convinced that someone had pushed down the wheat make me wonder.
Most farmers that I've dealt with, who have had genuine formations
on their property, come away convinced that nobody could have hoaxed it
-- yet this farmer was convinced otherwise.
-
- I hope I'm wrong, but I've seen this happen several times
now in Cereology, where mass awareness of crop circles as a genuine phenomenon
starts to build amongst the general population, then a big event occurs
that gets picked up by the mass media to get everyone's attention, only
for the rug to be pulled out from underneath it all -- and it sets back
the whole of Cereology years. I really hope this won't be the case here.
-
- I also had a feeling too, after seeing the photo
of the Arkansas formation, like I had seen this formation somewhere before,
but I couldn't exactly remember where -- so I went looking!
-
 July 2, 2001 Bluebell Hill, Kent County, UK was nearly an exact
match for this formation. The central circle for this formation looks a
little larger than the one in Arkansas, and it may have had a few areas
of standing grain in the central circle, but you have the same 10 circles
diminishing in size, and bending in the same direction. See the attached
photo and diagram (from the Crop Circle Connector database). At the time,
the researchers investigating the Bluebell Hill formation questioned the
authenticity of that formation too, although nothing definitive was ever
learned (as I recall they may have had trouble gaining access due to the
foot-and-mouth disease problems).
-
- As I was looking and ran across this one, I seem to recall
there may have been another match that happened outside of England - so
I kept looking!
-
 I began to wonder now if
this formation design may be a 'stock' image design of some hoaxing group
. . .
-
- It didn't take me long to find what may be
the original 'model' for the Arkansas formation, and the one which may
have been nagging at the back my mind. Back in 1998, the famous hoaxing
group "The Circlemakers" were flown to New Zealand for an NBC
'crop circles are all hoaxes' special to create a major hoax project.
See the attached photo of it. Although the hoax was a much more elaborate
and sophisticated design, recognize the basic similarities? I wonder if
this was the model for the Bluebell Hill formation too?
-
-
- I haven't investigated the Arkansas formation personally,
which could answer some of these nagging questions, but without reliable
ground truth information, ground photos, etc. . . I will remain suspicious
of this one.
-
- Sincerely,
-
- Jeffrey Wilson
- <mailto:jwilson10369@comcast.net>jwilson10369@comcast.net
- Dexter, Michigan
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