Notorious Crop Circle Hoaxer Said To Reveal All Source: The Calgary Herald January 3, 1999
The myths surrounding crop circles
finally will be laid to rest this week when the man responsible for one of the world's greatest hoaxes demonstrates for the first time on film how he created the phenomenon.
Briton Doug Bower, 74, who has confessed
that he was the original crop circle creator, will reveal today how his patterns -- which spawned international followers and millions of dollars of scientific investigation --were made with planks of wood, lengths of rope and a ball of string.
The film, for the BBC's CountryFile
program, was shot under cover of darkness in a Wiltshire cornfield. Bower, joined by a new generation of hoaxers, shows how a huge and intricate geometric impression can be created in just a few hours.
Reports of crop circles around the world
-- including Alberta -- are now routine. They include an apparent
UFO landing site near Granum, about 130 kilometres south of Calgary, in 1991 that was part of a boom that year of some 34 markings. Reports in recent years have tailed off, but circles have also been spotted around Lethbridge and Okotoks.
"It seems incredible," says Bower, a former picture framer. "But despite us demonstrating how it is done,
the followers still don't believe crop circles are a hoax."
In 1978, Bower and a friend left his local pub one night and created the first crop circle. By 1981, news of
the discoveries had spread worldwide. An army of scientists tried to solve the mystery. Theories abounded, with many "experts" claiming the phenomenon was caused by static electricity, microwaves and even a "spinning plasma vortex."
The more the circles began to appear, the more frenzied speculation about their cause became. Scientists
began round-the-clock supervision of various areas, and farmers whose land had been targeted charged entry fees to the tens of thousands who came from around the world to see them.
National hysteria became so intense, however, that after 14 years the hoax began to unnerve Bower. He came
clean, but a huge band of mystics and devotees refused to believe him. For them, crop circles -- which still appear at least 50 times each summer -- are an unexplained cosmic mystery.
Interest from members of the Royal Family, including the Queen and Prince Charles, has only added to the
controversy.
But the farmers whose fields are targeted, often now by copycat crop circlers, are less impressed.
"It's sad that someone has to do this graffiti on the landscape," said Philip Fiddler, whose farm has been hit
on several occasions. "Why they have to pick on me in particular I'm not sure. The people who make them are one thing. But it's the people who go and have a look afterwards who do the most damage."
by Tim Reid, The Telegraph
© 1998 Calgary Herald New Media