The Rise and Fall of Interest in the British Crop Circle Mystery by Charles Lear.

Within euphology, there are several areas of specialization, such as abductions, landing traces, humanoids, contactees, military encounters, et cetera.

They often have their own specialized literature put out by individual researchers or organizations, and many have come and gone in terms of popular fascination and press coverage.

One aspect that has fallen by the wayside is crop circle research, also known as seriology.

Its early history and the reasons for its falling out of favor with the press and even among euthologists is summed up neatly in the nineteen eighty six report Mystery of the Circles, compiled by Paul Fuller than Jenny Randalls.

Randalls is the writer for the British UFO Research Association.

Of course, the report didn't put an immediate end to the phenomenon where the activity of researcher investigators who were focused on it, but it did presage the eventual waning of interest to where very few in the UFO community continue to consider it seriously as having anything to do with the UFOs.

According to Randall's mystery circles in the British West Country first started getting media attention in August of nineteen eighty, but persistent local rumors of them appearing in oak, barley and wheat fields throughout Wiltshire and Hampshire goes back to at least forty years before that.

As of the release of the report, mysterious circles had shown up in fields between May and August for six successive years.

Randalls points out that the reason before it became involved was because of the appearance of circles in the area of Warminster, which was notorious for UFO flap in the nineteen sixties, involving an object known as the Warminster Thing.

She explains that this created a definite height which sees these marks regarded as ground traces left by a landing or hovering spacecraft.

While this is very likely a valid argument for crop circles in England becoming associated with UFOs, mysterious circles that started appearing in the area of Tully, Australia in nineteen sixty six were called Tully nests and notably Saucer nests in the press.

So the association of mysterious circles with UFOs goes back far earlier than nineteen eighty.

However, the Tully nests consisted of sworled reeds and swamp grass, so they can't be called crop circles.

There is an article covering the Tully nests headlined nineteen sixty six Tully, posted under the related Cases Australasia section on the Old Crop Circle's website run by Terry Wilson.

According to Wilson, we assume he as the rider.

They actually occurred closer to the town of Uramo, south of Tully, which is known informally as Horseshoe Lagoon.

The first incident there involved a witness, George Pedley, who reported that while driving a tractor in the area at around nine a m.

On January nineteenth, nineteen sixty six, he heard a hissing sound and then saw a flying saucer rise up out of a swamp and fly away.

When he went over to investigate, he found a circle of flattened reeds swirled clockwise in a thirty foot diameter circle.

He later brought the landowner, Albert Pinissi to see it, and when Pinissie waded out into the circle, he found that the reeds had all been uprooted and were floating as a mat on the surface of the water.

Five more nests appeared, all in swamp grass, including one with a scorched center.

That same year, Also in Australia, circles in the grass were said to have been seen, where around two hundred school children and a teacher reported seeing at least one saucer land in the field on April sixth.

This was near Westall High School in Melbourne.

According to Randalls, what seems to have been the first West Country crop circle.

Newspaper report appeared in the August fifteenth, nineteen eighty Wiltshire Times.

It told the story of two circles being found by John Skull in his oat field just below the famous Westbury Whitehorse Hill.

A UFO group from Bristol that had recently formed newfora soon to be renamed probe investigated.

Ian Mertziglode and Mike Seeger interviewed Skull, and with the help of doctor Terrence Meaden, a meteorologist, took measurements.

The circles were sixty four point five and fifty eight point five feet in diameter and had an eighty per cent and a ninety three per cent eccentricity, respectively and sam And learned that there had originally been three circles, but the first one was destroyed when Skull harvested that section of his field before the other two appeared.

Merziglod published an account in the volume one, number two, August nineteen eighty pro Report and told his readers that UFOs are not ruled out, but neither are they readily accepted as an easy answer.

He noted that natural explanations were possible.

According to Randalls, the story fizzled out like all Nine Day wonders, until three circles, all in a line, were discovered a year later at cheese Foot Head near Winchester in Hampshire.

Quickly on the scene was Ken Rogers of Buphos, who promoted the idea that the nineteen eighty circles were created by a UFO and held up the latest circles as evidence to support this as local farmers became concerned about their fields getting vandalized.

The August twenty sixth, nineteen eighty one, the other An Evening Echo reported that one landowner, Giles Roussel, claimed that the circles were caused by the downwash of a twin rotor helicopter.

An mod spokesman said that an American Chinook helicopter may have been involved mean an advised probe.

It is emphasized that he was not a member.

That the new circles were similar to the ones from the year before, and that they were eccentric and swirled clockwise.

His theory was that they were caused by a weather based phenomenon.

Randall Lodge's Probe for its stance that UFOs were an unlikely cause.

She quotes Smuerziglod from the March nineteen eighty two volume two, number four Probe report.

Even to suggest that the flattened circles were UFO nests is wildly speculative, wishful thinking without any foundation.

There was a lull in press reports in nineteen eighty two, and it was announced in the October nineteen eighty two volume three, number two proport It is now time that the mystery be dropped from the circle's definition, as they are seasonal as Christmas and regular as clockwork.

However, Probe's efforts to demystify the phenomenon were in vain, as in nineteen eighty three, eight sets of mostly fivring formations, A large circle with four smaller circles on a compass point grouping around it appeared, and the press presented not only UFO theories, but the idea that the mating habits of deer in hedgehogs were a causal factor.

That year, the circles received nationwide coverage via the July eleventh, nineteen eighty three Daily Express, and Randalls describes that morning as one of the busiest in my life.

According to Randalls, every newspaper in Fleet Street called her as she was before his director of investigations, asking if she had heard about the UFO landing.

She says her obvious lack of interest in speculating about giant spacecraft was met with varying degrees of incredulity by those she spoke with.

With the circles now receiving national attention, Randalls says it was felt it before that this would result in more people looking for them and more reports coming in, and would also embolden those with intentions of hoaxing them.

Next week, hoaxes and confusion caused researchers to pack it in.

Charles Lear is the author of The Flying Saucer Investigators, available in its second edition at Amazon dot Com,