On Sunday, July 7, 1996, what has been called “one of the most complex and spectacular crop circle designs ever seen” (Andrews 2009) appeared in England. It was an astonishing fractal pattern called a Julia Set, which clearly demonstrates some sort of intelligence. It is unique in crop circle history for several reasons, including the fact that it appeared not far from the mysterious and world-famous Stonehenge monument in the English countryside—and that it allegedly appeared during daylight in less than an hour.

The circle became one of the most famous and important crop circles in history and has been claimed to be one of the best cases for crop circles. Indeed, “Noted researcher Colin Andrews expressed the sentiments of many when he said at several public conferences … ‘If these Julia Sets can be proven to be made by humans, then we can all pack our bags and go home’” (Lindemann 1996).

The Julia Set Appears

In addition to claims that have become standard with most significant crop circles (such as the difficulty of making the designs and quotes by occasional baffled “experts”), this strange case has many unique features. The circumstances surrounding its appearance are, at first glance, straightforward and impressive enough: A pilot flew over the field opposite Stonehenge late one afternoon and saw a normal, undisturbed field below; on his return flight less than an hour later, the pilot was stunned to see the spectacular 600-foot fractal crop circle below in that very same field. Soon word of the circle’s discovery spread, and it made international news.

Yet there exists no photographs or video of it being made; it seemingly spontaneously appeared in minutes. The validity of this crop circle rests almost entirely on eyewitness testimony and a timeline of events suggesting that the crop circle must have appeared in between the two flights, approximately twenty to forty-five minutes apart.

 

Was It a Hoax?

The question of hoaxing was soon raised. Hoaxing is undeniably rampant for crop circles. Skeptics suggest that crop circles are man-made; believers acknowledge some hoaxes but insist that many of the patterns cannot be hoaxed. This case in particular has several aspects that, if true, seem to rule out hoaxing. For example, not even the fastest hoaxer could hope to create such a complex pattern so quickly; they might have been able to make a few of the simple circles in under an hour, but such a fractal series would truly require superhuman—or perhaps supernatural or extraterrestrial—abilities. If the story is true as told, it is a genuine mystery.

The hoaxing explanation gained credence in 1996 when researcher Michael Lindemann interviewed a man named Rod Dickinson, who confessed to making it—or at least knowing who did. Dickinson answered the claim that the circle was created in about forty-five minutes. “‘That isn’t true,’ Rod insisted. ‘It was made the previous night, by three people, in about two and three-quarters hours, starting around 2:45 am (on Sunday morning, July 7). It was there all that day.”

How exactly could the Julia Set have been created?

You start with the large central circle, which is placed right next to a tram line. People asked why it had the large central circle, which is a little out of place in a Julia Set. Simple. To avoid damaging surrounding crop, you have to have a large central area already layed [sic] down, from which you can measure out diameters to other parts of the formation. After making the first circle, they measured out a work line for the rest of the formation. (Lindemann 1996)

Indeed, that is precisely how Joe Nickell, Kevin Christopher, and I made crop circles with “stalk stompers” during investigations (see Nickell 2004 and Radford 2010).

The Eyewitnesses

Many crop circle researchers dismiss the hoaxing claims because, they say, there are simply too many firsthand witnesses in this case. Indeed, the Stonehenge Surprise involves a large number (and variety) of potential eyewitnesses. Colin Andrews, who has written at length about this mystery, sums up the key point of the anti-hoaxing argument: “It is farfetched to believe that an entire day went by without anyone seeing the enormous formation—including the farmer who owned and worked the fields” (Andrews and Spignesi 2003). But just how farfetched is it?

Andrews wrote in his 2003 book, Crop Circles: Signs of Contact:

One of the most convincing arguments for the Julia Set’s authenticity is that honest, respectable people have attested to its almost instantaneous appearance. These are credible people telling of incredible things. Nowhere is this more evident than in the accounts provided by people who would have nothing to gain, and a great deal to lose, by making up such a story. (Andrews and Spignesi 2003)

This is of course a false choice logical fallacy: suggesting that either the crop circle must be authentic or any eyewitnesses vouching for its authenticity must be lying. Yet we need not accuse anyone of deception when another, more likely and charitable, explanation is that people may simply be mistaken or inattentive. With that in mind, let’s examine the most widely cited accounts of who saw what, and when, starting in chronological order.

The Night Before the Sighting: The Stonehenge Guards

The hoaxing explanation has been dismissed by some who claim that if the crop circle had been made the night before it was discovered, it surely would have been seen much earlier and the hoaxers spotted in the act. Andrews makes much of the fact that

The Stonehenge site, which is across the road from the field where the Julia Set appeared, is guarded 24 hours a day by a team of at least three, and often, four professional security guards. These guards can see the field from the patrolled, elevated ground on the northern side of the Stonehenge standing stones, but they did not see the pattern until after 6 p.m. on the day it appeared.

Andrews paints a picture of a team of professionals vigilantly and constantly scanning the skies and surrounding fields for anything unusual. Yet their charge was right in front of them—the ancient stones and their immediate surroundings. The guards were not being paid to watch over neighboring farmers’ fields, and for all we know—like many night-shift security guards—they passed another uneventful night playing cards, listening to music, or chatting. There’s no reason to think they would necessarily have seen three people in a dark field across a highway in the dead of night.

 

Furthermore, this argument ignores the fact that the A303 highway lies between the Stonehenge security guards and where the circle was made (see Figure 1). Andrews and others eagerly describe how heavily traveled the road is yet fail to realize that any lights that might have been created by the hoaxers and seen from Stonehenge would likely be ignored as coming from passing vehicles. Even if a few flashes of light had been seen from that angle from a field across the headlight-streaked A303, the guards would not be allowed to leave their post to investigate something on private property.

The Morning of the Sighting: The Farmer

The first person who (retrospectively) claimed to have examined the area where the circle appeared was the farmer who owned the field, a Mr. Sandell. The authors of the book Crop Circles: Exploring the Designs and Mysteries state that “Farmer Sandell claims to have personally inspected the field on that Sunday morning and not noticed anything unusual” (Anderhub and Roth 2002, 38). Assuming he made that statement, the claim that Sandell “personally inspected the field on that Sunday morning” is rather unlikely to mean what the authors (and others) seem to think it means. The confusion may stem from urban crop circle researchers and writers misunderstanding the nuances of an agricultural farmer’s daily life and routine.

Farmers do not routinely and personally inspect their entire crop. When a farmer speaks of inspecting a field, this does not mean that he personally walks back and forth through each field or that he hires a helicopter to fly over his crops just to have a look at them from the air. Instead, “inspecting a field” typically means going to the edge of a field at the most convenient and accessible location and inspecting the condition of some of the plants growing there. There’s no reason for a farmer to venture into the field itself during a routine inspection, because the plants at the edge of the field are (quite reasonably) assumed to be representative of the condition of the plants in the rest of the field. It would be pointless, impractical, and indeed impossible for farmers and their hands to do the sort of close personal inspection of their fields that crop circle researchers suggest had been done the morning before the circle was discovered, thus “proving” that it could not have been there.

Before and after the Sighting: The Pilot(s)

By far the most important eyewitness in this case was the pilot who first spotted the crop circle below. As Colin Andrews, head of Colin Andrews Circles Phenomenon Research International, notes:

The formation was first spotted from an aircraft at 6:15 PM. The pilot crossed over the field with a passenger (a medical doctor taking pictures) at 5:30 PM and both reported that there was no formation in the field at that time. … [Later] The pilot took off again and crossed the field at 6:15 when he saw the Julia Set formation in the field. (Andrews 2009)

If this account is true, and the crop circle did not exist at 5:30 p.m. on the pilot’s first flight, this fact should be easily proven by an examination of the aerial photographs supposedly taken by the (curiously anonymous) medical doctor passenger. Yet, strangely, these photographs never seem to have surfaced; surely if they indisputably showed an undisturbed field across from Stonehenge any time before 6 p.m., Andrews would have been eagerly touting them.¹

Before and after the Sighting: A303 Motorists

The press notes for the film Crop Circles: Quest for Truth, from Academy Award–nominated director William Gazecki, offer the Stonehenge Surprise as one of the most important and more baffling crop circles in history, because it “appeared in full view of the busy A303 road, opposite England’s ancient monument Stonehenge, within a 45 minute period one Sunday afternoon” (Gazecki 2002).

With a few corrected facts and clarified assumptions, Gazecki’s breathless statements can be seen in a different light. The Julia Set did not in fact appear “in full view of the busy A303 road.” The A303 road can indeed be busy at times, but it is not constantly busy, and in any event the topography is incorrect. Perhaps if the field had been located on the side of a steep hill facing the A303 it would be in “full view,” but for most of the roadway in the area, it was about at the same level, and of course obscured by tall wheat on either side. As Rod Dickinson noted, “If you went there, you’d see how the field slopes down and away from the road. The formation was in a kind of bowl, below the level of the road. Going by in a car, you couldn’t see it. You would have to get out and walk toward it and look down into that bowl-shaped area to see it” (Lindemann 1996).

It is important to remember that the field where the circle appeared is in the opposite direction of Stonehenge. When passing through the area, most drivers and passengers will naturally direct their attention to the side of the road where one of the world’s most famous monuments sits—not the (presumably) empty wheat fields on the other side. This is not to say, of course, that a few passing motorists may not have glanced in the direction of that field at some point as they drove by. But the suggestion that drivers would have been paying attention to a particular patch of field that’s identical to countless miles of fields coming before and after—instead of hoping to catch a glimpse of Stonehenge—is absurd.

The Mysterious ‘M’

Crop circles are notoriously shy; there are no authenticated photographs, films, or videotapes of crop circles appearing spontaneously. For skeptics, this is considered strong evidence that the circles are made by hoaxers. After all, if it is some natural (or even supernatural) phenomenon—even if the circles can be traced back to extraterrestrials, ley lines, or something else—there’s no logical reason it couldn’t be recorded on cameras. Furthermore, unlike many other Fortean phenomena, there is a glaring dearth of firsthand eyewitness accounts of crop circles being formed.

Except, it is claimed, in this case. Just as the Stonehenge Surprise is said to be unique in several other ways, according to prominent crop circle researcher Lucy Pringle, it is also the first time that a crop circle was witnessed being formed right before the amazed eyes of dozens of eyewitnesses. According to Pringle, a witness she refers to as “M” (whom she first heard about from a friend of a friend of a taxi cab driver) and a passenger drove on the A303 in July 1996. As they passed Stonehenge, they noticed the crop circle and a large number of cars pulled over to the side of the road near the field opposite the famous site. Curious, the pair pulled over:

[They] got out and joined the crowd of other people who were also watching what was happening. “There was an apparition, an isolated mist over it and as the circle was getting bigger the mist was rising above the circle. As the mist rose it got bigger and corn circle got bigger,” M said. “There was a mist about 2–3 feet off the ground and it was sort of spinning around and on the ground a circular shape was appearing which seemed to get bigger and bigger as simultaneously the mist get bigger and bigger and swirled faster. It was gradual and you are standing there and you are thinking What is going on and everyone is discussing it and more and more traffic is building up and everything.” (Pringle 2009)

M claimed to have stayed there for about twenty minutes before the pair got back on their way, only relating the incident to a taxi driver some thirteen years after the fact. M remains the only person in the world who has told this story; no one else has come forward to corroborate it.

M’s account is dramatic—and wholly implausible. For one thing, as has been noted, the crop circle was not visible from the A303 at the point in which it passes Stonehenge, so it’s unlikely that M or the car’s passenger could have seen it. Second, it strains credulity to suggest that out of the dozens (or hundreds) of people present, not a single person photographed the amazing event or apparently mentioned it to anyone else. No newspapers were called to report something that had never happened before in human history: a unique fractal Julia Set crop circle had been created right before astonished eyewitnesses—and across from Stonehenge, no less!

Most damaging to the story, M’s eyewitness account is contradicted by the (presumably credible) pilot who first sighted the crop circle. In his account, the pilot made no mention of the dozens of cars and crowds of people M claims had gathered to gawk at the amazing crop circle (who would have been clearly visible from the air). Recall Colin Andrew’s claim that “One of the most convincing arguments for the Julia Set’s authenticity is that honest, respectable people” (such as Lucy Pringle’s eyewitness “M”) “are credible people telling of incredible things [and] have nothing to gain, and a great deal to lose, by making up such a story.” Either the pilot is mistaken (or lying), or M is mistaken (or lying)—they cannot both be correct, and it is curious that Pringle and others have failed to notice (much less explain) this glaring contradiction.

Conclusion

This case offered merely the illusion of corroboration; while at first it seemed like an airtight case with a triangulation of evidence (from Stonehenge guards, a local farmer, pilots, and highway motorists) pointing to the same inexplicable conclusion, when I took a closer look at the eyewitnesses, one by one they fell like stalks to the scythe.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and this case is a perfect example of that axiom: the fact that no one noticed the crop circle in the field until after six o’clock does not mean that the crop circle was not there. The same holds true for the fact that the circle makers were not detected while they worked the previous evening/early morning.

The much-lauded story of the Stonehenge Surprise falters under one of the most important scientific principles, Occam’s razor. In this case, the simplest explanation for the (literally) incredible eyewitness account of the Julia Set circle being created is that M is simply lying or mistaken. Similarly, the simplest explanation for the fact that a pilot, Stonehenge guards, farmers, and A303 motorists didn’t report the crop circle prior to being sighted at 6 p.m. is that they simply didn’t notice it because most people don’t spend their time paying attention to farmers’ fields looking for anything unusual. And the simplest explanation for the circle itself is that it was created the night before by the three hoaxers who admitted (albeit anonymously) to making it—and not in under an hour in broad daylight.

The simplest explanation is not always the most satisfying one, but in the case of the Stonehenge Surprise, it is surely the correct one. If this crop circle truly is one of the best and most mysterious cases—such that a close look suggesting it was hoaxed should prod researchers to “pack [their] bags and go home”hen croppies may want to start looking for their luggage.

The Stonehenge crop circle case was one of those investigations I was drawn to, not only because it was considered the “best case” for crop circles but also because nobody had solved the mystery. A key lesson I take from this is to not assume that someone would have solved a decades-old mystery. Especially in the realm of the “unexplained” and paranormal, don’t assume that any competent or skeptical investigation has been done. In the field of crop circles—as with ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs, psychics, and more—adequate scholarship is usually the exception instead of the rule, and it’s often done by advocates and believers (if done at all). This case, then, highlights the role of investigative skepticism.

Note

1. There is some confusion over whether it was the same or a different pilot who saw the field both before and after; Colin Andrews states that it was the same pilot, while Lucy Pringle, in her book Crop Circles: The Greatest Mystery of Modern Times, offers another account that differs in several important details. If two well-known crop circle researchers can’t agree on basic facts, it raises serious questions about how thoroughly this presumed best case was investigated.

References

Anderhub, Werner, and Hans Peter Roth. 2002. Crop Circles: Exploring the Designs and Mysteries. New York, NY: Lark Books, 38.

Andrews, Colin. 2009. Eye witness to the formation of a crop circle opposite Stonehenge. The Official Website of Colin Andrews (October 15). Available online at http://www.colinandrews.net/JuliaSetStory.html.

Andrews, Colin, and Stephen Spignesi. 2003. Crop Circles: Signs of Contact. Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books.

Gazecki, William. 2002. Press release/promotional material for Crop Circles: Quest for Truth documentary film.

Lindemann, Michael. 1996. Crop circle artist declares Julia Sets human made. November 16. Available online at http://www.anomalies.net/archive/cni-news/CNI.0547.html.

Nickell, Joe. 2004. Crop circle capers. Skeptical Briefs (March): 9–10.

Pringle, Lucy. 2009. Stonehenge Julia Set 1996—M’s eye witness account. Available online at http://www.lucypringle.co.uk/news/stonehenge-julia-set-eyewitness.shtml.

Radford, Benjamin. 2010. Chapter 7: Riddle of the crop circles. In Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries. Corrales, NM: Rhombus Books.