General
Historical Crop Circles, Before People Knew What ‘Crop Circles’ Were
With the spread of crop circle and UFO phenomena through modern mass media, many find it easy to dismiss crop circles as hoaxes. Everyone knows what they are, and so what if someone goes out in a field with a mower to get some attention or play a prank?
When Queen Elizabeth put a crop circle book on her summer reading list in 1989, there was a particular surge of interest and also talk of hoaxing.
But crop circles aren’t a modern fad.
Reports throughout history, before the term “crop circle” buzzed through the world, seem to refer to phenomena much like those observed today. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t ordinary explanations for those historical crop circles as well as today’s.
It simply means people have been surprised and perplexed by crop circles for centuries. Some of the explanations given in historical accounts suggest natural causes, though some allude to supernatural causes.
‘The Mowing Devil’
In 1678, a news pamphlet titled “The Mowing Devil: Or, Strange News Out of Hertfordshire,” described a crop circle in Hertfordshire, England. The report was republished by Hertfordshire folklorist W.B. Gerish in 1913, and it reads:
“Being a true relation of a farmer, who bargaining with a poor mower about the cutting down three half acres of oats: Upon the mower’s asking too much, the farmer swore that the devil should mow it rather than he.
“And so it fell out, that very night, the crop of oat shew’d as if it had been all of a flame; but the next morning appear’d so neatly mow’d by the devil or some infernal spirit, that no mortal man was able to do the like.”
The farmer seems to have seen a bright light, like fire, in his field the night the crop was mysteriously mowed.
Woodcut of the “Mowing Devil” that accompanied the 1678 news report.
The farmer seems to have seen a bright light, like fire, in his field the night the crop was mysteriously mowed. The report goes on to state that the farmer was too scared to go collect the mowed oats.
Crop Circles Caused by Storms?
In the July 29, 1880 edition of the journal Nature, John Rand Capron published an article titled “Storm Effects,” that described crop circles in detail.
Part of his description reads: “These all presented much the same character, viz., a few standing stalks as a centre, some prostrate stalks with their heads arranged pretty evenly in a direction forming a circle round the centre, and outside these a circular wall of stalks which had not suffered.”
He wondered if these were caused by “cyclonic wind action.” He noted, “The storms about this part of Surrey have been lately local and violent.”
Improved Fertility in Crop Circles
In 1686, Oxford University professor of chemistry Robert Plot wrote of geometric shapes in fields in “A Natural History of Stafforshire.”
He wrote, “the earth underneath having been highly improved with a fat sulpherous matter … ever since it was first stricken, though not exerting its fertilizing quality till some time after.”
Improved fertility is also said to be a characteristic of some crop circles today.
A plate from “Natural History of Staffordshire,” by Robert Plot, illustrates Plot’s hypothesis of how patterns were created in crops by forces emerging from clouds during a thunderstorm.
Plot hypothesized that the formations were created by lightning or other forces during thunderstorms. Gary Bobroff, in his book “Crop Circles, Jung, and the Reemergence of the Archetypal Feminine,” noted:
“Today, formations continue to be found the night after tremendous thunderstorms—the 2001 Milk Hill formation, consisting of 409 individual circles and spanning 1,000 feet across—being perhaps the finest example of this correlation.”
Some have suggested that Plot was describing what we know today as crop marks, not crop circles. Crop marks appear due to different conditions of the soil, often caused by buried structures.
For example, a buried wall or ditch will affect how much water will collect in the soil above, thus affecting the ability of plant life to flourish. This sometimes causes discernable patterns in crops.
Henry VIII’s Court Celebrates Crop Circles With a Dance?
John Leyland, a chronicler of King Henry VIII’s court wrote of traditional English maypole dance: “We go out in the early hours and we learn the patterns that appear on the grass overnight.”
Fairies at Work or Play
Walter Evans-Wentz gathered Celtic folklore in his 1911 book “The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries.” Bobroff noted that many of the collected descriptions of rings in the grass clearly relate to mushrooms that grow in ring formations and have long been known as “fairy rings.”
But some seem to relate to crop circles, as they clearly describe a flattening of crops.
For example, Evans-Wentz wrote: “Sometimes the fairies helped human beings with their work, coming in at night to finish spinning or … thresh a farmer’s corn or fan his grain.”
By Tara MacIsaac, source: theepochtimes.com
A British woman purchased a portrait of a young girl from a charity shop and now asserts that the picture is cursed, reports mirror.co.uk.
Zoe
Elliot-Brown, aged 36, spotted an artwork by an unfamiliar artist at
the Hastings Advice Representation Center in St Leonards-on-Sea, East
Sussex, a month ago.
Simultaneously, the seller cautioned Zoe
about the painting possibly being cursed, revealing that a prior
purchaser of the same artwork had returned it to the store with the
statement “it ruined my life.”
Out of curiosity, Zoe captured an
image of the painting on her smartphone and shared the photo with her
68-year-old mother, Jane Elliot-Brown. Her mother seemed to be entranced
by the painting.
Instantly,
she began urging Zoe to acquire the painting. Yielding to her mother’s
persuasion, Zoe paid £20 for the artwork. However, as soon as she
introduced it into her home, strange occurrences commenced taking place.
As
Zoe entered her home and positioned the painting in the living room,
their dog named Cilla leaped up and started growling at the artwork.
Cilla deliberately kept her distance, refraining from approaching the
picture. Subsequently, Zoe’s mother’s health took a sharp decline. She
began experiencing alternating spells of fever and chills, requiring her
to wear four sweaters to keep warm.
Concurrently, Zoe’s mother
seemed to be captivated by the painting. She continuously gazed at it
and even caressed the painted girl’s cheek. During the night, she heard
peculiar knocks emanating from the room where the picture hung, despite
the room being unoccupied.
Zoe managed to persuade her mother that
the painting held negative energy and was cursed. However, Jane
staunchly defended the painting, reluctant to part with it.
“I’ve
never seen my mother yearn for something so intensely. She was
entranced by it, but not in a positive manner. She guarded it. She
frequently gazed at it. She ran her fingers over the painted girl’s
cheeks and polished the surface, although the painting didn’t require
polishing.”
“Each time I mentioned disposing of the painting, she
became exceedingly irritable. It transformed into a sort of family
heirloom for her, something she began cherishing.”
“My mother
flatly refused to get rid of the painting. I think it’s a bit like the
magic power of the Lord of the Rings ring. It definitely works in an
attractive and charming way, it seems to pull you towards it.
“My mother became a bit like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings,” says Zoe.
Jane
herself says that it seems to her that the painted girl is very unhappy
and she stroked her to comfort her. She also does not attribute the
deterioration of her health to the purchase of the painting.
At
the same time, she admits that there were several cases when someone
seemed to knock on the door, and when she opened it, there was no one on
the threshold.
One day, Jane became so ill that she fainted right
in the bathroom. Zoe called 911, but her mother refused to go to the
hospital and was eventually left at home.
One morning, Zoe entered
the living room and saw her mother standing and stroking the painted
girl on her cheeks. And the mother could not remember how she ended up
in the living room and what she did at night.
“It
was strange behavior, especially for my mom. She couldn’t remember
anything from what happened last night. My mom is still very weird and
distracted and doesn’t want to discuss it.”
And then something
even more frightening happened. Zoe and her friend Ben went for a walk
on a hill during a thunderstorm and suddenly saw a “creepy black figure”
that suddenly appeared in front of them.
They do not know if this
is related to the painting, but they immediately ran back in fear.
Deciding to get rid of the cursed painting, Zoey eventually took it and
took it to the same shop where she bought it.
And when she drove
up to the store, she saw that in one of the tires of the car, brand new,
someone stuck a screw. She gave the painting to the seller, but then
changed her mind and took it back.
She
didn’t want someone else to buy the painting and get hurt because of
it. Now Zoe wants to give the picture only to someone who understands
damn things.
Now the painting is kept in Zoya’s house in a box filled with sage (it is believed that sage helps against evil spirits).
She also hung sage in every corner of the house, although Zoya’s mother was very unhappy with this.
“I
thought knowing my luck some idiot will go and get it and try and burn
it and I don’t really want to be left with the remainder of whatever the
hell has been going on. Technically I was the last owner. [I want it]
dealt with properly. […]”
A mysterious wild man, nicknamed by the locals “the wolf man”, was
photographed in the forested mountains of the Harz, in the center of
Germany. The man was completely naked and held a spear in his hand.
The
savage was accidentally noticed by two tourists who were walking
through the forest, not far from the city of Blankenburg in
Saxony-Anhalt, and examined the ruins of an old castle.
“When we
reached the caves in the sands, we saw this wolf-man. He stood high in
one of the caves and held in his hand a long wooden stick that looked
like a spear.
“He didn’t take his eyes off us, but he didn’t say
anything. He looked dirty and looked like a prehistoric man from the
Stone Age, like pictures in a history book,” Gina Weiss, 31, told Bild
newspaper.
According
to Weiss and her friend Toby, they observed this man for about ten
minutes. The naked man appeared to be in his forties and reportedly
these tourists were not the first to have seen him in the area.
It is assumed that he has been living in the forests near Blankenburg for about five years.
Authorities say they have received numerous reports of a person wearing a wolf’s skin or wolf costume over the past five years.
In
March 2023, a frightened eyewitness even called the police because he
thought that a wolfman running next to him wanted to attack him. In
other cases, people have seen how a savage is trying to make a fire or
building a hut out of branches for himself.
At the same time, it
is quite cold in this area in winter and it is not clear how this person
managed to survive here for several years.
According to Alexander
Beck, head of the local fire brigade, this savage clearly has the
skills to live in the wild and adapt to the changing seasons of the
year.
Where this man came from is unknown. There are many theories, from the hermit to more mystical versions such as time portals.
However, there are those who believe that all this is just some kind of prank to scare tourists or some other purpose.
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