Please NOTE that the content and photos on this page were contributed by Janet Ossebaard.
The scientific information has been amended by Nancy Talbott, based on the research conducted
and published by the BLT Research Team.
Copyright © 2005 by Janet Ossebaard and BLT Research Team. All rights reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Where can we find crop circles?

All over the world. In England, USA, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Russia, Israel, Australia, India, Japan, Canada.
England however is the 'cradle' of crop circles: the place where most patterns appear each year.

Why certain places attract crop circles over and over again, is still a difficult question to answer. It seems that the presence of holographic lines (earth energy lines around and across the earth) play an important part. Our ancestors were very much aware of these energy lines; they built their sacred sites (such as burial mounds, long barrows, stone circles and pyramids) on places where powerful leylines crossed each other, thus forming leycentres. Maybe that's why so many crop circles appear in South England, where we can find a multitude of strong energy centers. Stonehenge is a very good example: situated in the heart of the crop circle area. Another example of such a powerful place is the East Field at Alton Barnes (Wiltshire), where at least one (and often two) beautiful and complex crop formations appear each year.

Stonehenge 2002	East Field 2002

Yet it remains remarkable that some places receive many crop formations in certain years, after which the amount suddenly drops. This can even occur on a national scale. For instance in the Netherlands where 1996 had a total amount of 99 crop circles. In 1997 however the amount dropped to 41. How this works precisely is still a question unanswered...

Apart from leylines, the soil and water level seem to be of influence as well. For instance, the chalk soil in Wiltshire is highly permeable, which easily inducts an electrical current. This current helps to conduct the crop circle energy.

And for those who are interested in my country, here is the distribution of crop circles in the Netherlands up to today:

What is the life span of a crop circle?

One crop season, after which the famer harvests his field.

However, the energy will be there for a long time, I know of at least one case of six years. This means that the contours of the formation (and thus the formation's energy) can still be traced, for instance with the aid of a pair of dowsing rods. In some cases the contours can be seen in the new crop of the next crop season.

2000	2001

When are crop circles formed?

When the plants involved have grown enough to be flattened. In general this means between March and September, when there are fields of crop. But also during the winter crop circles appear, for instance in fields of grass.

And then the actual timing: most crop circles are formed during the night. But there are exceptions... On 7 July 1996 this formation (called the 'Juliaset') appeared near Stonehenge, in broad daylight!

Multiple eyewitnesses confirmed that they were positive that this complex formation appeared in the late afternoon. The eyewitnesses were all pilots, who had flown over Stonehenge around 17.30 h. when the formation had definitely not been there. When they flew over Stonehenge once more at 18.00 h., the Juliaset was there...

The 999 emergency centre confirmed that at 17.50 h. they received reports of cars suddenly pulling over at Stonehenge, causing dangerous situations at the A303. People got out of their cars and peered into the field across Stonehenge, marvelled by the sheer beauty of the Juliaset... Due to these reports we know for sure that this enormous formation, consisting of 149 circels, must have been formed between 17.30 h.and 17.50 h. That is, within 20 minutes in broad daylight! On inquiry, nobody turned out to have seen anything out of the ordinary, neither the countless tourists who visited Stonehenge, nor the guards who work there...

There are more examples of crop circles that were formed during the day, but thanks to the fact that the Juliaset event was confirmed by multiple, independant witnesses, this remains a unique example.

Are crop circles made by man?

Not all of them. According to research carried out in the 1990s by Michigan biophysicist William C. Levengood and the BLT Research Team , a large majority of the crop formations examined contained specific plant and soil abnormalities which could not be caused by mechanical flattening of the plants ("hoaxes"). These abnormalities were found in plants from several hundred crop formations in 7 different countries, and consistently included statistically significant elongation (stretching) of the top nodes of the plants as well as expulsion cavities (holes blown out at lower stem nodes)--both changes indicative of exposure to brief, but intense, bursts of microwave radiation. The control plants (plants taken from outside the formations) in each case did not show these changes.

Biophysical anomalies

More scientists proved that the crop formations they examined could not possibly have been made by man. One of them is Dutch physicist Dr. Eltjo Haselhoff (chairman of the DCCCS (Dutch Centre for Crop Circle Studies, our Dutch crop circle research group)) .

Strangely enough, there are still people out there who claim to be making crop circles. What's more, they not only claim small circles, but huge, complex formations as well. This is indeed a remarkable situation, since science denies them completely. Over the course of years, I talked with these men many times, sometimes informally, sometimes I interviewed them. A couple of things caught my attention.

First of all I met the first man who claimed to have made crop circles on a truly large scale: Doug Bower. Together with David Chorley (who died several years ago) he claimed in 1991 in the national press to have made hundreds of crop formations. They said to have had only one goal: to kid the world... In front of the camera they showed how they made a circle: by means of a board and some ropes they flattened crop. The result was a messy circle. Compared with the beautiful circles the world had seen so far, this wasn't anything like as good. Unfortunately the reporters didn't ask any critical questions. It was quite obvious that they simply assumed that 'Doug and Dave' (as they entered the world news) were telling the truth...

However, when asked about the scientific data, they had no answer. Furthermore it was weird that these men could leave their homes night after night, without their spouses noticing anything... On several occasions, one of the men claimed a formation, whereas the other one denied having made that particular one. After a while, Doug and Dave started contradicting themselves and each other; they had to change some of their statements. Their story lost total credibility, but the strangest thing was that the world had already fully accepted their claim: crop circles were made by man; they had all been made by two British old men...

After Doug and Dave came Team Satan: three men from London who claim to be artists. In the course of years they changed their name into The Circle Makers. However, I will always refer to them as Team Satan, for their claims too are based on lies.

I am interviewing Team Satan (right), while researchers
listen and shoot film (1998)

When I interviewed them in 1998 for the production of the video documentary Crop Circles, The Research , the 'leading man' of the group (John Lundberg) made a mistake. He had told me earlier that they never reveal which formations they make, since that would damage the magic of the phenomenon, something they wouldn't want to do. Then he told me about a particular shape they had designed once. They had it all drawn out and planned to put it into a field somewhere. But when they arrived at the field they had chosen, the formation - exactly the same shape - was already lying there! This was a remarkable story; it indicated the presence of and interaction with the genuine Circle Makers! But when I asked him what formation he was referring to, he answered he couldn't tell "because he didn't want to damage the magic of the phenomenon". I pointed out that this could not be the case. After all, according to his own statement he didn't make that formation, so he could relax and just tell me. It became quiet. After a while he just smiled...

Claimers, among whom Team Satan (middle two), 1998

In 1998 Team Satan was hired to push the shape of a car into the crop, for a commercial of Mitsubishi. The piece of crop that would be flattened was bought from the farmer (Tim Carson, owner of the famous East Field at Alton Barnes) and the three men went to work, in broad daylight. And that was very interesting, because now we could finally see just how capable they were. Well, it was a learning experience, for both parties... First of all, they hammered posts into the ground to mark certain spots in the field. This of course created holes in the ground (which you don't find in authentic formations) and it produced a lot of noise. Strange, for 'professionals' who claim to work without a sound... Furthermore they couldn't agree on many things, whereas teamwork should be absolutely indispensable to perform such a task professionally. They argued about how to hold the measuring tape, about who was supposed to stand where, about many issues one might expect a professional team to perform blindly. Finally, they needed no less than 14 hours to put the car into the field, under these ideal circumstances (broad daylight and permission of the farmer). Fourteen hours was far too much, since the available number of hours of darkness in summertime is no more than five...
Watching this event left us with but one conclusion: these men were definitely not responsible for the appearance of UK's magnificent crop formations. Some barefaced lies were exposed...

The Mitsubishi commercial after 14 hours in broad daylight...

Another thing that caught my attention was that these men are extremely communicative! I am a professional communication consultant and I can assure you that these men are professionals. They are extremely well trained, eloquent, and (apart from the example mentioned above) intelligent. I don't often meet artists like that. Most artists are so focused on their creations, that they neglect their communicative skills. Team Satan is a huge exception. Take a look at their website: it's far too smooth! I still wonder if these men were trained by the government in order to bring disinformation into the world, thus aiming to keep the majority of the public away from the crop circles. They are simply too well trained, too smooth and too cunning to be just some jokers from London...

And let's face it: desinformation is a very effective tool. This became quite clear after the claims of Doug and Dave. No matter how ridiculous they were, they had the world convinced. Even these days, in 2004, when I tell people I'm a crop circle researcher, many times I hear: "Crop Circles? But aren't they made by those two old guys from the UK?"... And when, in 1994, two Dutch boys went to the press and claimed to have made a crop formation that had been discovered the day before, their story turned out to be nothing but a lie. They just thought it would be fun to be in the newspapers just once... But the public opinion was formed: "That crop circle was man-made, we can relax and go back to sleep..." For suppose the formations are not made by man, then by whom are they made? Isn't that a scary thought?...

To continue please go to page 1 and/or 3.

Janet Ossebaard is a professional crop circle scientist and researcher that co-produced three video documentaries with Bert Jansess. In 1996 "Crop Circles, What On Earth Is Going On?" appeared. In 1998 "Crop Circles, The Research" (with an update in 2000), and in 2001 "Contact" was launched, which won an EBE-Award as best ufo-related video documentary during the conference and film festival at Laughlin, Nevada (USA).

She also participated in the production of "The Silbury Hole Enigma" (2001), another video documentary of Bert Janssen. In the summer of 2002, she participated in a research project set up by the University of Utrecht (the Netherlands), examining newly formed crop formations by means of infra-red thermografy. In the same year, she won the Frontier Award - together with fellow researcher Bert Janssen - for her work in the frontier sciences in the Netherlands. In 2004 she was nominated once again for this award. Furthermore she is an active member of the DCCCS (Dutch Centre for Crop Circle Studies).

For more information about Janet Ossebaard and her work, please visit her homepage www.circularsite.com or by clicking the banner below.