In July of 1996 one of the most complex and spectacular crop circle designs ever seen appeared in a field opposite Stonehenge. The design became known as “The Julia Set” because it resembled the mathematical fractal called by that name. The formation was remarkable not only because of its complexity and beauty but also due to several anomalies associated with its discovery.

It arrived in daylight on a sunny day opposite a busy tourist spot surrounded by high traffic roads such as the A303. What is exceptional about this event is that it is the first time the window of arrival can be narrowed down. 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...

A mystery has cropped up in a wheat field just west of Stettler, Alta. Someone or something has laid down a set of crop circles in a field owned by Vera Shuckburgh, occupied by members of her family and farmed by Gordon Smith. Custom sprayer Colby Squires says discovered the circles while desiccating the field in preparation for harvest at about 7 p.m. on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 25. Because his sprayer is fully automated, managed by a GPS and computer mapping program, Squires says it was already heading through the circles when he realized something was amiss.

Squires stopped his machine and called his wife, Toni, to come out and get some pictures. While he has mixed feelings on whether space aliens could have been responsible for the making the circles, Squires said he...

The work of pranksters, or an alien landing zone? The 100-foot interlocking circles that mysteriously appeared in a hayfield this weekend have local residents trying to answer that question. The crop circle, near the intersection of Huffman and Oak Crest drives, is about 100 feet long and half that wide. Rick Hawkins, 28, who lives nearby, favors an extraterrestrial explanation. He saw bright lights overhead Saturday night and initially assumed it was a plane. “But now I don’t know,” he said Tuesday, examining the mashed grass. “This is freak city, after all.” Asheville police Capt. Tim Splain said the department has had no reports of unusual activity. The property owner is deceased. “With all that detail, it probably would have to be some kind of extraterrestrial...

It was early August, around the time that tips of strange lights in the sky came in. Field investigators from the Colorado-based Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network, or MUFON, flew over in a plane after hearing those reports and got photographic confirmation in early August. There was no doubt about it. Thirteen crop circles, varying in size between about 50 feet to 15 feet across, were visible among the soybean plants on the sloping banks of a gully that splits a farm near Belleville. Lacking expertise to continue the inquiry, the UFO people turned to an outfit that specializes in this sort of thing. That's right. BLT Research Team Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., prides itself on searching for a scientific explanation for crop circles. The name has nothing to do with bacon. It...

Video footage of bright balls of light forming a crop circle will be shown to Western Australians during a series of seminars on the connection between crop circle formation and contact with alien intelligence. The seminars, to be delivered by two of world's leading crop circle and alien contact researchers, Janet Ossebaard and Mary Rodwell, are the first of their kind in Australia.ºº Ms Ossebaard, director for the Dutch Centre for Crop Circle Studies (DCCCS), author and producer of award winning documentaries on the subject, said crop circles remain an unexplained enigma. "What we do know is that crop circles have been reported in many countries all over the world and found in mediums such as wheat, barley, canola, grass, corn/maize, trees, ice, rice paddies...

A group of researchers in Russia claim they have solved the mystery of crop circles, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reports. According to them, plants bend as a result of microwave emissions caused by lightning strikes. The newspaper described an experiment conducted by researcher Stanislav Smirnov who placed several stalks of cereals in a microwave oven with a glass of water. He said the stalks bent in exactly the same way as those usually found at crop circles. Smirnov said he now has to find out how microwave emissions appear on fields. He has a theory that they come from underground, but cannot prove it. Another Russian researcher, Anatoly Arzyayev of the All-Russian Electrical Hardware Institute, said that the emissions are most likely a result of lightning strikes. He said...

Ever since the first crop circle appeared mysteriously over night, speculation about the forces which created it have kept tongues wagging. And the age-old question of whether it is the work of aliens, ancient magic or simply some nocturnal humans was the centre of debate again in Glastonbury yesterday. It was the first day of a three-day symposium on circles and related phenomena attended by enthusiasts and experts from around the world. Scores of those who are fascinated by crop circles, which have been turning up in the mystical West for more than three decades, have been converging on the Somerset town. Among those attending yesterday was Californian psychotherapist Barbara Lamb, a leading researcher and lecturer who has studied crop circles in England for 15 years. She...

They aren't saying what made hundreds of cornstalks in John Polomcak's field lay over in one direction, in the shape of a circle joined by a square. But it wasn't caused by human pranksters, volunteer researchers have concluded. Investigators "do not believe, based on their field work, that the Lawton formation was mechanically made by people," said Jeffrey Wilson, director of the Independent Crop Circle Researchers' Association, a group of enthusiasts who study crop circles, which are unexplained patterns in fields. He said that statistically verified tests showed the flattened plants -- which form a circle 32 feet in diameter and a square about five rows wide and 12 feet long -- had "elongated growth nodes compared to the 'normal'...

There's something angry about the crop circle in Francis Burton's barley field. "I haven't felt anything bad from a crop circle since my first one in 1999. But this one is mean. I just didn't like it," said Beata Van Berkom, a volunteer researcher with the Canadian Crop Circle Research Network, which documents all the reported Canadian finds of this mysterious, worldwide phenomenon. When she left the one on Burton's land, three kilometres northwest of Humboldt, on Friday, Van Berkom had a headache and was in an all-around cantankerous mood. "It was very intense. This one (crop circle) felt like it had been whipped into shape rather than having the gentle flow you usually get," she said. But in the very centre, there was a soothing feeling...

Fall often brings sightings of mysterious crop circles in Ohio, and this season the Miami Valley has one of its own. Maj. John DiPietro of the Miami Twp. police department spotted the pattern of interlocking circles pressed into the cornfield about two weeks ago, according to Jay Phares, Miami Twp.'s community resource officer. DiPietro was riding in a WHIO television news helicopter scouting sites for DUI checkpoints when he saw the circles and snapped a photograph. The photo appeared on the cover of the Miamisburg-West Carrollton News last Thursday and began spreading via the Internet. The crop circles are in a field owned by the Miamisburg School District, right next door to a Miami Twp. fire station and service garage. Crop circle investigator Jeffrey Wilson called the...