Stavanger Aftenblad, Pluss, 10th of September 2004:

TEXT: Ann Mari Gregersen
PHOTOGRAPHY: Pål Christensen

Ornaments in the fields? Some think they are nature’s own work.

Tracks in the field

Crop circles fascinate the enthusiasts and annoy the sceptics. We came with Eva-Marie Brekkestø for a
circle hunt in England. The phenomenon probably has roots back to the 800s.

 - MANY SEE US as morons.

Eva Brekkestø is indeed aware of the fact that her special interest makes people shake their heads and smile disconcertedly. But she’s in love and doesn’t care.

IT IS SATURDAY. We have been an hour in the county of Wiltshire and have already seen our first crop circle. But we cannot enter it. The farmer is of the angry kind and has put up a warning sign that does not leave any doubt about his serious intention to report to the police anyone who should try to take a closer look at the grain.

– Come on. Let’s go to the top of Silbury Hill. It is not entirely legal to climb the 5500 year old mound, but we can see the formation better from up there, says Eva, as she climbs the locked gate.

Eva receives us with a smile. Her planned guide program for the afternoon is quite tough. But it will be interrupted if she receives a message of a new circle on her black mobile. For the time being it is silent.

The tall, slender lady with blue mountain trousers, short sleeved pink shirt and a headband and armed with a hip sack and water bottle, is not a silent, lady.

She pours out her knowledge, teaches us about energy lines, ancient monuments older than the pyramids, English history. We walk up a hill and down another; we see a couple of crop circles that are several days old. Eva walks like a general and talks like a perpetual machine.

  – Avebury, where we are now, is a gigantic stone circle, 500 years older than Stonehenge and 14 times larger. Why don’t we learn about this in Norwegian schools? asks Eva

  Eva is not sorry that so far we have only seen old circles. She’s already seen fourteen new ones so far in her three weeks holiday. Every year since 2000 she has spent three of her vacation weeks as a teacher in Wiltshire and Avebury, England.

– I was hooked in 1997, I read a magazine and saw a picture of a crop circle. Something just clicked inside me. It felt like falling intensely in love. The circle ( Barbury Castle 1991. Ed.) spoke to me.

Her interest became so profound that, this autumn, she releases the first Scandinavian book about crop circles. Her family has also, little by little, become involved. This summer, her husband, Norwegian Wood manager Sten Fredriksen, and the daughter will visit Wiltshire too.

The circle phenomenon probably has roots back to the 800s. This is indicated in a letter written by a priest to his bishop in Lyon. He despairs over the fact that the congregation members worship the devil in circles of flattened grain. Stories then surface in several written documents from 1500 until this day. The largest number of circles has been reported in the area between Stonehenge and Avebury, but they appear all over the world. The phenomenon got a lot of attention when the film “Signs”, staring Mel Gibson, was released two years ago.

Others, though, have not fallen in love.

- We know that many are made by pranksters. This has been revealed in England, among other places. Generally, when people discover strange phenomena, many tend to look for super natural explanations. Most often, when these phenomena are subjected to strict scientific studies, natural explanations are found, and such natural explanations can be very interesting, says researcher Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard at the institute for theoretical physics at the University in Oslo.

IT IS LATE Saturday afternoon, and Eva’s mobile remains silent.

The mobile phone is the most important link to other croppies, as the crop circle fans are called. There used to be a cafe that informed about the latest circles, but it is not able to function very well any more.

We go to The Barge Inn, a typical English pub in the middle of the countryside, just like the ones you can see in English detective series on television. This one, though, has its own separate crop circle room where the croppies gather.

We order lasagne and fried scampi that has seen better days. That does not apply to the lady at the table where we sat down. Sylvie Demedfort-Dunne is a woman in her fifties

who is a holist, massager, reflexology and therapist. She likes crop circles as well.

– But you have to be careful about whom you speak to about these things, she says with a good laugh.

Michael Tyler and the dog Bess do not say a lot. He has sailed up from Devon with his canal boat for the night.

– I think some are man made, but perhaps not all?

Eva is not enthralled with all the people who visit he place.

– People come here from London and try to confuse the research. They place things in a circle and when people enter they say: ”Oh, I forgot my flashlight when I made the circle.” We know that it is most often not true and try to avoid them.

IN A SMALL, yellowroom full of smoke behind the bar there are many photographs of crop circles, and a map showing where the latest circles are located. The room is full of people of all ages and many dogs. Phil Dee from Ireland, who is sitting in a corner, shows a photograph.

– I took it yesterday, and when I developed it, I saw this circle surrounded by a corona, says Phil pointing at the screen of his portable computer

– I have lived here for a long time and I’ve never seen anything like this before, says Mary Ramsey. Her black eyes shine mildly. A lady of few words.

Eva discusses crop circles with Sylvie. They do not agree on everything.

Eva’s mobile still lies tranquil. No one gives a call.

The locals are also at the pub, and have nothing against the tourists who hang around during the summer. Even the tourist information has the in recent years used the circles in their promotion of the region.

– I’m a bit tired of the circles. I don’t know what to think about the phenomenon, but I see that the circles make some people happy, while others hope to be happy. Anyway it makes people park their cars and go for a walk in our beautiful landscapes, says young Sharyn Norcliff as he takes another pint.

The pub is closing in not too long. It is time to go home and accept that there will not be any fresh circle today.

– I'll call you as soon as I hear anything. We’ll leave at once then, says Eva and leaves for the cottage that she and her three friends have rented.

RIIING: It is Sunday , ten o’clock and my cell phone rings. Eva is on the line.

– We have received a message about a new circle! No time to lose. She’s in a high gear.

The map is ready. We drive away. Eva has been doing orientation, and her skill in map reading comes in handy.

– The walks can often be long. We have walked up to three hours before finding certain circles. The one that has appeared now is comfortably close to the road, though. But still it is in a field, and as always an angry farmer might turn up. Eva has often had to talk her way into the circles. She has used her charm to make friends with many, so we recon it is going to be ok this time too

The car is parked and we feel like dogs on Eva’s leach. She establishes a speed we have no chance to follow. Soon she is no more than a dot far away ahead of us in the kilometre long tramline we have to walk to get to the circle.

Finally we arrive there as well. Eva is alone in the formation.

– The lying grain is flat and fresh. In the centre of the formation the stalks are arranged in nests. Go ahead and touch it! This is really something. Very beautiful!

Eva is carried away, and is not interested in anything else right now. On the top of the hill someone goes for a walk with their dog in the beautiful summer day. They do not come down to the formation.

– Seven fold geometry. That is very exiting!

Later we learn that eleven fold and thirteen-fold geometry is also included.

– Do you think we are the first here?

– No, I can see that people have been here before us. Eva is busy photographing high and low in the circle.

– Take a close look here! You will see from the air that none of these standing tufts are there by accident. They are important for the pattern. So watch out where you step, don’t destroy anything!

I feel like one of her pupils, but promise to tread carefully.

– Look at the complexity of this. It is not the kind of things that hoaxers would bother to do, you see. Hoaxers are people who try to fool the researchers by manufacturing circles, and the researchers do not particularly care to indulge them.

Eva’s digital camera continues to work.

THE CIRCLE IS about 100 metres in diameter. We do not see anybody on their way to the circle. Not even a farmer with a hot-temper. It is unusual to be left alone in a circle for such a long time because people ring and inform each other quickly.

– Look at this! Look at how the stalks are arranged. Most people think that crop circles are only about flat grain. In this we have virtual constructions of grain. It’s the second time I have seen such complexity. The stalks are wound together forming a rising spiral around a tuft of standing stalks. Do you want to try to copy it? Go to the edge of the field and try.

Eva sounds almost threatening.

She does not believe that people could have made this. At least not with the normal tools used to mechanically flatten grain.

– If you look at a bundle of stalks. Imagine that people have flattened the stalks with a plank. They would hit across the stalks at the same place. If you then take a bunch of stalks and lift it up, the stalks will bend over at the place where the plank hit. We have to look at several places in the formation. It doesn’t seem to be probable that a form of mechanical flattening has been used here

– The plants in the formation are still green and the stalks have a wax like coating. Can you see it? It doesn’t take more than a little scratching with a nail, and you leave a mark. If a plank has been used to flatten the stalks, you would find marks in the wax at several places. If you find anything like that it is suspicious. I have seen one circle so far that I was quite certain was man-made. But I have also seen fields in Norway where you sink ankle deep in mud while entering a fresh circle. Still there is not a lump of mud on the laying grain in the circle. Then you start to wonder how anyone could have achieved that.

Eva continues to examine the grain.

– Here come the police? The photographer hears a siren.

– Maybe we’ll be chased, then says Eva, not concerned at all.

– I don’t know if they come this way, but if they do, we can lie down. That has happened to us before. I’m glad I wear a yellow jumper today. We once experienced being chased by a farmer with a gun.

THE SIRENS WENT AWAY. But now we hear a helicopter. Several firms make good money on taking tourists up into the air. About £300 for half an hour is normal, and you won’t see too many circles then. They are too far apart.

Now people arrive from all directions. Two of them are Eva’s companions. And two German experts: Werner and Andreas have come here for 14 years and know a lot.

Werner is sceptical, but doesn’t want to say too much. Andreas wants to know who called, when, and which pilot was the first to spot the formation. All information is important.

Eva calls the Norwegian who informed her. Film producer Terje makes a documentary that will probably be shown on Norwegian TV this autumn. He’s now at a symposium in Glastonbury.

- Terje! There are seven knots in a ring and a fantastically beautiful spiral construction in the middle. You can look forward to seeing it. You’ll need some time here to work on your film. Upon arriving I saw that several people have been in it already early in the morning. When will you come around? You should hurry before it is damaged too much! Eva leaves no doubt.

Eva’s friend Irene Lian is lying in one of the circles.

– I like best to feel the energies, lying down in the field. I think they are beautiful; they speak to everybody who wants to hear.

Guro K. Parvanova has finally got the time to engage in her interest.

– I have been interested for many years. But with three children, a large house, animals it hasn’t been easy. Now, that the youngest is 18 and has moved to Sandnes, I can spend more time on my own interests. I can feel the energies. I can see energy. It is a part of the picture. Beauty, energy. I take in the full picture, and only attend to the details after a while

EVA DASHES AROUND: She normally spends hours in the new circles. To explain how the circles might come about, she refers to biophysicist William Levengood from the USA. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that his work is highly disputed.

He has studied plants and soil from more than 200 crop circles for 12 years. In 90% of the circles he has found changes in the plants or soil. He has been able to replicate some of the changes by exposing grain stalks to very intense and brief microwaves. His theory is that plasma vortices descending from the upper atmosphere bring large amounts of magnetised iron that they leave in the circles. Such phenomena do not exist, expresses Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard at the University of Oslo.

- Scientists have searched with incredibly thorough methods – much more thorough than laymen would be able to imagine – for all kind of phenomena in the atmosphere for decades without ever finding any such thing. Additionally, it is physically impossible to make a whirl of charged particles descend to the ground. Such a theory, like for instance the theory of radiation from the ground, is pure religion and does not describe anything that is going on in the real world, he says.

When it comes to how the grain is flattened, Røed Ødegaard says that there are many ways to do it mechanically, and that it can be done very carefully and in such a way that the stalks do not get any marks. Natural phenomena are of course just as “careful”.

– Twenty five named persons claim to have seen crop circles appear. They tell about balls of wind during daytime and balls of light during nighttime. Columns or waves of light have also been observed. What people refer to, as balls of light might be what Levengood calls plasma vortexes. This matches the events on the one footage of a crop circle appearing. Four balls of light the size of basketballs take a couple of rounds above a field. At the same time, in a mater of seconds, the crop formation forms in the field. The grain simply seems to lie down. None of the experts who have examined the footage are able to find any traces of hoaxing, claims Eva.

EVA HAS a copy of the footage that she uses in her lectures. She will present with a stand and hold two lectures at the alternative issue convention in Stavanger the last weekend in September.

The plasma whirls do not make the formations on their own, Eva feels.

– For plasma whirls to make patterns that complex, there must be some kind of intelligences involved.

Balls of light and ball lightning definitely are definitely not intelligent, Røed Ødegaard, who is not imposed by the crop circle research.

- These so-called researchers often find what they are looking for, and will not publish their findings if they do not support their own pre-convictions. Serious research must be carried out with an open mind – only then can one find a real explanation to the phenomena.

– Eva, what would you say if explicit proof that all crop circles are man-made was presented?

- A difficult question. If it was proven that all crop circles are man-made, it would also mean that hundreds of named persons have been lying about what they have witnessed, and that lots of film footage along with published scientific papers had been faked. It is of course theoretically possible that such a massive disinformation campaign could have taken place. But with the large amount of documentation that exists, it would implicate an organised conspiracy that involved a lot of people. I find it difficult to take such conspiracy theories seriously.