Strange Secrets Real Government Files on the Unknown

Part One High Strangeness One Around in Circles Exactly who, or what, is responsible for peppering Britain's landscape with the now familiar crop circles and the fantastically elaborate "pictogram" designs has been hotly debated for years. Indeed, worldwide interest in the subject is so intense that it even became a key aspect of the summer 2002 blockbuster movie starring Mel Gibson,Signs.Official interest in these mysterious "circles" began early on. According to theWall Street Journalof August 28, 1989, "British agriculture and defense officials want to know more about the mysterious crop circles which have appeared across the countryside...so does Queen Elizabeth, who is said to have sharply questioned Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about the circles recently. While those talks are kept secret, a Buckingham Palace spokesman says the Queen took a hurriedly published book about the circles to her summer palace in Scotland this month."Numerous theories have been advanced to try to explain the phenomenal number of designs that have appeared throughout the country (and now, the world) since the 1980s, but opinions remain sharply divided. For the "believers," crop circles are the work of UFOs, some form of vaguely defined "earth energy," or some other inexplicable phenomenon. For many, however, the human factor is overriding. Indeed, good evidence shows that many of the pictograms are the work of human beings.In the latter part of 2000, for instance, a Welshman named Matthew Williams hit the headlines when he was arrested for causing criminal damage in a field in Wiltshire, England. Williams had created under cover of darkness a highly elaborate pictogram of the type that many crop-circle researchers believed -- and continue to believe -- could only be made by a currently unexplained medium. Little wonder, then, that the matter remains unresolved to everyone's satisfaction.But what of the possibility that the circles -- whatever their origin -- have attracted the attention of officialdom, as theWall Street Journalsuggested was the case in 1989? One man who claims to have such knowledge is crop-circle researcher George Wingfield. Eton-educated and previously employed at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Wingfield claims that in September 1990 the British government called a secret ministerial briefing to debate the circles. According to Wingfield's sources, the meeting was supposedly convened to try to determine the nature of the circles, lest the British government be placed in the potentially embarrassing position of having to admit its ignorance of the phenomenon.A similar but more personal experience comes from a Royal Air Force medic, Jonathan Turner, who was stationed at RAF Lyneham, Wiltshire, in 1991. He recalls that on July 15 of that year, a crop circle was discovered on nearby Hackpen Hill. Shortly afterward, examples of the more elaborate pictograms began appearing too. His interest piqued, Turner visited the area on an off-duty day and took some photographs of the various patterns and formations that had appeared. As he soon learned, however, Turner was not alone.Parked near a run-down farm building was a car: a Royal Air Force Police car. Turner subsequently had a brief conversation with the police officer and questioned him about his presence. This provoked a cryptic response from the RAF policeman, who admitted that he was "monitoring the activity on the downs regarding the crop circles."And the stories continue of official interest, in one form or another. The film director John McNeish claims that he received an order from Buckingham Palace for a copy of his bookCrop Circle Apocalypse.But to what extent can such tales of official interest in crop circles be validated? Do governmental, military, and intelligence files exist on this topic? The answer is yes -- at least, to an extRedfern, Nick is the author of 'Strange Secrets Real Government Files on the Unknown', published 2003 under ISBN 9780743469760 and ISBN 0743469763.