Info-ParaNet Newsletters Volume I Number 469 Sunday, September 1st 1991 Today's Topics: Blue Grass Crop Circle (part 4) Blue Grass Crop Circle (part 5) Re: Ogden Objects ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: shemtaia.weeg.uiowa.edu!jrblack Subject: Blue Grass Crop Circle (part 4) Date: 1 Sep 91 10:12:35 GMT From: James Roger Black [Blue Grass Crop Circle: begin part 4 of 5] EVENT #4: A BIG STING RAY and A LITTLE RED LIGHT Our fourth witness, S.S., can contribute little to the immediate events of August 21/22, 1991, but she has much to say about their background. S.S. is a divorced factory worker who lives with her parents. (Her father is a firm skeptic and has never seen anything in spite of her efforts to show things to him. She says that 'they don't like him.') She began seeing lights in the sky near Blue Grass about two years ago, and saw them quite frequently thereafter-- especially in the autumn--until last fall when they abruptly stopped. Because she works second shift in a nearby community, she is often on the road late at night, and she says the lights have frequently 'followed her home' from work. At times she has seen rows of cars stopped alongside Highway 61 in the early- morning hours so the passengers could watch the distant lights maneuver in the sky. She described the lights as 'like a star' but says she can pick them out as being somehow different from real stars, and that on occasion they will suddenly drop down out of the sky and begin moving across the fields. She has also sometimes noticed that when following her they seem to be 'in distress'; on these occasions they display a contrail and seem to have difficulty catching up with her. They often travel in pairs, one large white light accompanied by a smaller red light. The larger light, she says, generally stays north of the highway; but the small red light has been seen to zip across the highway and travel around by itself. Sometimes it descends into the fields near her house and remains there for long periods of time, giving her the impression it is 'watching' her. Once it sat behind her barn for a long time and was viewed by her mother as well. S.S. has apparently had at least two close encounters. One, which was conveyed to me by MUFON investigator Grey Woodman, happened in 1980 in Davenport, Iowa, when her car was approached by a bright light and time seemed to slow down. The other experience occurred about two years ago when her boyfriend called her outside to witness a huge UFO passing silently over her house. She described it as 'shaped like a sting ray' and so low that "if they had dropped a ladder down I could have climbed aboard.' Wednesday night at about 9:30 pm she saw the distant lights again for the first time this year while she was on her way to work. Once again they were on the north side of Highway 61, heading west toward Muscatine. She did not see anything on her way home Like M.A., S.S. has received some amount of teasing and abuse from others who have heard about her experiences; some have told her that she ought to take up with M.A., because 'she sees that kind of stuff, too.' She seems less bothered by it all, however, and is more inclined to challenge scoffers to come out and see for themselves. DISCUSSION: CROP CIRCLE FORMATION Much of our discussion with witnesses and with other researchers about this case has centered on how this and other crop circles could have been formed. The easiest explanation, of course, is a hoax. And, indeed, there are some elements that might be consistent with a hoax. The center of the circle fell precisely between two rows of corn, which is where one would expect a hoaxer to begin; and it was a bright moonlit night, which would have obviated the need for artificial illumination. On the other hand, those who offer this answer will be hard- pressed to come up with any mechanism consistent with the rest of the physical evidence: The circle was perfectly round to within a few inches--about one percent of the radius. The individual corn stalks were precisely laid out at right angles to the radius. There were no signs of abrasion on the sides of the stalks, no damage to the leaves, and no detached ears of corn. Small weeds and grass in the circle were not trampled, broken, or otherwise damaged. Stalks which had already been broken by predators were left standing; only tall-standing, intact stalks were knocked down. There was no evidence of a central stake, footprints, or other marks of human intervention. In general, force applied to the upper part of a mature corn stalk will cause it to snap near that point; force applied to the lower stalk will break it off between four and six inches above the ground. We found no evidence of either kind of damage in the circle. All but a handful of stalks were partially uprooted; the rest were snapped off within an inch of the ground. Both are consistent with a force applied evenly to the entire length of the stalk rather than at a particular point, which would seem to rule out any mechanism involving a rope or chain. The only hoaxing method we can envision would require applying a slowly increasing pressure at the base of each individual plant--within the first six inches or so above the ground--until the roots gave way and the plant toppled over. Such an approach would be incredibly time-consuming; there are approximately *one thousand* individual plants in a circle of this size. Several people might be able to do it in an hour or two if they never stopped to rest and never made a mistake; one person might do it in half the night. If done with bare hands it would require a lot of kneeling and crawling around, which would almost certainly have left marks in the dust; if done with machinery it should have left some kind of marks on the stalks. Further complicating the issue is the electric fence (which would have required travel through the homestead area to reach the gate) and the fact that dragging or carrying machinery through the close-standing stalks should have left tell-tale signs. While a hoax can never be absolutely ruled out (people can, after all, be extraordinarily clever when they want to be), it seems extremely unlikely in this instance. I discussed weather as an explanation for the circle with both Snowball and J.H., but both firmly dismissed this possibility. Snowball admitted that the field where the circle appeared is 'one of the worst for windstorms' and that 'this hill catches it all the time.' But both he and J.H. insisted that never in their many years of experience with wind damage had they ever seen corn knocked over in a single perfect circle and the plants otherwise left undamaged. Normal storm winds, they said, will uproot the stalks in a similar fashion, but in a straight line instead of a circle; furthermore, there is always a considerable amount of damage to the plants, especially torn or detached leaves, and there are generally a significant number of plants left standing in the midst of the damage. A typical whirlwind, on the other hand--far from forming a single perfect circle--will 'chew up' crops in a long, jagged scar, leaving them tangled and torn but still standing. Finally, it should be noted that the weather in the Blue Grass area during the time in question was dry and clear, and the wind was less than 10 miles per hour--hardly consistent with a violent windstorm. The 'plasma vortex' explanation was initially attractive, since this little-understood phenomenon allegedly forms near-perfect spheres within which the kinds of high winds required by this case can occur. That line of thought fell apart, however, when we learned that a crop circle formed last year in Milan, Illinois was also measured at precisely 46.5 feet.[2] It seems extremely unlikely, to say the least, that 'plasma vortices' or any other natural phenomenon would create two circles of identical diameter within ten miles of each other in two successive summers. This would seem to require some kind of intelligent origin for both circles, whether human or otherwise. It should also be noted that this particular circle formed in the middle of the only open expanse in an area cluttered with trees, fences, roads, buildings, and farm equipment. One would expect a natural phenomenon to be a little less discriminating. [End part 4 of 5] -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: shemtaia.weeg.uiowa.edu!jrblack Subject: Blue Grass Crop Circle (part 5) Date: 1 Sep 91 10:16:41 GMT From: James Roger Black [Blue Grass Crop Circle: begin part 5 of 5] Of course, in the Milan case the circle was swirled clockwise instead of counterclockwise, and most of the stalks were broken off at ground level instead of uprooted. However, this is not so great a discrepancy as it might seem. Whether corn will uproot or snap off in high wind depends on how deeply it is rooted and whether or not it is infested with insects which can weaken the stalk. In the Blue Grass circle, the roots of the corn plants were only three or four inches deep (somewhat shallow for this late in the year) which may have made them easier to uproot than normal. Furthermore, the one place where we found some stalks broken off instead of uprooted was on the western (i.e., down- slope) edge, where one would expect greater moisture and deeper root systems. Finally, the roots of the plants in question were tangled together more tightly than most, and may have presented greater opposition to whatever force toppled the other plants. One other point about the Blue Grass circle needs to be emphasized. Whatever acted to create it, it did not involve the kind of broad, crushing force that would be generated by large planks or sheets of plywood--or, for that matter, by a grounded flying saucer. Some of the plants (the grass, smaller buttonweeds, and previously broken corn stalks) remained upright and undamaged, while everything around them was being flattened; consequently, if some kind of vehicle descended toward the field as M.A. claims, it could not have come closer than about thirty inches to the ground. It would seem that the force which created the circle, whatever it was, acted on the stalks individually, not collectively--and that fact must be paramount in any theory that attempts to explain it. DISCUSSION: SIMILARITIES TO OTHER CASES This case has so many similarities to others in the literature that it's hard to know where to begin. The Milan circle has already been mentioned, of course, as well as the similarity to characteristics of English crop circles. But there are others. Indeed, in many ways Blue Grass looks like a 'classic' case in the sense that statistically it falls right in the middle on just about everything. To begin with, it took place on a Wednesday night, which just happens to be the day of the week when the plurality of UFO sightings occur.[4] For another, it happened in a spot which was bound to draw attention, rather than off in the middle of nowhere as one might expect. As John Keel put it in his book 'UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse', UFOs 'prefer to land in the fields of occupied farms and on major highways close to big cities'.[5] This case exhibits both characteristics at the same time. But the case that most often came to mind while investigating this one was Budd Hopkins' 'Kathie Davis' case.[6] As in the "Davis" case, we have a mysterious circle forming in someone's back yard, apparently in connection with a UFO landing; we have a witness who reports possible missing time and physical complaints (even to the location of that complaint in the ear); and we have a neighbor reporting an odd roaring sound at the end of the incident. Most importantly, though, we have a whole group of people who all know one another and all seem to be involved with the phenomenon in one way or another, either as witnesses or as victims. One wonders what a door-to-door survey of Blue Grass and its environs might turn up. AFTERMATH According to Snowball Meyer, the mayor of Blue Grass went up in a small plane over the weekend to get a look at the circle from the air, and immediately spotted a second circle in another one of Snowball's corn fields. This circle was adjacent to Highway 61 (only about 40 feet into the field) and approximately the same size as the first; but unlike the first one, the stalks had all been broken off about four to six inches above the ground-- precisely what one would expect from a hoax. Snowball was of the opinion that this circle was created by pranksters Saturday night after news of the first circle got around, and he was not at all pleased about it. 'If it's a prank and it keeps happening, somebody's going to get hurt,' he warned. Because of the near certainty that the second circle was a hoax, we chose not to investigate it. We do intend, however, to follow up from time to time with witnesses M.A. and S.S., and to track down some of the witnesses to other sightings in the Blue Grass area. The more we dig into this case, the more we are convinced that we have just scratched the surface. Meanwhile, what of the investigators themselves? All too often those who investigate UFO phenomena become its victims themselves. For example, to quote John Keel again: 'Within a year after I had launched my full-time UFO investigating effort ... the phenomenon had zeroed in on me.'[7] I am pleased to report that so far, at least, nothing like that has happened to us. Or, rather, almost nothing. Friday night after returning from Blue Grass, I excitedly called a fellow researcher and related in some detail what I had seen; and with my permission he recorded the call for future reference. On Sunday afternoon he called me back in a state of great agitation. Saturday night his roommate had returned from an errand to find their housecat inexplicably traumatized and the room filled with the feeling that 'somebody else has been here.' Then, about 3 am Sunday morning, they had been awakened by a series of poltergeist-style poundings on the outside wall of their apartment building. Finally, to top it all off, when he played back the tape of our conversation on Sunday afternoon, it was filled with a background chorus of moaning and howling that sounded like something right out of 'The Exorcist.' He still hasn't been able to determine how or why any of this happened, or whether it is related to our investigation in Blue Grass. Neither have I. CONCLUSION In some respects the Blue Grass case is almost too good. It seems to have something for everybody: nocturnal lights, strange noises, crop circles, close encounters with flying saucers and other exotic craft, the 'red light' which travels sometimes alone and sometimes with others, possible missing time, and perhaps even an abduction. All we need is a dead cow--and I wouldn't be surprised if one of those turned up sooner or later. If I hadn't visited the circle and talked to the witnesses myself, I might be inclined to dismiss Blue Grass as a disinformation experiment by some overzealous debunker to see just how gullible Ufologists can be. But I have visited the circle, and I have talked to the witnesses, and I can't even explain what *I* saw--much less what they tell me they saw (and heard). Of course, it is always possible to dismiss the testimony of inconvenient witnesses with the now-infamous accusation of 'hoaxes, hallucinations, and misidentification of known phenomena'; but I see no reason to do so in this case, and many reasons not to. The stories are consistent and mutually supportive. The witnesses do not exhibit any obvious signs of deception, or of instability beyond the stress and uncertainty one would expect from those who have experienced the unknown. At this point, anyway, and until some evidence to the contrary emerges, I am inclined to believe them. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks and appreciation go to Robert W. Atwood, my fellow researcher in this case, for his invaluable assistance and suggestions; to Michael Corbin, Director of ParaNet Information Service, for his enthusiasm and encouragement; and to Dr. Grey Woodman of MUFON for sharing insights and information from his own investigations of the Blue Grass and Milan cases. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION Send email to James R. Black (jrblack@weeg.uiowa.edu) or call (319) 335-5603 Tuesday through Thursday between 9 am and 6 pm. --------------- [1] U.S. Weather Service, Moline, Illinois (personal contact, 8/26/91). [2] Jeff Fischer, 'Crop Circle at Milan, Illinois', MUFON Journal #279, July 1991. [3] Incident Report #91-36708, Scott County Sheriff's Department, Davenport, Iowa. [4] John Keel, 'UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse' (New York: Putnam, 1970), [5] Keel, p. 178. [6] Budd Hopkins, 'Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods' (New York: Ballantine, 1987). [7] Keel, p. 173. [End part 5 of 5] -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peggy.Noonan@p0.f150.n30163.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Peggy Noonan) Subject: Re: Ogden Objects Date: 1 Sep 91 15:55:00 GMT Clark, Your message REALLY has my curiosity aroused and I will call your BBS to pursue it further. Thanks very much for the help! ==Peggy== -- Peggy Noonan - via FidoNet node 1:104/422 UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name INTERNET: Peggy.Noonan@p0.f150.n30163.z1.FIDONET.ORG ********To have your comments in the next issue, send electronic mail to******** 'infopara' at the following address: UUCP {ncar,isis,boulder}!scicom!infopara DOMAIN infopara@scicom.alphacdc.com For administrative requests (subscriptions, back issues) send to: UUCP {ncar,isis,boulder}!scicom!infopara-request DOMAIN infopara-request@scicom.alphacdc.com To obtain back issues by anonymous ftp, connect to: DOMAIN ftp.uiowa.edu (directory /archives/paranet) ******************The**End**of**Info-ParaNet**Newsletter************************