Crop Circle Study

In 1998, the Paul Brown Crop Circles Foundation awarded a grant of £2 million to Professor Nigel Gak of Stoke College to research crop circles. Gak, who rose to fame for inventing the word "Henmania" earlier in the decade, and is not a real professor but insists on using the title, was to study crop circles to determine their origin. He also claims to have gone undercover into several groups who were creating man-made circles.

Gak says he studied all the crop circles found in Stoke from 1998 to 2000. He concluded that 50% of all the circles he studied were definitely man-made. Gak could not account for the remaining 50%, saying they were caused by undetermined phenomena.



Professor Nigel Gak



Gak's figures have been disputed by the Stoke City Council, who argued that the "professor" had done no work and just made up the figures. "It's a bit too much of a coincidence that it works out at exactly 50-50," said Councillor Steve Krabz in 2002. "And he won't show us his research or working out."

The Stoke Paranormal Society tried to contact Gak at his log cabin at Lake Burslem but he refused to comment.

Crop Circle In Sneyd Green!

A crop circle has appeared at a farm in Sneyd Green. Farm-owner Barry Burgess has set up a booth and is charging an entrance fee for people to view the circle. He has so far collected about £35,000. The value of the dandelion and burdock crop he had been harvesting was about £1,200.

Barry always rides bareback

A warning if you go to see the crop circle: farmer Barry is a "committed naturist" and doesn't keep his pants on "under any circumstances".

Danny Dyer: I Believe!

If you've seen a British film in the last 10 years that isn't a period costume drama, then you will have seen Danny Dyer. Maybe what you don't know about the omnipresent cockney hardman actor is that he believes in UFOs!

Another film, another classic

Dyer made a show ('I Believe in UFOs') for the superb BBC Three channel in 2010, encouraged by a meeting with right-wing anti-immigration campaigner and astronomer Patrick Moore, where he investigates crop circles, UFOs and cults.

Patrick Moore, yesterday

This show was part of the same series that brought us Joe Swash's ground-breaking 'I Believe in Ghosts'...

http://stokeparanormalsociety.blogspot.com/2011/12/joe-swash-i-believe.html

As with Joe Swash's show, the programme got what might be described as mixed reviews. Patrick West at Spiked Online bemoans Dyer's "predictable, formulaic and unrelenting music-hall Cockney patois", says that "most heterosexual men think Danny Dyer is a twat" because of "his absurd, bow-legged gait, his speech impediment and his appalling mockneyisms".

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8048/

Crop Circle Convictions!

Two Stoke men, Nigel Neville and Phil Gaylord, have become the first people in Britain to be convicted of creating a crop circle. The pair, members of the choir at St Terry the Enforcer’s Church, created a 36 metre diameter crop circle in a sprout field near Bagnall. Discovered by Police working security at a nearby cockfight, they said in court that they were doing God’s work and only God could judge them.

Nigel and Phil outside Fenton Magistrates Court

This attitude did not go down well with presiding Judge Blairs, who sentenced the pair to 5 years hard labour. Judge Blairs, who fought for General Franco in the Spanish Civil War, plans on spending his retirement by watching Britney Spears videos.

Crop Circles: Naked Barry Sheene

The pinnacle of all crop circle formations, a giant picture of a naked Barry Sheene straddling a motorbike, was found near Stockton Brook in April 1989. It measured 90 by 50 feet, with 71 circles.

Two men from Milton, Danny Ryland and Timmy Crips, announced in 1991 that they had made the circle. They say they conceived the idea as a prank whilst speed-dating at an oxygen bar in 1986. Inspired by media stories of other crop circles, they made their crop circles using planks, rope and pork pie hats as their only tools; using a four-foot-long plank attached to a rope, they created circles eight feet in diameter. The pork pie hats made them look good while they were doing it. They were able to make an 8 foot circle in a matter of minutes.

The pair became frustrated when their work did not receive any publicity, so in 1990 they created a circle in a field in Stockton Brook next to the main road so that a clear view of the field was available to drivers passing by. Their design was a simple circle. When UFO correspondent Jeremy Bulb of The Stoke Daily Gargoyle claimed that the circles were caused naturally, an enraged Ryland and Crips responded by making a far more complex pattern: a 50 foot high picture of snooker player Dennis Taylor’s face!

Northern Irish snooker player Dennis Taylor

Ryland’s wife had by this time become suspicious of him, noticing high levels of mileage in their car and copies of Bulb’s articles in his underpant drawer. Fearing that her husband was having an affair with Bulb, Mrs Ryland followed Bulb home to his penthouse apartment in Trentham and killed him with a single gunshot wound to the head. At the end of her murder trial in 1992, presiding Judge Blairs said in his closing remarks: "You may have killed on a misunderstanding, but you enjoyed your kill, rubbing your victim’s blood over your face as a sign of victory. Now get this woman out of my court. I never want to see her ugly face again." She was given a 375 year prison sentence, with a chance for parole after 225 years

Mr Ryland re-married in 2002, after a chance meeting with a young Malaysian woman on the internet. He says he has made crop circles as recently as 2004. Ryland has said that, had it not been for his wife's murder spree (she killed 12 more people during a low speed hovercraft chase while on the run from Police), he would have taken the secret to his deathbed, never revealing that it was a hoax all along. Crips finally succumbed to the tinnitus that had haunted him since childhood in the summer of 1998.

Crop Circles: A Cynic's View

Of course, not everyone believes that crop circles are of extraterrestrial origin.

Dick Mellor, yesterday

Traffic warden Dick Mellor, who wears an orthopaedic shoe on his left foot because he suffers from hammer toe, self-published a leaflet in 1998 called 'Crop Circles: A Truth Punch To The UFO Face by Traffic Warden Dick Mellor'. He wrote: "If crop circles are the work of hoaxers, then they should stop doing it now. They are breaking the law, embarassing the city and molesting the local food supply. If aliens from another planet are responsible, they should return at once to where they came from and leave us alone. And if supernatural, the beings responsible should realise that us Stokies do not stand for this kind of thing; we are not willing to accept supernatural happenings of any kind. Not in this town and not on my watch."

Critics of Mellor are not shy in coming forward. "He's a fucking tit-munching monkey bollock, and you can quote me on that," says leading medium Crystal O'Future. Dave Munton once described Mellor as a "knob-toed bender".

Crop Circles

The phenomenon of crop circles became widely known in Stoke in the late 1980s, after media reports of crop circles in Baddeley Green. To date, approximately 1000 crop circles have been discovered across Stoke, mainly along the eastern side of the city.

After publicity in the media, crop circle activity skyrockets. Each new design seems to be more complex than earlier ones. Today, crop circle designs have increased in complexity to the point where they have become an art form. Crop circle hoaxer Mike Parson, in an interview with Paul Brown (Managing Director of the Paul Brown Crop Circles Foundation), spoke about this change in crop circle designs.

"I am rather envious of circle-makers in other counties. Expectations about the size and complexity of formations that appear in Stoke are now very high, whereas the rather shabby looking Derbyshire crop circles made the national news. Even Wade Saggory, deputy general of Derbyshire County Council, was on the news banging on about it; 'There is no doubt that it was not man made... an unknown object definitely landed there.' If the same formation appeared in Stoke it would undoubtedly be virtually ignored by researchers and the media alike."

Most people in Stoke believe the circles are messages from alien life forms. Most scientists dispute this, claiming there is no evidence of alien involvement. The fact that many crop circles appear near to Stokehenge or the city’s stargates is what leads many to believe they are extraterrestrial in origin. Many hippies believe crop circles give off sexual energy, which is why you often see copulation at crop circle locations. Some people even claim to have seen UFOs or lights in the sky near to crop circle locations.

Among crop circle supporters was singer Michael Jackson who, prior to his death, argued that some circles displayed a level of weird that even he could barely comprehend it, let alone produce one in a field after dark with the help of a large group of children. Even Hispanic children, his favourite type, and the most hard-working.

The earliest recorded image claimed to be a crop circle is depicted in a 17th century Stoke pottery work called the Doulton Devil. The image shows the Devil cutting a phallic design in a field of nettles with a big sword. The pamphlet that comes with the pottery states that the farmer, disgusted at the high price of African slaves, insisted that he would rather make a deal with the Devil to complete the work than pay for the slaves.

Typical crop circle pattern

In 1976 one of the most famous accounts of UFO-related circles happened in Sneyd Green. A dandelion farmer said he witnessed a saucer-shaped craft rise 40 or 50 feet up from the swamp and then fly away. When he went to investigate the location where he thought the saucer had landed, he found the reeds had melted then solidified into a round tartan pattern on top of the water. The reeds could hold the weight of 10 dwarves.

Some farmers and land-owners have expressed concern at the damage caused to their land and crops by crop circles, although local response to the appearance of a crop circle can often be enthusiastic, with locals taking advantage of the tourist potential of circles. Past ventures have included bus or helicopter tours of circle sites, walking tours, t-shirts and porngraphic movies. Potential markets include scientists and crop circle researchers, individuals seeking a spiritual experience by praying to and communing with spirits, curious tourists and perverts.