In 1991, two men from
Southampton,
England, announced that they had conceived the idea as a prank at a
pub near
Winchester, Hampshire. Inspired by the 1966 Tully Saucer Nests, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley made their crop circles using planks, rope, hats and wire as their only tools: using a four-foot-long plank attached to a rope, they easily created circles eight feet in diameter. The two men were able to make a 40-foot (12 m) circle in 15 minutes.
The pair became frustrated when their work did not receive significant
publicity, so in 1981, they created a circle in Matterley Bowl, a natural
amphitheatre just outside
Winchester, Hampshire—an area surrounded by roads from which a clear view of the field is available to drivers passing by. Their designs were at first simple circles. When newspapers claimed that the circles could easily be explained by natural phenomena, Bower and Chorley made more
complex patterns. A simple wire with a loop, hanging down from a cap—the loop positioned over one eye—could be used to focus on a landmark to aid in the creation of straight lines. Later designs of crop circles became increasingly complicated.
Bower's wife had become suspicious of him, noticing high
mileage in their car. Eventually, fearing that his wife suspected him of
adultery, Bower confessed to her, and subsequently, he and Chorley informed a
British national newspaper. Chorley died in 1996, and Doug Bower has made crop circles as recently as 2004. Bower has said that, had it not been for his wife's suspicions, he would have taken the secret to his deathbed, never revealing that it was a
hoax.[sup]
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[/sup]
In 2002,
Discovery Channel commissioned five aeronautics and astronautics graduate students from
MIT to create crop circles of their own, aiming to duplicate some of the features claimed to distinguish "real" crop circles from the known fakes such as those created by Bower and Chorley. The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery Channel documentary "Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields".[sup]
[11][/sup]
Scientific American published an article by
Matt Ridley,[sup]
[12][/sup] who started making crop circles in northern England in 1991. He wrote about how easy it is to develop techniques using simple tools that can easily fool later observers. He reported on "expert" sources such as the
Wall Street Journal who had been easily fooled and mused about why people want to believe
supernatural explanations for phenomena that are not yet explained. Methods to create a crop circle are now well documented on the
internet.[sup]
[13][/sup]