Doug Rogers Keeps Making The Rounds Of Crop Circles

By Jan Howard

Crop circles. What are they, who makes them and what do they mean?

These are questions that Doug Rogers of Newtown says the scientific community is reluctant to study.

Mr Rogers, a resident of Newtown for 44 years, is the coordinator of the United States Network of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies based in London, England. As United States coordinator, he flies to England once every year or two to report on what is happening here in the way of crop circle sightings.

He and his wife, Marjorie, were there last summer.

Mr Rogers first became interested in crop circles in 1989 after Mrs Rogers showed him a magazine article about them. He said he spends about half a day every day on issues related to crop circles.

Mr Rogers has spoken to several groups about the crop circle phenomenon. The designs are created mostly in agricultural areas through the flattening of crops, such as wheat or barley. The circles, which appear overnight, are surrounded by fields of grain that are untouched.

Similar circles have also appeared in sand, snow, ice and other agricultural crops, such as sugar cane and potato fields and rice paddies.

“Most crop circles pop up in the summer,” Mr Rogers said. Most occur in grain growing countries where crops have been planted by machine in uniform rows. A design created in mid-June can last for two months; once the grain is harvested, the design is gone.

 Though reports of crop circles have escalated in the last 25 years, they are not a recent phenomenon. There is one report of a crop circle in 800 AD. Though many have been reported in England, they have occurred in 25 to 30 countries worldwide, Mr Rogers said.

There have been 3,000 to 4,000 recordings of the phenomenon since the late 1970s. Two have been reported on the east coast of the United States, one in Charlottesville, Va. and another near Cooperstown, N.Y.

Eyewitness reports exist from Russia, Japan, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, France, Spain and other countries around the world.

“You can’t always know how many there are,” Mr Rogers said. “We keep track of about six countries. We rely on coordinators to take photographs and keep us informed.”

There are several theories about crop circles, including suggestions that they are man-made or created through atmospheric conditions, miracles, or by hovering helicopters or unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

There have been reports of lights in the night sky followed the next day by the appearance of a crop circle design in a field.

“There are lots and lots of theories,” Mr Rogers said. “The designs show up in the middle of the night. In England, there are only four to five hours of darkness. The next day there is a design in a field where there was nothing there before.”

Only one design is known to have occurred in the daytime. “There were lots of witnesses who knew there was no design there,” Mr Rogers said. A pilot flying over Stonehenge saw no design below him. Later, his passenger went home via the road near the ancient ruin, and a design had appeared in the neighboring field.

 “This is a very controversial subject,” Mr Rogers said. “The crop circles are an event occurring over the past 25 years. It’s a Johnny-come-lately compared to UFOs.”

In the 1970s, the crop circles began to get some attention. People began to measure the diameters of the designs and make entries in logs, Mr Rogers said. “Then something changed. The circles started to proliferate in quantity and the designs became more complicated.”

Needless to say there are skeptics who believe the crop circles are hoaxes.

Mr Rogers said when the phenomenon was new 25 years ago there could have been hoaxes. In 1991, landscape artists David Chorley and Douglas Bower claimed responsibility for the crop circles in England, but Mr Rogers said they were unable to duplicate one.

“Those days are long gone,” he said, noting that in the last ten years the designs have grown in complexity and size, which, he said, “would require lots of people and lots of hours.”

He noted also that vandalism laws have been tightened in England because farmers went to their representatives in Parliament to have fines and jail sentences instituted for anyone spoiling crops. “No one was ever caught,” he said.

 Whatever causes them, Mr Rogers said there is scientific evidence that a crop circle has experienced an electrical charge, which breaks down the molecular structure inside the plant stems. This causes them to soften at the base and fall, creating an intricate design.

He said a horticulturist, Michael Levingood of Michigan, analyzes grain plants from within a crop circle and from a nearby field to determine whether it is a genuine crop circle.

“There are certain things to look for,” Mr Rogers said. “Most designs are quite genuine.”

Mr Rogers said the area of the crop covered by the crop circle design is not killed, but continues to grow to maturity and can be harvested. Some crop circles can cover a two-to four-acre area.

He said scientists need to figure out what the energy is that can bend a plant, heat the base, then push the plant over.  “There are very definite imperfections in the plants,” he noted.

 People visiting crop formations have noted the malfunctioning of electric and mechanical instruments, Mr Rogers said. “If a compass points north, the needle wobbles and does something wild in the center of a crop circle. There are residual magnetics left in the ground. You don’t wear watches or have a pacemaker and go in the crop circles.”

Most designs are flat to the ground but there are others where the plants are bent six to eight inches off the ground. “They are unique, ” he said.

The scientific community appears reluctant to study the phenomenon, Mr Rogers said, except in isolated cases.

“Crop circles don’t go away. They’re here to be reckoned with. But the scientific community refuses to pay attention,” he said. “If indeed that hoax affair had not taken place, the scientific community would have solved this.”