ALIEN: Crop Circles

For centuries, farmers have awakened to find large, elaborate geometric patterns pressed silently into their fields overnight—no footprints, no witnesses, no explanation. The phenomenon spans more than 50 countries, with some of the most striking formations appearing in the shadow of ancient, mysterious sites like Stonehenge. While skeptics point to hoaxers, others say aliens or even fairies might be to blame. Yet, to this day, no one has been able to solve the mystery of crop circles.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  It's natural for us to search for patterns and meaning in places it might not exist. If you've ever laid in the grass, looking up at the clouds as a kid, pointing out animals in the sky, you know exactly what I mean. It was always dragons or unicorns for me. Or if you've ever seen a face in a piece of burnt toast and been totally freaked out, then you get it. Oftentimes, it's just our brains trying to make sense of the world around us. It actually has a scientific term, and it's called pareidolia. But I don't believe that everything in this world is a coincidence or just a trick of the mind. Sometimes, patterns appear because they really do have meaning.

• 1:17Rasha Pecoraro?

  They have purpose. They have intention. Especially when they appear overnight outside your home.

• 1:25Yvette Gentile?

  For centuries, farmers have reported finding something called crop circles in their fields. Beautiful, intricate, and massive designs that simply appear in a matter of hours. Skeptics have called them a hoax, and others have connected them to UFO sightings and supernatural entities. But what do these patterns mean? Could they be some extraterrestrial's way of trying to communicate? Are they nature's own attempt to speak to us directly? Or are they messages, or even warnings? Is it something we need to take more seriously before it's far too late? I'm Yvette Gentile.

• 2:09Rasha Pecoraro?

  And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecoraro. And today, we're looking for the patterns in this episode of So Supernatural.

• 2:48Rasha Pecoraro?

  It was the summer of 1996. A Nebraskan farmer named Kelly Riser woke up early to go work in his fields. He knew it was supposed to get hot that day, so he just wanted to get a head start. He drove out to his barley fields and was working for hours before something ended up catching his eye. Some of his barley stalks had been bent over, almost like someone had smashed a path right through the middle of his field. Kelly climbed onto his tractor to get a better view of the damage. But now, when he was looking down from above, he realized this wasn't just a simple pathway. Someone, or something, had carved two giant rings into the barley field.

• 3:31Rasha Pecoraro?

  One was inside of the other, almost like the circles in a dartboard. Kelly called everyone he knew to tell them about it. Then his friends called their friends, and as you can imagine, a game of telephone began. And it just kept spreading until the news made it all the way to the local FBI and Air Force Base. Which may sound like a bit of an overreaction for just some damaged crops. But Kelly felt this was much bigger than just him or his fields. Many locals thought the rings had been created by something out of this world.

• 4:05Yvette Gentile?

  There have been countless reports like Kelly's of farmers going about their lives only to encounter something inexplicable in their fields. In fact, the earliest written record of a crop circle comes from, get this, 1678. A farmer was living just north of London at the time, and he had hired a day laborer to work out in his oat field. When the day was done, the farmer and the laborer had a dispute about the pay. The worker thought that he deserved more money, and the farmer didn't think that he had earned it. At one point during their debate, the farmer got so frustrated, he blurted out something like, "I'd rather hire the devil to work in my field than pay you what you're asking."

• 4:50Rasha Pecoraro?

  Don't project that.

• 4:51Yvette Gentile?

  I'm telling you. Well, later that night, the farmer woke up to a strange light outside his window. It lit up the sky in orange and yellow, and he actually thought his oats were on fire. But for whatever reason, he didn't rush out to check on them right away. Instead, he just stayed safe inside his house until morning. But once the sun was up, he stepped out the front door, ready to find a stretch of barren ash. But when he got to the field, he saw that most of his oats were still there. They hadn't been incinerated during the night. But there was an odd circular pattern in the middle of the fields. It was a simple, standard ring,

• 5:36Yvette Gentile?

  almost like someone had mowed a patch right in the center of his oats and nowhere else. And the farmer thought, you know what? I know who exactly is responsible for this: the devil himself. He'd foolishly, right? He'd made a joke about wanting to hire Satan instead of the laborer, and the devil himself had come to teach him a lesson. But let me ask you this: was it the devil, or was it something else entirely?

• 6:06Rasha Pecoraro?

  Over the next 300 years, reports like this kept popping up, and not just in England, but all over the globe. Farmers would wake up to find strange patterns had been carved into their fields overnight. Unfortunately, many of those accounts are actually pretty vague or completely undocumented. But there was one case that made headlines in 1966. A farmer named George Pedley had a banana farm outside the town of Tully, which is a rural farming community in northeastern Australia. Back then, it had a population of about 3,000 people or so, and it was still considered one of the biggest towns in the area.

• 6:49Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, one afternoon, George was riding a tractor across his property near a river, far away from the actual field. The area was pretty marshy and wet, but that's when he heard an odd noise that was completely unexpected. It was a hissing noise. When George looked in the noise's direction, he saw a large metal disc sitting on the ground, half-buried amongst the grass. It was about 25 feet long and nine feet tall, about as tall and wide as a standard RV. Whatever it was made of was bluish gray in color. As George was standing there in complete awe,

• 7:30Rasha Pecoraro?

  the disc lifted off the ground and actually hovered in the air. Then it went straight up into the sky, turned toward the southwest, and zipped away in the blink of an eye. Afterwards, George reached out to everyone he knew to share what he had just seen: an alien vessel from outer space. He even notified the local papers, and George made a point of explaining that he was not a conspiracy theorist. In fact, at one point, he said this, it's an exact quote: Had anyone asked me five days ago if I believed in flying saucers? I'd have laughed. But now I know better.

• 8:13Rasha Pecoraro?

  I have actually seen a spaceship. End quote.

• 8:18Yvette Gentile?

  Right? Right?

• 8:19Rasha Pecoraro?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:20Yvette Gentile?

  For the, for the non-believers, when something like this hits them.

• 8:23Rasha Pecoraro?

  And it happens to you.

• 8:25Yvette Gentile?

  It changes their entire perspective on it, right?

• 8:28Rasha Pecoraro?

  Absolutely, it does change their perspective.

• 8:30Yvette Gentile?

  Well, anyhow, local reporters descended on George's banana farm to interview him about his sighting. He didn't leave out a single detail. Unfortunately, he hadn't managed to get a picture of the UFO. But he showed the reporters something that was just as good. There, right along the muddy riverbanks, was still a saucer-shaped indent, right where the ship had been stopped. But the stalks weren't bent or broken, like you might expect if a heavy vessel were sitting there. Instead, all the plants in that circle had been ripped out by the roots and laid out in a swirly pattern. Almost like, if you could imagine, like when you have spaghetti, like after you twirl it around your fork.

• 9:15Rasha Pecoraro?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:16Yvette Gentile?

  That's what it looked like.

• 9:18Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, it was enough to captivate these reporters. And while it certainly fit the definition of what we would call a crop circle today, they had another name for it. Depending on the publication, they called it either a tully nest, which was named after the nearest town, or a saucer nest. But George soon learned, he wasn't the only one who had experienced something like this. Over the next few weeks, countless neighbors came forward to say they'd had a tully nest on their property too.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live US-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. Two, we sound the alarm at points of entry. Three, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 10:28Rasha Pecoraro?

  Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers.

• 10:30Speaker 04

  And I'm Britt. And if you're on the edge of your seat listening to this show, Crime Junkie needs to be your next listen.

• 10:36Rasha Pecoraro?

  Every Monday, I dive into a new true crime case that our reporting team has been on the ground looking into. From lesser-known disappearances to the most chilling cases hitting the headlines. And I'm gonna walk you through it the way I tell my best friend, because, well, that's what I'm doing.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's me. And I'm right there with you as we listen together, react to every wild detail, and of course, I ask all the questions.

• 10:59Rasha Pecoraro?

  And I'm gonna have the answers, because we have case files. We're talking to detectives and family members, and we're gonna stay focused on the facts.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  So if you're not already listening to Crime Junkie, what are you waiting for? There are over 300 episodes available right now.

• 11:13Rasha Pecoraro?

  And you can listen to new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 11:24Rasha Pecoraro?

  Throughout 1966, countless farmers in and around Tully came forward saying that they'd found saucer nests, or rather, crop circles, on their property. But George's report had one thing theirs didn't: a sighting of an actual alien spacecraft. All across Australia, people wondered what this could mean. Some thought George's story was actual proof that they were created by aliens. But the skeptics, well, they of course thought it was a hoax or maybe just some trick of the light. The controversy was intense enough for Australia's Department of Air, the military branch that oversees the Air Force,

• 12:07Rasha Pecoraro?

  to investigate George's Tully nest. And they said they had a simple, scientific explanation for how it was caused: by wind.

• 12:18Rasha Pecoraro?

  Specifically, a phenomenon called a downdraft.

• 12:23Yvette Gentile?

  Well, this happens when a patch of air cools quickly or fills with precipitation. Wet air is heavier than dry air and cold air sinks while hot air rises. So when it gets heavy and cold enough, it rushes downward, like a gust of wind plummeting straight toward the earth. And that's what we'd call a downdraft. And according to the Department of Air, a very small, 25-foot-wide downdraft must have slammed down from the sky onto George's property. It made a perfect circle of weeds and grass and created the tully nest.

• 13:01Rasha Pecoraro?

  Okay, but if the circle was created by ordinary wind patterns, it's unclear why depressions like this were suddenly popping up all across tully. Though, some skeptics had a theory. They said these circles were actually very common and had been for years. The tully nests were only getting attention now because George's story had encouraged farmers to actually start looking for these depressions in their own fields. But others insisted this was a brand-new phenomenon, something that couldn't be explained away so easily.

• 13:38Yvette Gentile?

  Years later, in 1991, a team of Japanese scientists suggested an alternate explanation. The nests were created by something called ball lightning. This is a very rare, poorly-understood phenomenon that happens during electrical storms. Sometimes, instead of lightning forming bolts or streaks, it creates a sphere of electricity. They figured maybe one of these balls smashed into George's marsh, creating that circle in the vegetation. The researchers even used computer models to show how the ball lightning could create these circular patterns. Except the scientists never went to Australia

• 14:21Yvette Gentile?

  to actually study these nests in person.

• 14:24Rasha Pecoraro?

  So how did they come up with that theory?

• 14:26Yvette Gentile?

  That is a fabulous question.

• 14:30Rasha Pecoraro?

  There was one other theory we read that I have to admit is totally out there. It wasn't proposed until decades after George's sighting, but it's so wild, we just had to tell you. So apparently, in 2009, an attorney general in Australia suggested that crop circles were created by wild animals. And not just any wild animals, but... I cannot even say this with a straight face. They said they were animals that were on drugs.

• 15:04Yvette Gentile?

  Wait, what do you mean by that?

• 15:06Rasha Pecoraro?

  Oh, okay, let me, let me tell you, okay? So several farmers in Australia, they grow beautiful poppies, which are flowers. And poppies can be processed into things like opium and morphine, and used for medical purposes. But even unprocessed poppies do have mood-altering effects. The theory goes that wallabies got into some poppy fields, ate the flowers, and got a little high. And they began bouncing around and behaving, you know, like they were on drugs and going crazy. And as they were bumbling all through the countryside, they may have flopped down in a farmer's field,

• 15:51Rasha Pecoraro?

  smashed some crops, and created these circles. It's...

• 15:54Yvette Gentile?

  Okay, they created, they got drugged and they created...

• 15:57Rasha Pecoraro?

  They got high.

• 15:58Yvette Gentile?

  They created perfect circles.

• 16:00Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yep.

• 16:01Yvette Gentile?

  Okay, do tell us more.

• 16:03Rasha Pecoraro?

  Okay, but, I mean, we all know this is ridiculous for so many reasons. But mainly, there are no animal tracks of our drugged-up wallabies. These tully nests never had any footprints around them, not from the wallabies, not from humans, or anything else for that matter. Not to mention, many crop circles appeared in areas that they didn't have any poppy fields.

• 16:27Yvette Gentile?

  Oh, man. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think wallabies are native to southern England, which was where, in the mid-1970s, several more crop circles started to appear.

• 16:40Yvette Gentile?

  It's hard to nail down an exact date for when they started to pop up, because at first, most farmers didn't think to call the police or the press when it happened. Instead, they just reached out to their friends and neighbors and said something like, "Hey, look at this. Isn't it weird, right?" Right. So, I mean, a few locals would come out to check it out, but then they'd all just go about their daily lives and think nothing of it. And it took until the late 70s for any journalist to realize England was actually a hotspot for crop circles. And each time a reporter talked to the locals, they'd admit, "Oh yeah, this has been going on for years."

• 17:22Rasha Pecoraro?

  But unlike the tully nests in Australia, these weren't just simple circular impressions. England's crop circles often had these very intricate patterns. Sometimes, they had these complex waves, swirls, and geometric layouts. They looked less like depressions from a saucer landing and more like some kind of mysterious language. And they always popped up in just a matter of hours. Farmers would spend a day laboring under the sun with nothing unusual happening. Then, the next morning, they'd get to the farm just to see massive, complex designs carved into their fields.

• 18:04Rasha Pecoraro?

  There were never footprints to or from the designs, no tools left behind. The plant stocks themselves were almost always bent, but never broken, suggesting whoever did this had taken their time. These crop circles were made with the utmost care.

• 18:26Yvette Gentile?

  Well, after this, paranormal investigators from all across the world became fascinated with southern England. And many of them wondered, "Did this mean contact with a species from beyond our planet? Were they sending us some sort of message, a warning, a sign? Could this be the beginning of something huge?"

• 18:49Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, that all changed in 1991. That's when a reporter from a British publication called Today interviewed a pair of locals from Southampton, England, 67-year-old Doug Bauer and 62-year-old Dave Chorley. They admitted on the record, all of the crop circles, in that area at least, were hoaxes. They could say that with confidence because, well, they were the ones who created them. According to Dave and Doug, it began one night in 1976. At the time, they were in their late 40s, early 50s. There had been a lot of news coverage around that time on the Tulliness in Australia.

• 19:34Rasha Pecoraro?

  Not to mention, a number of eyewitnesses were coming forward to talk about the alleged Roswell crash from 1947. So, one night, while Doug and Dave were at a pub, they started talking about UFOs and were feeling a bit, let's just say, bold. They wondered if they could create their own extraterrestrial hoax right there in England. Before the night was over, they had devised a plan. They were going to make or fake crop circles in and around their hometown of Southampton.

• 20:09Yvette Gentile?

  Okay, so, listen to this. This is how they claimed to do it. They'd sneak into a farmer's field late at night so they wouldn't get caught, and one of the men would stand in the center of the crops, holding a piece of rope. The other guy would take the other end and walk in a circle around his friend. The rope would help him ensure that the circle was perfectly round and consistent. And as they walked, they'd lay planks of wood on the ground in front of them, then they'd step on them so they wouldn't leave any footprints. This also helped them smash the crops down more easily. Then they repeat this process over and over, taking all night if they had to,

• 20:52Yvette Gentile?

  until morning came and the two had created a fake crop circle.

• 20:57Rasha Pecoraro?

  Supposedly, this went on for over a decade. The two of them claimed they made at least 200 depressions over the years. All of them were in or around southern England. Reportedly, they also came up with ways to make their patterns more complex and more interesting as time went on. They experimented with new designs and replaced the circles with swirls, loops, lines, and other flourishes, while still using the same old tools that they started with. And yet somehow Doug and Dave never got caught? Though by 1991, the fun, I guess, was starting to wear off. They decided to contact a reporter with Today and come clean.

• 21:42Rasha Pecoraro?

  As part of their interview, they even let the journalist come to a field with them and take photos while they made another crop circle. When the next issue of Today came out, readers all across England realized Dave and Doug had pulled the wool over their eyes, and the proof was right there in full color.

• 22:02Yvette Gentile?

  Let me just tell you, there were a few problems with this interview. The biggest one being Doug and Dave talked a lot about how they'd faked the simple circles, but they never explained how they created the more complicated designs that were popping up around the country. And to this day, nobody can explain how Doug and Dave created such elaborate patterns, not without special equipment like cranes and bulldozers, which the two men didn't have access to.

• 22:35Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah, and to piggyback on that note, it would take a long time to make some of these complex designs. Many experts think it would require a huge team of people, not just good old Doug and Dave working on it for, what? A couple hours?

• 22:51Yvette Gentile?

  Right.

• 22:52Rasha Pecoraro?

  Come on.

• 22:52Yvette Gentile?

  Right, and with wood planks. Like, they're doing... Like, how? How is that happening?

• 22:58Rasha Pecoraro?

  We know this is true because even today, companies like Spotify and even the Olympics promoters have created fake crop circles as advertising campaigns and PR stunts. And they require huge crews that include land surveyors, laborers, and design experts who make sure the image is perfect. They use a lot of equipment, including drones, which can photograph from overhead and make sure it looks perfectly symmetrical. The work needs a lot of precision and very careful planning and always happens during the light of day so everyone can actually see what they're doing.

• 23:40Rasha Pecoraro?

  But Doug and Dave claim they always created their crop circles at night and without any help or any special equipment. And somehow, they always ended up looking perfect?

• 23:51Yvette Gentile?

  That's hard to believe.

• 23:52Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah. Plus, they said they only stuck to the Southampton area. And yet, over the past two decades, so many crop circles have appeared all over the world, including in the United States. In the 90s, there were so many in Illinois that state officials declared a crop circle plague. The best explanation Doug and Dave could actually come up with was that the other circles must have just been copycat hoaxes. Okay. I mean, pranksters all across the world had figured out how to make their own designs. I don't buy it.

• 24:31Yvette Gentile?

  That makes me think about the episode that we did about the monoliths, right?

• 24:36Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yes.

• 24:36Yvette Gentile?

  How they were popping up all over the world in different places. But I don't know. I'm just, I'm still not buying Doug and Dave's story.

• 24:44Rasha Pecoraro?

  No.

• 24:46Yvette Gentile?

  Well, for a lot of critics and a handful of obvious reasons, Doug and Dave's story doesn't hold up to scrutiny. And a prank doesn't really explain away one of the biggest and most complex crop circles, one so impressive it's got its own name, the Julia set. It showed up in southern England on July 7, 1996. Technically, it's made up of hundreds of small circles, all laid out in a spiral pattern. It looks a bit like a snail's shell, with all of these little circles forming a curl. And it appeared in the middle of the day, next to a very busy highway. Nobody saw it being made.

• 25:31Yvette Gentile?

  It was basically like it came out of nowhere. And that's not even the most talked about part. The thing that really gives us chills, it was discovered right next door to another mysterious location: Stonehenge.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables, it's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live US-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. Two, we sound the alarm at points of entry. Three, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers.

• 26:25Speaker 04

  And I'm Britt. And if you're on the edge of your seat listening to this show, Crime Junkie needs to be your next listen.

• 26:30Speaker 05

  Every Monday, I dive into a new true crime case that our reporting team has been on the ground looking into. From lesser-known disappearances to the most chilling cases hitting the headlines. And I'm gonna walk you through it the way I tell my best friend, because, well, that's what I'm doing.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's me. And I'm right there with you as we listen together, react to every wild detail, and of course, I ask all the questions.

• 26:54Speaker 05

  And I'm gonna have the answers, because we have case files. We're talking to detectives and family members, and we're gonna stay focused on the facts.

• 27:01Speaker 04

  So if you're not already listening to Crime Junkie, what are you waiting for? There are over 300 episodes available right now.

• 27:08Speaker 05

  And you can listen to new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:18Rasha Pecoraro?

  On July 7, 1996, a pilot was flying a private plane through southern England. His name hasn't been made public, but we're just gonna call him Jake. He had one passenger on board, a doctor, who we're going to call Leslie. At 5:30 PM, Jake passed right over Stonehenge, and he, of course, encouraged Leslie to look out the window. Leslie picked up their camera and snapped a bunch of photos of the monument, surrounded by open, empty countryside. Soon afterwards, Jake landed at his destination. He helped Leslie off the plane and unloaded their luggage. Then Jake said goodbye and took off again. He went right back the way that he'd come from.

• 28:01Rasha Pecoraro?

  At 6:15 PM, he passed over Stonehenge a second time. Only 45 minutes had gone by since his previous flyover, but now, it looked totally different. Because by this point, there was a giant crop circle, clearly visible in a field right across the street from Stonehenge. Jake could not believe his eyes. The design was so complex and elaborate that it couldn't possibly have taken only 45 minutes to make. There's no way. It was so strange, Jake wondered if maybe it was there the first time he flew over it. Maybe he just missed it before.

• 28:44Rasha Pecoraro?

  He figured there was only one way to settle this. He reached out to Leslie, the doctor, and he told them he wanted to see their photos of Stonehenge once they were developed. Because back in 1996, you actually had to develop your photos. It wasn't instantly on your phone. Well, once the pictures were ready, Leslie sent photocopies to Jake. And while those images were never shared publicly, Jake said they showed Stonehenge in an empty field. No crop circles in sight on the photos. Once Jake knew he'd witnessed something incredible, he went public with what he had seen. Other experts came to investigate it for themselves, and that's when they gave it a name: The Juliuset.

• 29:28Rasha Pecoraro?

  Ultimately, many agreed with Jake. There was no way anyone could have made something like this so quickly. It would have taken about three hours at an absolute minimum. And remember, it was 45 minutes.

• 29:41Yvette Gentile?

  Right, but here's what's wild to me. That day, the sun went down about 9:30 PM. So if the Julius set was created between 5:30 and 6:15 PM, that means that it was made in broad daylight. It was right next to a busy highway and an incredibly popular tourist destination that was crawling with visitors. And yet, nobody saw someone making this elaborate crop circle? Yeah, I don't buy it. Plus, it's worth noting that Stonehenge has a lot of security. They don't want anyone damaging the monument or stealing anything from it. So they patrol the area 24/7.

• 30:24Yvette Gentile?

  And we actually talk about that on the episode. But none of them saw the crop circles being made either. I mean, we also haven't heard of any UFO sightings from around that time. Although, it's possible someone saw something that just didn't make the news.

• 30:42Rasha Pecoraro?

  Later that year, a local man named Rod Dickinson comes forward. He says he knows exactly who created the Julius set. And he says it was a hoax. As soon as he goes public, a bunch of UFO investigators and reporters begin asking him some hard-hitting questions like, "How did the creators make it so quickly? How did they avoid getting caught or even seen? And how did they pull off something so elaborate?" And let's just say Rod couldn't answer a single one of these questions. He claimed three men were working together to make it, although he won't say who they were or if he was one of them.

• 31:26Rasha Pecoraro?

  He also claims that they made the pattern during the night before it was discovered. So the night before. And somehow, all of the visitors, the guards, and the passersby just failed to notice it until Jake's flight at 6:15 PM? That does not make any sense to me. A farmer actually checked on his field earlier that day and also agreed there was nothing there. Not to mention, Leslie's photos didn't show the Julia set.

• 31:57Yvette Gentile?

  Right, there's proof.

• 31:59Rasha Pecoraro?

  There's photographic proof. Even some skeptics believe Rod is lying and that there has to be some other alternative explanation. Meanwhile, true believers say the Julia set is definitive proof that crop circles are absolutely 100% made by aliens.

• 32:22Yvette Gentile?

  Okay, you know, you know, deep in my heart, I want to believe that. But there's just one problem. Okay, you remember back in 1966, the banana farmer George Pedley thought crop circles were created when alien saucers landed on the ground. They would stamp down the grass or whatever they were sitting on, and when they took off, they left an impression behind, which was the crop circle. But the Julia set is 600 feet long, and that is equivalent to two football fields, meaning it's way too big to be an indent from a spaceship. Not to mention, it's hard to imagine a craft with such an elaborate shape.

• 33:08Yvette Gentile?

  The same is true for countless other formations from over the years all across the world. They're consistently too big, too complex, and too artistic to be indentations from landing gear. And that's why some people believe these crop circles aren't made by ships touching down on Earth. Instead, they think aliens may be creating them from above on purpose to communicate with us. The idea is that crop circles could be an extraterrestrial equivalent to billboards. Visitors from outer space may be carving words and symbols right into our fields from above, trying to tell us, I don't know, something.

• 33:54Yvette Gentile?

  But the question is, how do we decipher these symbols? Because we talked about this, Rasha. Like, that was one of my first thoughts. Like, maybe this is a sign or a symbol, like some type of SOS or something that they're communicating with us.

• 34:10Rasha Pecoraro?

  Sending us a warning.

• 34:10Yvette Gentile?

  Right.

• 34:13Rasha Pecoraro?

  Lots of accomplished cryptographers and linguists have tried to figure out what these symbols are. One group took one particular crop circle in southern England and converted its patterns into binary code. They treated the field like a grid. Every place a plant was smashed was labeled as a 1, and any place where plants were still standing was labeled as a 0. With this method, they actually translated the circle. And what it said, literally, gives me chicken skin all over my body. Are you ready?

• 34:48Yvette Gentile?

  I'm ready.

• 34:48Rasha Pecoraro?

  OK. It translated to, quote, "Beware the bearers of false gifts and broken promises. Much pain, but still time. There is good out there. We oppose deceivers. Conduit closing."

• 35:07Yvette Gentile?

  OK, yeah, I have no idea how you explain that away or how a human could have made something like that.

• 35:15Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah, that's definitely, if you haven't seen the movie Contact with Jodie Foster, that's a contact moment for me.

• 35:21Yvette Gentile?

  For sure, for sure. But there is, I just have to say this too, there is something very deep to that.

• 35:27Rasha Pecoraro?

  Hundred percent. Well, not every crop circle can be converted into binary code. Some of the messages they produced didn't make any sense at all. Maybe we've got to find some other way of reading them. But as of this recording, researchers haven't made any headway in figuring out what methods that might be. So, no. We don't know if it's a warning or if they're trying to say an invasion is coming. I don't think it's that. It's all a mystery.

• 35:59Yvette Gentile?

  Maybe we're working under the wrong assumptions, though, because there is another theory that's being explored. What if crop circles weren't made by aliens, but by Mother Nature herself? And what if these plants are bending themselves into patterns so Earth can tell us something? Strap in, y'all, things are about to get a little sciency. We know that every living being on Earth generates electricity. Our brains work by sending tiny sparks from one neuron to the next. Even plants create electric power. If you've ever made a potato battery for a science class, which I have, Me too. then you've seen this with your own eyes.

• 36:43Yvette Gentile?

  So trees, grass, and fields full of crops are brimming with energy. And it's possible to direct and harness electric energy by using magnets. That's where electromagnetic power comes from. Some researchers believe that each time the Earth's natural magnetic field shift, these fluctuations create an electric charge in all of the nearby plants, including the ones growing in fields. And for some crops, the electricity is powerful enough to burn the plants in these elaborate patterns. I mean, I'll acknowledge, no one is entirely clear exactly how this happens.

• 37:27Yvette Gentile?

  We still need a lot more data to understand the phenomena. But some believe our planet has a consciousness, and it's purposefully sending out magnetic waves to these patterns. It's interesting that the first modern crop circles were discovered in 1966, just a few years after climate change started picking up steam. The world was getting warmer, and maybe these circles and symbols were nature's way of saying, "This is a problem, and fix it before it's too late."

• 38:01Rasha Pecoraro?

  That is a wild one to think about. I can see it. I truly can. But I have to say, I believe it a lot more than drugged up wallabies. Okay? But there is an even wilder theory we have to discuss. And this is one I get so excited about because it's so fun and so magical.

• 38:25Yvette Gentile?

  This is right up your alley.

• 38:26Rasha Pecoraro?

  This is right up my alley. I'm a Disney princess at heart. It's something I definitely did not have on my bingo card for this particular episode. And the theory says that crop circles haven't been made by aliens at all, but instead by fairies. For hundreds of years now, scientists have been baffled by a phenomenon known as fairy circles or fairy rings. Those are terms for an inexplicable bare patch of ground surrounded by thriving grass, flowers, mushrooms, or other plants or vegetation. If you're walking through the woods and you see a little bit of dirt that doesn't have anything growing in it,

• 39:12Rasha Pecoraro?

  or maybe you see a band of mushrooms, congratulations, because you may have just found your very own fairy circle.

• 39:21Yvette Gentile?

  Researchers have no idea how or why these rings form. Some think that insects may eat all the roots in a particular stretch of land, killing the plants above them. Or maybe when shrubs and vegetation are competing for the same sunlight and resources, they choke each other to death. A whole patch withers away, leaving a circle of bare ground. The problem is, there isn't much hard evidence to support either theory. They're just basically guesses.

• 39:53Rasha Pecoraro?

  Plus, fairy circles and fairy rings appear all over the world. In the remote deserts of southwestern Africa, the Australian outback, forests in England, Germany, and Austria. So mythology offers a different explanation. At least in Europe, traditional stories talk about elves, fairies, or even witches that gather late at night. They dance in circles until "they've stamped" on all of the plants that live there. As part of a secret magical ritual we don't fully understand. But beware. Stories say fairy rings can be very dangerous to ordinary human beings.

• 40:38Rasha Pecoraro?

  If you accidentally stumble on one while the fairies are parting it up, they might punish you by pulling you into the circle. And then they'll force you to dance and dance and dance until you collapse from exhaustion or even die. Other accounts say their dances are a magical ritual that opens a portal between our world and another realm. Fairy rings are supposed to mark that doorway. And if you step into it, you might end up in another universe. I have to say, I have the biggest smile on my face right now. I wish our listeners could see me.

• 41:22Rasha Pecoraro?

  I get so excited talking about this.

• 41:24Yvette Gentile?

  She's grinning ear to ear, y'all.

• 41:25Rasha Pecoraro?

  I really am. The stories about fairy rings do sound kind of similar to crop circles. They also pop up overnight without explanation. And they seem to have connections to seemingly magical sites like Stonehenge.

• 41:43Yvette Gentile?

  But we should warn you. If you're hoping to check out one of these crop circles for yourself... Y'all, you need to do it fast. Researchers say less and less of them are appearing every year. In the late 90s and early 2000s, there were a ton of them all over the earth. And it's hard to nail down an exact number, but there seem to be hundreds, if not thousands. But these days, it's pretty rare and unusual for new ones to even pop up. Skeptics say this is another sign that they're a hoax. They used to be very popular and got a ton of attention for a couple of decades. But once crop circles stopped grabbing headlines, pranksters just moved on.

• 42:27Yvette Gentile?

  However, if you believe crop circles were created by aliens, or fairies, or Earth itself, then maybe you have a mission on your hands. Perhaps it's up to us, the believers, to follow the patterns and interpret the message. Who knows? It could expand our understanding of our world, or even the entire universe. Because while it's human nature to look for signs and symbols and meanings where they don't exist, sometimes, they might actually be there. I know we absolutely believe they do.

• 43:08Yvette Gentile?

  And if that's true, then the message isn't just out there in the stars. It is already here, right in our own backyards.

• 43:28Rasha Pecoraro?

  This is So Supernatural, an AudioChuck original, produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at sosupernaturalpodcast.com. Join Yvette and me next Friday for an all-new episode.

• 43:48Rasha Pecoraro?

  I think Chuck would approve.

• 43:54Speaker 06

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir, and that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.