5. A Ridiculous Explanation for a Mysterious Phenomenon
A strange new phenomenon cropped up in 1976 in Wiltshire, England. It started with crops in a local wheat field getting flattened in a circular pattern. Soon, mysterious circles of flattened crops, in increasingly elaborate patterns, began appearing in other fields throughout Britain. Once the phenomenon became widely known, it attracted self-declared experts, who offered mystical, magical, and pseudo-scientific explanations for the mystery. Theories ranged from secret weapons testing, to restless spirits and ghosts acting out, to Gaia, the primal Mother Earth, expressing her distress at what humanity had done to her planet.
Early on, one of the more ridiculous explanations – and one that gained the greatest currency – revolved around space aliens. Presumably, extraterrestrials had created the crop circles and left them behind as a means of communicating with humanity in some as yet un-deciphered code. That line of reasoning of aliens being behind the circles was supported by the fact that only a decade earlier, mysterious circles had appeared in Australian crops. Many had attributed the Australian circles to UFO landings, labeling them “[flying] saucer nests”.