In a cross-pollination of subcultures, my first exposure to the UFO community was via Simon, the train enthusiast (conventional circular-hat guy).
‘The Tall Whites and the Greys are the two alien races that come to earth most often,’ he explained, seemingly elated that somebody was finally showing interest in the information he had spent years gathering. ‘They use gravity waves to get to here and take nutrition through their skin. I had a visit from a Zeta Reticulan once (a “Grey”), at three in the morning. It wore an owl mask.’
This was a bit much for me. I needed to find a more pragmatic access route into this world, a slightly less paranormal phenomenon, and one experienced by more than a select few. After a few weeks of deliberation, I found my answer.
There have been roughly 6,400 crop circles recorded in over sixty countries since the mid-1980s. The circles have been a mystery since the first was sighted, with multiple theories circulating as to how and why they are made, including freak weather conditions, fairy ritual, the landing marks from alien aircraft, or messages from another planet or dimension.
In 1991 ‘Doug and Dave’ declared that they were the hoaxers behind the UK crop-circle phenomena, creeping into fields at night and using a system of boards, ropes and tape measures to make the intricate geometric patterns. However, although most in the ‘cereologist’ community accept that some of the circles are man-made, they claim to be able to tell the difference between a man-made formation and an authentic one. The general consensus is that to enter a field undetected and construct a circle of enormous complexity and geometric accuracy without leaving any marks of human involvement is simply impossible.
‘I have bad news,’ our host tells us as we gather outside a hotel in Devizes for a crop-circle coach tour. ‘There are no circles for us to visit.’ He shakes his head, his huge palms turned upwards like two soup bowls.
Although there hasn’t been a change in the rate the circles are appearing, we are told (there have been sixty reported already during the year of the tour), they cannot be viewed because the farmers are either not allowing access or cutting out the middle of the circles as soon as they appear.
‘This is the first time in nine years of running the tour that this has happened.’ The crowd breathe a sigh of collective disappointment. I share a shrug with the tall Danish man sitting next to me, none other than Sten from Findhorn, whom I’ve become rather fond of and had prearranged to meet for this tour.
We are briefed about what the day will entail in the absence of our quarry, and told that the first stop on the tour will be a visit to the ancient stone circles of Avebury. We arrive an hour later to find a somewhat bedraggled but friendly-looking chap with a long beard and a backpack playing with a pair of L-shaped copper rods in between the stones.
‘What are they?’ I ask, pointing at the thin rolls of metal in his hands.
He grins at me, holding my eyes in an intense stare. ‘Dowsing rods,’ he says.
‘Can I try them?’
‘Of course,’ he says, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Phil.’ We shake hands and he gestures ahead of us to the meeting point of two stones. ‘Just hold them in your hands loosely, point them forward and walk in between those two stones over there.’
I look up at the ten-foot stones sticking out of the ground, balance the rods facing forward and start walking. Nothing happens. Told you so, I think to myself. But then, just as I get between the two stones, the skin tightens around the left side of my hand as the rods are pulled to the right. I continue to walk, shaking my head. After a few steps, they swing back to the neutral position.
I repeat the movement three times, with the same result, handing the rods to somebody else to try without a word. What is this trickery?
After the tour of Avebury, we head to a local village hall for a talk from Michael Glickman, a world-renowned architect-turned-crop-circle-researcher, driven by his professional interest in their mathematical precision and intricate craft. Michael has published three books on the subject, including Crop Circles: The Bones of God, and Cornography: The New Swirled Order.
Michael has an open face that exudes a childish, playful spirit, his eyes deep-set and vibrant. Smart in a yellow shirt, green suit jacket and grey trousers held up with braces, he begins his talk from his wheelchair at the front of the room. ‘This is a historic moment,’ he says. ‘Usually, the week before the crop-circle tour is spent working out which of the circles we should take you to. There are always so many to choose from.’ He looks down into his hands. ‘This is a dark time for crop circles.’
He goes on, ‘For fifteen years now, I have received hate mail. It gives me pleasure that the hate mail is always written terribly and full of mistakes. The moment I get a well-written piece of hate mail, I will worry about the world.’ He smiles and looks around the room with avid curiosity.
‘Crop circles are benign; they harm no one. They scatter toys on the floor of the nursery and say, “I am here if you want to play, children.” So why do they evoke such hatred? Such venom?’ He pauses for a long time, as if genuinely waiting for an answer. The room remains silent. ‘Because people are scared of them,’ he says, reaching out his arms. ‘They don’t understand them, so they are frightened. Fundamentalist crop-circle deniers all gather together on social media and feed each other’s hatred. The so-called hoaxers say, “We made all of them.”’ He looks pained. ‘But it’s all horrible lies. Just an easy solution for the media. And now the farmers are siding with the hoaxers, rather than with the croppies, as they have in the past.’
He picks up his exasperated gaze from the floor and looks back at us. ‘How many of you have travelled from abroad for this?’ Over half of the room of sixty put their hands up. He shakes his head and sinks his gaze again. ‘It’s such a shame.’
Despite being new to this world, I can’t help but feel genuinely devastated for this wonderful man.
‘Some civilisation or federation are sending us a message,’ he continues. ‘They have an agenda for us, and this agenda won’t change because a couple of farmers are angry. These are personal messages, for each and every one of us as individuals.’ He looks around the room again, pointing at each of us with a gnarled and shaking finger, the same playful look on his face. ‘I look in the bathroom mirror every morning and think, maybe I am completely mad’ – he pauses to enjoy the ripple of laughter – ‘and there is always that possibility. But when you consider the number of synchronicities, coincidences and intuitions, for me, there can be no doubt. I keep going back to the bathroom mirror when these things happen, to check: am I bonkers?’ He grins. ‘But I’m not.’
‘I’ll leave you with this thought,’ he says, releasing the brakes from his wheelchair and moving slightly closer to the group. ‘Every baby is born with an elastic band around its head, to keep its consciousness in. It is very flexible, so there is room for it to expand. Then, as the baby grows up, the powers of darkness go “chhh” with an aerosol can on the band, to freeze it. Every time the child meets a head teacher, a priest, a bank manager, they spray it a little bit more. So by the time they are an adult, they have a cast-iron band around their consciousness. What the crop circles do’ – he pauses for effect – ‘is soften our bands, by forcing us to question what we think we know.’
After the talk, I go over to Michael, introduce myself and launch straight into a spiel about the book to check he is happy with me quoting him. He puts his hand up to stop me.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Lucy.’
He offers me his hand and smiles with his whole face. ‘It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Lucy. Let’s have a cup of tea.’
At that moment Dowsing Phil walks over. He looks at Michael. ‘Do you think the chemtrails have anything to do with our restricted consciousness?’
Michael shrugs, fixes a stare into the distance and rolls out his lips. ‘Could be.’ He nods slowly. ‘Could be.’
He looks back at me and smiles again. ‘But, of course, we can’t be certain. Behind every war, conflict and argument there was somebody who was “certain”. You can never be certain,’ he says. I wish he were my granddad.
‘What are “chemtrails”?’ I ask Phil.
His jaw drops. ‘What?!’
‘I, erm, I just don’t know what they are.’ I look at him blankly, drawing my lips into a long line.
‘I don’t believe it!’ His eyes are wide. ‘You know the white trails you can see in the sky?’ He points at the ceiling. ‘They’re poisoning us. Flying over and spreading dangerous chemicals like barium to poison our crops and water.’
‘What?’ I pull my head back onto my neck. ‘Who is they?’
‘The government! They’re not here to look after us. Oh no. They’re trying to gain control of our food and water. Then they have us. They are already poisoning our bodies. Now they are trying to poison our minds as well, stunt our consciousness.’
I try to sit on the opposite side of the bus from Phil on the way to the next location, but he somehow finds his way over to me.
‘I like what Michael said, about the baby, and the consciousness,’ I say to him.
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Babies are born open, and as soon as they go to school, they get brainwashed. All they are taught is how to be closed.’
‘Well’ – I decide to be diplomatic – ‘a lot of what they learn is pretty useful as well, right? Like reading and science and stuff.’
‘Hardly any of it,’ he says, turning away from me and staring out of the window.
The coach pulls over to the side of the road and our guide points up the hill to a huge circle that has been cut out of a crop field. ‘That’s the circle that was cut out by the farmer,’ he says. ‘But we don’t have permission to enter it. You may see other people in there, and I can’t stop you, but I can’t recommend you go into it.’
As soon as we are off the coach, nearly everyone heads to the circle. You can clearly see where the formations within the circle would have been, the neatly laid rows of corn contrasting with those that have been cut. Somebody runs just outside of the circle and excitedly beckons us over.
‘Look,’ he says through a bushy brown beard. ‘There is a line running around the outside of the circle.’
He is right; the line is about two foot wide, the corn immaculately laid down in one flowing direction.
Phil hands me his dowsing rods. ‘Try it,’ he says.
I pick up the rods, walk five steps back from the outer circle and face them forward into a neutral position. Slowly walking forward, I watch the rods closely, trying with all my might to keep a clear and open mind. As I approach the line, they start to feel as if they are being pulled by a magnet, swinging a full ninety degrees to the right.
‘So the energy is going clockwise,’ Phil says, leaning back, hands on hips.
Hang-on-a-freaking-minute. How can this be right? How is there an ‘energy’ in a crop circle that pulls two copper rods along it? This doesn’t fit my model; it doesn’t fit my scientific world view at all.
‘So this is a genuine crop circle,’ Phil nods in satisfaction. ‘The energy is still here even when it has been cut out.’
The dowsing experience stays with me all day, culminating in a detour back to Avebury on my way home that evening. Was this a genuine experience? Or had I been caught up in the excitement of the group, influenced by their expectations? I had to know.
By the time I get there the field is almost pitch black, the imposing stone structures reflecting what little light there is, radiating heat like hot-water bottles for the sheep lying against them. I get out the rods I had bought for £15 from the Avebury gift shop that afternoon and stand exactly where Phil had shown me earlier.
My theory, derived over the course of the day, is as follows: when I walk past the stones my mind subconsciously wants the rods to swing, so it sends this message to my hands, bypassing my brain, and makes the rods move.
With this in mind, I walk past the stones and study my hands intently. Sure enough, my hands are leaning slightly in the direction of the pull when the rods swing. But have I moved them because I subconsciously want the rods to swing in that direction, or are they moving because the rods are pulling them? I guess I will never know. It feels like I’m not pulling them, but that doesn’t fit with my paradigm. I might not have been OK with this ten months ago, but I think I am now. I don’t have the same burning desire to prove things to be right or wrong, to falsify, to be reductive. Maybe it’s OK to just enjoy the mystery.
For the next couple of nights, I stay at my family home in Bristol, before receiving an excited phone call from Sten on Sunday evening. ‘There’s a new crop circle,’ he says, sounding as excited as it is possible for stoic Sten to sound. ‘It appeared overnight about twenty minutes from Devizes; a group of us are taking a taxi there in the morning.’
I head straight there and find a group gathered in the circle; some doze, others meditate. There is an exciting atmosphere of curiosity. I spend some time lying in the circle, trying to feel the energy. The sun warms my body, and my dowsing rods swing as they are supposed to when I walk around the lines of the circle, but the hairs on the back of my neck don’t stand up, and I don’t feel the sort of ‘energies’ I had been promised by the numerous YouTube videos I had watched on the subject.
Despite my lack of feels in the crop circle, I am open to the idea that there are other intelligent life forms in the universe. Heck, maybe they even visit us once in a while. So I am unfazed when I attend an exopolitics conference in Leeds, aimed at those who have made up their mind that UFOs exist, and are ready to move on to the question: what next?
Let’s get some definitions in here: UFOlogy is ‘the array of subject matter and activities associated with an interest in unidentified flying objects’. Exopolitics is the ‘militant wing of UFOlogy’. A ‘contactee’ is the word for anyone who has been contacted by an alien race, either psychologically or physically, and if you are then taken against your will, you are an ‘abductee’.
I arrive at the venue on a Friday evening to find a surprisingly mixed audience and not a tin-foil hat in sight. There are some you would expect; awkward-looking middle-aged men wearing rain hats indoors, but also a young woman in a beautiful floral dress, a few teenagers wearing mostly black, a number of young couples who resemble my friends, and a sharp-suited character with a pocket watch and a shock of white hair.
On the first evening, we are given a talk by Stephen Bassett, a full-time political activist focused on ending the sixty-seven-year ‘truth embargo’ that Western governments keep around the ET phenomena. He is dressed all in black, his polo neck sitting just below his chin, with intense piercing eyes and hair cropped severely short.
‘Why are we being denied the truth?’ he exclaims, banging the table with his open palm.
Stephen is campaigning for ‘disclosure’, a formal acknowledgement from the government that they are aware of an extra-terrestrial presence engaging with the human race.
‘How many people in this room believe that the UK government isn’t telling us the full story about the phenomena?’
Every single person in the hundred-strong room raises their hand, including me, apparently.
‘Exactly! And based on multiple polls, fifty per cent of the public in most developed countries privately accept the extra-terrestrial phenomena.’ He bangs the table again. ‘Fifty per cent! The BBC should be all over it! Why aren’t they?’
Stephen has already petitioned the US government for ‘disclosure’.
‘This was their response,’ he says, clearing his throat and reading from a piece of paper. ‘“There is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public eye.”’
He looks up at the audience and raises an eyebrow. The room fills with laughter.
The following morning, after a lecture on how meditation can charge gold and crystal batteries with healing energies to send to other planets, I settle for a somewhat more accessible talk on the influence of UFO subculture on Hollywood. Handsome in a nerdy way, Robbie Graham is the youngest speaker so far. He wears jeans, a grey waistcoat and black-rimmed glasses.
Towards the end of his talk, he takes a long pause and looks out at the audience. ‘UFOlogists speak a great deal about the “truth”, ’ he says, ‘but rarely are UFOlogists truthful with themselves. First off, there is no such thing as UFOlogy, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word. If “ology” refers to a branch of knowledge or learning sprung from organised research – which it does – then UFOlogy is a broken twig.’
There are a few audible sucks of air from the audience.
‘The UFO subject has produced thousands of dedicated researchers over the years, and thousands of books, but when it comes to understanding this phenomenon, we are all of us clueless, awash in a sea of speculation and petty ideological feuds.’
Robbie continues, his eyes scanning the audience for a reaction. ‘Our obsession with UFO “truth” speaks to our insatiable yearning to grasp the essential meaning in our universe and fathom our purpose within it… UFO disclosure will, we insist… open the floodgates to our understanding of this phenomena… but this is delusional.’
This is the moment I look up at him, my eyes drawn from my elaborate doodle of an alien riding a giraffe.
‘A great many people in the UFO community see the pursuit of UFO “truth” as a battle; an “us versus them”. This way of thinking is not at all productive, as proven by seventy years of official silence on the UFO issue. They’ve not budged because they cannot…’
He switches to a slide showing a child in a supermarket, tugging on a grown-up’s trousers.
‘The disclosure movement looks to officialdom as an unfair parent figure. It tugs incessantly at the leg of power and says, “Dad, tell us...” Well, you know what, Dad doesn’t have the answers… because, despite appearances, and the power of his ego, in a universe that is thirteen billion years old, he is just a monkey like the rest of us, flailing around for answers.’
Some of the men, particularly the ones who look like they could be trainspotters, murmur and shake their heads.
‘All too often on the UFO scene, audiences are content to hear what they want to hear. To have their existing beliefs confirmed by self-proclaimed experts who know full well that their personality cult is guaranteed only by telling the crowds, and dare I say, followers, what they want to hear – that disclosure is just around the corner, and that a brighter tomorrow will follow that day.’
He flips up another slide and shifts his gaze so that he is talking up towards the image, instead of out at us. I glance over at Steve Bassett to see how he is taking this. He stares intensely at Robbie, his face unreadable.
‘Disclosure has become the focus of the UFO community, marginalising the more esoteric approaches to the phenomena. In the age of disclosure and exopolitics, the pursuit of UFO truth is political rather than mystical.’ He looks back out at the audience, his head lowered so he can see us over the top of his glasses. ‘I’m in no doubt that some of what I say here might not sit well with the UFO community, but I wanted to share with you my own shifting perspective on this phenomenon, and the field that seeks to understand it.’
A few of the audience continue to shake their heads, but the vast majority clap loudly, some even whoop, revealing the divide between those who view the UFO question as a fight against government cover-up and scientifically quantifiable phenomena being hidden from them, and those who see it as an esoteric phenomenon, hoping it will offer us a glimpse into the nature of reality and a deeper understanding of human consciousness.
‘Were you nervous?’ I approach Robbie outside the venue.
‘Very,’ he says. ‘I thought I was going to get booed off stage!’
A woman walks past and calls over to him, ‘Great speech, Robbie. Very brave.’
Robbie smiles, ‘It’s a good indication of where people are in their thinking on the subject, actually,’ he says, relieved by his own words. ‘I’m pleased.’
Between the talks, people gather to discuss their alien contact and abduction experiences, many striking in their similarity. ‘I was pinned down onto the bed and held there,’ a short and plump fellow declares to a captivated group of listeners.
‘Me too!’ a passer-by joins their conversation.
Over lunch, I interview Sarah and Kevin (not their real names), both alien contactees in their forties.
‘Something happened that I can’t explain,’ Sarah tells me, barely opening her mouth as she speaks, ‘but I can’t tell anyone; it would be suicide for my job.’
A chemistry teacher, with blonde hair tied into a loose ponytail, Sarah’s appearance is neat and unflustered. ‘Here, I can show you my evidence.’ She pulls out her phone and shows me a picture of a foot with two small red marks just above the ankle bone. They look like spider bites.
‘I was in agony with them. Two nights after, I had one at the top of my leg, then my arm, then my inner thigh. I tried to convince myself it was a bug, but it didn’t swell up like it does with a bug. Then I stopped sleeping in my bed.’
‘So you thought they were coming into your bedroom at night?’ I try to understand.
‘I didn’t think, I knew. How else do you get marks like that?’ She takes a bite of her salad. ‘And I’d already seen it.’
‘Where?’ I ask, suddenly much more interested.
‘In my bedroom,’ she says, looking down at her salad. ‘It woke me up. I felt this hand behind my back. I lay there and thought, shit, there’s a burglar in my house. So I froze and lay there. Nothing happened, so I opened my eyes and there was a fucking Grey at the bottom of my bed.’ She points at where the end of her bed would be. ‘It was stood at the end messing with my feet.’
‘How long was it there for?’
‘Not that long. I got angry, and the light around it faded.’
Kevin – who has the look of a friendly builder, with closely cropped mousey hair and light stubble – interrupts.
‘Do you ever get marks on your veins?’ he shoots at Sarah, flashing us the photo he has been looking for since he sat down. The photo shows an arm covered in bruises and red marks.
Suddenly the room feels a bit colder. I shudder. ‘If this is true, why is no one in the public eye writing about it?’
‘It’s all silenced.’ Sarah looks at me, eyes wide. ‘If you speak you lose all respectability, you lose your life. They will either think that you’re making it up or that you’ve done it to yourself or something stupid like that.’
‘I don’t worry about it any more,’ Kevin interrupts. ‘The more you fight it, the more it hurts you. It’s usually three in the morning. There is a loud, high-pitched noise when it starts, then you are paralysed, and a light comes up from the floor. Then a face looks at you.’
Kevin shows me another picture on his phone. It’s a pencil drawing of an alien.
‘This is the sort of thing that comes to see me,’ he says. ‘ET-looking thing but wider, about that tall’ – he puts his hand out at about four foot – ‘the skin is brown and wrinkly. This one time, I thought there were a lot of blonde women around me, and I could feel someone playing with me… you know… down there.’ He looks at his crotch. ‘Then I realised I was in pain, and that these blonde women were actually little men!’
There is an uncomfortable pause. We all look at each other, Sarah and Kevin with blank faces.
‘But you only see what they want you to see.’ Kevin breaks the silence.
‘Yeah, they put a false memory on you.’ Sarah nods in sympathy.
‘Sometimes I’m so scared of going to bed, I keep all the lights on,’ Kevin continues. ‘They interfere in my relationships too. It’s like they introduce me to people they want me to be with. For example, all my partners have had depression and gynaecological problems. All of them.’
Shit just got weird.
Sarah looks down at her feet before remembering something with a start. ‘My friend’s mum is getting abducted! She finds sand in her bed’ – her voice gets higher – ‘in the middle of bloody Wolverhampton!’
I shake my head, trying desperately to process what I am hearing, to suspend my disbelief. ‘What do psychologists say about all this?’ I try the same question I had posed to Kiaan the star.
‘Oh, you don’t go near them,’ Sarah says. ‘You can’t. They’ll put you on all sorts of pills and call you mad.’
Kevin jumps back in. ‘I kicked one of them in the head once. Then I got punished. An ice-cold finger on my head. It knocked me out. Then I remember coming back down. I was dropped back onto the bed with so much force it woke my partner.’
‘Did they take you onto a spaceship?’
‘Oh yeah, been there loads of times.’ Kevin nods. ‘A room with no corners. All lit up, but no lights.’
‘What did they do to you?’
‘The only way I can explain it is like milking a cow.’
Sarah becomes animated. ‘They are taking your bits. Your spermy things!’ She screws up her face and turns to me. ‘It’s one of the theories of abduction; they call it the hybrid programme. They think it’s something we have – perhaps emotions – that they want, so they breed with us.’
‘Yeah, they’re definitely taking my sperm.’ Kevin nods.