The 2001 Crop Circle Season

What is a crop circle season?

Crop circles appear in growing fields of grain that are tall enough to be flattened into designs. The British crop circle community measures a season from the appearance of the first formation – in April or May – to the last formation of the summer, in August or September.

These crop circle seasons build slowly, with the most complex formations occurring in late July and August. There is often a “grand finale” formation that ends the crop circle season just as the giant combines are beginning to harvest.

Once a crop circle is discovered, the word spreads quickly and hordes of people descend on the farmer’s field within hours. The human foot traffic goes on for weeks until the crop circle design has been trampled and sampled almost beyond recognition. For this reason, the formations are best seen within the first week of their appearance.

Each crop circle season is like a vintage of wine. Each year seems to have a personality or theme. Experienced croppies all agree that 1991 and 1996 were the best years and that 1992 was among the worst. 1995 was the year of astronomical designs. Each season represents a new opportunity for definitive proof of contact. The croppies all secretly dread that one year the crop circles will no longer appear and that the story will be over, having left more questions than answers.

The 2001 crop circle season was one of the most interesting of all. Expectations were high following a spectacular 2000. Croppies and researchers had been fearful that the new millennium would end the phenomenon and that the transmissions would terminate. But instead, some of the best crop circles of all time appeared that year.

During the winter, England suffered torrential rains and flooding that saturated the landscape and delayed spring planting. Something else made 2001 a year to remember – Foot and Mouth.

What was different about the 2001 season?

During the spring of 2001, Great Britain was fighting a devastating outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease among their cattle and sheep populations. Foot and Mouth is so contagious that entire herds are sometimes destroyed if one case is discovered. The nightly news was filled with disturbing pictures of burning pyres of livestock and the entire country was on high alert for the next outbreak.

Foot and Mouth is transported in many ways, including through human foot and automobile traffic. People walking through fields could pick up the disease on their shoes and carry it to a new area.

The outbreak was north of Wiltshire and Hampshire, but the crop circle community watched with dread as the British government banned access to the nationwide system of footpaths. All non-essential traffic across the countryside was eliminated, and the farmers were in no mood for crop circle hoaxers, researchers or tourists.

As a result, an intriguing question emerged. Was it possible that the genuine crop circles – the non-manmade circles – would appear regardless of the restrictions? Would the human circlemakers risk high fines or even a farmer’s shotgun by going into the fields this spring? The stakes were higher than ever before.

For the first time in a decade, April came and went without any formations. The crop circle community was depressed. Were they going to have to cancel their conferences and tours? Even worse – would they be banished from the fields for an entire summer?

In May the first crop circle of the season appeared in oil seed rape in Hampshire County, near researcher Lucy Pringle’s home. Two more simple formations followed – in Devon and Wiltshire. Banned from the fields, the researchers still got as close as possible and used pole-mounted cameras to document the formations.

The circles came slowly throughout May. Although restrictions were being lifted, the farmers remained tense and vigilant. Some researchers worried that even though the F&M threat had passed, the farmers were going to close the fields to crop circle tourism for good.

The season takes off

One of the most exciting moments in the CircleSpeak production came at the end of May when our film crew came upon a very new triangular formation in a barley field near the Barbury Castle hill fort. We were able to film researchers Charles and Frances Mallett and their young son when they arrived to take the first measurements and photographs of the formation. It was the first complex design of the year – and a signal that the 2001 crop circle season was truly underway.

June came around, and the crop circle season was finally returning to normal, with complex designs appearing every few days. The famous East Field in Alton Barnes saw its first formation –a highly controversial pyramid design, disparaged by some researchers as being “obviously hoaxed.”

The summer season was in full swing and the crop circles were gaining momentum with each passing week.

Ethical issues

But the concerns about F&M hung over the fields throughout the summer. It had forced the researchers (and the hoaxers) to confront difficult ethical questions about accessing fields without permission. For many researchers, it was a question of timing. It could take hours, or even days, to locate a particular farmer for permission to investigate a formation. Yet during that time, less scrupulous tourists would find their way into the fields and trample the formation before valuable data could be gathered.

The CircleSpeak crew was with Charles and Frances Mallett during one of those moments. They had just discovered a new formation in Avebury Trusloe. It was visible from the road, and would soon be filled with excited croppies anxious to soak up the crop circle energies. If the Malletts wanted to get fresh pictures and measurements, they needed to visit the formation immediately.

While in the field, the researchers were confronted by the angry farmer – Robin Butler, who was particularly incensed by what to him was a pure case of trespassing. CircleSpeak captured the confrontation on tape.

Two other controversial events occurred in July – and they also involved a farmer. Beckhampton Farmer David Hues agreed to allow circlemaking teams to make two crop circles. The first – a Japanese crest – was quietly done by Matthew Williams’ team during the night. It was not public knowledge that it was a legally commissioned formation.

The second formation was done under the glare of British television lights. This time, the London-based Circlemakers made a complicated design for a television documentary.

The lines had become very blurred as “legal” formations were being made by humans while many unexplainable formations continued to appear around the country.

Interactive intelligence

During this same period, researcher Ed Sherwood performed a meditation and ritual to attempt communication with what he feels is the genuine circle-creating intelligence. The CircleSpeak crew filmed this experiment as he meditated atop the West Kennett Longbarrow – an ancient burial mound near Silbury Hill and Avebury.

Soon after this ritual, a surprising formation appeared which seemed to validate Ed’s communication with greater forces. The results can be seen in the film.

The mother of all crop circles

Although the summer was playing out as a typical crop circle season, there had been no spectacular formations like the previous year. Until the night of August 14th, that is.

The formation that appeared above Milk Hill was, and is, the largest crop circle ever to appear. It was 900 feet in diameter, had 409 circles and seemingly appeared overnight, during a harsh summer rainstorm. The researchers that discovered it were simply astonished beyond belief. It was called “the mother of all crop circles.”

This Milk Hill formation captured the attention of the world press like no other crop circle since the famous Alton Barnes pictogram of 1991.

The Alton Barnes pictogram was 430 feet long.

The Milk Hill “Galaxy” was seen on television and in news stories around the world. Its sheer size was astonishing – and evidence that the creative agency behind it was something much more sophisticated than a few inebriated pranksters.

Within the space of a rainy weekend, the 2001 crop circle season had suddenly taken on more significance. But there were even more surprises in store.

A new kind of crop circle

A few days later, two more formations were discovered in a field next to an observatory in Chilbolton, Hampshire. Crop circles had appeared in this same field in previous years, in keeping with some of the recurring pattern of the phenomenon.

But the two formations that were discovered in August 2001 signaled yet another shift in the complexity of the crop circles. And they both excited and chilled the researchers. They were described as “a new kind of crop circle.”

Watch CircleSpeak to learn about these exciting formations and the dramatic end to the 2001 crop circle season.