by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
In 1986, Jim Speiser of Fountain Hills, Arizona, got the urge to create an electronic forum dedicated to a discussion of paranormal topics. He started a BBS (bulletin board system) using six personal computers located at various locations in the U.S. and Canada linked together with a Fidonet system. Speiser called his new BBS “The ParaNet.” In the summer of 1991, there was a “spin-off” of ParaNet named the Multi-national Investigations Cooperative on Aerial Phenomena, and ParaNet published a magazine called Continuum to get their investigations reports out to the public. The first case in the Volume 1, Number 1, September 1991 issue involves an investigation by James Black (who wrote the report) and Robert Atwood of a simple crop circle that formed overnight starting on August 21, 1991, in a cornfield in Iowa that led them to other reports of strange activity in the area. The case became far more complex than a simple crop circle report, and this has ended up becoming a two-part blog. In the first part, we looked at the investigation and three witness accounts, and in the second part, we’ll look at one more account, the conclusions, and the aftermath, which included poltergeist activity reported to have been experienced by a fellow investigator at his home.
In last week’s blog, we looked at Black’s report from his and Atwood’s investigation of a simple crop circle found in a cornfield belonging to Delmar “Snowball” Meyer up to Black’s interview with a witness identified as “M. A.” who reported that she had been seeing UFOs while driving in the area since an encounter with what Black described as a “classic flying saucer” in November 1990. She said that after that, she had seen a light three or four times that she thought was the same craft and decided to ignore it because of the ridicule she was getting from her friends.
- A. reported that two weeks before the crop circle was formed she saw a light in the sky and sent this angry thought out to it: “If you’re for real why don’t you land? Give me some proof.” She thought this may have been the reason for the crop circle’s formation and said that on the night the crop circle was formed, she saw a light descend in Meyer’s cornfield. She said she woke up the next morning with a headache and a back ache, and she said her housemate told her she had come home extremely late, which surprised her because she thought it hadn’t been much past 1:00 a.m.
According to Black, the last witness he spoke with was a divorced woman who lived with her parents and worked the second shift at a factory. She is identified as “S. S.,” and Black says she told him she had been seeing lights in the sky in the Blue Grass area for the last two years, mostly in the autumn, and that last autumn, they stopped appearing. She said she would be on the road late at night after work and that the lights would frequently follow her home. On some nights, she would see lines of cars parked on the side of Highway 61 with the people in them watching the lights maneuvering in the sky.
According to Black, S. S. described the lights as being “like a star,” but different, and that sometimes, they would drop down and move across the fields. She said there were times when they followed her home that they seemed to be “in distress.” On these occasions, they displayed contrails and seemed to have difficulty keeping up with her.
She said they often travelled as a pair made up of a large white light that would stay north of Highway 61, and a small red light that would come across the highway and sometimes descend into the fields near her home, where it would stay, giving her the impression that it was watching her.
According to Black, S. S. had “apparently” had at least two close encounters, which were described to him by MUFON Investigator Grey Woodman: one in Davenport, Iowa, in 1980 when a bright light came towards her car and time seemed to slow down, and another one two years before when her boyfriend called her outside to witness a huge stingray-shaped object moving over her house that she said was so low that she could have climbed up to it if a ladder had been dropped down.
According to Black, in 1991, S. S. saw the lights again at 9:30 p.m. on the Wednesday that the circle formed in Meyer’s field. She said they were again on the north side of Highway 61.
Black describes S. S. as also being a subject of ridicule and says she had been told she should get together with M. A. According to him, she was less bothered by it than M. A.
In his discussion about how the crop circle might have formed, Black considers the possibility that it was hoaxed. He bases this on the facts that artificial lighting was unnecessary as it was formed on a moonlit night, and that it formed between two rows of corn.
Arguing against a hoax, Black presents these aspects: the circle was perfectly round to within 1% of the radius; the corn stalks were laid down at perfect right angles to the radius; there was no abrasion on the stalks, damage to the leaves, and no ears were detached; weeds and grass inside the circle were not trampled; and there were no footprints or indication of a central stake that pointed to “human intervention.”
Black says he discussed the possibility of weather causing the circle with Meyers and another farmer, “J. H.,” and that both said that they had never seen wind cause corn to lay down in a circle. They said that when it did blow down the stalks, they would be in a straight line and damaged.
According to Black, the idea of a “plasma vortex” causing the circle was an attractive one. He explains that “this little-understood phenomenon allegedly forms near-perfect spheres within which the kinds of high winds required by this case occur.” He rules this out due to another circle they heard about in Milan, Iowa, that measured 46.5 feet ± 2 inches just like the one in Meyer’s field. He says the idea of a natural phenomenon creating two circles approximately 10 miles apart over two successive summers with exactly the same diameter seemed unlikely and indicated that some sort of intelligence, “human or otherwise,” was responsible. Black points out, however, that the Milan circle was swirled clockwise, the opposite of the Blue Grass circle, and the stalks were broken at the base instead of being uprooted.
Black emphasizes this about the Blue Grass circle: whatever caused it only affected the corn. According to him, all other plants (and previously broken stalks) remained upright, which ruled out a broad means of flattening such as plywood or a landed flying saucer.
In the section headed “Discussion: Similarities to Other Cases,” Black describes the Blue Grass crop circle case as “classic” although he includes aspects of what defines a classic crop circle case that may not be familiar to most readers. He points out that it formed on a Wednesday, “when the plurality of UFO sightings occur,” and in a spot where it was likely to get attention. He quotes John Keel who wrote in his 1970 book, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, that UFOs “prefer to land in the fields of occupied farms and on major highways close to big cities.”
Black also says that the case reminded him of a case called “the Kathie Davis case” in Budd Hopkins’s 1987 book, Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods, mainly due to M. H.’s complaints of physical ailments after her encounter and the possibility that she had missing time.
In the section headed “Aftermath,” Black reports that the mayor of Blue Grass went up in a small plane to look at the circle and spotted a second circle in another of Meyer’s fields. Black describes that this one had stalks that were broken between 4 and 6 inches above the ground, and says that this is what one would expect with a hoax. Meyers offered the opinion that it was created by pranksters after news of the first circle got out.
According to Black, he and Atwood chose not to investigate the second circle but did intend to follow up with the two women and try to find others who had had sightings as they were convinced they had “just scratched the surface.”
Black then asks, “Meanwhile, what of the investigators themselves?” He quotes John Keel again from his book: “Within a year after I launched my full-time UFO investigating effort … the phenomenon had zeroed in on me.” Black reports that nothing, or almost nothing, like that has happened to them.
Black then describes calling another researcher on Friday after getting back from Blue Grass and giving him details of the case. He adds that he allowed him to record the call. According to him, the other researcher called him on Sunday and reported “poltergeist-style poundings on the outside wall of their apartment building.” He says that “to top it all off,” when the other researcher played back the tape for him of their phone conversation on Friday “it was filled with a background chorus of moaning and howling right out of The Exorcist.”
In Black’s conclusion, he points out that this case “seems to have something for everybody” with the exception of a dead cow. He says he saw no signs of deception in the witnesses and was “inclined to believe them.”
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