In the 1970’s crop circles, well, started cropping up all over the English countryside.  These circles were created when a crop, such as corn, was flattened down in an organized fashion so as to form a circle or other pattern.   At first, theories abounded as to what was causing, or creating, these circles which seemly appeared overnight.  Was it a meteorological incident such as high wind or lightening? Famed physicist Steven Hawking once thought so.  Or perhaps aliens from another universe visited and settled their flying saucers into our corn fields?

While these theories are quite intriguing, it is now widely believed early crop formations were the handiwork of two British hoaxers named Doug Bower and Dave Chorley.  The duo was evidently inspired by the story of a farmer in Australia who reportedly found a flattened saucer-like circle in some swamp weeds after seeing a UFO.  These two pranksters made hundreds of circles before making headlines in 1991 by claiming, then demonstrating, it was they who started the now international phenomenon in 1978.

Today, hundreds of sophisticated ‘pictographs’ now appear around the world every year. Crop circles have spawned artists, tourism and even competitions. No longer made with simple tools, many crop circles are created using GPS and lasers which can produce amazingly sophisticated images. 

So do we have crop circles in Virginia? According to the International Crop Circle Researcher’s Association, since 1965 there have been 12 reports of crop circles in our state.  The two most recent where spotted in 2003 in Prince George County and in fields owned by Virginia Tech in Montgomery County.