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Title: Crop Circle Communique II - 'Revelations' Length: 1 hour Price: £15.00
Produced by Circlevision Publications, PO Box 36, Ludlow, Shropshire, SY8 3ZZ
While still with the subject of hoaxers, and having recently viewed John's new video while staying with friends in Wiltshire, I thought I'd write a review to summarise it's content for other Enigma readers.
Not surprisingly, there was nothing of any major surprise contained in it, as I already knew John's stand point from reading his book. This video is very much an attempt to close the subject and make the viewer believe that all circles are hoaxed.
The video contains plenty of aerial shots of formations. These are very high quality and John has obviously taken the chance to collect a vast footage of aerial views over the years.
It starts from the early years and includes interviews with a number of circles 'experts' such as Pat Delgado, Colin Andrews and Richard Andrews. The 1991 Operation Blackbird is mentioned in some detail, noting that although formations appeared seemingly in front of the cameras, subsequent analysis failed to reveal what actually caused the circles to appear.
It then goes on to describe how, in 1991 Doug and Dave made their announcement to the World, and how Pat Delgado was set up by The Today Newspaper at a location in Kent, The subsequent circle-making contest is then shown in some depth, with interviews from Dr Rupert Sheldrake, Richard Andrews and Jurgen Kronig. Circle hoaxer Jim Schnabel, who incidentally only started making formations in 1991, is briefly interviewed, as is Adrian Dexter, the winner of the competition. Dexter then gives the camera a demonstration of how they made their formation - complete with ladders and poles. Although difficult enough to carry equipment into the fields without being seen, Dexter also went on to say how they used the entire five hours in order to complete their formation.
Macnish decided that the only way to really convince himself of the hoaxing was to get some high-tech surveillance equipment and go out personally into the fields to watch. This he started to do in April 1992, during which he filmed his first time-lapse sequence - in an Oil Seed Rape field. This black and white sequence is shown on the video, cutting to a colour aerial sequence. To anyone analysing the footage, it's worth watching for the position of the tramlines and the bush in the foreground of the time-lapse photographs and then the same things in the aerial shots.
A couple more sequences are shown before Macnish goes on to interview some of the hoaxers such as Jim Schnabel and Rob Irving - who confesses that hoaxing makes you 'feel larger than life' ("I suppose it depends on how sad you are" - Ed.)
Doug and Dave are then interviewed again and Doug tells how it became an obsession and describes it [hoaxing] as 'a most beautiful feeling'. ("I can't see how criminal damage to farmers livelihood can be a beautiful feeling" - Ed.)
There is some footage of Doug and Dave (although, due to the quality you can only discern the shapes of people - not who they are) filmed through night vision equipment and a number of Doug's paintings of crop formations. I can't really see the point of showing their paintings, as no proof is provided as to whether the paintings came before or after the formations - you have only their word for it.
The only revelation in the video (as far as I can see - Ed.) is the claim that John Macnish commissioned Doug and Dave to make the HMS Mercury formation at East Meon in 1992. Even then, the night-time footage doesn't really show any distinctive landmarks. Again, it's worth comparing the slope of the field and the position of the gap in the hedge in the night-time shots, with the colour day-time sequence shown after creation. Further footage shows Doug demonstrating the (in)famous baseball cap with sighting device and 'stomping sticks'.
One of the most interesting parts in the video (for me anyway) was the rather humorous way Schnabel and Irving tried to fool UFO researchers by releasing helium balloons filled with small flashing lights. There is an intriguing bit of footage where the balloon is drifting slowly across the night sky, occasionally flashing on and off. Watch carefully when the balloon passes in front of some clouds and momentarily blinks out. Personally I would have expected to see the dark outline of the balloon visible in front of the clouds instead of totally disappearing. Perhaps my eyes aren't as good as they used to be.....
More footage shows Dexter repeating the experiment, this time using luminous green fairground-type toys stuffed inside helium balloons. The date they give for this experiment is the summer of 1993. All I can say is that my sightings reported around the same time (see Enigma 2) were definitely NOT helium balloons.
On the whole, my personal view of this video was that it was an insult to my intelligence. Any serious researchers will immediately see that no solid evidence is put forward by any of the hoaxers - and sceptics won't see conclusive proof that ALL formations are hoaxed. As Dr Rupert Sheldrake has said, "You can hoax good £20 notes, but that doesn't mean that all £20 notes are forgeries".
I was even more convinced, after watching this video, that there is a genuine phenomenon, and puzzled as to why people should want to try so hard to debunk it. I can think of better things to spend my money on than this video. After all, you only need one genuine circle for there to be a genuine mystery.
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