The story of two friends who created an alien myth and filled the world with conspiracy theories

Despite evidence to the contrary, several people remain convinced that the mythical Crop circles were created by aliens brought in by UFOs.

However,how are unidentified flying objects related to the flattened expanses of cereal grains?

And why have these designs been historically mainly associated with the south of England?

The real people responsible for the figures in the crops

The answer to all of these questions lies in two people: Doug Bower and Dave Chorley.

Bower and Chorley were a friendly couple who lived near Winchester, England. In 1978, the two were sitting in a pub, “wondering what we could do to have a little laugh,” Chorley told TIME magazine in 1991..

Inspired by reports of UFO landings, which spread in the late 1970s, after a retired Air Force officer gave an interview about the Roswell crash, claiming that something alien crashed in the New York desert. Bower and Chorley decided to create their own fake UFO landing site.

How two friends created a UFO myth

Arm yourself with a few planks, a string, and string attached to the brim of a baseball cap to place their patternsBower and Chorley went to a field and set about creating a masterpiece.

No one noticed the movement. Indeed, the two had to make multiple forays into the southern England countryside over the course of several years before the media from all over the world to notice their newly invented crop circles.

Once the story went global and UFO enthusiasts began appearing in droves, the artists came forward and admitted their hoax.

Since, crop circles have become a landscape art form and a tourist attraction.

Their myth as alien artifacts isn’t as strong as it once was, although true believers, dubbed “croppies,” still believe aliens are responsible for at least some crop circles.

Today, marketers are more likely to: crop circles have been used to advertise the Olympic Games and computer chips.

What are crop circles?

Crop circles are large-scale patterns made by flattening crops such as wheat, barley or canola.

Crop circle artists still use wooden planks to squash the patternsas illustrated by a National Geographic documentary filmed in 2004. The makers of these figures hide their footprints in the existing ruts of tractor tires, making it appear as if the design fell from the sky.

Crop circles can be simple or more complex. The south of England remains a hot spot for crop circle artistswith masterpieces incorporating triangles, swirling shapes and crescents.

They have popped up in other parts of the world as well, with an Illinois Courier & Press newspaper article calling them a “plague” in the state in the 1990s.

Sometimes “crop circles” appear for seemingly natural reasons. The crop circles that Chorley and Bower took inspiration from were found in Australia in 1966, even though they weren’t actually collected; they were flattened, floating clumps of reeds in a lagoon in far north Queensland.

The farmer who found them claimed to have seen a flying saucer speeding away, but locals said such circles were common during the rainy season. According to the Cairns Post, these are most likely downdrafts or small eddies known as willy-willies, similar to dust devils.