In 1991, two men in England named Doug Bower and Dave Chorley revealed that they had been making these 'Signs' using planks, rope, hats and wire and thus exposed what hitherto unexplained phenomenon as a hoax?
"the Canadian Crop Circle Research Network. In his 1997 book ""The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark"", Carl Sagan concludes that crop circles were created by Bower and Chorley and their copycats, and speculates that UFOlogists willingly ignore the evidence for hoaxing so they can keep believing in an extraterrestrial origin of the circles. Many others have demonstrated how complex crop circles can be created. ""Scientific American"" published an article by Matt Ridley, who started making crop circles in northern England in 1991. He wrote about how easy it is to develop techniques using simple tools that"
"as a cereologist. The number of crop circles has substantially increased from the 1970s to current times. There has been little scientific study of them. Circles in the United Kingdom are not distributed randomly across the landscape but appear near roads, areas of medium to dense population and cultural heritage monuments, such as Stonehenge or Avebury. In 1991, two hoaxers, Bower and Chorley, took credit for having created many circles throughout England after one of their circles was described by a circle investigator as impossible to be made by human hand. Formations are usually created overnight, although some are reported"
"and Chorley confessed in 1991 to making the first crop circles in southern England. When some people refused to believe them, they deliberately added straight lines and squares to show that they could not have natural causes. In a copycat effect, increasingly complex circles started appearing in many countries around the world, including fractal figures. Physicists have suggested that the most complex formations might be made with the help of GPS and lasers. In 2009, a circle formation was made over the course of three consecutive nights and was apparently left unfinished, with some half-made circles. The main criticism of"
"were made by ""common quadrupeds"" such as donkeys and ponies, and some by wood mice (see below). He admitted, though, that these cannot explain all the reported marks and ""the mystery remains"". Author Geoffrey Household suggested that ""an experimental balloon"" released by mistake from Devonport Dockyard had left the mysterious tracks by trailing two shackles on the end of its mooring ropes. His source was a local man, Major Carter, whose grandfather had worked at Devonport at the time. Carter claimed that the incident had been quieted because the balloon also wrecked a number of conservatories, greenhouses, and windows before"
"television interviews that he was a marvel comics fan, and was inspired by the Doctor Strange use of the symbol to use it himself in photoshoots. He later (by 1976 or earlier) had black gloves made that lacked the thumb, index and pinky fingers so that even his raised open hand would emulate the ILY sign. ILY sign The ILY is a sign from American Sign Language which, as a gesture, has moved into the mainstream. Seen primarily in the United States and other Americanized countries, the sign originated among deaf schoolchildren using American Sign Language to create a sign"
"no one else has been successfully prosecuted in the UK for criminal damage caused by creating crop circles. The scientific consensus on crop circles is that they are constructed by human beings as hoaxes, advertising, or art. The most widely known method for a person or group to construct a crop formation is to tie one end of a rope to an anchor point and the other end to a board which is used to crush the plants. Sceptics of the paranormal point out that all characteristics of crop circles are fully compatible with their being made by hoaxers. Bower"
"of crop circles and the role of deception in the process of artistic creation. Lundberg and his collaborators – including Rod Dickinson, Gavin Turk, Simon Bill, Wil Russell and Rob Irving – followed after Doug Bower and Dave Chorley in anonymously creating their own crop circles at night. Sometimes treated as not only authentic but as ""significant"" by paranormalists, Lundberg and the Circlemakers' work has been the subject of a BBC documentary and been commissioned by various clients, including the rock band Korn. In 2017 streetwear brand Supreme asked Circlemakers to create a massive crop circle of their Supreme box"
"his money (consequently leaving nothing) on a stack of woollen underwear for his family, sufficient to last for several years."" In 1988, Susan Blackmore claimed that she had communicated with Dingwall about the case. Blackmore stated that Crawford had confessed to Dingwall that all the Goligher phenomena was fraudulent. Blackmore quotes Crawford as saying ""Ding, I have to tell you something. It was all faked, all of it."" Kathleen Goligher Kathleen Goligher (born 1898) was an Irish spiritualist medium. Goligher was endorsed by engineer William Jackson Crawford who wrote three books about her mediumship but was exposed as a fraud"
"produced by her trumpet were caused by chemical explosions induced by potassium and water and in other cases by lycopodium powder. Another well-known medium was the Scottish materialization medium Helen Duncan (1897–1956). In 1928 photographer Harvey Metcalfe attended a series of séances at Duncan's house and took flash photographs of Duncan and her alleged ""materialization"" spirits, including her spirit guide ""Peggy"". The photographs revealed the ""spirits"" to have been fraudulently produced, using dolls made from painted papier-mâché masks, draped in old sheets. Duncan was later tested by Harry Price at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research; photographs revealed Duncan's ectoplasm"
"and was repeatedly exposed as a fraudulent medium. The medium Henry Slade was caught in fraud many times throughout his career. In a séance in 1876 in London Ray Lankester and Bryan Donkin snatched his slate before the ""spirit"" message was supposed to be written, and found the writing already there. Slade also played an accordion with one hand under the table and claimed spirits would play it. The magician Chung Ling Soo revealed how Slade had performed the trick. The British medium Francis Ward Monck was investigated by psychical researchers and discovered to be a fraud. On November 3,"
"alleged non-human creation of crop circles is that while evidence of these origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is essentially absent, some are definitely known to be the work of human pranksters, and others can be adequately explained as such. There have been cases in which researchers declared crop circles to be ""the real thing"", only to be confronted with the people who created the circle and documented the fraud, like Bower and Chorley and tabloid ""Today"" hoaxing Pat Delgado, the Wessex Sceptics and Channel 4's ""Equinox"" hoaxing Terence Meaden, or a friend of a Canadian farmer hoaxing a field researcher of"
"can easily fool later observers. He reported on ""expert"" sources such as ""The Wall Street Journal"", who had been easily fooled and mused about why people want to believe supernatural explanations for phenomena that are not yet explained. Methods of creating a crop circle are now well documented on the Internet. Some crop formations are paid for by companies who use them as advertising. Many crop circles show human symbols, like the heart and arrow symbol of love, stereotyped alien faces, Hoaxers have been caught in the process of making new circles, such as in 2004 in the Netherlands for"
"a number of similar hoaxes. Cardiff Giant The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous hoaxes in American history. It was a purported ""petrified man"" uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. ""Stub"" Newell in Cardiff, New York. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by P.T. Barnum are still being displayed. The giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Hull, an atheist, decided to create the giant after an argument at a Methodist revival meeting about Genesis 6:4 which stated that there were giants"
"the phenomenon. It was also recommended that other government agencies should assist in the investigation. This led to the creation of the Air Force's Project Sign at the end of 1947, one of the earliest government studies to come to a secret extraterrestrial conclusion. In August 1948, Sign investigators wrote a top-secret intelligence estimate to that effect, but the Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg ordered it destroyed. The existence of this suppressed report was revealed by several insiders who had read it, such as astronomer and USAF consultant J. Allen Hynek and Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, the first"
"with what amounts to a chimpanzee's level of intelligence."" However, Clark concedes, ""Nothing about this phenomenon makes any kind of sense. It seems to defy not only natural but even any conceivable paranormal explanation."" Some of the stories may be based on outright fabrications. Charles Dawson, quite probably the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax, had some years earlier presented the Brighton ""Toad in the Hole"" (a toad entombed within a flint nodule), likely another forgery. Dawson presented the toad to the Brighton and Hove Natural History and Philosophical Society on 18 April 1901, claiming that two workmen had found"
"his own homosexuality. In 1992 Hodges incorporated himself into the material of his pieces through the use of his saliva. He drew ink doodles of spider webs, clovers, chains, lines, spirals, and a matrix of dots, then blurred them with his saliva by pressing the wet images against another paper and created different printed impressions. Hodges said that by using his saliva with his materials, it revealed a ""sensuous act"", where his hand would draw the images and his mouth would transmit it. This expressed Hodges' empowerment, and was intended to disrupt the preconception of bodily fluids as something horrifying."
"documents is consistent with the MoD's earlier statement that they never took the case seriously. Included in the released files is an explanation given by defence minister Lord Trefgarne as to why the MoD did not investigate further. One proposed theory is that the incident was a hoax. The BBC reported that a former U.S. security policeman, Kevin Conde, claimed responsibility for creating strange lights in the forest by driving around in a police vehicle whose lights he had modified. However, there is no evidence that this prank took place on the nights in question. Other explanations for the incident"
"how a modern American town would react to discovering biped hoof prints in freshly fallen snow. Devil's Footprints The Devil's Footprints was a phenomenon that occurred during February 1855 around the Exe Estuary in East and South Devon, England. After a heavy snowfall, trails of hoof-like marks appeared overnight in the snow covering a total distance of some . The footprints were so called because some people believed that they were the tracks of Satan, as they were allegedly made by a cloven hoof. Many theories have been made to explain the incident, and some aspects of its veracity have"
"a distant city, only made these hoaxes seem more credible. In the United States, collections of supposedly sinister symbols have been circulated among school administrators and police departments; in the 1980s these symbols were frequently alleged to be ""Satanic symbols"", and in the 1990s they were alleged to be ""gang symbols"". Political or religious symbols, like the peace symbol, the Star of David, the Rosary, the ankh, or the pentagram were mingled with other cryptic or fanciful symbols in these faxed and recirculated sheets, and the entire collection was condemned. On the authority of these anonymous, hard to trace, and"
"and inside carnation flowers were found as well as a key-ring torch and other objects. In 1988, the magician Bob Couttie criticized the paranormal author Brian Inglis for deliberately ignoring evidence of fraud in mediumship. Couttie wrote Inglis had not familiarized himself with magician techniques. In 1990 the researcher Gordon Stein discovered that the levitation photograph of the medium Carmine Mirabelli was fraudulent. The photograph was a trick as there were signs of chemical retouching under Mirabelli's feet. The retouching showed that Mirabelli was not levitating but was standing on a ladder which was erased from the photograph. In 1991,"
"lack of empirical evidence. The exposure of supposed mediums whose use of séance tools derived from the techniques of stage magic has been disturbing to many believers in spirit communication. In particular, the 1870s exposures of the Davenport Brothers as illusionists and the 1887 report of the Seybert Commission brought an end to the first historic phase of Spiritualism. Stage magicians like John Nevil Maskelyne and Harry Houdini made a side-line of exposing fraudulent mediums during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1976, M. Lamar Keene described deceptive techniques that he himself had used in séances; however, in"
"the subjects were two of his associates, amateur conjurers Steve Shaw and Michael Edwards. The pair had created the effects by standard trickery, but the researchers, being unfamiliar with magic techniques, interpreted them as proof of PK. A 2014 study that utilized a magic trick to investigate paranormal belief on eyewitness testimony revealed that believers in psychokinesis were more likely to report a key continued to bend than non-believers. Internationally there are individual skeptics of the paranormal and skeptics' organizations who offer cash prize money for demonstration of the existence of an extraordinary psychic power, such as psychokinesis. Prizes have"
"physical condition and I do not believe that there are many if any pilots who could withstand the turn and speed effected by the object, and remain conscious. The object was not only able to out turn and out speed my aircraft ... but was able to attain a far steeper climb and was able to maintain a constant rate of climb far in excess of my aircraft. Within a few hours, military officers from Project Sign arrived to question Gorman and the other witnesses. Project Sign had been created by the US Air Force in late 1947 to investigate"
"Devil's Footprints The Devil's Footprints was a phenomenon that occurred during February 1855 around the Exe Estuary in East and South Devon, England. After a heavy snowfall, trails of hoof-like marks appeared overnight in the snow covering a total distance of some . The footprints were so called because some people believed that they were the tracks of Satan, as they were allegedly made by a cloven hoof. Many theories have been made to explain the incident, and some aspects of its veracity have also been questioned. On the night of 8–9 February 1855 and one or two later nights,"
"absolutely clear feature and definitely shows that it was not a rope."" Holmes later admitted this, but the photograph was reproduced by the press in several magazines and newspapers as proof of the trick having been successfully demonstrated. Although discredited, the photograph is considered to be the first ever taken of the trick. In 1919, G. Huddleston writing in ""Nature"", claimed to have spent more than thirty years in India and knew many of the best conjurors in the country but not one of them could demonstrate the trick. Lord Frederick Spencer Hamilton in 1921, described an alleged demonstration of"
"across London. Alien artifacts, supposedly items recovered from the crash site, were depicted in the footage. These included alien symbols and six-finger control panels, which Santilli describes in the Sky documentary as being the result of artistic license on his part. These artifacts were also created by Humphreys. The footage also showed a man reading a statement ""verifying"" his identity as the original cameraman and the source of the footage. Santilli and Shoefield admitted in the documentary that they had found an unidentified homeless man on the streets of Los Angeles, persuaded him to play the role of the cameraman,"
"forgery. Teilhard de Chardin had travelled to regions of Africa where one of the anomalous finds originated, and resided in the Wealden area from the date of the earliest finds. Hinton left a trunk in storage at the Natural History Museum in London that in 1970 was found to contain animal bones and teeth carved and stained in a manner similar to the carving and staining on the Piltdown finds. Phillip Tobias implicated Arthur Keith in helping Dawson by detailing the history of the investigation of the hoax, dismissing other theories, and listing inconsistencies in Keith's statements and actions. Other"
"of reports of crop circles have appeared in and spread since the late 1970s as many circles began appearing throughout the English countryside. This phenomenon became widely known in the late 1980s, after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire. After Bower's and Chorley's 1991 statement that they were responsible for many of them, circles started appearing all over the world. To date, approximately 10,000 crop circles have been reported internationally, from locations such as the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, the U.S., and Canada. Sceptics note a correlation between crop circles, recent media"
"a horse paddock in Winkfield village (near Ascot), the village of Welford (near Newbury), in Berkshire, Chippenham in Wiltshire and on Dial Hill in Clevedon in Somerset. The hoax was undertaken by aircraft engineering apprentices from the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough. The idea behind the hoax was planned in January 1967 as part of Farnborough college's upcoming Rag Week. The apprentices created their flying saucers in fibreglass halves and then covered them in metal with no aerials or portholes visible. Inside each saucer was placed electronic equipment that would make an eerie sound when the saucer was flipped"
"they were caught utilizing signal codes and they confessed to fraud. George Albert Smith and Douglas Blackburn were claimed to be genuine psychics by the Society for Psychical Research but Blackburn confessed to fraud: For nearly thirty years the telepathic experiments conducted by Mr. G. A. Smith and myself have been accepted and cited as the basic evidence of the truth of thought transference... ...the whole of those alleged experiments were bogus, and originated in the honest desire of two youths to show how easily men of scientific mind and training could be deceived when seeking for evidence in support"
"on college campuses. By the end of the decade, the symbol had been adopted as a generic peace sign, crossing national and cultural boundaries in Europe and other regions. In 1970, two US private companies tried to register the peace symbol as a trade mark: the Intercontinental Shoe Corporation of New York and Luv, Inc. of Miami. Commissioner of Patents William E. Schuyler Jr, said that the symbol ""could not properly function as a trade mark subject to registration by the Patent Office"". Between 1968 and 1971, the John Birch Society circulated rumours about the origin and meaning of the"
"the cloak to his son. The story is generally believed to refer to the Peverell brothers centuries ago, although very few actually believe the story to be fully true. Dumbledore believed that the Peverells were simply particularly powerful and ingenious wizard inventors. The sign of the Deathly Hallows had also been adopted as a personal symbol by dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald; therefore many wizards, such as Viktor Krum, mistakenly understood it to be a symbol of dark magic. Dumbledore had sought the Hallows, initially in his youth as a friend of Grindelwald for the power they were said to bestow,"
"that this was a juggling trick, performed by a hidden piece of platinum. Hereward Carrington described Evans hypothesis as ""certainly ingenious"" but pointed out William Crookes an experienced chemist was present at a séance whilst Home performed the feat and would have known how to distinguish the difference between coal and platinum. Frank Podmore wrote that most of the fire feats could have easily be performed by conjuring tricks and sleight of hand but hallucination and sense-deception may have explained Crookes' claim about observing flames from Home's fingers. Between 1870 and 1873, chemist and physicist William Crookes conducted experiments to"