Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs The Worlds Most Puzzling Mysteries Solved
Page 8
Without the suggestion of unknown forces at work, very few people would take an interest in crop-circle art on its own merit, so artists need the mythmakers to continue to be as vocal as possible every time a circle appears. Equally, without the circle makers, there would be no circles for otherwise bored individuals to fly over and photograph, or visit en masse with their measuring tapes and electronic devices for gauging unusual electrical activity.
In the debate about whether crop circles are man-made or created by supernatural forces of some kind, the balance of evidence tips very much toward the former. The circle makers have proved pretty conclusively that they are able to create elaborate and complicated designs using relatively simple resources— string, planks of wood, plastic piping, and a garden roller—in a matter of a few hours. They have actually been filmed doing it, but the believers, while accepting that some circles are man-made, still prefer to wonder why their mobile phones fail to work in crop circles, or why flattened wheat is less electrically charged than the standing wheat nearby. Any schoolchild with a basic understanding of physics could step forward and enlighten them by explaining that standing wheat will act like an aerial and attract the atmosphere's electromagnetic charge better than the flattened stems. Presumably that is why all lightning conductors point upward from the roof of your house and do not lie flat in the back garden. And, what's more, my mobile phone doesn't seem to work anywhere in the countryside, let alone in the middle of a field.
All the pseudoscience offered as solid evidence simply doesn't stand up to detailed cross-examination. Nothing has been suggested to prove that crop circles are made by anything other than man himself. There is absolutely no credible evidence of mysterious forces at work, and as is always the case when it comes to proving such things, we will need to see a real alternative to the “man in a cap with a plank of wood working at night” principle. Don't expect many people to believe that ancient ruins under the ground are responsible, or mini tornadoes, plasma vortexes, or any other freak of nature, because if any of these could have created the circles, then it should be easy enough for scientists to prove, or at least reconstruct under controlled conditions. But nobody ever has.
Already I can hear the believers sharpening their tongues in order to dismiss me as a CIA plant or part of a wide-ranging government cover-up program denying the existence of extraterrestrial forces and/or denying the coded messages left in wheat fields by visitors from Mars. That is what the crop believers usually do to vocal opponents of their mystic beliefs, and I am already looking forward to discussing it. Because there is no tangible evidence of any intergalactic interference in our wheat fields, and the only slight piece of evidence ever offered always turns out to be a hoax, later admitted by the hoaxers themselves.
Usually they are the very same circle makers proving to the world how easily fooled the experts are and showing us exactly how they created them. In one such case, from 1996, called the “Oliver's Castle Video,” balls of light, referred to by the experts as BOLs, were filmed floating across a field while a crop circle mysteriously appeared directly underneath and the cameraman was heard to whisper, “Wow, that's amazing!”
Never having been in that position myself, I do not know how I might react if I saw such a thing happen right in front of me, but I imagine it is rather more likely that I would be running down the lane screaming in terror, having dropped all my equipment. Equally suspicious is the way in which the camera stays fixed on the field where the crop circle appears, whereas most cameramen would tend to follow the balls of light with their lens, not hold the camera in one position as the BOLs floated in and out of view.
Further investigation revealed that it was indeed a hoax. John Wheyleigh, a young man from Bath, had created the illusion by filming a wheat field and using an editing program to create the BOLs and then gradually faded out some of the wheat to leave the effect of a crop-circle design. The film caused a sensation and enthusiasts all over the world tried to contact Wheyleigh, but without success.
Digging a little deeper, it came as no surprise to find that “Wheyleigh” wasn't his real name. The young man in question actually turned out to be one John Wabe, a partner in a video-editing company. Needless to say, he sold his video, made a documentary about how he had created his film, and apparently signed a lucrative contract with a television company. Predictably, he has made himself thoroughly unpopular with the more resentment-prone members of the crop-circle and UFO communities across the world, some even threatening to sue him. Others, meanwhile, quietly ignored the hoax and carried on with their important research into inter galactic “messages” left in fields of wheat.
The believers dismiss the evidence of circle makers as the “Doug and Dave effect.” Television documentaries about man-made circles are known as “Doug and Dave-style programs,” and so on. So blinkered have some of them become that any suggestion of a circle being man-made is derided. (Skeptical believers—now there's a conundrum …) In the meantime they have given their “science” a special name. Cereology, they call it, and no, neither I nor the Microsoft spell checker had heard of that word either.
I am already ordering my insultproof vest in preparation for the publication of this book, because I have a feeling the best reaction I can expect from the community of cereologists is to be called an idiot. We shall see. Of course, as with all of these types of mystery, it is simply impossible to prove a negative. Some people will believe whatever they want to believe, although most of us need to see the firm evidence first, so—as with the Bigfoot mystery (see page 25)—please show us a carcass; some real evidence.
One company, called “Circlemakers” and run by the British artist and documentary filmmaker John Lundberg, makes no attempt to hide its identity, or its work. The company even accepts com mercial commissions to create crop circles and has done so all over the world. In one case it recreated a well-known cereal company logo, and in another The Sun newspaper asked it to make a huge crop logo of the five Olympic rings to support Britain in its bid to hold the next Games. The following day they ran a front-page headline, “Aliens Back Our Bid,” and printed the photograph underneath. Just stop for a minute and wonder how many people in Great Britain, or even across the world, actually believed that headline. Very few, I imagine, but I expect some dyed-in-the-wool cereologists did, even so. When asked why he does it, John has stated that among the numerous reasons for creating crop circles, the chief one is “being able to construct something that most people believe to be beyond human capability.”
Now, for me, that is a pretty good reason to do anything, and good luck to him. On their website (www.circlemakers.org) the group claim the circles they create are actually “genuine” in the sense that there is no attempt on their part to deceive anybody. They are open about their art and ridicule many of the so-called crop-circle “experts” who claim to have had visits from outer space or other paranormal experiences. Well, you would too if you had spent a hard night in a wheat field constructing a giant spiral spelling out the words SHREDDED WHEAT only for somebody to claim it to be the work of little green men from Mars.
So, of the many explanations for the sudden appearance of elaborate designs found in some fields of wheat, ranging from the paranormal to the extraterrestrial, none of them have ever been supported by any genuine evidence. And therefore none of them are as convincing as the most likely explanation—a man in a cap with some string and a plank of wood, plus a flask of tea to keep him going—which is continually dismissed by the cereologists.
So, now I have changed my mind. I began by believing the circle makers were a bloody nuisance and wanted to find out what, if anything, had created the circles not identified as man-made. But instead the only solid evidence I can find is that people have created all of them, so now I respect the circle makers’ art, for art's sake, and hope crop circles continue to appear in more and more clever and elaborate forms—and some of them are very clever indeed. The meditation groups down in Sussex who sit in
crop circles contemplating whatever it is they contemplate can happily continue to do so as far as I'm concerned, although I think the artist should charge them a fee for it in future. Perhaps he/she could leave out a saucer for the money to be placed in. Although, on second thought, that might create even more confusion.
But for the many who dismiss the circle makers as publicity seekers and hoaxers, I have another idea. Imagine H. G. Wells's time machine, only from outside the machine rather than inside it; in other words, we just happen to be walking past the site of the inventor's house as he flashes through our time zone on his way to the year 30,000 or whenever. You wouldn't see the actual time machine, as it would be traveling too quickly, but its track or footprint would suddenly appear right in front of you, then gradually fade away over the next few weeks. There you are: that's my alternative explanation for crop circles. Scientists of the distant future have managed to build time machines and these are racing backward and forward through our own time zone leaving the footprint of their time machines in our fields, where they are actually standing in thousands of years’ time. That would explain why the birds fly around them too. Now, is that any more ridiculous than any of the other theories you have heard from the real experts? And I just made that up, for fun.
But in the meantime the two opposing groups should, in my humble opinion, try to get on with each other. The artists should be allowed to continue creating their art without having their cars vandalized by the believers, and the believers should be allowed to run around in a field measuring bent wheat straws and taking soil samples without people like me making fun of them. And as to that, I really will try to restrain myself in future, but I can't promise anything. (You can call me Doug from now on, or Dave.)
The story of the charismatic criminal who leaped over
counters Hollywood-style when robbing a bank
During the Depression of the 1930s, many Americans, broke and hungry, made heroes of the outlaws who simply pulled out their guns and took what they wanted. This was the era of the gangster: of Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, and, most of all, John Herbert Dillinger.
A career criminal, Dillinger is often described as an American Robin Hood—although he conveniently skipped the bit about giving anything back to the poor. Dillinger is best known for his narrow getaways from police and his many bank robberies where, incidentally, he also picked up the nickname “Jackrabbit” because of the athletic way he leaped over counters (supposedly inspired by something he had seen in a movie).
He was finally cornered by FBI agents at the Biograph Theater in Lincoln Park, Chicago, on July 22, 1934. He had been there to watch the film Manhattan Melodrama with his girlfriend, Polly Hamilton, and a brothel owner called Anna Sage, who was facing deportation charges. Sage had cut a deal with the FBI and, as they exited the theater, she tipped off agent Melvin Purvis, who gunned Dillinger down from behind.
J. Edgar Hoover, founder and director of the FBI, had become obsessed with capturing the charismatic bank robber, who was on the run from the Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana, said to be escapeproof. In the quest for the gangster, agents had arrested the wrong man several times and even mistakenly killed three innocent construction workers in a shootout, causing public outrage. Dillinger had been goading Hoover and was becoming something of a Robin Hood-style figure in the eyes of the world. Hoover, in return, was devoting a third of the entire FBI budget to catching this one single outlaw.
But then doubts arose as to whether it was Dillinger who had been shot. It all started when Dillinger's father, summoned to identify the body, failed to recognize his son, famously stating: “That's not my boy.” Further investigation appeared to confirm the doubts rather than dispel them. The dead man had brown eyes, for instance, whereas Dillinger's were gray, and the autopsy revealed signs of a childhood illness that he had never had. The corpse also showed signs of a rheumatic heart condition, but Dr. Patrick Weeks, the physician at Crown Point, confirmed Dillinger had been suffering from no such disease and had been in robust health. Apart from his famed athleticism during bank raids, he had been an avid baseball player both in the navy and while in prison. Furthermore, although fingerprint records were inconclusive because of acid scarring of the hands, the body had none of the scars that had been listed on Dillinger's prison files.
Had the FBI mistakenly killed the wrong man again in their desperate search for John Dillinger? Was he to remain a free man, with J. Edgar Hoover refusing to reveal the truth, as he was already under pressure to resign over the previous mistaken-identity killing? Anna Sage was still deported back to her home country of Romania, leading to speculation she had deliberately misled the FBI by identifying the wrong man, a petty criminal from Wisconsin named Jimmy Lawrence who bore a close resemblance to Dillinger and had dated the same girls. Had John Dillinger found the perfect way to rid himself of Lawrence, a love rival, and the interest of the FBI in one fell swoop? Rumor has it that such was the brazen cheek of the man, he even taunted J. Edgar Hoover by sending him a Christmas card every year afterward.
The mysterious disappearance of a real-life
James Bond—the man on whom the
fictional character was based
Lionel “Buster” Crabb, OBE, was the Royal Navy frogman who famously vanished in 1956, when the Suez crisis was at its height, during a reconnaissance mission to investigate a Soviet cruiser.
Crabb's life began uneventfully enough. He was born on January 28, 1909, into a poor family living in Streatham in southwest London. After leaving school he held several menial jobs and then joined the Merchant Navy. At the beginning of the Second World War he joined the army, but it wasn't until he transferred to the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1941 that he came into his own. In 1942, he was posted to Gibraltar as part of a new Royal Navy diving unit. Their mission was to remove un-exploded mines fixed underneath the waterline to the hulls of many Allied ships. It was dangerous, unpleasant work, but Crabb excelled at it. His comrades held his courage and ability in such high regard that they started calling him “Buster” after the American Olympic swimming champion Buster Crabbe (who moved on to a career in the film industry, starring as both Tarzan and Flash Gordon), and the nickname stuck.
His skills were also recognized by his superiors. Buster was awarded the George Medal, promoted to lieutenant commander, and made principal diving officer for northern Italy. At the end of the war he was awarded the OBE for his services to the empire, and posted to Palestine to lead an underwater explosives disposal team removing mines planted by Jewish rebels. In 1947 Crabb left the navy, but he remained in close contact with the military, on one occasion even helping to identify a suitable location for a nuclear waste discharge pipe for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.
In 1955, as the Cold War gathered pace, the Soviet cruiser Sverdlov steamed into Portsmouth harbor as part of a worldwide naval review. Behind the scenes, and the friendly gestures of the world's most powerful nations, Crabb was recruited by naval top brass to make a series of secret dives around the docked Sverdlov to evaluate its potential. According to his diving companion Sydney Knowles, they found, contained within an opening in the ship's bow, a large propeller that could be directed to give thrust to the bow. Whitehall was impressed, but in the process Crabb had technically become a spy.
In March 1955, Crabb reluctantly retired from professional diving because of his age. The following April, the Russian ship Ordzhonikidze arrived in Ports mouth carrying a delegation headed by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. It was during the run-up to the Suez crisis. The British and Egyptian governments were arguing about ownership and rights of access along the Suez Canal; hence, as the Russians were providing the Egyptians with arms, negotiation with the Soviet Union was crucial. So Prime Minister Anthony Eden was both alarmed and dismayed when, without warning, Khrushchev furiously called off the talks, claiming they were being spied upon by British intelligence. On his return to Russia, Khrushchev promptly released a statement
declaring that his ship's crew had spotted a frogman close to the cruiser berthed in Portsmouth harbor.
Soon afterward the British government issued its own somber statement—that Commander Crabb had been reported missing while “enjoying a recreational dive somewhere along the south coast in Hampshire.” This aroused a great deal of suspicion, leading to speculation that perhaps the Russians knew rather more about the baffling disappearance of Britain's best-known diver than the public were being told. And when questions were asked in the House of Commons and Anthony Eden forced Sir John Sinclair, the head of MI6, to resign, it only added to the mystery. After all, if the Russians were this upset over the alleged spying, what information did they have to support it? Could they have captured Crabb?