2012 Countdown - et en Arcadie je

Another local crop circle…

May 15, 2008 on 5:19 am | In other | No Comments

 

The image above is a crop formation from Madisonville, TN (about 30 miles south of our home base here in Maryville).  It was found in May 2007 by a pilot flying overhead.  The local newspaper editor gave us the location, and SEPRS was on the scene the next day.  This was our first circle, and we didn’t really have a lot of info on what we needed to document, so we got a lot of photos and waited for the International Crop Circles Research Association (at least I believe that’s what their acronym ICCRA stands for) to arrive that weekend.  We went out on a Saturday in late May to assist the ICCRA guys with measurements and readings. We, like them, were pretty sure of the circle’s authenticity after a brief inspection because of two things:

1.  There were several places where the arms connecting the outer circles with the inner circle came into the circles in a woven pattern.  In other words, the straight lay of the wheat in the arm was alternately layered with the whorled wheat in the circle.  That type of interweave would be almost impossible to fake.

2.  The center of the whorl pattern in the circle was not in the geometric center of the circle.  So in other words, if the circle had been faked, there would have been a rope of some sort centered, and then keeping the rope taut, the outside edge of the circle would have been walked around that center.  Therefore the center of the whorl pattern of the circle would have been in the geometric center of the circle.  While this wouldn’t have been impossible to fake, it would have made the hoaxer’s job much, much harder.

So these two things immediately pointed to the authenticity of the circle.  The electromagnetic readings, as well as the radiation readings were both higher by several times that of the readings at a distance from the circle.  Another thing we found was that while trying to pick out the compass points to get measurements of the formation, the compass would often either point in a wrong direction, or would simply not stop spinning.  Everything was pointing to the formation being authentic, but the definitive yes did not come until the ICCRA was able to analyze the samples they took back to Ohio with them.  The absolute litmus test for crop circles is what’s known as the Levengood test.  In this, you measure the nodes (the little bulges on the stalks that look like knuckles) of the plants inside the circle and compare them with the nodes on an equal sized sample from outside of the circle.  35 plants per sample is enough to establish this, but ICCRA took almost 700 stalks back with them to analyze, and statistically, the nodes of the plants inside the circle were much longer than the plants outside the circle, proving without a doubt that the 2007 circle was authentic.  These elongated nodes are something that no hoaxer, no matter how good, can fake.

Another few indicators from last years circle that were significant were that the circle was a short distance from a power pole with a transformer on it, was at the lowest spot in the field, and was in an area with prehistoric Native American earthworks (even though TVA has erased most of the evidence of that).  Jeff Wilson, leader of the ICCRA, told us tonight that those three things are very often found with authentic formations.

One thing I did want to mention as an aside here is that an armchair investigator who is also an Oak Ridge researcher from the paranormal group in Knoxville did manage to straggle out to the formation several days after it had been open to the public, and with just a cursory glance, pronounced it to be fake.  Eddie confronted the guy, asking him what data he had gathered.  NONE.  So I guess this is the state of proper scientific investigation these days, and is what you can expect from the Knoxville group - East Tennessee locals in search of paranormal investigators, consider yourselves forewarned.   SEPRS would never walk into a situation simply to debunk, and we try our best to impartially let the data speak for itself.  Ok, I’m off my high horse now.  :)  More on those yahoos later…

The photo above shows the crop formation found in Madisonville a little over a week ago.  The same local newspaper editor contacted us about this one.  It was also found in a field of wheat by a pilot overhead.  Our suspicions were kind of raised from the start because said editor seemed to be doing everything he could to make sure we didn’t find or get into the circle this year to go ahead and do some of the preliminary legwork for ICCRA, who finally got in today.  Talking to Jeff Wilson, it didn’t take them long today to determine it was a hoax.  No electromagnetic or radiation elevation inside the circle, and after examining a decent sample of nodes inside and outside the circle, it was determined that the nodes inside the circle were not elongated.  

We met with Jeff and his wife tonight at Fox’s (a plug for our pizza-makin’ lead investigator, Eddie, here - East Tennessee locals, if you find yourself in Madisonville, Fox’s Pizza on 411 on the north side of town ROCKS) and he reminded us that he had told us last year to not be surprised to see a copycat hoax around this time.  We sat and chatted with them for a couple of hours tonight, and he showed us a presentation that he had prepared for their annual conference.  It’s so weird how often several of these circles will show up tens or hundreds of miles apart, but they are all exactly on a straight line.  Often one of the geometric features of a current circle will point to a site miles away where a circle appeared years ago.  And according to them, they’ve been noticing a definite military interest in the formations, often being buzzed by military aircraft while in on an investigation, or being followed by a vehicle with government plates.  I asked him if he thought, because of the patterns these things make over vast geographical areas, and the military interest that’s starting to border on harrassment, that UFOs are the most likely crop circle makers, and he said that even though they don’t officially support one hypothesis over another as far what or who is making the formations, he thought that UFOs were unlikely.  His reasoning is that there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between UFO sightings and circle formation, and that no one has ever witnessed a UFO making a circle.  I didn’t press too much, but in my opinion, I would still say that UFOs are at the top of my suspect list.  From hundreds of sightings, it seems that UFOs have no trouble blinking in and out of our range of vision, and also many reports where a UFO is confirmed on radar, but pilots very near it are seeing just clear blue sky.  Anyway, that’s just a hunch on my part.  You can’t exactly confirm causation from something that is invisible.  :)  

But Jeff did say that as years go by, the general trend for the number of crop formations is upward.  So more and more of these mysterious formations, that we can’t explain, and can’t decipher.  And..

There are 4 years, 7 months, and 6 days left until the end of time.

j

 

Bienvenue à “et en Arcadie je”

May 14, 2008 on 5:24 pm | In Uncategorized | No Comments

Welcome to your 15 minutes of Forteana, conspiracy, and 2012 discussion.  Hopefully the title is all the French you’ll have to deal with for a while.  And for those of you who didn’t know, it means “Welcome to ‘and in Arcadia I’”.  What’s “and in Arcadia I” mean?  What’s the deal with 2012?  What exactly is Forteana?  Stay tuned and eventually all this will be answered.  

Ever notice how things seem to be happening faster and faster as time goes by?  More new diseases show up.  More devastating storms occur every year.  Wars get worse and more politicians lie more and more. Everything seems to be headed towards some cataclysm, towards a major paradigm shift, towards something history-changing. Everybody has a gut-feeling that things are speeding up and that there’s a major change on the horizon, but no one can quite put their finger on it.  This phenomenon is what latenight radio talk show host Art Bell refers to as The Quickening.  What will humanity, the Earth, be like after The Quickening has come to fruition?  Will the world be a much better place, or much worse?  Will the majority of humanity live to see it?  

On a personal note, I just found out on Saturday that I had a very good friend die last month in a car accident (RIP Jimmy - I hope you’re at that great big Dead show in the sky). But as upset as I am at losing him, with the way the Quickening seems to be getting more and more negative in total, I have to wonder if he’s not the lucky one?  I guess we’ll see.

There are 4 years, 7 months, and 7 days left until the end of time.  (more on that next time)

j