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Why did you make the circles?
Well, actually, we lived in Australia from 1958 to 1966, which is eight and half years,
and me always being interested in outer space and
UFOs and things. I saw an article in the
Australian newspaper one day, about some circles in...
some reed beds or grass in Quee... Tully in Queensland,
and after reading it of course I forgot all about it but when I returned home in
1966 I met David Chorley and he was also an artist
so we had a common interest there, and for the next few years
we used to go out on our Friday evenings to have a drink in the pub
and talk about paintings and one day when we were walking on...
Cheesefoot Head near Winchester one summer evening
in the midst of the cornfields we sat down there
and tried to get a bit of inspiration from UFOs and paintings,
and I suddenly remembered this article that I read while [I was] in Australia
and I said told him about it and I said it would be quite a good [bit] of the fun
if we could devise some way of making a circular mark in the cornfields here
and so it would arouse bit of interest, people would think that
a UFO had landed during the night when they discovered it the next morning,
so after returning home to my workshop I
sort of thought quite a bit the next day as to what we could use
to make this circle, so we started off
by using my big heavy security bar that
was on my workshop door
and our first few circles were made on our hands and knees
with this security bar, we were kneeling down side by side
that, my goodness, it was certainly hard work.
And but it was quite good fun because you were down below the height of the corn
and if a car was coming down the road and the headlights
were surging towards you we used just to say
"down we go!" and just wait for it to pass, and...
but for the first two years our circles were...
were not seen at all except I suppose by the
driver of the combine harvester because we were doing them in fields that were...
that the public couldn't see from the road.
The ideal place of course would be in the Punchbowl at Cheesefoot Head
but at that time there were sheep in there
and I don't think it had ever been ploughed for crops
until about the third year
my wife and I drove up past one Sunday afternoon
and they were ploughing the Punchbowl
and I thought to myself I must go back to Southampton to find Dave Chorley
and tell him that the ideal spot for doing a circle was now under crops,
so we patiently waited until the spring to see the first corn arrive, and we knew
that this would be the ideal spot to do our circles
and our first circle in the Punchbowl I mean it was on the news in the next evening
which pleased us quite a lot and of course the other
place which was ideal for the public to view them was the White Horse at Westbury
and Cley Hill [Warminster] which we did quite a few there as well.
It was all a bit of fun really yes, and being circular and UFOs were circular,
we just wanted people to imagine just to... just to believe the next morning
that "My God something's landed here during the night!"
and the fact that it was circular they immediately would think that it was a UFO
because flying saucers were circular, you see, it's no good doing
square or triangle or anything like that
because they would cotton onto anything from outer space
and, as I say, once the news broke it gave us
quite a fillip, you see, and to carry on
because Dave Chorley said to me one day he says "I've had enough
of this", he said "I'm not keep on doing this",
he said "every week", he says we're getting nowhere with this,
we're getting no publicity, I said "You just hung on a minute,"
I said "especially when the Punchbowl's ploughed,
now when we get down in there and of course
lo and behold that was on the,
the television news the next night and
the news was rapidly spreading around that
something was making these circular marks in the cornfields
and of course you know the story from then on, it just grew and grew
and of course the more publicity we got with the media and...
newspapers and things it egged us on even more.
So the circles continued as circles for quite a while
but Dr. Terence Meaden who was a very clever man as far as weather is concerned
he really got us because he was saying it was wind vortices, you see,
and that we didn't like that, so we had to change from circles into something else...
If you want a cup of tea and a bit of cake, you say so... you break off
Well, we were so secretive about all this, and...
we realised when we started this that no one...
no one must know what we were doing
and otherwise it was going to spoil everything completely
then we said to each other but what about our wives?
And I said well the fact that we go out every Friday evening
they won't... they won't be any the wiser because
that was our usual thing is to go out Friday evening for a pint of beer and...
but it was seven years before my wife really found out about this and...
she came to me one day and she said
"This car needs servicing quite a lot"
she says "with the enormous amount of miles that you're doing"
she said "I'd like to know where you are going in these evenings"
and I said "Well", I said "we are journeying around the countryside quite a bit"
and she wasn't very satisfied with this so I had no alternative
but to hand her the huge album of all the press cuttings,
the publicity, lovers that we were,
and show her, she said "What this don't mean a thing to me really",
she says, "I all know about the circles", she says,
but you're telling me that you and Dave are doing them?
She said "There's only one way to prove it", she says,
is to take me out one night and tell me what you're going to do
which we did, and then it was proved.
But of course it was nice then because once she knew,
although we were only going out Friday and perhaps other nights,
but once she knew about this
we could go every Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays
and we were doing more, that's when the circles started to increase,
because up until then we couldn't do many circles
because we're only allowed out so, so to speak on Friday nights,
and someone even made a remark, I don't know whether it was Pat Delgado or not,
but he said "it's very, very strange
that these circles only seem to appear Saturday mornings",
and of course that was quite true, you see, because it was
Friday nights that we started doing the circles,
but once our wives knew about it then the circles increased
because we were out more nights then than the Friday night.
I wish to remember that our circles were quite small
compared to what's happening today,
and although we were treading down a lot of farmer's corn
we knew... we knew what we were doing
as far as a bit of vandalism was concerned
but the bit of fun that we got have the small circles we were creating,
we didn't seem to mind that very much and...
as I say, I wouldn't... I would never dream of doing...
seven hundred, eight hundred, or 1000 foot-long
patterns and things in fields really because I mean after all
it is... it is a form of van... well it is vandalism, isn't it?
as the years roll by it was getting more and more difficult.
And for instance in the early days
you can back your car into the farmer's field in his gateway,
pop out, do the circle, get back in the car again and have a cup of coffee
and still stay where you were all the time
but nowadays, the last few years
it would be impossible for you to leave a car... an empty car,
if a police car came by now and saw an empty car at
one o'clock in the morning they would certainly stop
and go back, but in those earlier days
no one seemed to take any notes at all.
The money side of it...
doesn't really come into, or it never has
come into it really because it was the...
it was the laughs and the fun that we had at night.
We were aware of it after a while...
jewelry being made and
tapestry wall hangings and all the rest of it,
but as far as we were concerned we were just having a laugh from it,
but there was no way really that we could make money out of it.
[Ilene Bower, Doug's Wife]
[No, but we were angry that people were using it
as a mean of making money out of more gullible people,
they were forming associations, they were doing as you said making...
jewelry, posters, T-shirts, all this sort of thing
they were using your creations
and people's gullibility to make money for themselves.]
Well they still are, even today... [yes I know!]
I had a good laugh in some of the things that
they said, I mean, for instance if you see
people laying on their backs in the circle joining hands
and doing a dance around
to me that was incredibly funny when I first heard of it
but after a while
I got a different way of thinking
and I thought to myself "well, if this is what they want to make of it,
it's entirely up to them".
I, guy, can't understand why it's got so big,
but I can see now that is more or less uncontrollable
because these people are going to do exactly what they want,
and if they get pleasure from it, ok.
Have you had [abusive] phone calls or letters?
We were very surprised that we did receive two letters
from a group called the Black Watch
and [they] said that we had to stop
making circles in the cornfields.
and...
it... that did worries us quite a bit because...
the way you got to look at this is that if anything happened
to us...
in any form
then...
the suspicions were then go to the people that sent these letters.
Because I'm a wild life sound recordist and this and have
been for about 15 to 20 years now
and... I'm out most nights
recording the sounds of deer and mammals and
birds and all this sort of thing
and... when I went to the meeting at the Guildhall in Winchester one evening,
which was the subject of crop circles,
they brought up this business about
the grasshopper warbler, the sound that they've heard
up on...
Cheesefoot Head near Winchester
and I knew immediately
what this was
because I'd already recorded this bird several years before
and this bird also sings in the night.
And when it came to question time after the meeting
I walked up to the stage
and I spoke to *** Taylor who happened to be there
and the other people as well
and I said "The noise that you heard that night
was...
a grasshopper warbler
because I'm a sound recordist and I knew what it was"
and they did everything but almost [they] did throw me out of the Guildhall
but of course there again, you see,
I think, the more... the more you can add to this phenomenon
the more interest you're going to get world wide from the audiences
and you can say that you got
damage to your lenses of your cameras and you got... marks
I mean... if you take aw... get away from the circle business a minute,
people have their films developed every week of the year,
they have marks and things on their films
which was... which is more or less...
[which] can't be explained, but the fact that these people
get some marks on them when they got photographing crop circles
they try to marry the two together,
so... quite honestly I think it's all imagination
and it's just to make things sound a little bit more important than they are.
There was one strange happening one night
when we were doing a pictogram on top of Telegraph Hill
and... Dave was over one side of the pattern doing his little bit
and I was doing mine... and suddenly I was knocked unconscious
and... only for a short time of course, something hit me on the head, and...
I immediately thought that the farmer or the farm workers
were approaching us and they'd thrown a stone at me or something
but anyway the next thing I knew David was kneeling over me
and he's saying "What's the matter?", you know, "What's the trouble?"
and... I said "I don't really know", I said
Something'*** me on the head", [then] he said "But there's nobody about!"
but then I started feeling what I thought
was blood running all down the back of my neck
and all my hair was full of blood
but of course we didn't know that it was blood
because we had no torch
we couldn't use torches of course otherwise we'd be seen.
And Dave says "I think we'd better get back to the cars"
and I "No, we must finish the pattern, we can't leave it half finished"
but... anyway I came too quite well after a bit and...
we had about three quarters of a mile journey back to the car
and... I said "Well we can't see what it is", I said,
until we get back to the car park and switch the headlights on
and anyway when we got back to the car and switched the lights on...
"My God", he says, "what a mess your head's in!"
I was covered in green like green slime and...
plenty of other things intermixed with it.
And I said "We'll get off home now" but of course when I reached home
I opened the door and I had to call to my wife
and I said "Don't be alarmed when you see me", I said, "but...
I've got some nasty stuff, I said, "all over my head"
and anyway she had a look at it and "my God"
it was really terrible, but... what had happened?
It was a chunk of ice it'd fallen from...
an aircraft that was going over
and how one earth that millions of chances
to one of it hitting me on the head, I don't know but
as it was a warm evening by the time that hit me
it was just a soft piece of sludge
but it was just enough to knock me out for...
for a minute or two and... and of course
the air people from the Heathrow completely deny
anything falling from aircraft, but as you know
there's plenty of reports since
of lumps of ice falling through people's... roofs
and into their living rooms,
but... thank God it was only a just small soft piece that hit me that night.
And it was of course the chemical toilet waste? Yes, it was, yes, yes!
Well, although I'm an artist myself
it's a totally different art to what we created in the fields,
as I say, the fact that it was circular to start with and UFOs were circular
that was the whole idea behind it
and it's what come of it as the years have gone by, but...
the recognition that we've had I suppose we've left the mark
and... sadly my friend Dave Chorley
has passed away, now he's creating circles up in the sky.
What we were doing
but... all it is, is flattened corn if you walk in you flatten that,
the only difference was the shapes,
you know, we love the shapes because that it is artistic value but I mean
what these people have made of it
was their business
mean this just become a big, big laugh as the years go by.
But I'm still here, I'm not creating circles anymore, I'm retired now ah, ah... and...
you can believe that or not but...
as an artist
I create water colors and oil paintings
and also in the fields it's the largest canvas that we've ever had
and, as I say, it pleases me to think that this has given pleasure to a lot of people.
Well I was hoping to be knighted one day by...
by the Queen but I can't really see that happening
because I suppose the...
the national farmers union will create a bit of a fuss then but...
never mind "Sir" Doug, he'll carry on as long as he can
and taking in interest in what other people are doing.
Well, time and time again I've told people
how these... lots of people say how on earth could these two men
create circles all around the world? Well the answer to that is very simple,
because I said it no end of times but
no one seems to take any notes of what I say,
not that they want to anyway
but... let's take for instance if we did a circle up on
the Cheesefoot Head near Winchester of an evening
we would go up the next evening to have a look at our handiwork
and they would be anything up to fifty to hundred people up there... viewing it
which pleased us no end, and of course we would then rub shoulder with them
and they would be from all different parts of the world on holiday
they would be people from Canada, America, Germany, France
and we used to get into conversation with these people
and... they used to say to us when we get home from holiday
we're going to do our circles too.
And there you are,
they've gone back to America, they've gone back
to Canada, Germany, likewise Japan
and they're treading around just the same as we did
and there you have the circles in all the parts of the world
not from Doug and Dave but from the people that came over here on holiday
viewing the circles that we made an then they're having a go themselves,
they're still doing it today, aren't they.
Yes, when we used to go out to view what we've done the night before
as I say, the only people that we knew
were researching this was Pat Delgado, Colin Andrews, *** Taylor
who was flying over and Richard Andrews
and... we used to get into conversation with these and I mean, they...
they must know even to this day that we were
frequenting up there and talking to them all the time
and I always remember one Wednesday afternoon at Longstock.
I took my wife up to Longstock to have a look at the circle that we'd made
previous and... I met Colin Andrews up there
and he said there was some connection between a bit of
a rubbish dump there and the circle that was out in the field
and he gave me his business card, and he said "if you hear of any circles roundabout"
he said "perhaps you could let me know", I said "yes I will, because I travel around
quite a bit because I'm a wild life sound recordist"
and of course Dave and I used to do a circle
one evening and then ring him up the next morning and said "oh Colin there's a circle
and such and such" and he used to say "oh thanks very much,
thanks for the information" which made all the fun.
Well, this is a little bit of the mystery attached to...
to this although we've had a lot of fun out of making the circles over the years
when we started reading reports that some of our...
designs and patterns that we were creating
had a connection with the Hopi Indians in America,
Mongolia, Aborigine tribes, cave paintings, etcetera
and what mystifies me most of all is where is the connection of this,
why is it that I could sit down
and in half an hour create a pattern on a piece of paper,
it was just as if my hand was being...
forced round with the pen to do this pattern,
I don't know where it came from but then...
then you read afterwards in the newspapers and magazines that...
it seems there's a connection between what I drew that evening
and what we were going to create in the fields
that with the Hopi Indians and Aborigine people
and... it seems to me that it could be a connection between languages
but... that mystifies me very much because...
it makes me feel as if there's something unknown to us
that we've no knowledge of it at all.
Well, looking back at it all now after all these years I've come to the conclusion
that it'll never end, I'm rather pleased that...
thousands of people have found an interest and an enjoyment from it,
I hope no one ever he gets caught doing it we has some narrows squeaks [escapes]
but... I appreciate the fact that lots of people
are more or less depending on this now for their interest,
I suppose really it's a kind of religion
but I've got nothing against these people and what they've made of it,
the people that... the bit that gets me most of all I think is the so called experts.
What they've built on themselves up us
what they say it is they seemed to know it all, the media goes to these people
but the people that finds some enjoyment and pleasure from it
they're the people that I think
are getting something from it and I hope it continues that way,
but I don't think it'll never end, it'll never end, it'll go on forever.