Bizarre reports involving strange new developments in crop circle activity stemming from Wiltshire, England are coming to the attention of media today, thanks to Colin Andrews, author of the new book Government Circles. I received an email from Colin earlier today, detailing an odd set of circumstances that occurred just yesterday near Silbury Hill, unique especially because of the apparent presence of “strange humanoids” witnessed at the scene.

“The latest bizarre event took place yesterday morning (July 7th) at approximately 5 AM,” Andrews explains. “A Wiltshire Police Sergeant was driving in his private car towards Marlborough on the A4 highway and about to pass Silbury Hill on his left. He looked to his right and witnessed three exceptionally tall beings inspecting the new crop circle which appeared there on the 5th July.” The officer stopped his vehicle at this point, watching the “Nordic” beings for several minutes “because they stood out as odd.” According to the report, “Each of them were well over six feet tall, each had blond hair and also they all were wearing one piece white suites, with hoods that had been dropped onto the back of their heads.”

After the officer shouted at the beings and received no response, he ventured into the field in pursuit, at which time they took notice of him and ran away from him with amazing speed. “I recognised that I could never catch up with them… they ran so exceptionally fast,” the officer is reported to have told investigators, claiming to have felt “very uneasy and left the scene.” Colin Andrews comments on this report in greater detail at his website.

According to statistics presented by Peter Monaghan in 1994, Europeans and Latin Americans are several times more likely to report encountering a Nordic alien than a “Grey”, the popular aliens in abductee lore here in the US. In fact, the European nation with the highest proportion of reported encounters with Nordic aliens is the United Kingdom, where so many of these recent crop circles have appeared. Elsewhere, while he remains skeptical of crop circles having extraterrestrial origins, author and futurist Mac Tonnies said recently that “I don’t think crop formations are created by paranormal forces. However, examples such as this serve as profound examples why crop glyphs, like all genuine works of art, wield the capacity to stir us in unexpected ways. The recent glyphic offerings from Britain deserve to be marveled at.”

Interestingly, crop circles, in spite of being labeled recent phenomenon, may date back further in European history than most realize. For instance, a 17th-century English woodcut depicts a folk tale referred to as “the Mowing-Devil”. The image on the woodcut depicts the devil with a scythe cutting a circular design in a field of oats. According to legend, a farmer, “disgusted at the wage his mower was demanding for his work, insisted that he would rather have the devil himself perform the task.” Later that night, the farmer’s field appeared “as if it were on fire,” and the following morning a circular pattern had appeared eerily where the illuminations had been seen the night before.

This incident is of interest particularly due to the fact that, as is often reported in instances with crop circles today, strange lights were said to have appeared in the field prior to the appearance of large circular impressions. Does this indicate a strange Ufological element dating back to the 17th century? It gives us much to consider, especially regarding whether “Nordic aliens” may really be a factor in these recent reports. Or perhaps, as indicated by those like Tonnies who doubt paranormal origins, are crop circles to be appreciated for their sheer artistic value, rather than be lumped alongside other things popularly deemed as “unexplained”? What would the farmers, whose crops are often damaged by such activity, say about the artsy side of the crop circle phenomenon, let alone notions that aliens are to blame?