This is a Q & A based on my article on hoaxes within UFOlogy
“I’m curious to know Massimo what you think of the trend in paranormality where hoaxing appears to be something that helps stimulate a paranormal phenomena into action? How does that fit into your hoaxed paradigm.”
I will answer citing two examples coming from my experience while studying the phenomenon directly on the field. In this case it was my instrumented investigation of two crop circles that were formed during the night in my area, in Emilia-Romagna. I state that such an investigation was just for fun. I have never been really interested in crop circles, as my real investigation is dealing with “balls of light” and the attempt to measure them using scientific instruments.
Well, the first time I investigated one, after recording nothing using instruments (magnetometer, VLF-ELF receiver, infrared, DLSR, Geiger, etc) I almost immediately noticed a hole in the middle of all the five circles that were composing the entire pictogram: clearly the hole, which was quite deep inside the ground, was left by a stick around which a wire was rotated in order to flatten the crop.
It was pathetically man-made, and yet it was not bad looking. The hoaxers, just to make the prank more funny, also designed a mini-crop circle version on the mat in front of the door of the house that was closest to the big crop circle , which was beside a little cemetery.
So it was a clear hoax, and even an hilarious one.
When I came back from the crop field I had to pass through a short subway that is close to the railway station and I met an old woman who had just come back from a train who told me this: “This morning, before taking my train, I saw strange little light balls that were floating in the air just inside this subway”. I frankly don’t know why this lady wanted to speak just with me. Maybe she saw some of my instruments? Who knows? That subway is close to the cemetery and the crop circle.
But the most shocking case is the one that follow.
Two years later I investigated a second bigger crop circle which was very well done, in this case located along side a large cemetery just in the peripheral area of a big town. This time I also entered inside with my instruments, started recording and measured exactly nothing. As in the previous case I noticed that inside all the circles of this pictogram there was the same kind of hole in the ground for the stick and its wire, of course. Another hoax.
I was laughing with a person who was with me, and at least I enjoyed the nice day and the funny vision of some persons laying down inside the circles in order to “absorb the energy” while singing Om-like mantras: a fully new age scene.
At the end, as soon as I went out of the fence I decided to take an infrared photo of the area, which is the image you see above.
When I saw the photo on my computer screen I almost fell from the chair: the mowing devil! Just pareidolia created by a plant there, but the similarity with the drawing of ancient chronicles describing crop circle makers is shocking.
A strange synchronicity seemingly aimed at mocking me, that has made me think a lot during these years.
Thank you very much to Robert Brandstetter for posing this question to me in Radio Misterioso after reading my article here.
Dr. Massimo Teodorani 