Posts Tagged ‘inman’

On the 14th Anniversary of Visiting My First Crop Circle

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Inman, Kansas – 22 June 1995 (formed 16 June 1995)

My hand-drawn diagram of the formation (meticulous!):

My daughter was 7 years old, and it was our first time in a crop circle:

This photo shows the powerful central swirl of the smaller circle:

A week or so later I went back for more research, and took this photo showing the rather perturbed layers in the southeastern part of the formation:

STACE TUSSEL

Generous thanks to Kate Gertzen, who took photos of my old photographs …

In an upcoming short article and accompanying video I’ll share the clever synchronicities associated with the Inman, Kansas crop circle of June, 1995.  (A longish written version of the story can be read here)

Crop Circles as Waveguides – Magnifying the Mystical

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Ridgeway - Preliminary Diagram by Andreas Muller

Ridgeway - Preliminary Diagram by Andreas Muller

I’ve deleted my last two posts on this subject, combined them and added something new, so that in this post everything’s finally all together.  When I saw the first crop circle of 2009, I immediately noticed its similarity to an important formation in North Dakota in 2000.  As stated in one of my prior articles, peculiar echoes from the Thompson formation of 2000 are evident in the Ridgeway formation of 2009…and I’d like to know why.

For comparison and contrast, three images accompany this post:

  • My diagram of the Thompson, ND, United States, “Circle in Parentheses,” of late summer 2000
  • Andreas Muller’s diagram of the 2009 Ridgeway formation near Avebury
  • Peter Sorensen’s uncorrected photography of the 2009 Ridgeway formation

What I intend to argue is that the much-acclaimed Ridgeway Waveguide appears to carry on a theme that started with the little-known Thompson formation nearly a decade ago.  If any doubt remains that the crop circles are somehow related, the “error” in one of the Ridgeway arcs (corrected in Andreas’ diagram and in Peter’s PhotoShopped stills, not shown here) hints that the tapered arc is not only intentional, but may even be a radical point (no pun intended) – and thus, it shouldn’t be disregarded as a mere mistake.

1)  My Thompson diagram is a bit rough-looking, but accurate. Extensive ground measurements and compass bearings taken throughout this large, if simple, formation, show the circle hugged by two arcs – three of the ends perpendicular, and one tapered.  I followed the tapered arc with dowsing rods, and was strongly guided toward the inner circle, where between the taper and the circle in the stubbled wheatfield (which had been harvested without any media hoopla) was a beautifully swirled grapeshot, probably no more than 18 inches in diameter.   The Thompson formation was significantly larger than the Ridgeway formation, though less intricate – and the firmly pressed wheat left no question that the taper was indeed part of the design.

2)  Andreas Muller’s diagram of the 2009 Ridgeway formation is enchanting.  (Reproduced with permission.  See Andreas’ website at http://www.cropcirclescience.org.)  The design really does seem to reference a waveguide, as Simeon Hein (www.newcrystalmind.com) pointed out when he reported on the first crop circle of the 2009 season.  The diagram, although preliminary, probably won’t be changed much, if at all, due to its aesthetic appeal as is – although I’d like to see the tapered arc that we can confirm was there, as seen in Peter Sorensen’s unretouched stills of the Ridgeway formation – next:

3)  Here’s one of Peter’s “raw” stills, with which I’ve taken the liberty to enhance the contrast in order to better show the tapered arc that Peter edited out of his final photographic versions of the Ridgeway crop circle, which can be seen at his website: http://cropcircleconnector.com/Sorensen/PeterSorensen99.html. Quoting Peter from personal correspondence, “The picture I sent around to be posted on my web page yesterday did NOT show the detail you were interested in, because (as I so often do) I had fixed what we circlemakers would call an error — the crooked end of the arc.”  (Despite the heightened contrast, the tapered arc is still somewhat difficult to see – in part due to the shot’s angle as well as the flowering rapeseed in which the Ridgeway formation appeared.  In this photo, it’s in the arc nearest the inner circle on the right side.  Nick Nicholson’s image, available in the 2009 archives via membership at the Crop Circle Connector website, more clearly shows the remarkable similarity – with the taper clearly opposing the expected geometry, exactly as in the Thompson formation.)

What I’ve noticed from my 14 years of crop circle studies is that all the formations that have resonated most strongly with me have been touched by some kind of “magic.”  These clues range from instantaneous healing, as in the Bishops Cannings formation, to amazing synchronicities interwoven on many levels of experience over time, as with the Inman, Kansas formation and the three North Dakota formations (of which Thompson was one).

Unless it’s just a simple coincidence that both formations show very similar geometry (to start with, simply put an “X” through the inner circle to find the ends of all the arcs) as well as what I consider a very-telling “error,” i.e., the tapered arc in both formations, then we must consider these surface aspects to be intentional and therefore something to be included in any serious contemplation of the phenomenon’s deeper implications.

STACE TUSSEL

My article “More Crop Circle Synchronicities – North Dakota, 2000” details that entire whirlwind expedition to Langdon and Thompson, ND, fraught with wild synchronicities and enigmatic clues.  If you’d like to more fully appreciate my fascination with the Ridgeway Waveguide, please take time to read that post.

Doug Bower – Crop Circle Trickster At Large

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

The time has come for me to tell my trickster tale.  I’ve been holding on to this one because, while I can see what the trickster represented, it’s been more difficult putting into words why I believe he appeared to me – and in the form he took:  Doug Bower.

During my late twenties I was undergoing huge transformations in my life, none more important than my ongoing romance with crop circles which began in 1995.  A preface to this trickster tale, my prior post entitled “Pleiadean Communication and Crop Circles,” describes how – apparently by design – I was prepared for and ushered into the study and experience of crop circles.

Synchronicity goes hand in hand with the crop circle experience, at least for me and several of my croppie buddies.  And in my view, many of the shapes themselves are archetypal in a way, resonating within many of us as an undeciphered but deeply meaningful language.

With all these Jungian concepts floating around, it’s no surprise that the trickster would show up somewhere in the mix.  I don’t quite understand the trickster phenomenon, but people all around the world for all of time have reported it, so I take what I experienced in late summer of 1995 seriously.  Again, what it means, and why it happened…I can only speculate.

I was standing in line at the supermarket in Emporia, Kansas, probably lost in thought.  The crop circles had pretty much come in and swept me up in their magic earlier that year, and they were about all I could think about.  The synchronicities, the beauty and the fun – I just couldn’t seem to get enough.  But of course grocery shopping must go on.

A tap on my shoulder made me turn around.  First I saw a hand holding out a piece of paper:  my shopping list, which I’d apparently dropped.  I took it, saying “thanks” before getting a look at this good samaritan behind me. When I finally did look up to meet his eyes – no exaggeration here – I nearly fainted.  I can only imagine the look on my face as I realised that there behind me was Doug Bower himself – or someone or something who looked exactly like him, complete with a knowing smirk and twinkling eyes.

For a few timeless seconds this trickster engaged me in an unspoken dialogue.  Like the meanings coded in the crop circles themselves, the trickster’s actions and words must be deciphered by each experiencer.  I know this much:  I didn’t get any negative vibe from him.  What I sensed was that he knew what I was up to, and that he appreciated my excitement and dedication to the crop circles – a phenomenon with which, by now, everyone associated him.

He knew I recognised him as well, which certainly seemed to please him –  moreso, I’d guess, since prior to the Inman crop circle months before I’d never even heard of him!  Everyone I talked with seemed to know all about the “two old fellows from the pub” who claimed to be the source of all the hubbub – whereas I’d barely heard of crop circles, let alone Doug and Dave, until early 1995, when I read Circular Evidence and then wished for and received the Inman crop circle.  (My unbiased wonder about the subject, untainted by misinformation, made me wonder if that’s why I was gifted with the Inman formation … but that’s another story.)

He and I didn’t exchange words, but I’ll never forget the smile in his eyes as he handed me my shopping list.  Here was Doug Bower, trickster at large, appearing in a small-town Kansas supermarket on a hot summer afternoon.  Who would’ve thought?  Confronting me was the trickster himself, better known for teasing or attempting to throw one off track, instead appearing to offer me a bit of recognition and encouragement, and adding yet another layer of magic to the mystery.

But perhaps I misread the entire event.  In handing me my dropped slip of paper, was his gesture simply a peace offering in disguise?  There’s something to think about….

STACE TUSSEL

My gracious thanks to whoever took the photo of Doug.  I pulled it off the internet, but there was no information attached about the photographer.  And thank you, Colin, for your curious yet not so surprising addition to the story!

Please Note – Awaited Visuals Added

Friday, March 6th, 2009

Images and Some Editorial Updates Added to These Posts

copyright Stace Tussel

copyright Stace Tussel

UFO Encounter in an Idaho Crop Circle
In Memoriam – Paul Vigay
Crop Circle Encoded at Germination – Herington, KS 2006
More Crop Circle Synchronicities – North Dakota, 2000
Pleiadean Communication and Crop Circles
About Me, And Why I’ve Created This Site

(special thanks to Simeon and Dustin for their friendship and tech support!)

More Crop Circle Synchronicities – North Dakota, 2000

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

MORE SYNCHRONICITIES –
NORTH DAKOTA, 2000

NOTE:  All three circle diagrams can be found at Paul Vigay’s archives by year and location:  2000, North Dakota.  (Paul was a shining star – he will remain a shining star – Stace, 22 February 2009.)


My first trip to visit US crop circles after Inman in 1995 and travelling to England in 1997 took me from Denver to just shy of the Canadian border in North Dakota and back – in one weekend.

That expedition in late summer of 2000 brought more transformative synchronicities, adding to the ones I described in my prior post Pleiadean Communication and Crop Circles.

How deeply these synchronicities affect me and my world is hard to describe – although I’ll try my best.

The trip from Denver to Langdon and back took all of about 57 hours – about 35 of which was spent driving.  We put almost 2500 miles on the car.   I got only a few hours sleep total over those three nights: none on Friday night, perhaps three hours on Saturday night, and an hour or two on Monday morning before work.

Wow. What a drive. Good thing my friend Lyn was with me to help out – and it was her first visit to a crop circle!

Back to synchronicity…..

The first synchronicity was when I realised that there was a new crop circle in the US in Langdon, North Dakota. Yes, it was far, far away – but 16 years earlier I had graduated high school at a very small school at Langdon, Kansas. So my ears perked up.

Langdon is not a common place name, as I found out while searching through the atlas during the 17 hour drive to Langdon. Between the lines I could make out a message from the circle makers, “Now you’ve got your education, so put it to use!”

Turns out that Langdon, North Dakota, at -98.368W longitude, is almost precisely north of Langdon, Kansas, which sits at -98.325W longitude. I tried to figure out how far off an exact longitude line that would place each small town, and so far I haven’t come up with a conclusive figure – though it can’t be more than a handful of miles.

So we arrive in Langdon around 3 PM local time Saturday, and I call farmer Ullyott again (I’d of course called him they day before, to get permission to go into his field.)  He met up with us several miles north of Langdon and we walked out into the crop circle, which couldn’t be seen from the road, being a few hundred yards out into the wheat at the top of a small rise in the otherwise flat landscape.

Although I hadn’t slept for over 30 hours, my energy was stoked as we made our way through the long-awaited, familiar sound of wind-brushed, ripening wheat, which swayed like hula skirts around our legs.

Most of the wheat was laid flat to the ground in this dumbbell-shaped formation – similar in many ways to the Inman circle, the “Tractor” (again, referenced in “Pleiadean Communication…”) – but hundreds of standing stalks caught my attention upon first entering the formation.

In many crop circles, both human made and non-human made, the downed wheat will stand back up fairly quickly due to the plant’s innate desire for sunlight, growth, and photosynthesis. In this case, the standing stalks were more numerous than in other circles I’d seen, but seemingly randomly placed within the formation.

Examining them carefully at the base I could see that these stalks appeared to have never been flattened; somehow, they were simply left standing.

The largest circle in this formation was where I found a good-sized chunk of granite – pink, black, and white – sitting on top of the dirt in the exact center of downed wheat. The stone dowsed very, very strongly for many months. Over the years the energy has gradually attenuated, mellowing like brown on wood, the dowsing rods reacting differently today than then.

The Bata circle, a few miles south and west of Langdon, was our second stop.  This second one resembled, to some, a flowerpot (which I never quite understood); to others, it was a microscope.  In this formation Lyn and I were sitting in the center of a radially-splayed circle and found a huge ladybug crawling up my arm.  Its right wing was distorted.  On closer look it appeared that the wing itself had been singed, shrunken and curled around the edges – yet the ladybug was full of life.  She was definitely something to behold.

After the unslept rush of immersion in the crop circle energy, I remember the frenzy of mosquitoes buzzing the field just after the sun slipped past the horizon.  We were exhausted, yet incredibly energised at the same time.  By nightfall we’d visited and documented two powerful, yet very different, crop circles.

By the time we’d done as much as possible with the second crop circle, night was falling and as mosquito-laden as we could bear.  We decided to go to dinner, chat with some folks about our work, and try to get a few hours sleep.

We had to leave for Denver before sunrise, so the third Langdon circle was out of reach.  But..that night we heard rumours that a new crop circle had also been spotted at Thompson, just south of Grand Forks – which we would drive past on our way home the next morning.  So despite the 17 hour drive we faced the next day, we decided to take a slight detour to the small town of Thompson to look for the rumoured fourth crop circle.

It was just after sunrise on Sunday morning when we arrived at Grand Forks, within elevator-sighting distance of Thompson, and I don’t recall seeing any cars on the road on the way to the newspaper office. They hadn’t answered their phone earlier.  And then nobody was there when we arrived and knocked on the door and phoned again, so we went on to Thompson without a location or anyone to contact.

Thompson’s a small town with a 3- or 4- barrel grain elevator.  It’s a very sleepy Sunday morning town.

Lyn and I drove for miles looking for the crop circle, but we knew we were talking a good hundred or more square miles land unseen by air.  Each glance into the flat fields was roulette.  Then finally something yawned awake in the northern prairie:  the sun came out suddenly and filled everything with “wakey wakey!”  And finally we had a few people trickling into town to talk to, to find out at last where the crop circle was…

….but no one had heard of it.

After asking everyone we could if they knew of it, or if they knew what a crop circle was, and getting only dumbfounded gestures in response, Lyn had started the car, turned up the music, and had the A/C on full blast.  I had one foot in the car, disappointed and deflated after the anticipation of getting into one more circle before heading back to Denver.

Remember, by now it must’ve been around 8 o’clock and we still had a good 15 hours of driving to go to get home.

“Just a minute. Just one more…”

I walked over to the fellow putting gas in his old pickup. This guy had long hair pulled back in a ponytail, wore a plaid shirt and cowboy boots, and wasn’t looking up for anything. A dog, a border collie mix perhaps, peeked out the back window from the cab, practically wagging the truck.

“Hello there – my friend and I have come from Denver to investigate crop circles in Langdon, up north, and we’re heading home now – and we’ve got a really long drive ahead of us today – but we heard there was a crop circle at Thompson and we’ve got to find it if at all possible. Have you heard of it?”

He continued pumping gas, ver-r-r-r-ry slowly lifting his head so that his eyes were almost level with mine. “It’s in a field across from my house.”

I had hit pay dirt!  WOW!  Even though the field had already been harvested, I knew that the crop circle would still be there to experience, because flattened crop circles aren’t destroyed by combines.*

We followed Scott and his dog seven or eight miles in a slather of dust and chaff out west and south of town and right into a field.  Stubbled wheatstems polished the underside of the rental car as we drove a couple hundred yards to the circle that lay undisturbed on the ground, shining in the sun.

Thus begins the story of one fabulous crop circle near Thompson, ND, during the late summer of 2000.

A “Circle in Parentheses,” I call it.

Thompson, ND (copyright Stace Tussel)

Thompson, ND (copyright Stace Tussel)

The farmer, John Adams, had been harvesting the field a few days earlier when he came across the circle, which had apparently been undetected until then. He felt a strange energy emanating from the pattern, and so did his wife Bonnie when he brought her back to see it before continuing the harvest.

Bonnie was having a hard time believing it wasn’t otherworldly. Her film came back with the photos just snapshots of yellow.  (My film was unproductive too.)

Years later, the shape and diagram of this crop circle resonates as strong as the day I walked into it.

I receive a message from this crop circle, gazing into the black cut-out of the “circle in parentheses.”  The synchronicities are so intricate and interwoven beyond what’s already described – and I can’t go into that here in this short post. Perhaps some other time.

I believe one use of parentheses is to highlight: 1) “A qualifying or amplifying word, phrase, or sentence inserted within written matter in such a way as to be independent of the surrounding grammatical structure.”

So the Thompson formation can be a message from the circlemakers that the true circles are always composed of circles. Also,

2) “A comment departing from the theme of discourse; a digression.”

There are various themes departing from the original phenomenon, but I figure that a central feature of the real circles is that circular geometry is *the* radical component of any true formation…

STACE TUSSEL

* Note: A year and some months later, I was again in North Dakota to film a TLC documentary: “Crop Circles: In Search of a Sign.”  We hadn’t included the Bata formation during filming, so I had a little time to myself that afternoon.  I found the little hill where the crop circle had lain, and held my dowsing rods out as I walked up to where I remember the circle had been.  It was tilled dirt with no sign of seedlings or anything green.  The sky was overcast.  And it was very cold, and windy – yet the dowsing was immensely strong – in fact there’d been very little attenuation at all.  Despite the blustery conditions, the rods clearly followed the intricate lay of the crop circle that had been plowed under many months before.

* Interestingly, the decomposition of the plants means that the wheat seeds from crop circles are naturally incorporated into the soil to germinate alongside the next planting.  More about that consideration in my article, with graphic, about the Herington, KS crop circle of 2006.

Pleiadean Communication and Crop Circles

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

In the early- to mid-1990s I was going through an increase in anomalous encounters with what I consider non-human intelligence.  Interaction occurred primarily during the middle of the night, but I sensed interaction as well while I was listening to certain trance music through headphones – particularly “Pleiadean Communication” by A Positive Life.  In early June of 1995 I listened to it perhaps a hundred times, or more.

At the same time, numerous synchronicities involving the Pleiades came at me, and I distinctly felt that whatever was “visiting” me was Pleiadean in nature.  As the song infused me, something in me seemed to “click into place.”  I felt something special happening, but I didn’t know exactly what it was, or what it meant…but I was soon to find out.

On Friday evening, the 16th of June, my friend Sonja and I drove from Emporia, Kansas, where we were both attending college, to Topeka, to visit with a friend of hers that I’d never met before.  I believe his name was Michael.  He handed me a book called the Keys of Enoch (Enoch being a major pseudopigraphal work) and showed me some photos of southern England’s recent crop circles.

I’d only recently “discovered” crop circles, via the classic Circular Evidence by Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado, so I was interested in these designs which had apparently been evolving in complexity throughout the early 1990s.  But unlike the circles in the book, which were relatively simple in nature while showing anomalous details that seemed to eliminate humans as a factor in their creation, the circles Sonja’s friend showed me depicted undeniably intelligent designs. My impression of these complex circles was that they weren’t the real deal; surely the fancy ones were fakes.  But I kept that to myself.

As Michael handed me a full-colour calendar back from a prior year, with twelve beautiful photos including 1991’s famous Barbury Castle formation, I thought (with a touch of natural skepticism, I suppose):  “Show me one of these in Kansas, and then I’ll believe.”  Now, this is very important:  The time was about 10.30 on Friday night, 16 June 1995, and I was sitting in a stranger’s house on the west side of Topeka, Kansas, holding a calendar back, literally asking for a crop circle to investigate.  This, too, I kept to myself – or so I thought.

The next few days passed quickly.  My younger brother got married Saturday and my older brother and his family were visiting from Ohio.  So on Thursday morning, the 22nd of June – almost a week after I’d wished for a Kansas crop circle – we were all sitting around my mother’s dining room table in a small town in south-central Kansas.  Mom was looking at the Hutchinson News, and she read aloud, “Here, Stace – Crop Circle Mars Inman Wheat Field.”

There on the front page was a photo of a farmer standing in a brand new crop circle formation little more than an hour away from my mother’s house.  I wouldn’t normally have been at Mom’s house on a Thursday – what luck!  Within minutes I had phoned Mr Regier for permission to enter his field and directions to the site, packed the car with Dad’s tape measure and a camera, and said some quick good-bys.

Ironically, in the excitement of the moment, I had completely forgotten my request the Friday previous for a crop circle of my own to investigate.  More about confirmation later….

Because the crop circle had only been found on the 20th and reported in the news on the 22nd, my daughter and I were two of only a few people to have stepped into the formation. I felt a sense of elation and wonder that beautiful Thursday morning as I photographed and took measurements of the gleaming golden crop lay.  The ground details were beautiful.  I knew what to look for after having pored over Circular Evidence with such interest. I carefully inspected the entire formation, which stretched about 120 feet (about 36.5 metres) from east to west.  My daughter and I carefully measured each facet’s dimension, and I photographed and documented details like gap-seeking, isolated standing stalks, and underlying swirls.

The diagram I produced from measurements was painstakingly created from careful ground measurements; no aerial photo has ever been found. The crop circle shape resembles an old tractor:  a large circle to the east was connected by a thin path to a smaller circle to the west, which had another thin path leading directly north out of the smaller circle before jutting east, almost like an exhaust pipe.

The samples I collected of the affected and control wheat were sent to Michigan. WC Levengood,, confirmed that the sprouted wheat from the control samples grew normally, whereas the wheat from various points within the formation grew significantly more rapidly and evenly.

As I continued my investigation over the next several days, I interviewed a farmer named Chad who witnessed astonishing light phenomena that “made the hair on [his] arms stand on end.”  (Note: piezoelectric effect, perhaps?)  He was tilling a field on the warm, muggy night of June 16th, and at around 10.30, he suddenly saw a stationary row of several lights “like car headlights on dim” above the field across the road to his north, “stirring up dust.”  The strange lights “spooked” him, he said.  He turned the tractor around at the end of a row, looked back, and the lights were gone.  And four days later, on the 20th of June, Mr Regier found the crop circle in the exact spot Chad had seen the lights.

Was the timing mere coincidence?  I didn’t think so; 10.30 PM on the 16th of June was so specific that I had to take it personally. And something about the song “Pleiadean Communication” kept coming back to me….as though by listening to what I feel may have been channeled music I had entered a true trance state which had allowed an interface between myself and the circle makers.  That my request had apparently been answered immediately was notable.  But who knows – maybe I needed just a little more evidence….

To cement my knowledge that inter-intelligence communication had occurred between myself and the circle makers, a full year later in the summer of 1996 an even wilder synchronicity was revealed.  On a whim, I decided to take out a map of Kansas (82,282 square miles of land) and put a point on the map where I had originally wished for a crop circle and another where I had initially learned about the Inman formation.  With a ruler, I drew a straight line between the two points – a geographical distance of about 160 miles.  There, on the line, six miles east of Inman and a mile north on paved county roads, then a quarter mile back west on a dirt road, was the precise spot of the Inman formation.

So not only did the crop circle appear at the moment I wished for it, but it took the stylised form of the tractor on which rode the only known witness to its creation….and it appeared directly on an extraordinarily significant axis.  All of this without a word spoken – only a private wish calling out from deep within me.  Webster couldn’t do better at defining “communication.”  At that moment I beamed one of the biggest smiles of my life, I’m sure.

I feel sure the circle makers were smiling too…

STACE TUSSEL

NOTE:  My field report and diagram were published in the Summer 1996 issue of The Circular, a UK periodical now out of print.