By Mike Lockley
AN Aussie historian believes he has buried forever the ‘cereal’ lie that crop circles are the work of hoaxers – by unearthing Black Country images of them dating back to 1945 and beyond. It’s ‘barley’ believable, but Greg Jefferys has also uncovered evidence of the phenomenon in scientific documents dating back to 1880.
The boffin, from Hobart, Tasmania, says his findings prove there’s more to the mysterious circles than hoaxers playing silly tricks. “This discovery proves that claims by various artists to be the sole creators of crop circles are themselves a hoax,” he says.
“It just goes to show that the circles remain unexplained. “I hope this discovery will stimulate renewed interest in crop circles by serious scientific researchers who have been fooled by the hoax claims.”
Greg, aged 59, who cut his teeth locating shipwrecks, used Google Earth’s new 1945 overlay – images of places taken 68 years ago – to make the breakthrough.
He spent more than 300 hours scouring the English countryside using the technology – and found a large number of crop circles. Two of the most significant were on the outskirts of Stourbridge.
“Searching the old images presented many challenges,” Greg told the Sunday Mercury. “Some of the original photographs had physical and chemical damage that produced circular flaws on the Google images.