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Speculation About Mysterious Crop Circles Turning up in English Countryside

Aired August 21, 2001 - 14:55   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: There's speculation today about the mysterious crop circles that keep turning up in the English countryside. Now some new crop circles have turned up, and they're something to see. They are something to see.

International Television News takes a look for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICHOLAS OWEN, ITN REPORTER (voice-over): The rolling English countryside on a beautiful, clear afternoon, but out there is something distinctly odd. They look at first like craters of the moon, but they are on a perfect, but gigantic pattern on top of a Wilshire Hill. In an area rich in ancients legends and mysteries, corn circles have been intriguing people for years, but there's never been one of this scale. Sliced through five acres of wheat, the biggest circle 70 feet across, they suddenly appeared one recent night.

Musician Reg Presley has spent a decade studying corn circles, puzzling over their origin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is over 420 circles here, and for this done at night, it's almost impossible, and the night in question was a rainy, windy blowing night. Can you imagine that?

OWEN (on camera): The big question you always get asked of course is, how was it done? How did it happen?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, let the government give us a little bit of money, and we will give them the answer in about five year's time.

OWEN (voice-over): The sightseers that comer, the curious and those cconvinced something supernatural is going on.

(on camera): From up here, it does look pretty extraordinary, but when it comes to how it was done or who might have been done it, it must be significant that between the closing of local footpals (ph) because of the foot and mouth outbreak, and there reopening about a month ago, they're Almost no reports of similar crop disturbance.

(voice-over): The farmer isn't happy about his damaged crop, but at least the tourist trade is getting a boost. Nicholas Owen, ITN, Milk Hill, in Wilkshire.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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