Delta Blue Squadron

This time last year, Jeff Wilson of the Independent Crop Circle Researchers Association had not yet begun to collect hundreds of wheat stems in an attempt to prove the validity of a nine-circled Celtic Cross-type crop circle that suddenly appeared just off Rocky Springs Road in a wheat field on the Kefauver farm.

Wilson was not even aware of the symmetrically- shaped - and beautiful, as some residents said - formation that lay hidden some 200 yards from the nearest neighbor. In fact, no one even knew of its existence until a local pilot spotted it and offered the BUZZ a chance to photograph it from 500 feet in the air.

But by the first week in June 2007, Wilson and several of his ICCRA associates had determined that “The Monroe County Crop Circle” was “not man-made,” as tests on over 1,500 wheat stems showed, conclusive proof that the stems had been collapsed internally by explosions at their growth nodes.

From within, as if the sap inside the stems had suddenly overheated and burst through at the stems’ “joints,” or nodes. It was a phenomenon that Wilson said completely debunked any human involvement. Stems outside the circle were “healthy” and showed no expulsion damage.

“Though we have figured out how the wheat collapsed upon itself to form this amazing pattern, we just don’t know what exactly caused the nodes to swell and burst,” Wilson said. “That’s the mystery of a crop circle.”

Now a second formation has been found. Its discovery on Monday baffled its finder and the
owner of the property where it now lies.

On Tuesday, Knoxville television station WVLT visited the site and talked with the property owner and the neighbor. The two ladies were not identified but their faces displayed in newscasts were familiar to most residents in Madisonville.

“It was not here Sunday night,” the finder said. “But when I got up Monday morning I looked out my bathroom window and there it was.”

The owner told Channel 8 that she didn’t know if aliens made the pattern but she was not afraid of such beings and would speak to them if approached.

“But they better speak English,” she said.

The field is leased to a fabled farmer of Monroe County, one who grew up with a reputation for looking at things squarely, without speculation. Especially when it might come to speculating what happened to his wheat crop.

This farmer, however, hasn’t been seen since the formation occurred.

Not as complex as last year’s crop circle, this year’s formation is more simplistic and lacks the pinanche of the 2007 event. It is basically a triangle with circles at its apexes and from the ground appears to be only flattened young wheat without the intricate woven stem configurations of the first crop circle. In fact, from the ground, the triangle and its circles are difficult to discern as anything other than haphazard random trails in the crop.

Hoax? Possibly. Wilson said on Tuesday, after viewing pictures emailed by the BUZZ, that a hoax was always possible. But he also said the formation could be another unexplainable happening.

“So we’ll conduct tests to make sure,” Wilson said. He said he is planning to visit Monroe County once again in a few days.

Until then, the crop circle’s exact location will not be revealed. However, it can be said it is in the vicinity of the first formation, which lies along a vast underground stream of water and is believed to be near a former ancient native burial ground.

The neighbor and the owner believe the crop circle was not created by humans. Their reasoning? The speed at which it appeared, its hidden location, no noticeable recent activity in the wheat field, and the fact that pranksters nowadays are a lazy lot and making a crop circle is hard work.

“And what else could have made it?” the owner said, looking at the neighbor, members of her family, and the BUZZ.

The question is a good one.

And the answer, if determined, may even be a better one.