Doug and Dave confess to the crop circles

1991

Doug Bower and Dave Chorley told the press they had begun making crop circles in 1978 using nothing but a plank of wood, a length of rope and a baseball cap fitted with a wire sighting loop. They claimed responsibility for every circle made before 1987 and for more than 200 between 1978 and 1991. In a demonstration staged for journalists, the cereologist Pat Delgado inspected a formation they had just made and pronounced it genuine before the trick was revealed. The confession did not end the phenomenon. Circles multiplied worldwide afterwards as others copied the method, and Bower and Chorley never claimed the roughly 1,000 other formations of the period.