Crop Circles

Fall often brings sightings of mysterious crop circles in Ohio, and this season the Miami Valley has one of its own. Maj. John DiPietro of the Miami Twp. police department spotted the pattern of interlocking circles pressed into the cornfield about two weeks ago, according to Jay Phares, Miami Twp.'s community resource officer. DiPietro was riding in a WHIO television news helicopter scouting sites for DUI checkpoints when he saw the circles and snapped a photograph. The photo appeared on the cover of the Miamisburg-West Carrollton News last Thursday and began spreading via the Internet. The crop circles are in a field owned by theMiamisburg School District, right next door to a Miami Twp.

fire station and service garage. Crop circle investigator Jeffrey Wilson called the design found in the field off Linden Avenue just east of the Miamisburg line "the most impressive corn crop formation I've ever seen," and he's seen dozens. He said he's seen larger, more elaborate designs pressed into crops like wheat or soybeans, but he said he's heard of only one crop circle in a cornfield that was larger than the one in Miami Twp. "It's impressive not just because of its size, but because of the exactness of the geometry," Wilson said. "I've seen lots of crop circles that were obviously hoaxes, but this one didn't have thesigns of mechanical damage to the plants you sometimes see in obvious fakes. The corn stalks were laid flat but not broken and there was some interweaving."Wilson, who lives in Williamsburg east of Cincinnati, is the director of a volunteer group called the Independent Crop Circle Researchers Association. He said he became intrigued with crop circles in 1989 and has been visiting sites to examine the formations scientifically since 1996.Miami Twp. Service Administrator Jim Woolf said several people, apparently tipped to the location via the Internet, showed up Tuesday to see the circles."We had license plates from northern Ohio, Illinois, all over," Woolf said. "I don't think any of my guys have been out in the fieldto see it,. though. We had people coming from Illinois, but we didn't feel it was worth going next door for."



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A Maryville man says something weird is happening on his property, and while Jack Ledbetter isn't suggesting it's the work of aliens, he has no answer for it. Ledbetter is perplexed by a patch of dead grass on his four acre lot off Montvale Road. It's a perfect circle, about 15 feet in diameter, with green grass and a small hole in the middle. He's been scratching his head over this the past few years. "About three years ago, I was walking down through there and my foot just punched into the groundthere," says Ledbetter a retired machinist, referring to the spot in his yard.

"About six months later, this circle then just turned light green. Now this year, it's come to just died." 10 News asked got UT Agricultural Extension Agent, Neal Denton to look at our videotape of Ledbetter's mysterious ring. "It looks like a fairy ring," says Denton. A fairy ring is a fairly common fungus that moves out from the center of where a tree stump is buried. Denton says he's seen these rings about 15 times in the past 10 years. "It's a real interesting phenomenon. Not much you can do forit. Just let it go through its cycle and eventually it will go away," says Denton.Ledbetter says he hasn't tried to plant new grass on his yard circle, and although he finds Denton's explanation interesting, he has other theories."I think it's a little strange. The theory of my son (is that) the Confederate gold hoard been there...," laughs Ledbetter. "That's just a joke; I could never be that lucky."

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Scott Worden won't say for sure whether he believes in the paranormal, but he doesn't dismiss the idea either. That's why Worden, a longtime dairy farmer, agreed to have two paranormal investigators inspect six crop circles Saturday that were found by a farmhand Monday in Worden's barley field. "Everybody thinks I'm nuts, but I just want to know what caused it. I know cows more than I know circles," said Worden, 37, through a sheepish grin. Worden runs the farm with his brother, Tim, and father, Darrell. Paranormal investigator Terry Fisk of Eau Claire said he would first and foremost be looking for evidencethat showed the formations were a hoax.

"You usually can tell how the crops have been laid down and if there is damage to the crops," said Fisk, 49, who in July investigated crop circles found in Chippewa Falls. Usually, plants are bent, not broken in crop circles whose causes are difficult to explain. In obviously hoaxed circles, the grains are broken. The two arrived at the site around 9 a.m. Saturday morning with cameras and tape measures. They also brought a Geiger counter, which measures radioactivity, and a TriField meter, an instrument that measures magnetic, electrical and radio waves, as well as microwaves.They were disappointed to find that the field had been harvested with a combine after the circles were created.It also appeared that many people had walked through the field."We like to compare the crop inside the circles to the crop outside the circles," said paranormal investigator Chad Lewis of Eau Claire, who has been investigating crop circles for 10 years. "Obviously, since this has been cut, we can't do that."The circles' proximity to the road - about 50 feet - could indicate a hoax."Maybe someone wants it to be noticed, plus, it's easy access," said Fisk, who, along with Lewis, hosts a radio program called "The Unexplained" that airs weekly in the Eau Claire area.Even the lack of activity found on the investigators' TriField meter could indicate a sham. But the duo won't dismissthe. ...

A mystery in the age of certainty. An oddity on a corner where corn and hay and soybeans are as predictable as the sun coming up. What's a 71-year-old farmer to do? John Polomcak of Lawton just wants a better idea of what might have caused a patch of corn in one of his fields to lay down flat, plants all pointing east. A team of independent researchers may not have that answer. But they have confidence that research such as theirs is the only way to find it. So they will converge today on the field with measuring instruments, notebooks and specimen bags to collect samples of plant tissue and soil for analysis. It's an effort theresearchers hope eventually will shed some light on what might cause the curious phenomena called crop circles.

Skeptics roll their eyes. But Detroit high school biology teacher Charles N. Lietzau says the medical community also once scoffed at the scientists who said tiny microorganisms were responsible for disease. Lietzau, with Indiana residents Roger Sugden, an aerial photographer, and Ted Robertson, a master harpsichord maker, are part of what they term a "response team" for the International Independent Crop Circles Researchers' Association. "I just hope they're good," Polomcak said. "I want to know what's going on." It's a question he's been puzzling over since he and his sonfirst noticed the disturbance a few weeks ago. About half a dozen rows into the field, barely visible from the road, the men found a rectangular area about five rows wide and 12 feet long that opens onto a larger rounded area about 32 feet in diameter. "My boy and I hauled some cattle and he come around the corner and said 'some son-of-a-gun ran through the corn,' " Polomcak said. "He got out to look at it and said 'Come and look. All the corn is laying ... all down the row -- it's all same direction.' " Polomcak said the impression is far different from someone driving through a field. "No way I could see that any one could drive up and back and up and back without bending them stalks bothways," he. ...