Michael Glickman looks calmly at history and shows how we can be misled by unsupported claims.

SOME THOUGHTS ON CONFESSIONS

Here, in the real world, confessions carry a great weight. They have an almost mythic significance. Many of our archetypal tales hinge around a confession, which is often interpreted as a moment of epiphany, of cleansing, of squaring of accounts.

This of course must take into account the fact that a confession, in the real world, is not to be taken lightly. The confessor will face sanctions, ranging from social discomfort for slight infractions to imprisonment for crimes. Confessions do not come easy. The reward for frankness, for truth, is often outweighed by the gravity of the punishment.

But we are not in that real world. Around the crop circles all bets are off. Everything is reversed.

Crop circle confessors are not liable for punishment; they are more likely to receive rewards, even if those rewards are the satisfaction of their own devious nature. They have learned that the farmers, despite their protestations, will never press criminal charges and the National Union of Farmers, despite their offer of a £10,000 reward, will never follow leads.

Without wishing to enter the Bog of Conspiracy (from which return is impossible) it is true - on examination - that several crop circle confessions have been paid for. The rumours are that Doug and Dave’s initial payment was £10,000, but we cannot be certain. It would truly be a fruitless area of research. However, we can be sure that, whether paid or not, these confessors’ true reward is the adolescent satisfaction they get from knowing they were responsible for duping others, even though (and here is the parallel with the real world) the "victim" is so often desperate to be duped.

CONFESSIONS -

I remember two telling moments. A "hearing" was held in 1993 around Julian Richardson’s claim to have made the majestic Bythorn Mandala. This rather unappetising young man who, while claiming the authorship of one of the most important formations ever, did not know even the difference between formulas for Circumference and Area. I had never met him, and when I arrived he held his hand out and said "Hello, I am the perpetrator." The delight, the simple glee, with which he pronounced the word "perpetrator" was memorable and, I believe, pathological. It was clear to me that, despite his elaborately wrought confessions, the idea that this pathetic figure could have conceived, let alone made, Bythorn was high surrealism. Even clearer was the observation that many crop circle researchers actively wanted to believe him.

The second moment, also around ‘93 or ‘94 was the occasion on which Adrian Dexter, another hoax claimant, let slip to a group of us that the major satisfaction he got from his activity was the sight of the embarrassment and discomfiture of those he misled. Ah, history! Tragically we have learned nothing.

Was there ever a single crop circle confession which was shown to be true? Well, no. Were there confessions that were clearly false? Yes, the majority. Have we learned to exercise our experience, judgement and discernment in this area? Clearly not. We are told that an unknown and dubious character has produced a "confession" video. The rights to the video apparently belong to producers with an infamous record of debunking. They "fly it to the offices" of a hoax-obsessed researcher (I wonder why?) and, utterly predictably, he loudly characterises it as "conclusive evidence". We seem to have made little progress.

Michael Glickman Santa Monica, January 1999