Charles Mallet
Team Satan, the alleged crop circle makers, must love the attention they have been receiving from the British press this year. It seems whenever you switch on the TV or open a newspaper there they are: standing in a field of wheat, wielding planks of wood, bits of string and generous amounts of their somewhat dubious talent. At the very least these guys are skilled at fooling people, particularly the media; and they have been so successful you could be forgiven for thinking that the media actually wanted to believe them.
Of course anybody who visits a number of formations throughout summer knows full well that the aforementioned tools could not possibly be used in making large numbers of crop circles. The implied methodology just doesn’t work; it defies basic logic. To create formations that display large scale weaving, multi-directional layering, pathways a few stems wide and feather light layering of the wheat into waves and whirlpools, not to mention the severe heat damage to the plants and, on occasion, insects, observed by myself and numerous others, requires a method of construction that people such as Team Satan are simply not capable of. They have proved this point on many occasions; in fact, every public demonstration of circle making by these people contains all the evidence needed to conclude that they are indeed, not the circle makers. But still they make their claims, and still, without fail, the media, publish and promote the idea that their planks are responsible for the incredible formations that continue to appear in large numbers and in completely inexplicable circumstances on almost every night of the summer.
No doubt, these guys and a few even less talented locals do make a few formations each year, we have seen them at it on various occasions. The consequences are what one would expect from a group of heavy men stomping on the corn with chunks of wood. The end result looks flat, rough and messy and displays a total lack of style, fluidity and finesse. This is completely in contrast to the majority of formations examined by myself and others. Even though Team Satan’s formations may look terrible on the ground with some clever photography and editing things can look dramatically different. With a computer, photo enhancement and some technological trickery anything is possible, at least in terms of appearances. So it doesn’t even matter if they produce an unconvincing crop circle, by the time the formation gets on TV it will, all of a sudden, look very good. Quite simply these people are out to convince the public that they are making the formations but anybody who has studied and examined the crop circles will know full well that they just aren’t doing it.
This conclusion is based on extensive observation and experience with a large number of formations, including man made formations over the previous few years.
John Lundstrom, Team Satan’s spokesman with an assistant. Like all good covert operatives they are both disguised. Picture from Team Satan’s own web page.
This years hoax promotion by the Mail On Sunday 3/9/2000, with Team Satan as the stars is a classic example of our media taking a subject that will not sit comfortably with the established view of things and then trying to rubbish it. What a shame. This is a subject that is crying out for some honest and sensible investigation. Instead of honesty and integrity we get lies and arrogance. I wonder how long the Mail can get away with lying to its huge readership on such a regular basis. The article in question, regarding the flimsy claims of Team Satan (what a silly name) is so full of irregularities and inconsistencies that it would be hard for anybody to take seriously. Aside from the problems with the details of the hoax claim, the article itself looked like a piece of pure tabloid journalism.
Crop circle that appeared at Avebury, in 2000, that Team Satan claimed to have made
With this article, Team Satan provided a set of diagrams showing how the Avebury Trusloe, magnetic field (moiré) formation was constructed. It appears that there are some problems with this plan of construction. Crop Circle Researcher Michael Glickman explains:
They stated in The Mail on Sunday, September 3rd 2000 . . .“Using 120ft of tape, an inner circle is made. On this circle, make a mark every 4ft, 60 in all, like minutes on a clock.”
Let’s briefly examine this bullshit! The diagrams imply that the tape is held at the center and swung around the perimeter. Therefore the circle is of radius ( R ) 120FT. The diameter ( D ) will thus be 240ft. We can apply the formula ( C ) circumference =2pi R. Taking pi as 3.1415. . . the circumference will be 753.96ft. If this is divided into 4ft units, there will be 188.49 of them! Dividing the circumference into 60 equal bits produces a unit of 12.566ft, which is more realistic.
I think we know these people well enough by now to be unsurprised by their blatant lies. Yet it still irks that the British press is happy to treat its readership as mindless idiots. Michael Glickman
Unfortunately it doesn’t end there. A quick look at Team Satan’s web page reveals some other interesting features: including recruitment ads for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ plus offers of “A Career in the Intelligence Services.” When we inquired via email about the ads Team Satan assured us that they were just an “ironic gesture.”
Maybe so but when we told Peter Hillmore – the journalist responsible for The Mail on Sunday’s piece on Team Satan – about the advertisements he too assured us that they were just an “ironic gesture.” So the fact that he didn’t mention them in his article was, we assume, just a coincidence. Even more notable is the fact that the advertisements themselves were embossed with the words “Crown Copyright.” meaning that if you wanted to use them you first had to obtain the approval of the advertisers. We leave you to figure that one out.
The fact that Team Satan are prepared to make such claims is a measure of their contempt for the British public. Do we deserve it? Well the fact that The Mail on Sunday is one of the countries biggest selling Sunday papers really leaves that question wide open. Ed.
Last updated 31/03/2006
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