On the morning of Sunday, 11 August 1996, a young man named John Wheyleigh, a student from Bath, arrived at The Barge Inn in Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, UK, with a short video recording that purportedly captured the formation of a six-petaled crop circle shaped like a snowflake beneath Oliver’s Castle hill fort. The video, lasting approximately 24 seconds, showed four rapidly moving balls of light (BOLs) circling above the field, with the crop circle appearing in a matter of seconds, beginning at the center and expanding outward. The footage was shown in the pub mere hours after the formation was confirmed and photographed.
The video gained significant attention in the crop circle research community, with some experts initially certifying it as “clean” and unlikely to have been edited with computer technology. The cameraman claimed he had been camping on the hill fort and was awakened by unusual sounds, prompting him to record the event while still lying in his sleeping bag. The video’s authenticity was supported by claims that the technology of 1996 made such a hoax nearly impossible to produce within the reported timeframe.
However, skepticism arose due to several anomalies. The camera remained perfectly stationary with a fixed zoom, precisely framing the crop circle’s formation without any attempt to follow the moving lights, which would be expected if the event were real. The video also showed inconsistencies with ground observations, such as the satellite circles forming before the connecting pathways. Technical analysis revealed that the initial and final sequences were interlaced, but the animation sequence was non-interlaced, suggesting possible digital manipulation. Additionally, the balls of light appeared perfectly formed with no motion blur, despite their rapid movement.
The incident became highly controversial, with conflicting claims about its authenticity. Some sources assert that the video was a hoax orchestrated by John Wabe, a co-owner of a video special effects studio in Bristol, who allegedly confessed to creating it and attempting to sell it to Fuji TV in Japan. This claim is supported by a report stating that the hoaxer worked for a TV production studio and used a Quantel Paintbox to create the footage. Others, including documentary filmmaker Gary King, argue that the video’s authenticity is supported by the impossibility of such a high-quality fake being produced at the time, especially within five hours of the event.
Despite the debate, the Oliver’s Castle incident remains one of the most discussed and analyzed cases in crop circle research, symbolizing the broader struggle between belief in unexplained phenomena and scientific skepticism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMeRd5EdBwE
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