BillD and Art: Sleep deprivation is known to cause hallucinations. At uni, I had a tough project and the labs were busy during the day, so I tended to work one night on, one night off, only sleeping every other night (LONG lie-in next day to make up! :-) I frequently experienced the onset of hallucinations due to lack of sleep. I never got full-blown "they're coming out of the walls!!!" kind of stuff - I didn't push myself that hard - but I got all sorts of strange corner-of-the-eye effects, thinking things were moving or ppl were there, when there was no-one there. As an typical example, cycling back home in the early morning one time, I thought I saw someone walking across the pavement (sidewalk for Americans) into me, just next to me. I looked back, to find it was actually a postbox! (Incidentally, in Britain we have old-fashioned postboxes we call "pillar boxes", which are about 4-5 feet tall and painted bright red) A few times cycling back, I've also had "alien abduction" type experiences where I've got home and not been able to remember anything of the ride back, I only knew that I set off and got back!

Given this kind of experience, that gives me some personal experience of the explanations of neurologists that ghosts, UFOs, etc are hallucinations. There's experiments showing that when certain areas of the brain are stimulated (to simulate a mild epileptic-type event), a person undergoes an experience strikingly similar to that described in out-of-body and religious experiences (feeling a "presence", tunnel of light, the lot). Others give bright lights and sensations of movement, and stuff like that. This is why I'd be interested to know what LittleHawk saw. I'm not going to get onto the "... or thought he saw" bit, bcos for all I know it may actually be what really happened (viz. Wolfgang's post) and to phrase it like that would imply that I'd already made up my mind.

I like Wolfgang's story about that Victorian chap. My (cynical) explanation would be that he'd had a night out with his mistress and wanted to cover his tracks... :-)

Sorry about getting off the crop circle topic here, but it's the scientific approach-type thing. If someone says, "I've seen a UFO, and an alien spacecraft could logically cause this crop pattern when it lands", then that's a working hypothesis which fits the facts, but it's difficult to prove. Suppose someone else says, "I've conducted experiments on ppl's brains which cause them to think they've seen things resembling how some UFOs are described, and here's the results, and there's zillions of folk who think it's fun to create crop circles, and here's some books about how they do it". Which one do you believe? Me, I'd go for the one with the evidence.

Incidentally, does anyone know if farmers get compensation for damage caused by crop circles? Is it covered by insurance? And if the insurer's read Von Daniken, would damage by aliens come under "act of God"?

Grab.