Crop Circles in Germany

1995 - Beulich (Rhineland-Palatine)

by Waldemar Czarnetzki (transl. by Markus Schröder)

---

Deutsche Version dieser Seite

---

In teamwork with the author Willi Schillings, it was possible to gather some information about the circle near Beulich. Mr. Schillings telephoned several times with the forester Mr. Hammes, who discovered the circle, to get a better impression of the situation. In January 1996, I had the chance to telephone with him and his wife by myself. Unfortunately, it was impossible to do some research at Beulich when the formation appeared. If we had had the information about the circle, it would have been even possible to get some pictures because a befriended pilot was waiting for his chance...
If one takes a look at a map of this area, one notices a dolmen close to the formation, a minor detail which might be of some importance.

The pictogram was discovered on July 14, 1995, by Mr. Hammes. On the phone he told me that he was very surprised when he examined the damage supposedly done by game. He thought of wild boars but the usual tracks and paths that boars leave behind were missing as well as tracks of tractors. When he saw the perfection of the pattern, he made a force majeure of unknown origin responsible. Mr. Hammes thought of an unknown natural energy coming from inside the earth. He noticed that the stalks weren't broken or bent but grew in the direction of the whirl as if they had been pressed down by a very heavy weight. He showed the formation to his family and called the authorities and the newspapers. 12-15 years before he found something quite similar at the same place but he was afraid to tell anybody because nobody would have taken him serious.

Last summer his whole family were astonished about the repeating patterns in the field, so they informed the Government Departments of Agriculture and Conservation as well as the local government and the media. It was very frustrating when the two Government Departments didn't answer and the local government just sneered. A request at the nearest airstrip for a documentation of the pictogram from the air ended with a cost estimate that was much too high for the forester and his wife.

What the couple didn't understand was the fact that something strange happened and left its marks but nobody seemed to care. There was nothing left but a strong feeling of desperation and frustration. When the media eventually began to report about the circles, the whole affair didn't get better. A journalist was watched making a hole in the center of the formation with the heel of his shoe! No holes were to be found before this action but the media took it as a piece of evidence for a hoax...

Photo © Ute Hachemer, DJU

There were rumours that the same journalist tried to force Mr. Hammes to admit that he made the formation and to produce evidence for this. A photographer who examined the formation afterwards thought it was a bad joke - beause of the mentioned hole in the ground. Well, had everyone had the chance to come to an objective conclusion about the origin of the phenomenon?

By the way, the crop circle can still be seen because it appeared in a field of oats and clover which will be harvested in the autumn of 1996. This is a wonderful opportunity to study the growth of the crop and to do some examinations. Maybe we have then another story to tell about the strange crop circles in the Rhineland.