THE INFLUENCE OF CHARLEY KNOLL

By Steve Pyrah

I visited the Charley Knoll crop formation twice, the first time I went was to assist in the ill fated theodolite survey with a small team of East Midlands ‘croppies’.

It was during this visit that I first witnessed a magnetic anomaly at a crop formation. We were using a compass to take the bearings of the arms and shaft of the formation. In one place the compass needle was 'hunting', it was swinging to and fro for far far more time than usual before settling down to point to the north magnetic pole. It was as if the Earth’s magnetic field was far weaker at that point than elsewhere, and having a weaker pull on the compass needle, but how could that be? Bemused we put the compass on a book and placed them on a level piece of ground to eliminate hand shake but the needle was still 'hunting' for a bearing.

 Later on I learned that the data from the theodolite survey was useless as the theodolite had malfunctioned as well. Crop circles are notorious for causing instrument failure. At that time the magnetic bearing sun scope I was building still needed calibrating so it was a couple of weeks before I could return to the formation to see if I could measure the magnetic anomaly and conduct a magnetic survey of the formation using the sun scope. But by that time the magnetic field had returned to normal no anomaly was found.

I am not prone to getting headaches but I got one that afternoon at Charley Knoll. The 'atmosphere' at the formation felt heavy and 'buzzing'.  My headache went not long after leaving the formation.