Cheesefoot Head and the First Crop Circles
Circles in wheat began appearing in Hampshire and Wiltshire in the late seventies; they were explained by plasma vortices, landing craft and earth energies, and by the end of the eighties scientists and television crews were driving out to the fields. On 9 September 1991 the newspaper Today printed the confession of two pensioners from Southampton, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley: they had been making the circles at night since 1978, starting near Cheesefoot Head, where Bower had bet in a pub that he could cause a commotion. The tool was a plank on a rope pulled with the foot, and a wire sight on a cap to keep the line straight. In front of reporters they made a circle that the leading researcher Pat Delgado immediately pronounced genuine.
Hydesville and the Fox Sisters' Rappings
In March 1848, in a rented house at Hydesville, the sisters Margaret and Kate Fox, fourteen and eleven, began answering a murdered pedlar in raps: one for yes, two for no. Neighbours came in crowds, their older sister Leah took them to Rochester and sold tickets, and out of that room grew the whole of American Spiritualism. On 21 October 1888 Margaret walked onto the stage of the New York Academy of Music and, before a full house, showed how it was done: she cracked the joint of her big toe, and the sound carried through the boards as though the walls were knocking. Kate sat in a box and nodded. A year later Margaret retracted the confession, badly in need of money, but the doctors who examined her foot on that stage had already confirmed the mechanism.
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