England, Wiltshire
Oliver's Castle 2008 and 2009
..
1) AUGUST 2008: crop circle
2) JANUAR 2009: ghost circle in snow
3) AUGUST 2009: ghost circle in the new crop

8th of January 2009:
ghost circle in snow on the plowed field

The 8th of January Mattew Willliams was flying after several days of temperatures below
zero. The landscapes of Wiltshire were covered by a thin layer of snow. Flying over Oliver's Castle,
he noticed something unusual:
On the exact spot where a beautiful crop formation was discovered the 16th of August 2008, the snow
was missing. And not only that, within the formation area, only the sections former crop circle where
the plantswere flattened, were without snow! The sections in the former crop formation where there
had been standing crop, had snow cover.


Photo: Mattew Williams


Photo: Russell Stannard

Photo: K.A.

Not far away, in the neighbouring field, there is a barrow (see the dark area in the field in the
forground in teh photo below). This barrow was also without snow.
One can imagine that the snow falling on a barrow could be blown away by the wind, but that the
wind could blow away snow from a flat field only in the sections of flattened plants in a former
crop circle, is rather unlikely.

Photo: Mattew Williams

Traces in the fields of crop circles from earlier years are often referred to as "ghost formations".
Ghost formations in snow have been reported earlier, both in England and in The Netherlands.

In an article at the web site Swirled News, Bert Janssen and Janet Ossebaard suggest that ghost
formations in snow might be due to changes in the soil caused by the former crop circle at the same
spot, changes such as crystallization in the soil.

Increased crystallization in the clay particles in the soil has been found in crop circles in several
cases. You can find a study about crystallization at the web site of BLT Reasearch Team.

8th of August 2009:
ghost circle in the new crop

On the 8th of August 2009, Stannard Russell flew over Oliver's Castle. To his surprise, he saw that,
again, the crop circle from August 2008 was visible in the same field:

Photo: Russell Stannard

Photo: Russell Stannard

In this field there was again wheat crop, and at the site of the august 2008 formation, the
wheat plants now looked darker than the plants in the rest of the field.

The areas with darker plants exactly matched the sections with downed crop in the formation
from the previous year:


Photos: K.A. og Russell Stannard

Some days after Stannard had photographed this new ghost formation from the air, he visited
the area on the ground to try to ascertain what might be the cause of the ghost effect.
Unfortunately the electrical fence surrounding the field made it impossible to enter. From the
edge of the field he could not make out what might be the cause of the ghost effect. However,
Stannard suggests that the effect was either the result of the plants being longer or darker in
the sections of the field where there had been downed wheat in the former crop circle.

In 2000 a similar effect was observed near Barbury Castle. In this case it was ascertained that
the effect was due to the plants growing longer in the sections of the field that corresponded with
the sections of downed plants in the former crop circle.

Read about the 2000 Barbury Castle ghost formation here.

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