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and Fuller, it was his experience of the activities of hoaxers in this context that made him inclined to scepticism about the origin of the crop circles. He made the point that as well as 'hoaxing' lights in the sky, attempts had also been made to fake ‘landing sites' by flattening grasses in fields near Cradle Hill outside Warminster. He suggested that it would be a 'short step' from this to making crop circles as we He drew attention to the fact that, despite the claims made that features of 'genuine' circles were impossible to hoax, evidence existed that human circlemakers, using fairly basic methods, could indeed produce circles which were accepted as the 'real thing’ by investigators. In 1991, both Dr Meaden and Busty Taylor were publicly embarrassed by a group called the Wessex sceptics, who had produced a formation in conjunction with a film company. On camera they both, independently, found evidence of 'genuine' phenomena in the ringed circle made by the sceptics. Ken Brown's investigations were more practically based than Williams', who relied on logical deduction and interpretation, rather than fieldwork. Examining formations at Cheesefoot Head in 1991, he became preoccupied by the existence of 'underlying pathways’, which had previously been noted by other researchers, but never really interpreted. He noted that the underlying paths must have been the first elements of the design to have been laid down. Brown's interpretation of these pathways was that they indicated the line walked by hoaxers as they established the centre point of the circle and which was then covered by the main swirl as it was laid down in a series of widening circles from the centre outwards. As he was coming to these conclusions, a massive shock lay in wait for circles researchers. access down tramling " oe = yal ye 1) ‘a tl Hit Ok ial; di ic eae ay = s : oat "4 wna pe ib rm hl j Pex: a 4 Fae Ha ier fittes Hy ihe itt i Ay" ai wl Wie \ I, ay Ai liar i nil fi i ” if. vf Ply, The day after the Cerealogist 'Cornference' had ended on a high, with participants gathering in the Abbey ruins at Glastonbury to meditate, followers of the phenomenon were brought down to earth by a front page story in the British daily newspaper Today. Headlined "The Men Who Conned The now see them. An underlying pathway Doug and Dave