Mod+ 253. SUZANNE TAYLOR, THE SCIENTIFIC MYSTERY OF CROP CIRCLES

If there are such things as paranormally created crop circles I'd have to put my money on what's happening in Holland with Robbert van den Broeke - his latest here http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2014/Hoeven3/Hoeven2014c.html
I find his paranormal photography convincing so feel it's unlikely he'd wreck his chances of acceptance by getting involved with hoaxed crop circles. But I could be wrong......
Psiclops, I'm suspicious about van den Broeke after reading up about him re: the crop circles. See:
http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com...credibility-of-one-of-thrives-main-sources-2/
http://www.colinandrews.net/Robbert-van-den-Broeke-Message-Colin_Andrews.html
 

Ian, I don't quite know where to start on this, mainly because this whole saga goes back years and years and I've ridden the waves of belief and disbelief during that time.

I've spent hours chatting with Nancy Talbott when all this phenomena first started for her and have been pally with Colin Andrews for years and have corresponded extensively over Robbert.

But Colin and I do share some disagreement over Robbert.

He might appear to be totally convinced that his paranormal antics are not for real. But he's not completely off the fence for he still keeps in touch with developments in Holland.

Sorry, I haven't the time right now to consider all the points in that blog piece you linked, but my position is that I have heard acceptable (to me) explanations for most of the criticisms. But as with all mediums I would never accept what they channelled was ultimate truth. Personally I believe Robbert has psychic abilities which manifest in many ways - most of which are unprovable except for some of the videos of him capturing images of dead people - while being filmed.

This has been covered on other threads here - but there's an old newscast here which is worth seeing:

Film-maker William Gazecki visited Robbert and came away very impressed with what he captured on film, so too did another film-maker Dan Drasin who was also convinced that Robbert wasn't a fake and he has included his filmed experiments with him at the end of his documentary Calling Earth.

Here is the full documentary including the new end sequence:
http://www.newscience2020.com/

Here is the Robbert sequence alone:

As I mentioned my approach on the crop circle issue - having decided that most if not all formations are fake - finds me embarrassingly wavering over Robbert's circles for the reasons I stated....if his photographic stuff is genuine, why risk exposure with more easily detected phony circles? Also for what it's worth I've spoken to others over there who've been with Robbert during these claimed sessions when he locates new circles and I find them credible witnesses.

Time will telI and I hear there is other scientific research in the pipeline which may provide more compelling evidence about Robbert's psychic abilities.

In passing with reference to the images he produces which are found not to be unique and therefore assumed to be fake, I would ask you to consider other psychic photography in history - including the famed Scole Experiment and the séances from early Spiritualism where the images also existed in some publication or other.

Maybe this is some limitation they have on the other side where it's easier to pinch somebody else's photos rather than produce their own! :)
 
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Thanks for your detailed and informed reply, Psiclops.

I guess the stuff that makes me most suspicious includes the following (mentioned in the first blog but taken from the link provided below):
Broeke has even been caught in his same old technique. For instance, he allegedly captured this other alien in his house, which turned out to be a photo of a Mud-man, a native from New Guinea, published in Reader’s Digest.

mudmanrobbertmudmand.jpg


Above, center, is the alien that Broeke photographed. Left is the original photo published in Reader’s Digest, and right is the photo blurred to highlight the exact match. The exposé comes from the Dutch Skeptics.

So, you can see how the alleged medium and friend of aliens, orbs and crop circles simply places cutouts in front of the camera. And you may have recognized that these recent spaceships he photographed near the Dutch crop circles, along with people from the DCCA and Nancy Talbott, from BLT Research, which claims to be “Crop Circle Science”, are just cutouts of photos originally from Billy Meier.

broeke_meier.jpg


There is some distortion, as the cutouts may bend, and the photo I showed above is probably not the exact same photo Broeke may have cut out, but I hope it shows what is going on.

In one of the photos the cutout is glowing while the background is dark: the camera flash was triggered, probably automatically since it was dark, and the cutout near the camera reflected back the light. The fact it’s glowing is actually evidence that this “spaceship” was something small and near the camera to reflect the flash. The light from a flash only works within a few meters, beyond that it’s simply too diffused. Lame, lame hoax.
http://forgetomori.com/2009/ufos/ufo-photos/debunking-roundup/
http://www.skepsis.nl/mudman.html
 
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Thanks for your detailed and informed reply, Psiclops.

I guess the stuff that makes me most suspicious includes the following (mentioned in the first blog but taken from the link provided below):
http://forgetomori.com/2009/ufos/ufo-photos/debunking-roundup/
http://www.skepsis.nl/mudman.html

The problem with these sceptic sites is they don't always tell it like it is.

As far as I know Robbert never claimed the mudman was an 'alien' or that the figure was 'in his house'.

Nobody tried to deny the figure was in the Readers Digest and nobody professed to know why it turned up on the camera.

It's easy to talk about cut outs and how it might have been but often there have been witnesses to swear he didn't wave any cut outs in front of the lens.

Sceptics generally don't accept anything paranormal so to them this has got to be all trickery which they'll turn cartwheels to try to prove, ignoring any evidence to the contrary.

I'm not doing PR for this guy - I'm just putting forward another point of view. And while there are still credible people producing credible evidence as in film showing these images appear as they happen - it would seem odd that we would prefer to believe he's waving cut outs when not a single person has seen him do that and certainly no film showing it happen.

Here's Nancy Talbott's take on the mudman episode which I have to say is exactly how she told me about it on the phone at the time.

http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert/apparition2.php
 
As far as I know Robbert never claimed the mudman was an 'alien' or that the figure was 'in his house'.

Nobody tried to deny the figure was in the Readers Digest and nobody professed to know why it turned up on the camera.

It's easy to talk about cut outs and how it might have been but often there have been witnesses to swear he didn't wave any cut outs in front of the lens.

This is very reminiscent of the 'thoughtographic' photos made by Ted Serios using a polaroid camera, with both camera and film supplied by the observers. He and his photo process were extensively studied by the brilliant psychiatrist Jule Eisebud and documented in the book, "The World of Ted Serios." His photos, which were made under close scrutiny by Eisenbud along with many other observers over time, were sometimes found to be very similar to a photo in a magazine or whatever, but with differences that could not have been faked under those conditions. For example, buildings might be rearranged or have an extra or missing window.
 
The resemblance of "paranormal" photographs to existing imagery is a deal breaker. One of the things that first made me question mediumship photos, was the way lighting on the spirit image was frequently contrary to the medium and sitter. The spirit face either had a snapshot aesthetic, with the deceased blurred in a way that is consistent with lower quality optics of box cameras, or was posed with studio lighting and formality. It was obvious these images had been borrowed from secondary sources. Accepting the images just happened to resemble known simulacrum of the deceased, with all the optical artefacts intact, takes suspension of disbelief into areas where explanations become contrived.

Some of the same mindset operates in crop circles, where an unwillingness to dispense with the last opportunity for such pictograms to be paranormal, creates ever more convoluted explanations. If these circles are beyond explanation, it's because all art is unknown in its sources, not because cereal pictures are uniquely inexplicable.
 
Here's Nancy Talbott's take on the mudman episode which I have to say is exactly how she told me about it on the phone at the time.

http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert/apparition2.php

I have taken a look and here I find the following must be true:
-Either something paranormal is happening or this is fraud.
-If it is fraud, then it would seem that Nancy Talbot must be party to the fraud. She is clearly very involved with Robbert. By the way, I am not asserting that she is being fraudulent just asserting that it logically follows that she must be participating in the fraud if Robbert is a fraud.

So, the question then becomes: "What evidence do we have for or against Nancy Talbott being fraudulent?" Psiclops, you have spoken with her. What are your thoughts?

Some links. I do not assert anything about the links. I don't know what to make of them myself.
http://www.colinandrews.net/Crop-Circles-BLT-Wrong.html
https://circularstateofmind.wordpre...circles-2014-robbert-van-den-broeke-a-primer/
http://colinandrews.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/nancy-talbott-and-robbert-van-den.html
http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com...credibility-of-one-of-thrives-main-sources-2/
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=214437
 


But these are completed as far as I can see. When people want to see half-completed designs, they are meaning at various stages of construction ( including the final design ).

the one on the right looks obviously hoaxed because it looks like there are plenty of mistakes in the symmetry.

The only mistake on the one on the left was the farmer not having enough seed to fill the field.
 
The resemblance of "paranormal" photographs to existing imagery is a deal breaker. One of the things that first made me question mediumship photos, was the way lighting on the spirit image was frequently contrary to the medium and sitter. The spirit face either had a snapshot aesthetic, with the deceased blurred in a way that is consistent with lower quality optics of box cameras, or was posed with studio lighting and formality. It was obvious these images had been borrowed from secondary sources. Accepting the images just happened to resemble known simulacrum of the deceased, with all the optical artefacts intact, takes suspension of disbelief into areas where explanations become contrived.

Some of the same mindset operates in crop circles, where an unwillingness to dispense with the last opportunity for such pictograms to be paranormal, creates ever more convoluted explanations. If these circles are beyond explanation, it's because all art is unknown in its sources, not because cereal pictures are uniquely inexplicable.

You posted this just below my post about Ted Serios but I'm not sure if you were referring to that post or not. Ted Serios was not known to be a medium, he was an alcoholic elevator operator who had a strange ability. While some of his photos seemed to be based on existing published photos, they were usually altered in ways that could not be done on a polaroid camera under the test conditions being used, using factory-sealed film that was brought by one of the experimenters (including by various guest observers who were prominent people in the community). In fact, in those days before digital image manipulation, there is no known explanation for how they could have been altered at all, other than paranormally.

Many of the original images that Ted seemed to be mimicking had been published in obscure sources and it is unlikely Ted ever saw them himself - he led a very constricted life. The image alterations might be consistent with picking them from someone else's memory, although there's no real evidence for that as far as I know. Ted didn't claim to know where the images were coming from.

Stranger still, the source for some images, such as images of the Russian Vostok rockets apparently in outer space, could not be located in a worldwide search of the literature; they still might be images from someone's mind, though(?)
 
But these are completed as far as I can see. When people want to see half-completed designs, they are meaning at various stages of construction ( including the final design ).

the one on the right looks obviously hoaxed because it looks like there are plenty of mistakes in the symmetry.

The only mistake on the one on the left was the farmer not having enough seed to fill the field.
Yes the one on the right was made by Matthew Williams, who explains the mistake and having to leave it unfinished here (at 2:00) (to the right, if you look closely, you can see a half circle line which I guess was what they were supposed to follow).

The one on the left is apparently the way it is because two unfinished arms are touching a barbed wire fence. Are you saying aliens would have done this?

BTW, Mazda, you wrote this about the Milk Hill galaxy, which was made a big deal of in the podcast interview:
I think Suzanne was talking of the vast Milk hill circle -the one with over 400 circles... Its perfect , without a single mistake.
Have you watched the Williams video I posted above regarding it? It's a must-watch, in my view. He clearly demonstrates that it isn't perfect, and deconstructs the myth that it could not be man-made.
 
The resemblance of "paranormal" photographs to existing imagery is a deal breaker. One of the things that first made me question mediumship photos, was the way lighting on the spirit image was frequently contrary to the medium and sitter. The spirit face either had a snapshot aesthetic, with the deceased blurred in a way that is consistent with lower quality optics of box cameras, or was posed with studio lighting and formality. It was obvious these images had been borrowed from secondary sources. Accepting the images just happened to resemble known simulacrum of the deceased, with all the optical artefacts intact, takes suspension of disbelief into areas where explanations become contrived.
That's my feeling as well. I try to remember Psiclops' point which is that it isn't explainable (?) how van den Broeke can produce them or how the fraud could be accomplished in some cases. But still, personally, too many of the pictures leave me leaning towards the skeptical side.
 
You posted this just below my post about Ted Serios but I'm not sure if you were referring to that post or not. Ted Serios was not known to be a medium, he was an alcoholic elevator operator who had a strange ability. While some of his photos seemed to be based on existing published photos, they were usually altered in ways that could not be done on a polaroid camera under the test conditions being used, using factory-sealed film that was brought by one of the experimenters (including by various guest observers who were prominent people in the community). In fact, in those days before digital image manipulation, there is no known explanation for how they could have been altered at all, other than paranormally.

Many of the original images that Ted seemed to be mimicking had been published in obscure sources and it is unlikely Ted ever saw them himself - he led a very constricted life. The image alterations might be consistent with picking them from someone else's memory, although there's no real evidence for that as far as I know. Ted didn't claim to know where the images were coming from.

Stranger still, the source for some images, such as images of the Russian Vostok rockets apparently in outer space, could not be located in a worldwide search of the literature; they still might be images from someone's mind, though(?)
Yeah, the Serios stuff is very difficult to explain away.
 
Have you watched the Williams video I posted above regarding it? It's a must-watch, in my view. He clearly demonstrates that it isn't perfect, and deconstructs the myth that it could not be man-made.

That was a great video Ian, but I've found an image of the Milk Hill Galaxy formation that's large enough to see most of the flaws:

http://circularstateofmind.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/galaxy1.jpg

galaxy1.jpg


If you further enlarge the image, you'll be able to see the curved connecting paths in all six arms.

In addition, some of the little satellite circles (I think Williams calls them fractals) are badly spaced. The two most glaring errors of this nature pertain to the arms originating at approximately the 11:00 and 7:00 positions in relation to the center circle. If you start with the 11:00 arm and follow the small circles to the right of the arm, you'll see a large gap between the seventh and eighth arm circles. The error occurs at the same position in the 7:00 arm, although it's not as large. If you look closely at the other arms, you'll see even more satellite placement errors.

Finally, there are stomp marks in the larger circles, although they're hard to see because most of the images are too small to make them out. Fortunately, this video has some great closeups (starting at ~1:45) that clearly show them.

The Giant Milk Hill Spiral Crop Circle Formation

Doug
 
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Great investigative work, Doug!

EDIT: Looks like you beat Matthew Williams to it:
:)

From the comments section. This echoes what you said Doug:
The larger core circles in this field design are as good as it gets albeit pity the walk lines are quite so stark.For me the radiating sub circles whilst pushing the envelope and admirable in intent unfortunately are extremely ill co-ordinated. Wisdom of hindsight and all that.
This is about the worst example to hold up as "real" (whatever that is) as anything beyond a cursory glance confirms quite the reverse.
Look forward to your colorful forensic commentary Matt but this case would be in the shredder before even reaching the article clerk!

Here is a bigger resolution picture.
 
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You posted this just below my post about Ted Serios but I'm not sure if you were referring to that post or not. Ted Serios was not known to be a medium, he was an alcoholic elevator operator who had a strange ability. While some of his photos seemed to be based on existing published photos, they were usually altered in ways that could not be done on a polaroid camera under the test conditions being used, using factory-sealed film that was brought by one of the experimenters (including by various guest observers who were prominent people in the community). In fact, in those days before digital image manipulation, there is no known explanation for how they could have been altered at all, other than paranormally.

Many of the original images that Ted seemed to be mimicking had been published in obscure sources and it is unlikely Ted ever saw them himself - he led a very constricted life. The image alterations might be consistent with picking them from someone else's memory, although there's no real evidence for that as far as I know. Ted didn't claim to know where the images were coming from.

Stranger still, the source for some images, such as images of the Russian Vostok rockets apparently in outer space, could not be located in a worldwide search of the literature; they still might be images from someone's mind, though(?)
I've been aware of Serios since the 1970s. The images he produces make me suspicious for the same reason as Broeke's, I know what would lead to the way they look, and could probably reproduce them myself. In Broeke's case a photograph re-taken while zooming the lens would give exactly this effect, and there are filters that give a similar appearance. The heavy vignetting on Ted Serios's work looks like some kind of miniature scope with an image at one end, possibly a slide. I'm not saying that's how they were produced, but that's exactly the appearance you would get by a certain optical intervention. That only leaves the testimony of the person doing the testing that there was no trickery involved, and I don't need to be able to explain a stage trick to identify one. I'm not familiar with the Vostok image, but I'll make a bet it was out of focus and/or there was a model available of it at that period.
 
Have any of the investigators who believe some circles are anomalous and some are not identified which photos are of circles that are not man made, and which are man made under influence, and which are not anomalous?
 
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