A Trip to Crop Circle Country

We have just returned from a trip to speak at the crop circle conference in the UK, where we had some breathtaking adventures. When we entered our first circle, I was amazed to be greeted by TWO people who knew me! The first one was “Kate,” a contactee whom I interviewed several months ago. Then I heard “Anne!” and was hailed by Claire, William Henry’s financee. As I was chattering away with these dear folks, neither of whom I had met in person before, a Wiccan in the “crone” stage came up over the hill and told us that she could see all our auras. This was truly as auspicious beginning to our crop circle adventure.

We were exposed to 2 opposing views of the Circlemakers: One person who says he doesn’t know who is making them, but knows that, except for the obvious fakes, they aren’t being made by ordinary human beings. Later, we were taken on an extensive tour of the circles by someone who lives in the area who says they are all being made by humans who call this “co-creation,” meaning that they, so to speak, “divinely inspired.” He says you can hang out in the local pub and hear them planning their creations, then leaving to go out and make them and he says they’ve told him that they can hear the plant nodes popping as they create the circles. He claims he can recognize different crop circle “artists” in the same way that an art historian can recognize the creator of a painting.

We had planned to drive out to Stonehenge to meet Lucy Pringle, the creator of our crop circle calendars, since she was leading a tour there. Whitley rented a car, but could only get one with a manual shift, which he hadn’t driven in a long time. But the real problem was driving on the left side of the road. Whitley just couldn’t get the hang of it, and after several terrifying close calls, I insisted he return the car.

Some of you may remember how my dead cat Coe came and visited me in the hospital 5 years ago. You may also remember my diary about how our friend, hospice doctor John Lerma, discovered that his patients tend to die 4 days after they have a visit from a dead friend or relative. Shortly before we left, Whitley said to me, “Candy was here last night.I could feel her fur.” That’s exactly the sensation I had when Coe came to me. Candy was the little dog he had as a boy. She would nip him when she thought he was going to do something that would get him into trouble (which was often) and she slept with him every night. I remember when I first went to Texas with Whitley to meet his parents. We weren’t married yet, so we were given separate bedrooms at his house, even though we were living together. When I tiptoed past Whitley’s bedroom late at night, the door was open and I saw Candy’s head on the pillow with his and thought, “I’ve been displaced for the moment but that’s OK–she was there first.”

While we returning the car, it dawned on us both at the same time that Candy’s visit to Whitley had been 4 days earlier. It was a warning: Whitley would have died in a car accident had he driven on to Stonehenge.

We stopped at a bistro for supper one night, where the chef proudly presented “Mexican Food Night.” For a couple of Texans, this was mighty strange stuff.

We spend several wonderful days in London, staying at a small hotel in the SoHo district, which is the “Greenwich Village” of London, and made us nostalgic for our own “Village Days” in New York. I loved some of the euphemisms on signs advertising sex for sale, such as “natural Viagra.” We met lots of Brits who had spent time in the US, such as “5 months in Las Vegas” and “3 months in Miami.” This reminded me of the story of the 3 blind men and the elephant, where one of them feels the tail and says it’s a snake and the other one feels the trunk, etc. What would you say about America if you were only familiar with Las Vegas or Miami?

I didn’t do much shopping: I went into one famous shop (which is now in the US as well) and found that all the clothes were a kind of parody of US fashions (ie. a tee shirt that said “Wyoming” and had a buffalo on it), which would be the equivalent of us pushing clothes with tea cups on them as UK fashions.

For the plane ride home, I bought an English version of my favorite stupid women’s magazine, and I was amused to see that women in the UK are all going for the “LA Surfer look” (long blonde hair, cut off jeans) while US movie stars (pictured in the fashion pages) are all sporting the “Mad Men” tailored 60s look, which is much more appropriate for London and UK life.

Speaking of UK life, English tea is HORRIBLE! They make much better coffee. It’s so refreshing when all those cliches finally crumble, one of which is the perpetual argument about who is making the circles.

My new English friend Kerry (someone else I knew only via email but met for the first time during this trip) summed it up beautifully: She feels that it doesn’t matter whether the circles are created by humans or not, that this is irrelevant. What is important is that the circles attract a certain type of very spiritual person to a specific area every season and this concentrates the conscious energy of the Earth into a single spot for a short period of time every year. Now if we could only figure out how to USE it.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been a Strieber adventure if it didn’t contain UFOs. We visited the lovely home of Graham and Santha Hancock in the Georgian city of Bath. One night I heard “rain” on the roof, but when I peeked out the window, I saw that the sun was shining. Whitley and I are familiar with this sound, which we heard regularly in our cabin when the Visitors were arriving. When we got back to the US, we heard from friends in New York that they had a sighting of 10 UFOs that was witnessed by 4 people! We figured out that this happened at the same time I heard the “rain.” Since this friend is making a documentary about Whitley, but he needs to do more filming, we decided that this may have been a message for him that he needs to finish. This film would be a welcome replacement for the reality pilot about Whitley that turned out so badly.

UPDATE: After I sent this diary to Kerry, she wrote: “It was odd what you said in your diary about seeing a dead relative before you were due to die–I think I told you that I saw my maternal grandfather a few days (not sure if it was four or not) before I was due to fly to the US for the first time, and I had been terribly worried about the flight. After seeing my grandfather, I felt a sense of calm about the flight, and felt as though I would be OK, but in fact the plane was struck by lightning and we had a very lucky escape, with luggage and flight attendants being flung all over the place. It was a very scary moment, which left even seasoned flyers looking pale. I wonder what diverted my destiny.”

NOTE: This Diary entry, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.