In 1979, two British farmers reported that, while sitting on a hill, they suddenly saw the crops below flattened in a perfect circle. They inferred that some great force must have come down directly from above to squash the corn and barley. This started a public hysteria about so-called crop circles. The patterns pressed into the crops (not all of them were circles) seemed to have no entry or exit points. Many people hypothesized that only alien spaceships could make such bizarre imprints. Others, including Britain’s police, assailed such wild conclusions. They had a contrary theory: Someone was playing a big hoax. Teams of investigators took samples of the plants and the soil, trying to objectively analyze the crop circles as if they were a crime scene. Public curiosity often impaired the investigators, who had to tolerate busloads of tourists flocking to the circles. The farmers in the area, long suspicious of the police, approached the case as an instance of police versus the people. If the local farmers knew the circles were a hoax, they wouldn’t say so.