Some say space aliens are responsible. Many claim it’s due to a natural weather or geometric phenomena that has yet to be explained. Others believe a coil of rope, a compass and a case of Guinness Stout are the real culprits.

Whatever the explanation, crop circles are back in vogue as the result of the new feature film “Signs.” The Mel Gibson thriller  which favors the extraterrestrial theory  has rekindled a worldwide interest in the crop circle sensation that was all but discarded as a hoax several years ago.

“That’s the wonderful thing about crop circles: They seem to have this effect on people and grab hold of them,” said Karen Douglas, one of the leading authorities on the subject. “They’re kind of an invitation.”

Touchstone Pictures, the studio that is releasing “Signs,” recruited researcher Douglas and her photographer partner Steve Alexander for expert help with the $62 million project.

“We took part in a documentary that they made to go along with the movie,” she said from her home in Gosport, near England’s Isle of Wight. “They wanted to talk to some real crop circle researchers. It will be included on the DVD and video.”

Douglas has written a number of books and articles on the topic, yet she is still unsure of what determines its cause. The very mystery remains part of the allure.

“Crop circles are primarily geometric structures, on a huge scale,” she explained. “Back in the early ’90s we had meteorologists thinking it was some kind of bizarre weather effect. I think the complexity and order of the designs really rules out random weather. Certainly it seems that natural forces are somehow being manipulated to create the crop circles. Of course, what actually chooses the design and does the manipulating is the big question.”

Several years back, a group of British men came forward and admitted manufacturing a number of these circles. Their late-night exploits were captured on video tape, providing a how-to guide for falsifying these supposedly organic occurrences.

Although this incident gained a good deal of notoriety, Douglas believes it wasn’t very representative of the real phenomena.

“It’s very difficult to tell, but I only think it’s a small number (that are faked),” she said. “The size and complexity of a lot of the formations defy the human hoax theory. Also there is some scientific research that shows that quite a number of them are definitely NOT man-made. There are changes in the crop soil which would literally not occur if this was just being stomped down. I think there’s a lot of paranoia about hoaxing, but I just don’t get involved in that.”

Global reach

Douglas first became interested in the subject in 1990 when the crop circle controversy gained popularity through television. Then a few years after that she witnessed four separate crop circles appear within less than a mile of her house. Her initial curiosity eventually turned into a prolonged profession.

Since then she’s explored reports in all parts of the world. Luckily, her home base of England experiences a higher frequency of the patterns than other nations.

“For some reason it does,” she said. “Although having said that, other countries do have a lot of them. Germany has been experiencing a rash of them at the moment. But they happen all over the world: Canada, Australia, Japan in rice paddy fields  it’s a global thing.”

Douglas claims the formations aren’t limited to crops. They can appear in all kinds of different terrain, such as grass, sand and even ice.

While the researcher has little first-hand knowledge in terms of crop circles appearing in Kansas, she believes the relative size of the state (and country in general) often works to the disadvantage of locating these sights.

“In America a lot of them aren’t spotted until harvest time,” she said. “Basically, the fields are so huge that the only way you could find them is if you get up in an aircraft. Sometimes the farmers spray their fields from the air, and so the circles are spotted that way. But very often in America they’re not spotted until the farmer is in the combine and suddenly arrives at this flattened place in his field, and he thinks, ‘All right, I’ve got a crop circle.'”

Douglas and Alexander will continue to issue their “Crop Circle Year Books” that feature vivid images and accounts of the topic. These and other posters and videos of their work can be found at www.temporarytemples.co.uk.

She hopes “Signs” will bring fresh interest to the somewhat unconventional field in which she has staked her expertise.

“The books that we publish are what enable us to keep our interest in this alive financially,” Douglas said. “We’re obviously involved very much in recording the formations from the air and collecting photographic evidence. That’s very expensive, hiring helicopters and so forth.”

If only the aliens could provide their own pictures …