Without doubt, one of the strangest aspects of cryptozoology is it’s tie-in with the Crop Circle mystery. Although it’s a little-known aspect of both phenomena, more than a few accounts exist of strange creatures seen in and around Crop Circles. From Matthew Williams – the only British man ever arrested, charged and convicted for making a Crop Circle – come several such accounts. It transpires that, unsurprisingly for someone who has spent years deeply immersed within the Crop Circle controversy, Matthew is a veritable fountain of knowledge with respect to tales of weird creatures either having been seen in, or at least in the direct vicinity of, complex Crop Circle formations. One such case is truly strange.

Matthew advised me that the story in question concerned a man who had felt curiously compelled to drive late at night to a certain field in Wiltshire many years ago. On doing so, he parked his car and duly, and carefully, began his walk into the depths of the crop. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a large, black, human-like figure appeared in the air over the field. “It reminded me a little bit of the Mothman sightings when I heard this story,” said Matthew, not without a high degree of justification. Matthew continued that the source of the story could only stand and stare in awe, while suddenly gaining the distinct impression that the hovering entity was the source of at least some of the Crop Circle formations that were appearing in Wiltshire. At that precise moment, a simple Crop Circle suddenly appeared on the ground immediately below the black figure – after which it vanished from the skies and the man was left utterly alone in the field, and with no real option other than to make his shocked way back to his vehicle and drive home, baffled and bewildered by both the weird, aerial entity and what it was that had directed him to the field.

Matthew expands: “There was one time, I’d rather not say when or where exactly, as I could get into trouble for admitting I trespassed on the farmer’s land and made the crop circle formation. Plus, I had a friend named Paul helping me with this one. We were making this circle when we noticed these three bright lights – small balls of lights coming towards the field. We watched them; we were fascinated. But they split up and each of them went to a corner of the field – and which only left one corner for us to leave by without getting too close to these things. That was a bit unsettling. We didn’t know what these balls were; so we raced out of the open corner of the field. We looked back as we ran and could see the balls heading towards us: gliding very gracefully just above the top of the crop. It was like they were on a railway track, just moving very smoothly, but it left us sort of disturbed too: like they were almost ghostly and alive.”

The story was far from finished, as Matthew notes: “Well, I went to get the car, and told Paul to wait in the bushes at the edge of the road so he wouldn’t be seen. The last thing I wanted was for him to get arrested if the police happened to drive past. But by the time I had got the car and got back to Paul, he was walking up the middle of the road with all his Crop Circle equipment in full view. I pulled up, wound the window down and shouted at him: ‘What the hell are you doing? If people see you carrying your [crop circle-making] equipment, we’ll get arrested.’

“Paul looked scared stiff and said: ‘If they had arrested me, I’d have gone with them, just to get me out of there.’ I asked him what he meant, and Paul said that while I was getting the car he had heard these strange, animal-like screaming noises coming from inside the field and he had just charged out of there and onto the road. We never found out what it was though.”

Matthew Williams is not alone in commenting on such matters. In the summer of 2007, I spoke with Marcus Matthews, a researcher of mysterious big-cats in the U.K., who told me that he was then currently investigating a case involving a person who had seen a “huge black cat” sitting inside the confines of a Wiltshire Crop Circle. So, how do we define and explain such rogue reports as these? The answer, admittedly, and right now, is that we can’t. All I can say is this: if you ever find yourself deep in the heart of a huge Crop Circle, then keep a careful watch. There may be something monstrous keeping its eyes on you, getting ready to pounce.