Barbara Lamb’s Summers in England’s Crop Circles

Barbara Lamb is best known for her regression work with people who report contact. But for many summers she also had a second field of study, quite literally: the crop formations that appear in the wheat and barley of southern England.

She went as a researcher, with a therapist’s habit of careful attention. She knew that some formations were made by people, and she followed the efforts to tell the man-made ones from the rest. She also described the formations with real wonder, as works of beauty she believed were “given.”

And in 1994, by her own account, the subject she studied became personal. This story follows Lamb into the fields, through her radio interviews, a 1994 discussion with fellow researchers, and a 2006 interview in which she described her own experience.

Two solid weeks

Lamb returned to England year after year.

On a radio program, the host asked Lamb how long she had spent in the fields that year. Her answer showed how seriously she took the work.

“And I was in the crop circles this year for two weeks, two solid weeks at the end of July. And this, by the way, was my eighth year of going to England in the summer specifically to research the crop circle phenomenon.”

Barbara Lamb in a crop formation in England, 1999. (Photo: Barbara Lamb Archive)

What drew her back was that no two summers were alike.

“Every year, the themes and the patterns seem to be different from the previous year. So we’ve had a very large array of the type of patterns that happen. And every year, of course, it’s a total surprise. It’s a mystery.”

Sources: Barbara Lamb radio interview, case_id -1 (#259B), segments 3 and 4.

Telling the real from the made

Lamb took the question of hoaxes seriously.

Some formations are made by people, and Lamb never pretended otherwise. In a 1994 discussion with fellow researchers, she described a 1992 contest in which teams were invited to make formations by hand, so that researchers could compare them with the ones that appeared on their own.

“And they did that because they wanted the comparison. They wanted the data. They wanted to see.”

Barbara Lamb with dowsing rods in a crop formation at Hackpen Hill, Wiltshire, 1999. (Photo: Barbara Lamb Archive)

She described the conditions the teams were given, which were generous.

“And they did it at night, but they could take as much time as they wanted to. And they could take big flashlights or anything. They could take literally anything that they wanted to, to make their crop circle with.”

Whether every formation she studied was beyond human hands is something no one can settle from a recording. What the archive shows is a researcher who wanted the comparison made.

Sources: discussion session with Barbara Lamb, case_id 215 (part A), segments 30 and 31, 1994.

Something given

Inside the formations, Lamb found a feeling she struggled to name.

Asked on the air why she kept going back, Lamb answered as someone who had stood inside the formations many times.

“And some of them are like mandalas to meditate upon and to meditate in. And each crop circle has its own feeling. ... And they all have a different mood or a tone, shall we say.”

She described them as a kind of gift, open to anyone who made the journey.

“It’s very compelling for many of us because it’s something that is given. It may be totally a paranormal phenomenon. And if it is, it’s a great gift because it’s something that we can actually, as long as we can get to where the crop circles are, we’re welcome to go into them and to experience them.”

In a later segment of the same program, she put her view plainly.

“There definitely are intelligences behind this phenomenon. And very creative intelligences.”

Sources: Barbara Lamb radio interview, case_id -1 (#259B), segment 25, and (#259A), segment 0.

Her own night in England

In 1994, Lamb says, she became an experiencer herself.

In a 2006 interview for a television documentary, the interviewer asked Lamb about her own experiences. She said she was aware of three, and described the first.

“The first was in 1994 when I was in England researching crop circles and I had been told before going to England that summer, told by an extraterrestrial through a regression contact, that I would be able to be with a group of beings as they made crop circles if I really listened sincerely and really meant it.”

She remembered little of the night itself. Later, under hypnosis guided by a colleague, she recalled being taken from her room aboard a small craft over a wheat field, and hearing a swooshing sound from its center.

“And it made several of these swooshing sounds and then a big ring. It seemed as if we were whizzing around in a ring sort of formation.”

The next day, she said, a new formation matched what she had heard.

“I do believe that that was the crop circle that I had been taken to by these three beings.”

Like the accounts of the people she worked with, Lamb’s own memory was recovered under hypnosis (more on how we handle hypnosis-based accounts). She offered it the way she asked her clients to offer theirs, as her own experience, in her own words.

Sources: Barbara Lamb interview, case_id 277 (part A), segments 14 to 16, 2006.

Why it matters

Lamb brought the same open, careful attention to the fields as to her clients.

Crop formations sit at the edge of the disclosure conversation, and some of them are plainly human work. What makes Lamb’s summers worth remembering is how she approached them: with enthusiasm, with an eye on the evidence, and with the same willingness to listen that defined her clinical practice. For experiencers who wonder whether the people helping them have ever stood where they stand, her 1994 account offers an answer. She had.

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