Ley Lines: Investigating on Site
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[ INVESTIGATIVE FILES JOE NICKELL Joe Nickell, PhD, is a historical, paranormal, and forensic sleuth. His many books include Unsolved History, Adventures in Paranormal Investigation, and Crime Science. Ley Lines: Investigating on Site ystical forces are as plentiful were devised so that Neolithic people Michel, in his Flying Saucers and the and diverse as the imaginations could walk more easily from place to Straight Line Mystery, postulated that Mthat create them. They include place, navigating by line of sight. He sightings of UFOs tended to form crystal healing, hauntings, and pyramid adopted the word ley—from lea, leigh, alignments, and an early alien abductee power—along with countless others. ley, etc.—meaning an enclosed field claimed that extraterrestrials used lines Among them are “earth energies”— (Watkins 1925, 158), although there of magnetic force to power their space- supposed mysterious powers often were no pastures in Neolithic times. craft. UFO believer Tony Wedd com- associated with megaliths and other While it is reasonable that some align- bined these two saucer concepts with sacred or magical places—and (the Watkins’s ley lines (Sullivan 2000, 2). focus of this study) the “ley lines” or Others were drawn to leys, and in 1969 “leys” that supposedly connect the sites. paranormalist John Michell conceived of leys as invisible lines of an unknown What Are Ley Lines? Michell adopted natural “energy.” Originally, ley lines were supposed to Watkins’s “ley lines” A “lifelong marijuana smoker,” Mi- be ancient—even prehistoric—paths and linked them with chell (1933–2009) promoted all man- that connected sacred places. The Chinese feng shui ner of pseudoscientific and pseudohis- term was coined by Alfred Watkins torical claims, including UFOs, crop (1855–1935), an English brewer’s rep- (“wind-water”). circles, and other Fortean and New Age resentative turned photographer and concepts. In his The View Over Atlantis amateur antiquarian. Others had dis- (1969), he began to develop ideas that covered alignments of ancient sites, but led to the “Earth mysteries” movement in 1921—while looking at a map of the (“John Michell” 2016). He adopted Herefordshire countryside—Watkins Watkins’s “ley lines” and linked them noted that several ancient sites seemed ments might well have occurred as with Chinese feng shui (“wind-water”), aligned on an imaginary straight course Watkins thought, it is also true that the which advocates the seeking of har- that also crossed over some prominent vast number of ancient features—both mony with Earth’s universal life prin- hilltops. natural and man-made—meant that ciple, called chi. Chi is an imagined He immediately intuited that such many appropriate alignments would be “energy” that supposedly flows through alignments were part of a Neolithic sys- expected to occur by chance. Earth and everything upon it and is af- tem of straight lines. He presented his No doubt far overstating the case, fected by contours and changes of the ideas in two books, first sketched out in Watkins still never lapsed into mysti- landscape (Michell 1969, 46–54). Early British Trackways (1922) and then cal nonsense, as began to happen in the Michell regarded dowsing (the use developed in The Old Straight Track 1960s and 1970s with the rise of the of divining rods or pendulums) and (1925). He argued that the alignments New Age movement. In 1958 Aimé clairsentience (psychic sensing) as 12 Volume 40 Issue 5 | Skeptical Inquirer means of locating and verifying leys observed that the design was on a ley Andrews—were dowsers or those who as “indeed lines of the earth current” line that linked nearby sites—run- depended on dowsing by others to sup- (1969, 195). He wrote: ning from West Kennet Long Barrow posedly authenticate crop circles, often The dowser’s rod twitches as he through Silbury Hill and on to another with their association with ley lines. crosses the spot where once an old ancient site. He also helpfully took Yet time and again, the circle designs stone marked the corner of a sub- dowsing measurements of Chris’s and were discovered to have been hoaxed terranean rift. The sensitive person my invisible “auras.” At his request we (Schnabel 1994, 51–55, 100, 164–169, feels the magnetic surge within the meditated a few moments, whereupon 152–169, 152–277). I helped analyze stone ring [e.g., Stonehenge]. For such places still bear the invisible the sweeping rods supposedly indicated crop circle data that pointed to hoax- marks of some feat of natural magic, our energy fields had expanded from a ing as the most likely explanation for performed by the adepts of the for- few inches to several feet (Nickell 2001, the phenomenon: the designs were mer world, space and time travellers, 70–82). (Elsewhere, I have reported on more prominent in southern England, masters of revelation, to whom the had proliferated in the wake of media earth was but another living creature, my investigation that found auras to be responding like a man to certain nonexistent [Nickell 2001, 142–149].) reports, were increasing in complexity shapes, sounds and poetic correspon- Unfortunately, many of the lead- each season, and exhibited a “shyness” dences, the keys to universal enlight- ing cereologists—such as Terrence effect (i.e., the mechanism was never enment. (Michell 1969, 192–193) Meaden, Pat Delgado, and Richard seen in operation). Subsequently, two Michell not only held that there was retired artists, Doug Bower and Dave a network of mystical lines of energy Chorley, admitted they had begun covering Britain but also, implicitly, making the circles and then were im- such a network across the surface of itated by others (Nickell 2001, 70–82). the Earth. These ley lines linked pre- Time and again, historic “sacred centres” as well as more the circle designs were ‘Druids Grove’ recent holy sites and, it would soon be discovered to have An investigative tour I made of Germany apparent, mysterious formations such in the fall of 2002 included three sites in as crop circles (Michell 1990). been hoaxed. northern Bavaria associated with the legendary Celtic priesthood, the Druids. Crop Circles This expedition (which included the I first seriously encountered true intrepid Martin Mahner and several believers in ley lines when I exam- members of the Bamberg Skeptics ined crop circles in southern English Guild) was led by geologist Michael fields (guided by skeptics Chris Nash and John Eastmond) in June 1994. In the picturesque Wiltshire countryside, I came upon such ancient sites—all linked to ley line claims—as Silbury Hill (the tallest Neolithic man-made mound in Europe, see Figure 1), West Kennet Long Barrow (one of Britain’s largest Neolithic chambered tombs), and Avebury (Europe’s larg- est Neolithic henge monument, much larger than Stonehenge). In our “field research,” we examined two of the handful of crop circles and pictograms we discovered. The second of these had a crescent-and-circle de- sign and was introduced to visitors by a crude sign placed by the angry farmer: “The Circle—it’s a Hoax.” Neverthe- less, a group of local dowsers who pre- ceded us there pronounced the picto- gram genuine. One of them, applying his wand, claimed its reaction proved the formation was not a hoax but was Figure 1. John Eastmond (left), Chris Nash, and Joe Nickell (taking photo) examine a crop-circle pictogram in Wiltshire, with Silbury Hill in the background. formed by earth spirits (Figure 2). He Skeptical Inquirer | September/October 2016 13 been an ancient Celtic fortress. This tacked preferentially by seeping water, identification was confirmed by exca- the erosion eventually resulting in a vations that revealed iron implements multitude of rocks aligned in rows. and pottery dating to circa 500 BCE. [Link 2002].) Thus, Druidenhain is The second site (only about a kilome- revealed as yet another folly of dowsers ter and a half away) was a limestone and ley-line seekers. cavern named Espershöhle. (It brought back memories of my avid spelunking Nazca Lines adventures in the 1960s.) A passageway Heralded as “the example which really led to a fifteen-meter-deep pit where caught the public imagination” about excavated artifacts and skeletal remains leys (Heselton 1999, 59) and as repre- had proved it to be another Celtic site senting “real physical evidence for the (Link 2002). old straight track” in South America In contrast to these two scientifically (Sullivan 2000, 10) are the mysteri- validated sites is a pseudoscientifically ous Nasca lines in Peru. They consist claimed one known as Druidenhain or of myriad lines and swaths that run “Druid’s Grove,” which we also visited. ruler-straight for miles, together with Arrangements of giant rocks litter the great trapezoids and giant stylized birds wooded area, interspersed with pas- and other figures that can be properly sageways so as to create a labyrinthine viewed only from the air. They were effect and inspiring popular belief that Figure 2. A dowser claims his rod’s reaction proves a made by the pre-Incan Nazca culture crop pictogram is not a hoax but the genuine work of it is an ancient Celtic site—indeed, as that flourished in the area from 2000 earth spirits. (Photo by Joe Nickell.) some have called it, the “University of BCE to about 600 CE. Their graves the Druids.” The megaliths—suppos- and settlement ruins lie nearby. In edly formed by the Celts by heating and 2006, I was able to visit the area I had cooling to produce fracturing—have long studied from afar and to fly over been given such imaginative names as what looked like a giant drawing board “Christening Stone,” “Bowl Stone,” and (Nickell 2007b, 151–158).