In this episode, Andy Thomas revisits the crop circle mystery from a very specific and contentious angle: the famous 1996 Oliver’s Castle video, which appears to show a formation materialising beneath strange balls of light. Joining him are returning guest Jason Porthouse, an award-winning video editor with long experience in the crop circle world, and researcher Gary King, whose decades in the field have given him a deeply informed and balanced perspective. Together, they explore why this short stretch of footage still matters, what eyewitness testimony can and cannot tell us, and why the question of how formations appear remains so elusive despite years of observation, debate and attempted surveillance. They also dig into the technical side: what video editing was actually capable of in the mid-1990s, the practical time constraints that would have been involved in faking such footage, and the many assumptions that have built up around the case over the past three decades. Along the way, they reflect on the wider problem of evidence in a world increasingly shaped by digital manipulation, and ask whether a genuinely extraordinary video could ever be proven today. Whatever conclusion listeners draw, this conversation shows why crop circles continue to resist simple explanations and why mystery, for all its frustrations, still has a vital place in the story.

CCRA Ref.: ENWI199628 Olivers Castle Devizes