W-File: cc8007xx.htm

Type: Crop Circle
Date: July 1980
Location: Boscobel

Source: Boscobel, WI Dial, September 11, 1980

Did UFO land in Leland's cornfield?

Leland Freymiller of rural Woodman doesn't want to believe that a UFO landed in his cornfield. "People would think I'm crazy," he says. But he wishes someone would explain what had happened to a small section of his field, where the corn was mutilated as though by some outside force and the plants around it turned bright crimson.

Freymiller and his son-in-law, Ryan Reynolds, first noticed the weird phenomenon at the end of July, when the corn was tasseling out. They came upon an elliptical patch about 18 feet long and five feet wide extending across a tractor lane. The corn within the patch was twisted and broken.

Leland said he also noticed two round impressions in the earth, each about a foot in diameter.

"I didn't want to make a big thing of it then," he says, "but I've read about UFOs (unidentified flying objects) for 15 or 20 years and this intrigued me. It just didn't look natural."

Freymiller said he ruled out lightning. There were no storms at that time. And it couldn't have been vandals. The patch is in a remote area of the farm that can be easily reached only with a tractor.

When other strange things began to happen to the stricken corn, Freymiller began calling others in to have a look. The stalks that were mutilated appeared to be deteriorating within a few weeks in a manner that would normally take months. Stranger yet, leaves of the standing corn around the patch began to turn red.

"I've never seen red leaves on corn before," says Leland. "They always turn brown." All the rest of the corn in the big field is bright green.

"People who've seen it tell me I'd better have experts who know about such things look at it," Freymiller says. "Something happened to that corn, all right, but I don't know what it was."

Although Freymiller owns the farm, it is operated by another son-in-law, Bryce Updike.