For centuries mysterious drawings in fields of grain have appeared randomly. During the middle ages they were believed to be the work of the devil, while today they are attributed to aliens. These drawings, baptized as "crop circles", still represent a phenomenon of unexplained origin even today. For a long time the crop circle phenomenon has been centered on Northern Europe and especially the Anglo-Saxon world.
The Ecospirituality Foundation Committee of Investigation into Fortian Phenomena has previously carried out investigations on crop circles, but without the possibility of access to first hand data, eye-witness accounts or samples of soil and vegetation pertaining to the phenomenon. This meant that much of the evidence that had been gathered was subject to doubt.
Recently, for the first time in Italy, three crop circles appeared simultaneously. Other cases may well have occurred in the past, but the quantity of documentation gathered make this the first confirmed case of its kind in Italy.
The Ecospirituality Foundation, immediately contacted by the witnesses of the phenomenon, gained access to a large bundle of photos, soil samples and other material from the three sites where the crop circles appeared.
The case has proved to be interesting due to the fact that the material collected is first-hand and has not been handled or tampered with by any outside parties, making it possible to begin a serious investigation of the triple phenomenon.

The unintentional witnesses to the chance findings of the three crop circles are Dr. Miriam Madau and Mr. Alberto Dovana, a married couple from Montalto Dora , a small town some 50km. from Turin, in Piedmont, Italy. They just happened to fInd themselves gazing upon the manifestation of this singular phenomenon through a series of fortunate circumstances and decided to call in the experts of Ecospirituality Foundation.

Dr. Miriam Madau	Alberto Dovana

Here is the report of the events that led to the acquisition of the data of the first official case of observation of crop circles in Italy.

1) Sunday June 1, 2003.
Discovery of the first crop circle, known as the "Pictogram", just outside of the town of Vische, (Piedmont).
Dr. Miriam Madau and Alberto Dovana were passing along a country road from Vische towards Crotte and Strambino on their motorcycle, when they noticed that at the bottom of a hill in the road there was a field, bordering directly onto the road, with a strange drawing in the grain.
It was not clear what the drawing represented, but it was there for all to see and was highly unusual.
The next day, our two witnesses returned to the site to take pictures. They had a feeling they were standing in front of a crop circle and thought that it might prove useful to take samples of the soil and the grain stalks for further examination. (It should be noted that the bent stalks that form the drawing have subsequently re-grown upwards and continued to ripen).

2) Thursday June 5, 2003
Dr. Madau and Mr. Dovana, curious about the strange apparition they had witnessed in the fields of Vische, contacted Ecospirituality Foundation, whose web site they had seen on the internet, to see if the organisation could help to explain what they had discovered.
They turned to the Ecospirituality Foundation because it includes among its various activities a Committee involved in research into this field of interest.
They were advised to try and get an aerial view of the site and take pictures from the air to show the complete shape of the pictogram.

3) Sunday June 15, 2003
Discovery of the extensive second crop circle and the third circle, called "The Sail".
In the morning Doctor Madau took off from Montalto Dora airfield in a rented small plane, together with the pilot, Galletto Naviglio, to take photos of the Pictogram.
The pilot handed the controls to Dr. Madau soon after they lifted off; and she set the plane on a course selected at random.
They hadn't gone far, when they noticed below them a large crop circle, featuring a clearly defined design drawn onto a field right under the plane.
The crop circle extended for hundreds of meters and the design was composed of two separate circles, joined by a long line, with other symbols making up the drawing.
The circle was in a field lying in the district of Perosa, bordered by the provincial road that runs from Scarmagno to Perosa. (to see the alignment of the major axis of the drawing and the position of the field, click on the chart).
The plane flew over the crop circle while Dr. Madau took a series of photos and video clips, then the pilot flew the plane towards the corn field where the Pictogram had first been discovered.
Once they reached the drawing Dr. Madau took more pictures of the unusual formation in the corn and they then decided to return to the base at Montalto.
While the plane was making its turn before heading back to the air strip, our reporter noticed another strange drawing in a field of maize close by, which again seemed to bear the hallmarks of a crop circle.
This drawing showed what looked like a large sail, with a circle at its base; this circle, though, is made up of maize stalks that are still vertical, rather than being bent over, and the sail shape is made up of shorter and wider spread stalks.
Miriam took more pictures and noted the map references of the field with the Sail.
Points of reference: From the provincial road running from Crotte to Vische, at the point where it is joined by the site of the road works on the new road that will link to Carrone, there are two roads that cut into the fields on the left towards Vische, one that is asphalted and the other a dirt road (a third, cycle track, leads to Cascina Luisina, further away from the drawing). The asphalted road is the reference point of the left side of the Sail and leads to Cascina Monesa, while the dirt road forms the Sail's right edge, and from here there is an access point to the maize field that contains the drawing by walking around a cultivated field of vegetables, leading right into the center of the Sail. (When returning to the site later, our two reporters took the dirt road, but the maize was so high they couldn't find the position of the drawing in the field, so they found their bearings by referring to a stretch of the road between the second and the third tree standing along the right of it
Then the plane returned to the airfield.
That same afternoon, Miriam Madau and Alberto Dovana went back to the field where the large crop circle was (the Perosa site) to make an official inspection of the site with photos and video clips. They also took various measurements of the drawing. The larger circle had a radius of 20 meters, while the circle with the bent stalks, the one further north with a tuft in the center, had a radius of 7.5 meters. They took various soil and corn stalk samples to be sent to a laboratory for analysis.
Within a few days, the two witnesses delivered all of their material to the Ecospirituality Foundation so that it could be examined and possibly provide some sort of answer to their curiosity about the event to which they had been involuntary witnesses.