There has been a bumper crop of corn circles in the Marlborough area, says researcher Lucy Pringle, who is investigating whether this annual phenomenon could have health restoring properties.

Hampshire author Miss Pringle has spent 20 years studying and photographing the circles and other formations that have appeared mainly in Wiltshire with the focus on the Marlborough Downs and the Silbury Hill area.

Formations have appeared at two favourite locations, in a field by The Sanctuary on Overton Hill between West Overton and West Kennett and at Hackpen Hill on the Marlborough-Wootton Bassett road to the downs.

Miss Pringle photographed two of the most recent formations at Wroughton and East Kennett and said that so far there had been about 12 patterns, more than at the same time last year.

She said she believed from the experience of one of her friends that the patterns could hold a mystical key to alleviating some health problems.

“In 1997 a friend with Parkinson’s Disease stopped shaking for 24 hours after going into crop circles,” said Miss Pringle, who said that traces of a dopamine – a substance in the nervous system which helps regulate movement and emotional response – had been found in the patterns by researchers.

“My focus this year is trying to establish a connection between Parkinson’s Disease and crop circles,” said the author who is also fund-raising for Parkinson’s research.

Miss Pringle, who has lectured world-wide on crop circles, has appealed to people not to trespass on farmland.

“I know that people in their excitement tend to rush into the fields without thinking and without realising that it is not their land; the land belongs to farmers and it is their livelihood.”

More about her research and the latest crop circles can be found on her website: www.lucypringle.co.uk