You certainly remember the hullabaloo about crop circles in the 1980s, supposedly made as messages from alien beings. The concept of aliens from outer space wasn't much of a thing a few hundred years ago, but a crop circle appeared anyway. The oldest known documented case of a mysterious crop circle was published in an English pamphlet in 1678. The story told in its five pages involved the devil.
A farmer had three half-acres of oats ready to harvest. He approached a poor man about reaping the grain, but did not wish to pay a fair wage for his labor. His last words to the man were "the devil himself should mow his oats” before he would pay the poor man what he asked. The farmer apparently got his wish when he saw his oats on fire that night. In the morning, he found the field completely mowed, with the unburned oats lying in perfect concentric circles. However, he was too scared to gather them. Who needs aliens when you have the devil to deliver karma? Read that story in full at The Public Domain review. -via Boing Boing