An icebreaker
In the 1920s an antiquarian noticed old landmarks seemed to line up across the British countryside and called the pattern leys. Later writers expanded that into claims of a planet-wide energy grid; archaeologists say the alignments are simply what chance produces.
In his 1925 book he argued that ancient mounds, moats, and mark stones across Britain lined up along straight paths he named leys, which he took to be old trade routes. He presented this as practical field observation, not mysticism.
His 1969 book recast the same alignments as channels of psychic energy linking sacred sites worldwide, tying them to lost civilizations and sacred geometry. The book became one of the most influential texts of the era's countercultural revival.
After reporting a UFO sighting in 1952, he spent years calculating what he called a worldwide harmonic grid, arguing it explained UFO navigation, antigravity, and nuclear weapons alike. He published his calculations across several books starting in 1968.
He pointed out that Britain's landscape is so thick with ancient sites that a straight line drawn almost anywhere will connect several of them without meaning anything. He grouped ley lines with other claims his research found unsupported by the archaeological record.