Some years ago we were invited to lunch with friends in Afrata village, whose house stands on a hill with a commanding view of the Gulf of Chania and Lefka Ori. As we stood on the balcony a fellow guest, a Chania businessman, gripped us by the arm and said “Look!” in conspiratorial tones. It turned out that he was looking not at the stupendous view but at the sky which was criss-crossed with vapour trials from passing aircraft. “Contrails!” he said darkly, “It’s the CIA …”
He was of course referring to the widely held conspiracy theory, also known as “chemtrails”, that the vapour trials seen in the sky are caused not by condensation from aircraft engine exhausts (the scientific explanation) but by chemical substances introduced into the atmosphere by unknown agents for nefarious purposes. As anti-NATO sentiment is rife in Chania because of the Souda air and naval bases, the US and its various agencies are a natural culprit in the minds of believers.
What was striking was that the man in question was a senior manager in a local olive oil company who boasted that they were shipping a container load of olive oil to Brazil every month. One had always supposed that success in business required a certain amount of common sense which might insulate one against the excesses of the imagination, but it appears that this is not the case.
We came across the same belief a little later when invited to lunch at Kali Kardia in Afrata by a young Haniot businesswoman and her friend who said that she was firmly convinced by the contrails theory. She also told us that US military personnel stationed at Souda are limited to a term of 2 years to protect them from the radiation of the nuclear weapons stored there.
On the basis of this rather limited sample, as well as experience of the speed with which unsubstantiated rumour spreads among local villagers, we came to the conclusion that the residents of Chania are prone to believing in conspiracy theories. But they are not alone in this, and indeed it seems that this is a national phenomenon, although one which may be diminishing. The question of whether “they are spraying us” has, it turns out, been preoccupying researchers for some time, with periodic surveys measuring the extent to which Greeks’ belief in the theory has altered over the past few years. One of Haniotika Nea’s leader writers, Giorgos Ountrakis, penned the following humorous piece, which was published in the paper on 29th December.
Happy Christmas countdown …
Twelve years ago, the number of people who believed that they are spraying us was determined to be 33.3% (Metron Analysis, 13/10/2013). Four years later, the number had fallen slightly to 32.4% (About People 20-21/11/2017). On 13-17/11/2025 it was found that only 18.9% think that “they may be spraying us”.
This brings us inescapably to two possible conclusions: one that the spraying aircraft have suffered a breakdown, and the other that Greeks are beginning to recover from “the mixture they are spraying us with”. Of course the most probable scenario is that the spraying aircraft have been immobilised on the ground by a technical fault. Maybe they were vandalised by the Illuminators.
We can also reasonably suppose that a by no means negligible quantity of our fellow citizens do not get vaccinated against the flu because they have gained protection against colds from the “spraying”. Also, the same amount of our fellow citizens, when they go to vote in the elections, are gripped by persecution mania: they believe that they are being followed by the secret services of foreign powers.
This same 18% moves further into the realm of unproven beliefs with the conviction that the new ID cards have “chips” in them (oregano flavoured no doubt) so that the Americans can track us. Personally I prefer my chips without salt…
(Haniotika Nea, 29/12/25)