Látványos útmutató Higgins Steve Egy UFO fiatalkorom című könyvéhez

My latest book, ‘My UFO Youth: A Road Trip Through Britain’s UFO History’, features a selection of 20 photographs in the centre, capturing key moments and locations from my journey – from standing in the middle of a freshly made crop circle to nights spent skywatching on the slopes of Cradle Hill.

Although the book’s focus is on the story rather than the pictures, I’ve included a small selection in black and white to help illustrate the adventure. Here, I’ve gathered those same photos in full colour, along with a bit more context and background about each one.

If you’ve picked up the audiobook version on Audible, this page should also serve as a handy visual companion, giving you a closer look at the people, places, and moments behind ‘My UFO Youth’.

This photo captures our little camp on Knap Hill, the setting for my first proper skywatch in around thirty years. That’s James in the sleeping bag, looking like he’s about to cocoon and emerge as some sort of celestial moth, and Kerry keeping warm in the van behind him.

This was me putting my new digital night vision binoculars through their paces on Knap Hill. They weren’t exactly NASA-grade but they did the job. Despite being more like a camcorder built into a monocular rather than true binoculars. It was one of those geeky full-circle moments. As a teenager, I’d stood on this same hill with a basic pair of binoculars, staring up in wonder. Now, decades later, I was back in the same spot with tech that could see in the dark and record what it saw.

Here’s James, Rich and Paul huddled around Paul’s night vision camcorder, testing its limits under the Wiltshire sky. Rich was new to all this but threw himself in with enthusiasm, while Paul’s experience with past-life regression and alien encounter hypnosis made him perfectly qualified for brushes with the unexplained.

The Crop Circle Visitor Centre, tucked away in the old Honey Street Mill. Spread across two creaky wooden floors, the exhibition traces the full history of the phenomenon – from centuries-old reports of „mowing devils” to the modern heyday of Wiltshire’s elaborate designs.

Just a short walk from the Crop Circle Visitor Centre sits The Barge Inn – a canalside pub that’s something of a spiritual home for crop circle chasers and UFO enthusiasts. It’s been a hub for this odd little corner of Wiltshire folklore since the 1990s, attracting everyone from curious tourists to full-blown believers. On the day we visited, it was the perfect mix of locals, day-trippers, and boaters enjoying a pint in the sunshine.

Inside The Barge Inn, one of the main bar rooms is dominated by this incredible mural that stretches across the entire ceiling. It depicts a glowing sun, flowing energies, chalk hills, and geometric crop circle patterns spread across a Wiltshire landscape. I remember staring up at this same artwork back in the mid-90s, when it felt like a shrine to the strange and unexplained. Seeing it again after all these years was oddly nostalgic.

Stepping into the crop circle at Etchilhampton was a surreal moment. After following the narrow tractor lines through tall wheat, the field suddenly opened up into this perfectly formed pattern – flattened crops spiralling smoothly around a central point. Even knowing that most – if not all – crop circles are man-made, it’s hard not to feel a sense of awe standing inside one.

Here I am standing in the centre of the Etchilhampton crop circle – the heart of the formation and, apparently, where the „energies” are strongest. I didn’t notice any tingling palms or glowing skin like a hippie lady back near where I parked the car had promised, but it was still a strangely peaceful place to stand.

This aerial shot from my drone shows the Etchilhampton crop circle in all its detail – the sweeping arcs, crisp lines, and a few of the people we met that day scattered across the formation. They were an interesting mix – a seasoned circle-chasers, curious newcomers, and one man who claimed to get headaches only inside „genuine” circles. Conversations drifted from geometry to energy fields to whether drone pilots might secretly be the makers themselves.

After a long day chasing crop circles, we ended up at the Red Lion in Avebury – a thatched, picture-perfect pub sitting right in the middle of the ancient stone circle. We sat outside with Sullivan our golden retriever dozing under the table while locals and tourists came and went. Over drinks, I struck up a conversation with a man in a wide-brimmed hat who told me about an annual skywatch up on Cradle Hill – one of Warminster’s legendary UFO hotspots. It sounded like fate nudging me toward the next step of the journey.

Before heading home, we took a walk around the ancient stone circle at Avebury and decided to let Sullivan share in the experience by placing his paw on one of the stones – just to see if he could absorb some of that famous earth energy. Whether he felt anything mystical or not, he seemed perfectly content. Moments later, he proved his connection to nature by doing what dogs do best and leaving a very down-to-earth offering nearby.

A night-vision snap of the gathering on Cradle Hill’s parking strip – veterans, newcomers, dogs and deckchairs, all waiting for dusk to tip into possibility. The chatter was part local history, part UFO folklore, with the army’s security lights glowing on the plain below like stage lamps. If anything was going to appear, it had a full audience.

This long, straight fire road cuts through Rendlesham like a runway for rumours. It’s the same landscape the airmen trudged in 1980, now dotted with Forestry England waymarkers that steer you from the East Gate towards the key moments of the story. In daylight it’s dog walkers and latte stops; at night, with the wind in the pines and the lighthouse winking from the coast, you can see how Cold War nerves might turn ordinary lights and noises into something extraordinary.

Deep in the woods, this black metallic sculpture marks the supposed landing site of the mysterious craft seen by US airmen in December 1980. Modelled on witness sketches, it sits half-hidden among the trees like a modern monument to belief – part art installation, part memorial to the night Suffolk briefly became Britain’s Roswell.

In the old command bunker at RAF Bentwaters, this tongue-in-cheek display nods to the alien stories that put Rendlesham on the map. The museum’s „autopsy room” features a life-sized model of a supposed extraterrestrial body, lying beneath clinical lights beside newspaper headlines from the 1980 incident.

Warminster’s new mural brings the town’s most famous mystery vividly back to life. Stretching across the rear of a row of garages near the Central Car Park, the 20-metre artwork celebrates six decades since the first reports of the „Warminster Thing.” Created by local artist Paul Boswell, it replaces an earlier mural and features flying saucers, alien figures, and landmarks linked to the 1960s sightings – a bold, colourful reminder that this quiet Wiltshire town was once the UFO capital of Britain.

Part of the Warminster mural features a striking monochrome portrait of Arthur Shuttlewood, the local journalist whose reports first brought the „Warminster Thing” to national attention in the 1960s. Shuttlewood’s articles transformed a few strange noises and lights in the sky into a full-blown UFO phenomenon, drawing crowds of skywatchers to the Wiltshire hills. His inclusion on the mural feels fitting – a tribute to the man who put Warminster on the UFO map.

The familiar lane leading up to Cradle Hill looks calm and unremarkable by day, with its faded warning signs and rusted gate marking the boundary between farmland and Ministry of Defence land. Yet this quiet track once drew crowds of skywatchers and curious onlookers from all over Britain. Today, it’s just another peaceful Wiltshire byway – a place for dog walkers and locals, where the extraordinary stories that once defined it now linger only in memory.