| From a penchant for anal probes to carving crop circles in fields, aliens seem more like intergalactic student pranksters than advanced beings. Mind you, give the average human student a powerful space cruiser and he would undoubtedly search out booze, fun and kinky alien sex, preferably with a species sporting an extra sexual appendage or two. For some unfathomable reason though, visitors to Earth prefer to get their kicks in rural backwaters such as Wylatowo in western Poland. Wylatowo, a sleepy farming community where cows outnumber the 512 inhabitants, is developing a reputation as the UFO capital of Europe. For the last four years, complex patterns have been appearing in fields, eerie lights have shone from the skies, and one farmer has even claimed to witness a ‘huge spacecraft’ land in his back garden. My journey to see what all the fuss was all about – and hopefully set myself up for life by obtaining proof of alien intelligence – began in Warsaw. As I left the outskirts of the Polish capital, I spotted a lurking priest waving at passing cars. I considered picking him up – after all, Mel Gibson did kick alien butt in Signs and I didn’t know if the ‘visitors’ were friendly – but I dithered too long and didn’t stop. Ten minutes later, after having witnessed the suicidal insanity of Polish drivers, I realised the priest had in fact been administering the last-rites. Driving across Poland is a lesson in just how religious the Poles are, and goes some way to explaining why the people believe things most secular cynics dismiss. Even in the middle of nowhere, where my dreadful directional sense frequently took me, busts of the Virgin Mary studded the landscape, presumably for the benefit of any pious cattle that may wander past. As ‘Radio Maria’ – the only station I seemed able to find – played uninterrupted live Mass, religious retreats and sanctuaries flashed past with regular monotony, broken up by the incongruous sight of rural prostitutes hovering on the roadside in leather mini-skirts and boots: the Polish idea of a ‘service’ station. When I finally rolled into Wylatowo, I couldn’t deny there was a certain strange atmosphere. Grey mist had settled over the land, clinging to my shins as I clambered stiffly out of the car, and naked trees loomed threateningly over me. The hills undulated away from the village into nothingness, and I could almost believe a massive flying saucer had thumped to the ground and sent ripples through the earth. Before I arrived, Wylatowo had been planning to ask the European Union for EUR 1 million to build visitors’ facilities for the thousands of UFO hunters that come to see the mysterious crop circles each year. The money had obviously yet to arrive: only a lone sign in German proclaiming the town ‘UFO ground zero’ provided any sign of activity on the tourist infrastructure front . The lack of tourist facilities was mirrored by the lack of extra-terrestrial activity, although a chicken did run off in a suspicious manner when I tried to take a photograph, leading me to suspect it may have been a disguised alien. I had arrived too late in the year to see any circles – the crops had been harvested – but a farmer took me into his field and pointed to indentations caused by ‘landing gear’. He then charged me ten zloty, which did seem a little steep for staring at a few shallow dents in an empty field. However, he did show me some photographs of the crop formations: huge crosses with four circles at the extremities etched into wheat fields. He also showed me a photograph of a fish bearing the same pattern that someone had allegedly pulled from a Polish river, although what a tiny alien spacecraft was doing landing on a fish escapes me. These strange events have caught the imagination of the Polish people, although some accuse the farmers of creating the circles to extract cash from gullible tourists. But Nancy Talbott from independent American UFO research group BLT, who was in Wylatowo researching the phenomena, believes they may be real. “Five of the formations we examined exhibited characteristics associated with genuine circles,” she told me. When I left Wylatowo I was no closer to the truth, but as the late evening sun burned off the mist and bathed the idyllic rolling landscape in a warm red glow, I began to feel grateful that the aliens, who undoubtedly have a vast array of weaponry they could unleash upon Earth should we displease them, had chosen here to study humankind. After all, they could have ended up in Ibiza.
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