THE local environment of BL Lacertae objects, which resemble quasars but lack emission lines, is poorly understood. In the few cases where the surrounding nebulosity has been studied in detail, it is consistent with the presence of a giant elliptical galaxy1, but the evidence that the BL Lac and the putative galaxy are physically associated rests solely on their positional coincidence. An alternative hypothesis, that BL Lacs are gravitationally lensed2,3 and that the surrounding emission is from the foreground lensing object, gains some support from a number of observations4–6 which reveal less than perfect alignment between BL Lacs and surrounding emission. We have begun a systematic programme of high-resolution imaging aimed at understanding in a general way the local environment of BL Lacs. Here we describe a first series of images, which show the presence of emission features around most of the BL Lacs observed. Typically, this emission is close (<5 arcsec) to the BL Lac, and faint (mR = 21). We discuss the interpretation of these companions in terms of both interacting objects and gravitational lenses.