It's a canine.
Alfred, the dog owned by the Claude Greengrass character on Heartbeat, immediately comes to mind whenever I think of a lurcher.
Love it to be a panther, but I agree, it a moggie
It's not even grainy, blurry or poorly lit. It's just a video of a house cat bimbling about in a field.
Yes, other than it being black, I have no idea why the photographer would think it to be a panther
It's a good point you make. Jon Downes of the Centre for Fortean Zoology in North Devon received reports from locals of a big black cat being seen in the vicinity of some local woods. With his team he set up some camera traps at the rural and isolated location and caught nothing but an interesting array of local wildlife. Yet the farmer's son who saw the huge black cat leap the high fence and hedge (above) left me in no doubt as to what he had seen, was genuinely awe-stuck was of course familiar with the local wildlife.
This raises good points. We often fall into the habit of talking about ABCs in the way we talk about Nessie or Sasquatch. Yet, in spite of the appalling photographic and film evidence of alien cats in our countryside at any one time, we are talking about animals known to exist in the world, and, I believe, the remains of several foreign species of large wild cats have been discovered in our countryside. I saw the taxidermied body of Felicity the puma in Inverness Museum years ago, and she was discovered alive. There's nothing inherently impossible or even particularly improbable about foreign cat species existing for a time in the UK countryside.
In the Great Witchingham case there was a zoological park not that far away that included the Eurasian lynx but who denied any escapees. So equally you can argue a lynx would be attracted to this area for the very reason there were other lynx in the vicinity. In fact, its the same claim made about Dartmoor Wildlife Park's captive big cats attracting 'wild' big cats:
but yes, we have cast iron examples of wild big cats from lynx to puma in our countryside and yet the topic is still treated akin to Nessie and Bigfoot *sigh*. It seems dead bodies aren't enough, someone get a decent photo, please....!
I take your point. But Felicity the Puma and lynxes are light brown. Will anyone ever truly find a massive black cat with a long tail? I could say I'm 'on the fence' as so many of these creatures seem to be. But actually I don't think I am on the fence... I kind of take the crazy stance of Merrily Harpur and think that if people are seeing them, then maybe they're something half-real (like a nice traditional black dog). So I don't think real black cats are out there to provide proof??Rant over
True, the black colour is the most baffling part of this whole mystery. It could very well be that the lynx and Felicity are not in the same category as whatever the elusive black cats are. Then you have the link to the traditional Black Shuck etc. black dog sightings. Personally, I find myself in two minds between the physical and paranormal: it does seem, in the UK at least, that people stopped reporting encounters with UFO occupants at around the same time the alien black cats reared their heads along with the British bigfoot phenomena. I often wonder if it's the same 'intelligence' showing itself in different guises, as 'it' has done so throughout human history (the little people, elves, pixies etc). It would certainly explain the lack of evidence, something from which Ufology's CE3s also suffer from. Also, the circumstances in which ABCs are witnessed are pretty much identical to that of many UFO sightings: a person or small number of people isolated in some way due to location, time and/or darkness and experiencing 'something' without looking for it.
But then again, it can be hard enough to get a decent, clear picture of your own, domestic, usually-asleep-on-the-sofa cat. Either the camera isn't to hand and by the time you've fetched it the cat has wandered off, or the cat is moving and the picture is blurry or the camera is on the wrong setting and by the time you've switched it over the cat has wandered off or you point the camera at the cat who instantly sees something mouselike just out of frame and vanishes....In the Great Witchingham case there was a zoological park not that far away that included the Eurasian lynx but who denied any escapees. So equally you can argue a lynx would be attracted to this area for the very reason there were other lynx in the vicinity. In fact, its the same claim made about Dartmoor Wildlife Park's captive big cats attracting 'wild' big cats:
.... see towards the start of the above documentary.
It just seems that, as with UFOs, the media denigrate genuine witness experiences by hyping up every misidentification/hoax and drawing wild conclusions. There are people who have had genuine strange experiences including, for example, lights at night when driving that have interacted with them/their vehicle yet any attempt at a rational explanation is swamped by the media on one hand and wide-eyed self-titled 'investigators' on the other (see the 1992 A70 UFO incident). Likewise, there are plenty of rational witnesses to the alien big cat phenomenon, in fact more so than UFOs, and yet the media immediately steam in and shout "It's the Beast of [insert location here]!!!" and find someone who has taken a blurry photo of next door's moggie, or a smug journalist drives down from London and declares that ABC sightings are just "A manifestation of our desire for there to be something wild and dangerous in our environment blah blah crikey must hit the road, dinner at Fiorella's tonight, laters!"
Rant over
Ummm. The brush nearby kind of gives you an idea of scale. It's a kitty cat. So funny
I always suspect that it’s a slow news day.
Pretty much all that's in the news at the moment is Afghanistan. But it's the local news sites that seem to love these stories the most. Let's face it, it's always a slow news day in Lincolnshire.I always suspect that it’s a slow news day.
I used to volunteer on an archaeological dig at Castle Howard. If there was any truth in an ABC loose on the estate I can assure you that Simon Howard would have worked out a way to try to make money from it!
Don't worry, we all know ALL about the Howards round here...I used to volunteer on an archaeological dig at Castle Howard. If there was any truth in an ABC loose on the estate I can assure you that Simon Howard would have worked out a way to try to make money from it!
are those Howards descended from the Tudor Howards? (one of the beheadeds I think?)
Because way back then they were known for being really good at business.
Yes but you will find with most old families there has been a couple of ancestors who had, at some point, some sort of problem, be that gambling, drinking, women etc, which ends in the family becoming insolvent and having to sell off art works, land, estates etc.
And some not all that ancestral.
Or it could have been a black labrador(posted 5 hours ago on facebook)
Roxy Frances asked a question
S5tSlpofnshored ·in Cromer.
Morning!! My friend was driving to work the other evening on the phone to me. She stopped talking and swore she saw a large black animal (the size of a Labrador) with a really really long tail... she said it looked like a panther. So I googled it and this came up. Are these just myths? Has anyone else seen this animal?
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Some local has joked it's possibly Black Schuck.
