ABCs: THE MYSTERY CONTINUES
MERRILY HARPUR argues that Britain’s Anomalous Big Cats are more akin to fortean phenomena than flesh-and-blood creatures and asks whether new technology has brought us any closer to solving the ABC mystery…
It’s been 15 years since MERRILY HARPUR published her ‘heretical’ study of Britain’s elusive big cats, arguing that their contradictory nature made them more akin to fortean phenomena than flesh-and-blood creatures. With an updated edition hitting the shelves, she asks what has changed in the past decade and a half, and whether new technology has brought us any closer to solving the ABC mystery…
As soon as I opened the unfamiliar email, the familiar flush of excitement, foreshadowing something strange, came over me – much as it came over the BBC’s Clare Balding when she saw an anomalous big cat in Herefordshire: “I was fizzing!” And I hadn’t even seen an ABC myself, I was simply reading the report of a stranger who had – in Norfolk on 8 March 2021, just the night before. Adam began:
“It was yesterday – a cloudy evening and becoming dusk at about 6.10pm – and I was going for my usual after dinner walk towards our local church in Mautby. Opposite this ancient church are two fields, and in one of them, over to the right, I became aware of a dark mass, running. At first I thought it was a deer…”
With the publication of Mystery Big Cats in 2006 I had felt pretty much big-catted-out; but invariably as soon as I read a new report such as Adam’s I was immediately back in that thrilling landscape where encounters with the unknown happen. In the book I had suggested that ABCs are members of a family the ancient Greeks called daimones, in English “daimons” (and not to be confused with demons). They are beings which exist in every culture, and their common characteristic is to be contradictory: either bigger or smaller than us, tangible yet ephemeral, benign or menacing by turns, equally absurd and frightening, both there and not-there, sometimes ridiculous and sometimes impressive, often equally purposeful or meaningless. They are so contradictory that any attempt to grasp, categorise or classify them leads to confusion… until one finally twigs: their ambiguity is the point. They seem to provoke us into discarding our post Enlightenment insistence that they be either solid flesh-and-blood beings or wraiths; they tease us into making sense of them in another way.
“A BLACK MASS”
In the second half of Mystery Big Cats I pointed out those aspects of our ABCs which resemble other daimons, ancient and modern: dryads, fairies, goblins, djinn, the Sidhe, fauns, the Cornish piskies, the woodwose, Black Shuck, hulderfolk, UFOs, Will O’ The Wisp, men-in-black, werewolves, lights in the sky
– I could go on indefinitely. As intermediate beings, daimons often favour liminal zones, and indeed Adam’s encounter happened at a liminal time and place: twilight, an ancient landscape and church. Hardly surprising then that it was during a solitary stroll in such a suggestive scene that he became aware of “a black mass” moving. He continued:
“It got as far as the border of the field which has a tree on a bank – here it hid behind the tree for a few seconds and peered around the side of it. I say peered, but at no time did I see the head of this thing – although I felt it was watching me. It proceeded now to move out into the open of the second field – and then it ran at such a speed that my eyes had trouble focusing and following it in the dimming light. It ran so fast!
“It then proceeded to jump over the bank on to the road where I was standing, and stopped, watching me. At this point it was about 20ft [6m] from me. I am 5’ 6’ [1.68m] and I would guess that it would have reached up to my hips, just, in height. Again, I have to state that I could see no head and certainly no
IN THE BOOK I SUGGESTED THAT ABCS ARE WHAT THE ANCIENT GREEKS CALLED ‘DAIMONES’
eyes, but I knew it was looking at me.
“Now, I call this a cat from the way it moved – on occasion lowering itself on to its front like a cat that is ready to pounce; it did this a couple of times. And the way it ran reminded me of how I had seen cheetahs and big cats run on wildlife programmes. It was so near to dusk I could see no tail, only how it seemed to grow in length when it lowered itself – just like my pet cat does – and also it looked around the tree in my direction just like my pet cat used to when I was playing with him.
“I did not feel frightened but neither did I want to take my eyes off this ‘cat’. I was too mesmerised to reach for my phone to take a picture. It all happened so fast, and my mind was trying to make sense out of what I was seeing. It seemed to circle me at speed but in no way did I feel in danger at any point.
“I blinked and it disappeared into the woods on the other side of this road.”
Interestingly, Adam is a professional psychic and is familiar with the idea of daimons. In a different location near his village he is aware of elementals peculiar to Norfolk, calling them hyter sprites (see FT397:63). And yet, being practised at distinguishing between different kinds of perception, he is adamant that the ABC he saw “was definitely physical in nature rather than strictly psychic”.
“EVERYTHING CHANGES IN YOUR HEAD…”
When I reopened my file to log more recent reports, such as Adam’s, and to update Mystery Big Cats, I found that in the years since 2006 much had changed. Technology had arrived to illustrate ever more vividly the interface between the daimonic world and our quotidian reality. Podcasts and YouTube channels had sprung up to allow ordinary Joes an opportunity to describe their own encounters with the unknown. Indeed, Clare Balding’s sighting was recorded live on air, during her Radio 4 programme Ramblings.
Inevitably the largest genre of online sightings concerns UFOs. However, my own interest lay with the more obviously chthonic daimons, such as the wodewose or woodwose which the marvellous Deborah Hatswell records in her YouTube channel, the ghastly dogman in Dogman Encounters and richest of all, Sasquatch Chronicles hosted by Wes Germer. In well over 700 episodes and counting, Wes allows witnesses to describe encounters with that famous North American daimon, Bigfoot or Sasquatch, without interruption or judgement. Possibly the most extraordinary narration among these is by an Englishwoman in Episode 515. ‘Claire’ had arrived in California on a work project, and in her spare time had made her way to a beach near Big Sur forest in the hope of photographing sea-otters. Sitting quietly on some rocks she suddenly felt spooked and looking round she noticed what she at first thought was a huge cat. It then appeared much bigger and bulkier than a cat and when it rose from all fours and stood up she saw it was a bipedal man-like creature, covered in hair and at least seven feet tall. “I had never seen anything like it in my life,” she says. Moreover, there were five more of these creatures coming around the headland. Claire describes the strange chattering of the group and the threatening behaviour of the largest male, the incredible speed at which he moved, arriving in front of her “at the flick of a switch”, her voice shaking as she relives the trauma. She describes having seemingly fainted and coming round to find herself 10 metres (33ft) from her car, bruised and scratched, with her Barbour over her head, having been apparently dragged by the coat the half mile back to the car park.
It is impossible not to believe the event as Claire described it. But it is rarely that witnesses are dragged from one reality to another in such a brutally physical way. More often the witnesses, finding themselves the connecting principle between the daimonic world and our reliable reality, are left puzzled, wondering, terrified or awestruck rather than bruised. In the words of one of Rick Minter’s informants, Amy Louise from Hampshire: “It opened my eyes. You never expect to see something like that, and once you do you think ‘Oh my goodness’… Everything changes in your head.”
“THEY EXIST TO BE NOTICED…”
Rick Minter is a veteran of ABC research and follows Wes Germer’s format of interviewing witnesses in depth by means of some sagacious questioning but basically allowing them to describe events in their own unadorned words. Moreover Rick elicits their feelings and ideas about their encounters. As he thoughtfully remarks: “Big cats are about people.” His website and podcast Big Cat Conversations is therefore a treasure trove of primary sources.
While the physical evidence for ABCs being nuts-and-bolts animals, the descendants of zoo escapees or released pets, remains scarce and ambiguous, this is still – after all these years – the orthodox ‘explanation’. Yet the
first-hand accounts relayed by investigators such as Rick provide another rich vein – one that favours my own more heretical theory, that these creatures are modern-day daimons. They display the anomalous features and elusiveness of creatures which can pass between different worlds. For instance the big cat that startled Amy Louise was lynx-like, in that she describes its ears with black tufts extending them “as if someone had glued them on”. Yet in other respects it was a classic puma, sandy coloured with a long tail – whereas, of course, lynxes are mottled with very short tails. The black panther-like cat ‘John’ saw – at close quarters from his motorhome – was muscular and lean “with a freakishly small head”. Yet the one he saw from the M25 had an unusually large head, like a jaguar. Another of Rick’s reports, from Hertfordshire, describes a black panther with spotted back legs, while another witness saw a huge black cat with big black pointed ears – not a characteristic of the leopard family, which have round ears. There was certainly something a little otherworldly about this latter cat, sitting on its haunches on a path through a reed bed: it was slender and graceful with “gleaming yellow eyes” and a purple sheen to its long black hair which the wind was parting. It “melted away” in a fluid movement “like water”, leaving the witness puzzled: “Nothing was quite right.”
Moreover, whereas most ABCs display an air of confident indifference to the witness, others’ behaviour is often strange – as though they are not sure where they are. Angler Nigel Sweet was setting up his rods early one morning at a lake in the Coalpit Fields area of Bedworth, Warwickshire, when he became aware of a large, dark creature on the other bank. “It was cat-like with a long tail and kept crouching down every few yards and looking around as if it had been startled by something. It looked thin as if it has had a rough time and was desperately looking for food. It wasn’t trotting like a fox – it was stealthy and feline in its movements.”
Perhaps the most commonly observed of the ABCs’ odd behaviours is that of crossing the road in front of cars. Wes Germer notes exactly the same phenomenon when it comes to Sasquatch – “Why do they do that when they must have heard the car coming from miles away?” It is almost as if they want to be seen – briefly. Maybe, as veteran fortean Jim Boyd puts it: “They exist to be noticed.”
The Hertfordshire cat was seen near a landfill site, where a tram track runs beside the path. In Mystery Big Cats I write about the part that topography seems to play in the apparitions of ABCs, noting (as have many other ABC researchers) how often they seem to appear on or near quarries, tunnels, pits, but especially rail tracks. I wondered, in that book, if straight lines in the landscape might not precipitate balancing forms of energy, as Taoism suggests – forms which might become visible. Fanciful though this might be considered, I could not help noticing that railways continue to feature frequently in ABC encounters. Perhaps one of the most gripping was that related to Rick Minter by Billy Brown, who was a railway line inspector in the Peak District. Walking the track towards Edale Station at night he saw a black panther sitting looking at him in the station car park, not 10 metres [33ft] away… “I’m getting chills telling you this…” he informed Rick. “It was jet black, shiny, tiny ears –an absolutely beautiful creature.” Billy observed it for several minutes, as it sat watching him imperturbedly, a wisp of steam coming from its nostrils in the cold night. 10
“THE NUREYEV OF WILD CREATURES…”
Just as in the decades from the 1970s to the early 2000s, the continuing paucity of physical evidence for ABCs contrasts with the endless, vividly described sightings at close quarters by what can be considered cast-iron witnesses. Recently this dichotomy between the two kinds of information has been explored by various documentary film makers, including Mike Coggan, one of whose award-winning productions I explore in the new edition of Mystery Big Cats. (You can see Chasing Shadows at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gJfkvaxQW0.)
However, as we are all aware, a film crew is no longer needed to film an ABC – everyone has a phone in their pocket. And yet still no unambiguous film of an ABC, whether from a phone or a trail cam, has emerged in the last few decades. There are films, certainly, of distant black blobs which do often look pantherlike – but nothing that Sir David Attenborough would put his name to. Perhaps the best, if ghostly, image of a big cat did show up on a police camera in Edinburgh. A baby had been found abandoned and officers were searching for its mother. They called in Sgt Nicholas Whyte’s helicopter team to check out Arthur’s Seat, the crag that looms over Edinburgh, with infra-red camera gear. Sgt Whyte said:
“We started our search and found a large heat source lying on the ground. I directed a policewoman towards it, and as I was doing this the heat source got up – and it was a large cat. It was not your standard domestic cat or small moggy but more like a puma. We told the officer to stay exactly where she was and the cat bounded off, never to be seen again. It was one of the most astonishing things I have ever seen on our cameras.”
Scotland has produced a wide variety of ABC sightings over many decades, and continues to do so. It also produces one of the anomalies that disproves the theory that ABCs could be released or escaped pets or their descendants. For instance it was in Scotland that two witnesses saw a black panther-like
EVIDENCE FOR ABCS BEING FLESH-ANDBLOOD ANIMALS REMAINS SCARCE
animal cross the road in front of their car. It was “muscular, with a glossy coat – and much bigger than a dog, about 3ft [90cm] high and 5 or 6ft [150-180cm] in length, with a long tail.” It was broad daylight, and they had a good look at it as it was only 30ft (9.1m) in front of their car when it crossed, quickly disappearing into the field opposite. This couple, however, were on the Isle of Arran, driving to get the 7.30am ferry to Ardrossan and had just passed through the village of Shiskine heading to Brodick.
How likely is it that a black panther could have found its way on to a Scottish island by human agency? Moreover there have been several reliable sightings of black pantherlike ABCs on the Isle of Mull, as I describe in the book. When I was researching those sightings I rang the postmistress on Mull to ask her (just to make absolutely sure) if anyone had ever kept big cats on the island, or whether there had been a zoo there, or whether it had ever been visited by a travelling menagerie or circus. There was a long, incredulous silence from her at my clearly daft question; and finally: “Have you ever BEEN to Mull?”
The Republic of Ireland is as remote as Mull – culturally if not topographically. Yet it too has some of the most exotic ABCs on record. I detail two historic ones in the book, but a more recent one is equal to those literary examples in extravagance alone. Ned Egan was driving his van in Blackbog, Hugginstown, in County Kilkenny one early evening in summer, when he noticed a black panther-like animal running in the adjacent field towards him.
He watched it for about 20 seconds as it leaped into the road and crossed in front of him. Far from being terrified Ned was entranced:
“I was a bit in shock when it cleared a fence at great speed, bounced once on the road, and cleared the low bank on my right as if it wasn’t there. I’d love to have had a witness with me – but people would then only say ‘two liars instead of one’ in that case. A camera would have been no use, because of the rapidity. I saw it, and I’m glad I did, because I’ve never seen such a marvellously graceful animal in my life. It was the Rudolf Nureyev of wild creatures, the Ulanova of beautiful animals – and stuff the naysayers and disbelievers! I’d love to see it again – but not at close quarters!”
As the evidence of witnesses like Ned piles up, the “naysayers and disbelievers” are on increasingly shaky ground. All they have left to keep them sane is common sense, Newtonian physics, and evolutionary biology. In proposing the continued existence, in their various forms, of our traditional daimons, I have at least attempted a different footing on which to make these multitudinous beings intelligible. And if it still seems like a crackpot theory, bear in mind that – strictly on the evidence – all theories are crackpot. Yet again, it seems, we might be forced to conclude that ABCs are not so much a problem to be solved, as a mystery to be entered into.
NOTES
1 Pers. Comm.
2 John Kruse. “From Norfolk come the little known hyter (or hikey) sprites. They are small and elusive fairies, but they are said to be favourable to humans and will return home lost children they come across (and stray donkeys too). Oddly, the threat of the sprites was actually more frequently deployed by parents as a sort of nursery bogie to get children to behave.” https://britishfairies. wordpress.com/tag/hyter-sprite/
3 5 June 2014. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ b045c0ht
4 Deborah Hatswell; www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BSz2WG7juow
5 https://dogmanencounters.com/
6 https://sasquatchchronicles.com/category/ episodes/
7 https://bigcatconversations.com/
8 https://bigcatconversations.com/. Episode 34, July 2020.
9 Nuneaton News, 27 Aug 2010.
10 https://bigcatconversations.com/. Episode 40, 2015.
11 Sun, 8 April 2012; http://www.thescottishsun. co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/4244890/ Mystery- of-Edinburghs-big-cat-sighting. html#ixzz1rQRXjZmr 12 Reported by Gordon McCann to the Big Cats in Britain group, 25 Aug 2012.
13 www.kilkennypeople.ie, 25 Jan 2012.
✒ MERRILY HARPUR is a painter, illustrator, cartoonist and author who has lectured internationally on ABCs and contributed many articles on this subject (and others) to FT over the years. She is the author of Mystery Cats, published by The Squeeze Press (www.woodenbooks.com), RRP £14.95.
2020
In early August 2020, a sandy-coloured ABC, “the size of a medium dog” about 15in (38cm) tall, with dark spots and pointed ears, was photographed on Coldham’s Common, Cambridge, by Dan Underwood (below). Maybe a savannah cat. D.Mail, D.Telegraph, 12 Aug 2020.
Dr Andrew Hemmings of the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, has identified five recent animal carcases in the UK with tooth imprints on their bones that could only have been made by a non-native cat the size of a leopard or puma. Rick Minter of the Countryside Agency has recorded 1,300 ABC sightings in the UK over 10 years. One report was of a black leopard that followed two dog walkers in May 2020 for about a minute near Oldbury-on-Severn, South Gloucestershire. Minter takes a conventional blood-andsinew view of ABCs. He said that about three-quarters of sightings are of black leopards – Labrador-sized cats with an elongated body, pronounced shoulder blades, a long, thick tail and flat face with rounded ears. The others are mainly pumas – brown big cats with slightly more pointed ears – and then some lynx. Most sightings occur at dawn or dusk, when the
ABCs use the darkness as an advantage over their prey. Minter believes there could be a breeding population of about 250 black leopards and 250 pumas in the British countryside. Times, 29 Aug 2020.
CCTV footage in Eastbourne, East Sussex, in late September showed an ABC “bigger than a Great Dane” (right). Sun, 1 Oct 2020.
Hiker confronted by 4ft (1.2m)-long ABC while watching a sunrise in Snowdonia, Wales, in October. In late November, a Snowdonia farmer said 10 of his flock had been killed in the previous four months by a single bite to the neck.
D.Star, 24 Oct; D.Mirror, 28 Nov 2020.
‘Leopard’ photographed near back gardens in Codford, Wiltshire, in mid-December. Sun, 17 Dec 2020.
ABC photographed on Chester Meadows, Merseyside, on 13 December. At 7.30am on 16 December, a “large but slender” ABC was spotted at 30m (100ft) on Ince Marshes, Ellesmere Port. Later, the witness photographed a large pawprint in mud 300m (328 yards) from his sighting.
Liverpool Echo, 20 Jan 2021.
On 30 December, 10 sheep were killed in Marton, near Macclesfield in Cheshire. The farmer had previously reported a “very large black cat-type animal” near the farm. Then on 8 January 2021, a sheep and two lambs were found dead in nearby Winsford, killed by a predator larger than a dog. Sunday Mirror, 10 Jan; D.Telegraph, 11 Jan; Sun, 13 Jan 2021.
There were 12 ABC reports in and around the Lake District in 2020, attributed to the “Beast of Cumbria”. Sightings have been logged for decades. Sharon LarkinSnowden, who set up a “Big Cats in Cumbria” Facebook page, said: “The most recent sighting was at Thirlmere, where there have been reports of a black-andwhite leopard.” She mentioned several sightings of two big cats near Kendall, leopard fur found in the vicinity, and sharp teeth marks on a deer jawbone suggesting an ABC kill. 12 Jan; Guardian, 13 Jan 2020.
2021
Black ABC seen on a busy road near Talacre, Flintshire, about 20 miles (32km) from Pontybodkin on New Year’s Day. At least five similar sightings of “the Puma of Pontybodkin” in the area since November. Then a van driver had an encounter near Pontybodkin on 14 January. “My headlights picked up the puma crossing the track,” he said. “It was the size of a Labrador, black and athleticlooking. I braked and it stood 30 yards off, staring at me, eyes glowing in the dark, before slinking away.” Sun, 6+16 Jan; D.Mirror, 16 Jan 2021.
On 2 January, cyclist spotted jet black ABC at 6.30am on a footpath in Witney, Oxfordshire, about seven miles (11km) from Burford. It was dubbed “the Beast of Burford”, because of sightings dating back to the 1990s. (In 2005 a panther-like ABC was photographed opposite the Mason’s Arms pub in Brize Norton.) Metro, 6 Jan 2021.
Recent ABC sighting in Lopen, Somerset. Black ABC filmed near Ashurst, West Sussex, at midday on 16 January. Sun, 18 Jan 2021.
ABC with pointed ears seen at 3am on Moel Famau hill in Flintshire, North Wales, presumably in early February. D.Star, 8 Feb 2021.
ABC seen near Lynnbottom Tip on the Isle of Wight on 6 Feb. Larger than a Labrador with long thick tail. Sightings on the island go back to the 1980s. Isle of Wight County Press, 12 Feb 2021.
A black ABC was photographed prowling through undergrowth beside fields near Thrupp in Gloucestershire on 25 March (above). The unnamed witness was about 100 yards away. It was said to be the fourth ABC sighting in the area since November 2018, including one in 2020 in South Woodchester, two miles away. D.Mail, 27 Mar 2021.
Cheshire has become an ABC hotspot in recent months, with at least 12 sightings in the county since last December. The latest was reported by a visitor to Caldy Valley Nature Park in Huntingdon, who said he heard “continuous growling and snarling from the undergrowth”. Another recent sighting was of a four-foot long cat with a “great big tail” seen by two witnesses near the Chester Greyhound Retail Park on 12 February; a worker in the retail park reported seeing a “rather large black cat” later the same evening. Cheshire Live, 20 April 2021.