New Cross Panther Latest

Yesterday's Sun reported:

A WOMAN fled and dialled 999 yesterday after she spotted what looked like a wild panther in a cul-de-sac. Cops searched the street — close to a primary school — but could find no trace of a beast. A source told The Sun: “She was terrified. She described it as a huge, black wild cat with large fangs and a long tail. The woman was very respectable, not drunk or imagining things, so the call was taken seriously.”

The 8.30am terror in New Cross, South London, came eight years after a man was mauled by a 6ft-long panther-like cat in nearby Sydenham. More sightings came in 2007 and 2009. The Met Police said: “Officers did a search but could not find the animal.” Research group Big Cats in Britain said: “There have been sightings in this area before.”

The Newsshopper has gone one better today and located the sighting as being in Southerngate Way by Fordham Park in New Cross and reported the witness saying: "I was walking to work in New Cross and looked to my left and saw a long black tail hanging down from the roof that covers the bins outside our block of flats. I then looked up and saw the biggest black cat I have ever seen - this was no domestic cat. It was very built with strong large leg muscles that you could see very clearly from the rear view. It was just perched with its tail dangling down'

See previous posts on various supposed beasts in Bexley, Crystal Palace, Borough High Street, Nunhead, Shooters Hill, Thamesmead etc.

History Corner: The Shooters Hill Cheetah (1963)

I had a pleasant walk in Oxleas Wood a couple of weeks ago, a lovely peaceful spot - but now comes news that during the Olympic militarisation of London there may be missile launchers based next to the cafe there and/or on Blackheath by the Territorial Army building (as discussed at Blackheath Bugle and elsewhere). But it wouldn't be the first time the military had turned out on Shooters Hill on a phantom hunt.

SE London has a whole folklore of supposed big cat sightings - the Beast of Bexley, the Palace Puma, even the Nunhead Panther - with theories to explain them of varying degress of probability. One of the biggest cat panics occurred in 1963 on Shooters Hill, where a supposed Cheetah was reported in the Oxleas Wood area.

"The most famous labour-intensive hunt was for an animal dubbed by the press 'The Shooters Hill Cheetah'. On the 18th July 1963 David Beck, driving through Shooters Hill in south-east London, saw a large animal lying by the side of the road. Assuming it to be an injured dog he approached it, and then realised it was in fact a large cat with a long, upward curling tail. It ran off into Oxleas Wood. The same night police officers were amazed to see a 'large golden animal' jump over the bonnet of their patrol car. A check with zoos and circuses confirmed that no animals had escaped.

It was a magnificent affair. It covered 850 acres and involved 126 policemen with 21 dogs, thirty soldiers, ambulance men and RSPCA officials. No sign of a big cat was found - except for some spoor. These were huge - some seven inches across, the size usually associated with a lion or tiger; yet they showed claw marks, the characteristic not of a lions, but of a cheetah's paw print. The 'cheetah', however, was never caught and the hunters dispersed'.

Source: Mystery Big Cats by Merrily Harpur (Heart of Albion Press, 2005)

Palace Puma Again

We love a good South London alien big cat story, even if as sceptical Forteans we keep an open mind on whether there's really anything out there more mysterious than a misrecognised dog or domestic cat. Latest tale of a tail is from Crystal Palace:


'A mysterious animal dubbed the Palace Puma has been spotted again. Two 14-year-olds claim to have seen the big cat - first spotted in Woodland by Fox Hill last month - outside Crystal Palace Park two weeks ago. Kaz Johnson-Salami said he was walking along Thicket Road at 7am when he saw a cat “the size of a Great Dane”. The Streatham teenager, who was staying with his sister in Crystal Palace, said: “We saw it on the other side of the road. It was a huge black cat with bright eyes.'


Full story at Newsshopper, 7 September 2009

The Palace Puma?

Time for another South London 'Big Cat' story:

'A puma or panther is on the prowl in Crystal Palace according to a journalist who spotted a big cat there on Saturday. The beast - dubbed the Palace Puma - was sighted in some woodland by journalist Helen Barrett, 41, who was out for a walk with her family.

They were so terrified that they fled from the “wild animal” - described as black and 5ft in length - after it approached them on a pathway between Church Road and Auckland Hill at 3.45pm. Mrs Barrett said: “It was quite alarming. At first we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. It was black, the size of a labrador, but walking like a cat. It had to be feline.”

... Mrs Barrett reported the sighting to police who searched the path and woodland parallel to Fox Hill, but said they could find no trace of a big cat.

(full story at This is London, 10 August 2009; previous posts on South London 'Big Cats')

Thamesmead Big Cat?

Yet another SE London big cat story, from the Newshopper (11 August 2008)

A Beast of Bexley-type creature is believed to have been spotted in Thamesmead. The sighting happened at around 3am on Saturday morning (August 9) in Goldfinch Road when a man was woken up by something screeching. He looked out of his window and saw a small animal racing along the pathway followed by a larger one.

The man, who did not want to be named, said: "I saw a black animal rolling on the grass between two trees. I thought to myself, 'Bloody hell! That's the biggest moggy I've ever seen', and then thought, 'It must be a dog'. However, its head was cat-like and its tail was very long. It walked to the left to some bushes and I moved the other curtain but couldn't see it."

The sighting was reported to Neil Arnold, the founder of the Kent Big Cat Research group, which studies eyewitness reports of large exotic cats. He believes the creature, which has become known as the Beast of Bexley, is a black leopard. The Beast' has also been seen at Welling, Erith, Bexleyheath, Belvedere, Bromley, Abbey Wood and towards Dartford.

More Transpontine big cat stories

Wild Cat in Borough High Street?

Within a few weeks of big cat researcher Neil Arnold speaking at South East London Folklore Society on Borough High Street, there have been reports of a puma sighting... on Borough High Street (perhaps one followed him up from Kent and couldn't find its way back).

According to Southwark News (2 June 2008), "The 'tanned small cougar', described as almost twice the size of a domestic cat, was apparently spotted wandering near the entrance of Southwark Police station on Borough High Street". Arnold is quoted as saying that there was a similar report from a year ago near the Tower Hotel, and somebody commenting on the S.News story said that on 31st May 'on the sight of the recently demolished London Park Hotel' (by Elephant & Castle) he saw something that 'was too large for a domestic cat and didn't move like a fox or a dog'.

I went to Arnold' s talk at SELFS - his take on the whole phenomenon is that there have been big cats living wild in the British countryside for centuries, maybe as far back as Roman times, refreshed by escapes from zoos, circuses and private collections. Sceptics dismiss the whole thing as a mixture of hoaxes and misidentifications of pets, while others have a range of supernatural explanations.

Neil maintains the interesting Beasts of London blog. More Transpontine big cat posts.

Big Cats in London

We've mentioned big cat sightings in South London here before, including the so-called Beast of Bexley and the Nunhead panther. Theories abound about these - are they just misidentified pussies or dogs, escaped exotic pets or paranormal phenomena?

The next South East London Folklore Society event is a talk on Big Cats Around The Capital by
Neil Arnold. Neil is the author of Monster! the A to Z of Zooform Phenomena as well as maintaining Beasts of London, 'a chronicle pertaining to strange creatures and out of place animals in the capital'. The latter was recently selected by Time Out as one of London's top 50 websites.

In other words you must get to The Old King's Head, Kings Head Yard, 45-49, Borough High Street on Thursday April 10 2008 at 8:00pm (see Facebook event).

The Beast of Bexley Returns

Perhaps she or he was hibernating.

The Beast of Bexley may have been spotted again reportedly scaring a paddock full of horses. Over several years there have been scores of sightings around the borough of a panther-like creature. Neil Arnold, founder of the Kent Big Cat Research Group, said a black creature was seen around two weeks ago in Cold Blow Crescent. He thinks the animal could have been a black leopard.

An eyewitness saw all the horses in a field behind his house appearing spooked and bunching together. He then claims a big, black cat with an overly long tail appeared in the field, stopped, then turned around and walked back towards trees and bushes. Mr Arnold, who has been monitoring big cats for 15 years, receives around 280 reports of sightings every year from across the county.

Beast of Nunhead

'Interesting if true' report in the South London Press (20 October 2006) about a possible Alien Black Cat sighting in Nunhead:

Panther prowled into my lounge

A space scientist had a close encounter of the furred kind when a black panther called at his home. Astro physicist Brian Shear claims the big cat walked into his living room and settled on his settee in the early hours of Thursday.

Brian said: "It had green eyes and was between four to five feet long, nose to tail. This was no pussycat. It didn't miaow, it growled. I'd been sitting in my armchair when it walked in. I didn't try to get too close to it because I was concerned it might bite me. I just sat there and talked to it like you would a normal pussy cat. I said, 'Hello puss, where've you been then?' and it just growled. It seemed quite content and I didn't feel threatened. I don't think it would have harmed me.It seemed familiar with humans."

The 64-year-old diabetic said he had woken up at his home in Nunhead Lane, Nunhead, feeling ill and opened his front door to let some air in but got the uninvited house guest instead. After an hour the cat left Brian's home and disappeared towards Dulwich.

It is not the first time a big cat has been reported in South London. Last year dad-of-three Tony Holder said he was pounced on by a large cat-like animal in the backyard of his Sydenham home. Armed police patrolled the neighbourhood for several days afterwards and people were warned not to use local parks. Experts suspected a black panther had leapt at Mr Holder.