An African Big Cat In London

This weekend dear readers you are being offered a double dose of weirdness from the capital due to last week's mysterious missing episode...

Today, we're back to strange exotic felids prowling the capital, after a report appeared on a cryptozoology-based website regarding an incident from 1995 pertaining to a very close encounter with a large, black leopard.

Californian college student Matt Beloof was only twelve-years old at the time, when his family decided to visit England as part of a month-long house swap. Although Matt never stated where exactly the incident happened, he wrote in his report:

My sighting of a monstrous cat was in London of all places, not where'd you expect to see such a thing, but we had switched homes with an English family and we had a great time staying in their home. They had a very bushy and unkempt backyard, but it was very large and appealing to look at, all surrounded by six-foot high fencing.

One particluar evening the witness was sitting in the garden thumbing through a pamphlet on the 'London Dungeon' when he was suddenly distracted by a thump from the yard. As he looked up he was startled to see a large black panther (melanistic leopard) with what he called, "...abnormally illuminated yellowish eyes", which strolled across the garden, never once taking its gaze from the shocked witness. The animal casually mooched around before disappearing into bushes.

Matt claimed that the animal was over two-foot tall at the shoulder and at least four-feet in length, and that the presence of the cat caused him quite a lot of discomfort. He couldn't wait to tell his parents, although when he finally got round to telling them, they never once believed his tale.

These older reports certainly prove that so-called 'beast of Bexley' of the last few years, was nothing new at all, and I'm pretty sure that other such sightings unreported date back even further.

Image courtesy of the author.