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| ISBN-13: | 9780752471358 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 10/30/2011 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 96 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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Paranormal London
By Neil Arnold
The History Press
Copyright © 2011 Neil ArnoldAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-7135-8
CHAPTER 1
BEASTS IN OUR BACKYARDS
The 'alien big cat' mystery has peppered British folklore for at least two centuries. During the 1980s the so-called 'Beast of Exmoor' made the national papers as an alleged savage, livestock-slaughtering creature said to resemble a 'panther' that was roaming the West Country. The Royal Marines were called into action after there had been several eyewitness reports of an animal said to measure over 4ft in length, muscular in appearance and with a long, curving tail. Not since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles novel had such a fear been instilled in the hearts and minds of ordinary folk. Then, in the 1990s, a new 'beast' emerged on the horizon; the 'Beast of Bodmin' was the name on everyone's lips, the media had a field-day, documentaries were made devoted to the pursuit of the animal, and arguments continued as to whether the fens and quagmires could support the alleged monster.
A majority of eyewitness reports described a big, black or fawn-coloured cat with a very long tail. Such details confused the press, who didn't know their panther from their leopard or their lynx from their puma. Other reports spoke of greyish-mottled cats with large, tufted ears and short stubby tails. While some sightings were evidently just large feral cats or dogs or foxes, there was indeed a consistency suggesting that puma, black leopard and lynx were indeed at large in the British Isles and soon, every county would have its mystery cat. The question the experts couldn't answer was how they got there. The lynx was native to the United Kingdom up until a few thousand years ago, but leopards and lions died out many thousands of years ago, while the puma had never been part of our woodlands.
The wooded areas of the United Kingdom are seemingly alive with large cats – and so are the concrete jungles of the capital!
The Surrey Puma
The Surrey Puma was the first mystery cat to make waves across England in the press. For many researchers this particular beast was pivotal in attracting the attention of the media and putting 'big cats' on the map in the country. Indeed, the first mention of a Surrey beast actually came centuries before the West Country was besieged by cat scratch fever.
The most quoted reference to an early 'beast' sighting around Surrey came from the pen of naturalist William Cobbett, in his Rural Rides. It is said that as a boy he observed a grey cat as big as a middle-sized spaniel dog while visiting Waverley Abbey, sometime between 1766 and 1770. On 27 October 1825 he took his eleven-year-old son to the exact same spot where he'd seen the animal. Many have suggested that Cobbett saw a wildcat (a cat now confined to the Scottish Highlands), while others have argued that he may well have observed a lynx.
During the 1930s, a magazine known as The Field mentioned another early Surrey Puma encounter. It involved a lady named Irene Roberts, who, during the early hours of a July day, heard the most eerie cries close to her home at Lightwater. Irene wrote a letter to The Field a year later and described the cries as, '... of peculiar intensity, expressing, it seemed, mortal fear and physical pain.' Had she heard a large, elusive cat such a puma (which is known for its piercing scream) or simply not recognised the moans of a fox, even though she was used to such native calls?
In 1955 at Abinger Hammer, Surrey, a woman walking her dog stumbled across the remains of a calf. Naturally, the witness was shocked by her grisly find, but she was even more stunned when she saw what animal had killed the calf: a large gingery-coloured cat that sprang from the undergrowth and bounded away. A similar encounter took place four years later in the Hampshire area, but the most unusual report came from a taxi driver who, during the same year, reported seeing a lion near Tweseldown Racecourse in Hampshire.
The year 1963 was certainly the year of the beast and sightings persisted of a graceful cat, with a relatively small head, muscular shoulders and long, sweeping tail. Two years before, at Croham Golf Course in Surrey, a large black animal was spotted by a golfer as the autumnal mists descended over the greens. Police officers suggested the animal may have been a large dog and the witness felt he'd seen a bear, but is there a possibility that such an animal was in fact the Surrey Puma?
The puma (felis concolor) is at home in the dense woods of California. Despite its size (it is capable of reaching over 5ft in length), the puma is the largest of the 'lesser cats' and not technically a 'big cat', for it cannot roar like the lion, leopard, jaguar and tiger. It is also known as a mountain lion or cougar and is a fawn/tan-coloured cat with a white underside. Therefore, despite countless reports in the 1960s of a black puma, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that such animals exist. Reports of large, black cats would most certainly have concerned the melanistic (having dark, almost black coats due to a skin pigment known as melanin) form of the leopard. The 'black panther' is exactly the same animal as the black leopard or black jaguar. A 'panther' is not a species of cat, merely a term to describe melanistic leopards or jaguars.
If a big cat does indeed roam the Surrey countryside, how did it come to be there? Did it escape from a zoo or a private collection? Such escapees may not have been common, but they certainly would have happened over the course of history, and a now defunct website, under the heading 'Scare Bears & Other Creatures', was quick to highlight such escapees, writing:
In the 1920s Carmo Manor in Shirley acted as the winter quarters of Carmo's Circus. The Great Carmo's menagerie was housed there, and the circus men would often wash the elephants in the old estate pond or take bears for exercise around the grounds. So when a woman rang the police station to report an escaped leopard the duty sergeant was on the point of organising a full-scale, armed leopard hunt. The creature had been seen to force its way through a hedge and then jump over a fence. Stopping a moment to check the facts, he rang Carmo's and found they had no leopards! This time, the twilight at dusk was accused of turning a Dalmatian into a vision of a leopard. The circus dog had apparently slipped out during training for a new act.
The 1960s was a time when it was fashionable to have novelty pets such as big cats and it is possible that some of these may well have escaped, or been released, into the wild.
Strangely, not many reports of normal 'spotted' leopards have come to light, which confused many. But this can be explained. Black leopards (which still have rosettes evident under their dark coat) were ideal pets as cubs and any released/escaping into the countryside, either singularly or as pairs, would seek out members of the opposite sex (which must surely have existed in the British wilds otherwise such cats would simply have died out and no further reports would have been recorded). Black leopard pairs only spawn black offspring, hence sightings only of black cats locally. Although melanism occurs in other cats, such as the jaguar or bobcat, there is no evidence to suggest that jaguars are on the loose in the UK; such cats were not commonly kept as pets, and melanism appears rare in reference to other cat species sighted in Britain.
The 1980s noticed a huge lull in sightings of the Surrey Puma, despite rumour that a large black cat had been shot dead not far from Greenwich Observatory in London and the fact that hair samples taken from Peaslake in Surrey were proven to originate from a large wild cat. Instead, there was a surge in reports from the West Country as the Exmoor Beast went on the rampage, and it would be this neck of the woods which would produce the most sightings over the next two decades; the so-called Surrey Puma was relegated to a mere whisper on the wind as the millennium dawned.
The Shooters Hill Cheetah
Lorry driver Mr David Back reported seeing an animal laying by the roadside at 1 a.m. on 18 July 1963, at Shooters Hill, south-east London. Thinking it may have been an injured dog, he decided to pull over and approach the animal. As he neared it, he realised that it was in fact a very large cat eating something. The cat sensed the approaching witness and bounded away. One hundred and twenty-six policemen, accompanied by more than twenty dogs, alongside ambulance staff and officials from the RSPCA, boy scouts and members of the public, scoured several acres of land in the hunt for a cat they believed was a cheetah. They found nothing – although it was alleged that a large cat-like animal sprang over the bonnet of one police vehicle.
A snarling cat was heard at Kidbrooke Sports Ground on 23 July, and once again a ridiculous number of policemen turned up, but their pursuit was fruitless. The cheetah hunters soon gave up their search.
The only reason that the cat was described as a cheetah was due to the fact that not even a police motorcycle, travelling at 70mph, could flush the animal out. In 2002, at Oxleas Wood, Shooters Hill, even a sighting of a big, black cat (most definitely a leopard) brought back the 'cheetah' headline. Yet, looking back on the legendary spate of sightings, it's clear that not on any occasion was a cheetah-like animal described or indeed seen.
In 1964 the sightings of a mystery cat escalated. Loxwood, Puttenham, Witley and Elstead were scenes of cat activity and these places were visited again in 1965 and '66 by possibly the same cat, or cats. Press interest had waned, but when a flurry of calls bombarded the news desk the hunt was back on ... and then interest diminished once again. And so the saga continued, running its course, dying its death, being resurrected, and then fading, time and time again, just like the elusive predator in the Surrey woodlands.
While I was out riding in Granger's Woods, Woldingham, in May 1978, I saw what I believe was a lion rush across the road in front of me. It ran from the Oxted side into thick bushes on the opposite side. It was about ten or twelve yards from me. It was a beige/light brown colour and had a small head in comparison with the rest of its body. (It had no shaggy mane).
So wrote eyewitness Anne Stanette after her encounter in east Surrey over a decade after the original reports. Again a lion was mentioned, although it is more likely to have been a puma mistaken for a lioness.
A Man Walks into a Pub ...
The South Harrow Puma was owned by a man who, in 1974, often walked his prized pet through the local streets. However, during the November of that year, things got out of control. The owner in question casually strolled into the Farm House pub with his puma on a lead. After a short while several locals began to feel uncomfortable in the presence of the wild animal and so the man was asked to leave. Although he complied with the requests of the staff and customers, the beast didn't and went berserk. The landlady at the time commented that, 'It took the man fifteen minutes to get the puma out of the pub and into his car, during which it tore off the man's glove and ripped open his hand.' It also caused severe damage to the chair upholstery in the public house, as well as damaging tables, smashing glasses and demolishing the bar in its frenzy.
When the cat decided to shred the car seats the police were called to the scene, where, after a short time, they towed both the vehicle and the aggravated felid away. Later, the man was charged with being drunk and incapable. What happened to his cat was not recorded.
In 1975 a strange incident occurred at Acton, west London, when an estranged husband dumped his puma in the back garden of his former home, leaving his wife and kids trapped inside and screaming for help. The man left a note saying that he had nowhere else to put the cat. It took the local police and RSPCA two hours to get the terrified family out of the house.
The Tiger of Edgware
Edgware resident David Corbel awoke one August morning in 1988, peered from his kitchen window and, to his horror, saw an 8ft long cat perched on the branches of a tree in a neighbour's garden.
'I thought I was still dreaming, so I called my wife,' David commented at the time. 'She confirmed what I was seeing – it had a black body, ginger hindquarters and white paws.'
There is no large cat species which has this colouration. The melanistic leopard has a dark, seemingly black, coat that could appear gingery in sunlight, but they do not have white paws (although the paw pads could appear pale in comparison to coat colour), unless it had been standing in chalk or walked through paint!
It was reported that large paw-prints said to belong to the elusive animal were found in an area where a tree had been deeply scored, a marking sign of a large cat. However, despite a search, no trace of the animal was to be found. Some theorised that the cat had escaped from a circus that had been visiting the North London suburb.
The Lioness of Winchmore Hill
North London is hardly big cat country, but, during the early part of 1994, particularly around the Winchmore Hill area, several witnesses insisted they'd seen a cat resembling a lioness.
Linda Bostock had her sighting of the Winchmore Beast in broad daylight on 11 March, in the vicinity of Firs Lane, which runs parallel to the A10. She described the cat, which was walking along the canal towpath, as having 'short golden hair and big padded paws'.
Despite police being inundated with phone calls from terrified witnesses, no lioness showed up. The Daily Telegraph of 12 March believed they'd solved the mystery with the headline 'Bilbo the tomcat strikes fear in concrete jungle,' after cat owner Carmel Jarvis came forward to suggest it was her domestic moggie that had been seen.
During June of that year, a puma-like cat was seen by Robert Delane on waste ground near Northolt railway station. He stated that the animal was '3ft tall and 4ft long, with a smooth biscuit-coloured coat.' Robert had been travelling to work on the London Underground when he saw the animal. He told the Evening Standard, 'I watched for about two minutes as it walked through the brambles and then it went into some coal bunkers.'
Doug Richardson, a London Zoo expert, stated, 'The description is of a mountain lion. Railway land would suit it perfectly. The animal would be undisturbed and have a plentiful food supply.'
It's no surprise that no lioness or puma turned up, despite a helicopter whirring through the skies of Palmers Green and marksmen from London Zoo lurking in the undergrowth with tranquilliser guns.
When a ginger tomcat was photographed in a back garden and named as the culprit in the Winchmore sightings, it seemed that the case of the Winchmore Beast had died a quick death. Sightings less frequently littered the pages of the local newspapers, and, although another large cat was sighted at Chiswick in West London in the summer months, evidence was lacking, and the rumours faded.
An African Big Cat in London
Californian student Matt Beloof was only twelve years old when his parents decided to visit England as part of a month-long house swap. One particular evening, as the family were settling into their London home, Matt decided to have a thumb through his London Dungeon pamphlet. Suddenly, he was distracted by a thump from the yard and, looking towards the garden, he was startled to see a huge cat with what he described as 'abnormally illuminated yellowish eyes.'
The animal proceeded to stroll casually across the garden, but with each step had its eye on the shocked witness who gazed from the comforting confines of the living room. The animal then mooched about for a few seconds before disappearing out of sight in the direction of some bushes.
Matt commented, 'London, of all places, is not where you'd expect to see such a thing.'
He described the animal as over 4ft in length and standing 2ft at the shoulder. When Matt told his parents about what he'd seen, they did not believe him.
Such an incident echoed Trevor Irvine's encounter at Hayes Common, Bromley in 1993. He was driving to work at 6.25 a.m. when, just 14ft away, a cat bounded across the road, from the bank on the right-hand side towards the undergrowth on the left. Trevor described the cat as being very large but charcoal grey in colour, with a rosette pattern bleeding through the coat. The cat had small ears on top of a round head, and its tail was very long. After much consideration, he believed he'd seen a black leopard close enough for the rosette pattern to be visible, and the darkness of the coat not as strong.
One evening at 7.45 in January 2001 a woman from Walthamstow observed a sleek, black felid nosing through rubbish bins as she waited in her car to pick her son up. The animal slinked away towards Wickham Close.
The Beast of Bexley
The first reports of the Beast of Bexley emerged from north Kent during the late 1990s, where a creature was dubbed the 'Beast of Bluewater' after numerous reports near the shopping centre. However, regular reports from the outskirts of London, ranging from Bromley, Chislehurst, Penge, Abbey Wood, Belvedere and Crayford, suggested two possibilities: either the local beast was using all these areas as hunting ground, or there was more than one predator. Either way, it would always be dubbed the Beast of Bexley or the Beast of Bluewater in newspaper reports, depending on which area it was closer to when sighted.
On the nights of 20 July and 1 August 2002, Bexley resident Stuart Campbell heard a strange scratching at his back door which awoke him. Concerned about the noises and the safety of his three children, Stuart decided to contact the police and the RSPCA, but his call was not taken seriously.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Paranormal London by Neil Arnold. Copyright © 2011 Neil Arnold. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Foreword by David Farrant,
Introduction,
one Beasts in our Backyards,
two Phantom Assailants,
three The Highgate Vampire,
four Animal Apparitions,
five A Strange London Safari,
six Close Encounters of the London Kind,
seven A Handful of Hauntings,
eight Miscellaneous Mysteries,
Select Bibliography,
Copyright,