The reported number of sightings of big, black, cat-like creatures all over Devon and Cornwall have gathered ground over the past thirty years. Although there have been alleged findings of paw-prints, no other leavings of any kind have been produced to substantiate the existence of such beasts. So are these sightings real or spectres? What sort of people have claimed to have seen the outsized phantom black cat? The writer has done some investigating to try to track down "the beast of the moors" that has been seen everywhere in the Westcountry but has never been verified.

One of the first claimants was a playwright and scriptwriter who was driving home on a dark night after seeing a performance of one of his theatrical productions, a musical that was light-hearted and not in the least dark and foreboding. His powers of imagination must be unquestionable but he insisted that the something he saw on the road ahead that was not a figment of his mind`s eye. In his headlights was a large, black beast with glassy yellow slits for eyes. It was there at one moment and gone the next. Because it disappeared so quickly, he stopped his car and bravely got out to have a look but there was nothing to indicate that an animal had crossed that country road. His story was printed in the local paper.

A break of several years and then a farmer reported that one of his sheep had been found dead with terrible wounds on its body, in fact it was as if it had been killed by a beast of prey. What bestial brute had attacked that harmless sheep? A dog? A fox? A huge cat? Everyone agreed that it was inhuman whatever it was and definitely not a phantom. After that, many landowners murmured about strange findings, not all rational except perhaps the injured horse with terrible wounds that might not have been made by barbed wire. What spooked the animal?

Then there was a bout of pictures purporting to be photographic images of the black beast that lingered just long enough for someone behind a camera to make a snapshot. No close-ups but surroundings fuzzy and outline indistinct, just an impression of a distant, lone, furry, black cat-shape with a rather long tail. People began assuming it must be a puma or a black panther though no animal keeper had admitted to losing one. The conviction that a Big Cat was at large grew to amazing proportions and this month a poster was printed in the Western Morning News showing where the thing had been seen in 2000 and 2001. If all the findings were correct there must be a drove of them but why no reported cadavers or leavings or young? Lately, however, even wildlife writers have supposed that there must be something in the story, that far from being a dark wraith it is probably flesh and blood and extremely dangerous of course.