It was about 6.30 on a bright summer evening. After a long day's work in Chesterfield, I was driving north-east along the A623 towards Sparrowpit. My companion in the passenger seat was fast asleep: he had spent the day being irritating and had worn himself out. The road ahead stretched languidly uphill, curving to the left about half a mile ahead. There were two cars evenly spaced in front of me, the furthest being about halfway up the hill. No traffic was coming towards us.
There was a movement across the empty right hand side of the road. It was something long, low and entirely black. It moved fast and fluidly, with no appearance of great effort: a pace which made me feel it had come a long way, with a sense of purpose, and that it would go a lot further before it rested. I remember my mental cogs clattering rapidly through a set of familiar concepts, attempting to match it with something familiar - black sheep, black pony, black calf, black Labrador....
....blunt head, high shoulders, long body, a gracefully curved tail, nearly as long as the body, with a club-like end. A huge black cat with front legs and tail out; it stretched across almost the whole width of the right hand carriageway. It passed in front of the first car. It was as tall as the bonnet. It reached the side of the road and I lost sight of it in the vegetation.
So, I wondered, what was that all about? It was definitely a big cat, here among the drystone walls and the sheep. Where did it live, what did it eat and had anyone else seen it? Was it real? What is real? I saw it, sure enough, but was it an hallucination near the end of a very long day? A dream in the micro-sleep of a tired driver? A vision of freedom and purpose, coming to me as my relationship with my passenger, whom I loved dearly, but could no longer tolerate, disintegrated? Was this beast a manifestation of my own mental state, or did it have its own existence? Could both these things be true? Was it simultaneously physical and metaphorical?
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Some time later, it could have been the following winter or the one after, I was back on the same road, driving towards Chesterfield, having just passed the right turn to Tideswell. It was about 6am and pitch black. There was snow on the fields, but the road was clear. My headlights were on and there was no other traffic. I was driving carefully, below the 50 mph speed limit. There was a ripple in the darkness against the black road. Something moved from left to right in front of me. It crossed the beam of my light and I made out a black shape in the dark, a long, low animal moving quickly. It turned its head towards me, its eyes glowing red. It did not pause in its fluid movement and I glimpsed its shape as it seemed to flow silently up and over the snow covered verge and low drystone wall. Another cat? The same one? Who knows?
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Interviewing Mrs D How closely did the cat pass in front of the first car? Did the driver have to slow down or swerve? Not sure, I would guess 5 or 6 car lengths. No. If the cat seemed as tall as the first car's bonnet, about how tall would that have been? Between 2 and 3 feet. If the cat stretching out seemed almost as long as the width of the right-hand carriageway, about how long would that have been? About 10, 11 or 12 feet. Hard to tell, because it was moving. That was one of the things which made me sure it was not a dog, it was too long. Did you notice any reaction from the drivers of the other cars? Did either of them stop further up the road or sound a horn, for example? I did not see a reaction from either of the other cars. Was I the only one who saw it? I would love to know if they had seen it. Thinking of the second sighting, about how far in front of you was the cat? Did you slow down or swerve? No time to slow or swerve.. when I saw its eyes, it seemed to be 12 to 15 feet away, don't know, close-ish. What made you think it was silent? I think it was the nature of its movements, which were fast but very smooth. I wonder if it is still there?
I spend a lot of time looking at, or looking for, wildlife. It gives me a special feeling when I see a red kite or a badger. I had the same feeling of privilege when I saw the cat. I had seen something quite unusual.
Scratching Around Big Cats When big cats are seen wandering freely around UK, people use the terms 'Anomalous Big Cats' or 'Alien Big Cats' (ABCs). Big cats are not normally thought to live here outside zoos, so what they are, how they came to be here, and how they are surviving here is a puzzle.
Not all ABCs are the same. Several different species have been reported, including lynxes, lions and pumas. Sometimes the events around sightings are relatively straightforward. The cat is found, captured or destroyed (e.g. the Crannich puma in 1980). Sometimes, although people are convinced they have seen a cat, or that a cat has been in the area, there is no hard evidence and the circumstances are more mysterious.
There are three ways of looking at ABCs. Maybe they are all true sometimes. 1. These cats are real. They have escaped from somewhere, or they have been abandoned, or they are survivors of an ancient species which was once at home here. ABCs are not new; the first recorded non-fiction sighting was recorded by William Cobbett in the 1760s (in 'Rural Rides'). Some people believe that big cats escaped from travelling circuses in the 19th century. In the 1960s and early 1970s, there was a fashion for keeping big cats as pets. Some of these were abandoned in the countryside. 2. All these sightings are mistakes, hoaxes or the work of the imagination. Some domestic cats, e.g the Bengal, are larger than most moggies. In 'Mystery Cats of Devon and Cornwall', Chris Moiser tells the entertaining story of a pet Abyssinian cat which regularly made it into the local papers. As human beings, we are all fallible and the evidence of our own eyes is unreliable. Some people spread stories because they like the excitement. Some sightings are modern folktales. Some might be large feral cats. 3. These cats exist in a different kind of reality. They are at once real and phantom, fairy cats, cats from another dimension, intangible creatures which move in and out of our world for reasons we do not know. Merrily Harpur ('Mystery Big Cats') expresses the idea that nature has a spiritual side which can manifest itself in different ways, and these ways change as our human relationship with the natural world changes over time.
So, how does Mrs D's experience look against this backdrop? Firstly, Mrs D spotted a black cat. Both pumas and leopards can be black. Black leopards are called panthers, and, in Africa and Asia, they are not seen as often as other leopards. Pumas come from the Americas, where black pumas are very rare. Black ABCs, therefore, look like rare big cats. Maybe that is because they are unworldly creatures, or maybe they are real, breeding cats and so are all related. Or maybe everyone had heard the first black ABC story, and imagined or invented their own after that....
In 'Supernatural Peak District', David Clarke cites several examples of black ABCs, including one near Great Longstone in 1992 and one near Chapel-en-le Frith in 1994. Mrs D is not alone.
Mrs D said that she was not in a good frame of mind on the first cat day. She was tired and stressed. She wondered if her sighting might have been a 'micro-dream'. On the second cat day, she was driving in the dark, very early in the morning. Both occasions were difficult, and neither was conducive to efficient collection of evidence.
Mrs D had another thought, which was that maybe she had somehow conjured up the cat. That is an interesting angle, touching a toe into Tulpa, or 'thoughtform' territory. Simply put, a Tulpa is said to be an invented being, which eventually gains a physical existence independent from the person who imagined it. The Tulpa has its mystical roots in ancient Buddhism, but it has spread little twigs and leaves into the 21st century west. Of course, Mrs D did not set out to create an ABC that day, but it is a fascinating concept. Have you seen an anomalous big cat? Like to tell us about it? email [email protected]
