Because natural jaguars are a rarity in the American Southwest, and are tracked closely by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is there some other explanation for the large cat sightings in that area (iStock)?

      Rabinowitz presented his argument that regardless of the few jaguars sighted crossing into the United States from the northernmost population of the cats in Sonora, the American Southwest is, at best, a “marginal habitat for the animals.” Rather than waste any of the sparse federal funds allotted to the Fish and Wildlife Service to create a habitat for the jaguar, Rabinowitz stated that it made far more sense to help those countries in the “Jaguar Corridor,” where thousands of jaguars flourish from Mexico to Argentina, to conserve the big cat’s true habitat.

      Because the Fish and Wildlife Service has been keeping a watchful eye on the handful of jaguars that cross the border between Mexico and the United States since the early 1900s, it is unlikely that sightings of jaguars can account for the twice-told winter tales of black panthers. Nor, if Mr. Rabinowitz’s sage words are heeded, are we likely to see any black jaguars creeping into our livestock barns in the Midwest.

      In addition to jaguars that fade their spots under darker hair, there are leopards with skin color containing a mixture of blue, black, gray, and purple—thus appearing “black”—but they are found in the dense forests of southwestern China, Myanmar, Assam, Nepal, and parts of southern India. Melanistic black leopards are thought to be more numerous in Java and the southern part of the Malay Peninsula than the spotted leopards. Interestingly, a female jaguar or leopard may give birth to spotted kittens along with black and albino siblings in the same litter.

      Of course I knew nothing about melanistic mutations when I was a boy, nor did I realize that there were actually no species of big cats that were categorized as “black panthers,” but I surely knew that any kind of cat as large as eye-witnesses described them did not belong in Iowa. Especially, perhaps, in the winter months.

      As I became older and came to specialize in the investigation of such phenomena as ghosts, UFOs, monsters, vampires, zombies, and other strange creatures that go bump in the night, I discovered that out-of-place black panthers are not only sighted in Iowa during the winter months, but reports of big cats have come from nearly every state and province in North America.

      On February 9, 2010, Click Orlando (http://www.clickOrlando.com/print/22506062/detail.html) reported that a number of local residents had begun to feel nervous on their evening walks and noticed that they were being joined by bobcats, a feline about three feet in length and thirty pounds in weight. Spokespersons for Florida Fish and Wildlife said that bobcats migrate all over the state, and even though residents do not wish them to get in their homes or to attack their pets, it is not unusual to spot bobcats scavenging on the beach.

      Interestingly, on that same date in February, three coyotes were spotting sprinting across the campus of Columbia University in Manhattan—that’s Manhattan, New York, not Kansas. A few hours later, according to Andy Soltis of the New York Post, a coyote was seen sliding across a frozen lake in Central Park.

      These are neat human interest stories that cause the reader to cluck his tongue in wonderment how the strangeness of out-of-place animals could come to be. However, bobcats in Florida and coyotes in Manhattan are in no measure comparable to sighting black panthers in Iowa or African lions in Indiana.

       Mysterious Cougars and African Lions in Indiana

      My friend and colleague Tim R. Swartz grew up in Indiana and he recalls that mountain lions have also been recorded in that state over the years, even though these large cats are believed extinct in the state.

      “It is not unreasonable to suppose that some mountain lions could still live or migrate through some of the more unpopulated regions,” Swartz said. “However, Indiana has had sightings of what appeared to be maned lions, animals indigenous to Africa, not the Midwest.”

      Here is an account of one such sighting that Swartz shared with me:

      On August 5, 1948 Deputy Sheriff Jack Witherby received a phone call from a man who reported that he and his family were fishing along the banks of Elkhorn Falls, in the extreme eastern part of the state. Suddenly, a large cat came running at the family, chasing them into their car. The cat lunged at the car, but then ran away along the stream bed. The cat was described as looking like an African lion with a long tail and a bushy mane around its neck and head.

      Deputy Sheriff Witherby examined tracks found at the scene and said they were “like nothing I have ever seen before in this area.”

      A few days later two brothers, Arthur and Howard Turner, spotted two strange animals that they said looked just like African lions: “They were large headed, shaggy and brown in color.”

       The Big Vampire Cat of Bladenboro

      In January 1954, experienced hunters by the hundreds arrived to trek through the swamp outside of Bladenboro, North Carolina, in search of the Vampire Cat that had been ripping people’s prize hounds to bloody shreds.

      The terror began on New Year’s Eve, 1953, when Johnny Vause found two of his dogs “torn to ribbons and crushed.” Everybody knew that there was no animal anywhere near the small mill town that could work such terrible carnage on two big and healthy dogs.

      Within a few days, two more pairs of dogs were killed in a similar fashion, but this time it appeared that their blood had been drained by the thing that had killed them.

      Chief of police Roy Fores informed Mayor W.G. Fussell that something mighty strange was going on near the swamp, and Fussell decided that the citizenry needed to be warned. If it were big healthy dogs being torn to ribbons then, how long would it be before the beast claimed its first human victims?

      On January 5, 1954, the Wilmington Morning Star ran a front-page story warning that “Vampire Tendencies Found in Bladenboro’s Monsters.” That night people began to walk cautiously and look warily over their shoulders if they had to go out after dark.

      There was no question that area residents were on edge, and numerous reports came in to the police and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission demanding the capture or the killing of the Vampire Cat. Increasingly, people began to hear strange noises and to report shadowy figures moving near the swamp at night.

      No one in the police force or the Wildlife Resources Commission denied that the witnesses were seeing something that they deemed out of the ordinary, but none of the official investigations yielded any hair, tracks, droppings, or any physical evidence of any kind. Some livestock was lost, but in each case when the authorities investigated the slaughter the deaths were quite obviously the result of attacks by feral dogs.

      Newspaper reporters from around the United States descended on the small community, each journalist hoping to scoop the others with a photograph of the Great Vampire Cat. According to the people in the vicinity of Bladenboro, at least 1,000 hunters arrived to trek through the swamp. One of the men shot a large bobcat, and Mayor Fussell eagerly declared the dreaded monster slain and announced that the danger of attack by a vampire cat had come to an end.

      Interestingly, today, over 50 years later, Bladenboro still celebrates “Beast Week,” each year in recognition of the genuine terror that seized the community. A creature that was once feared as a “bloodthirsty shadow-dweller” now precipitates a “Boost the ‘Boro Festival.”

      Hiram Hester, a former chairman of the festival, told Monica Holland (The Fayette Observer, March 16, 2008) that the beast was no longer an embarrassment to the townspeople. The people were now really excited about celebrating The Beast of Bladenboro.

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