S19 Ep11: Pitch-black predators: Alien Big Cats (Sn. 19 Ep. 11)
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My name's Jack Wagner, host of Otherworld, a podcast featuring real people who experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained. I have no idea how I got there. I don't think I've ever seen anything that looks like this. It felt like electric stars on fire. I started Otherworld to take a grounded approach to the paranormal, help people tell their own stories, and encourage more to come forward. I certainly don't have the answers,

But maybe one day we will. Join me as we explore our world's greatest mysteries. Listen to Otherworld now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Good evening and welcome to Monsters Among Us. I'm your guide, Derek Hayes. Welcome back, everyone. Great to have you with us here tonight.

I'm often asked what got me started in all this paranormal stuff. In other words, how did I end up starting this show? Well, there are many reasons why I started this program. Frustrations with my struggling scriptwriting career, for one. Realizing there was a need for this kind of format, for two. And having something creative that I could call my own and call my own shots on, that's number three.

But what got me into the paranormal in the first place was an experience I had when I was about 10 years old. A sighting that sent me on a search that continues to this day. Now I'll get to that story for the 100th time here in just a little bit. But most of you already know what it is that I saw that day back in the late 1980s. A six foot long, muscly, shiny...

shockingly fast creature that all three of us there identified as a black panther of some sort. Now we hear this observation often, black panthers are not paranormal, but I beg to differ. Part of the paranormal realm includes cryptozoology, the study of hidden and unknown animals, and part of cryptozoology is a phenomenon known as out-of-place animals.

kangaroos in Oklahoma, giant pythons in Ohio, and these monstrous big cats just about anywhere east of the mighty Mississippi. Now you might still disagree with me on this, and you're free to skip this episode, but I wouldn't if I were you. Because not only are all of tonight's calls thrilling, interesting, and nerve-wracking, but every one of these witnesses could be you. It appears that these sightings happen to all walks of life.

Hello guys, this is Chris Graham. So this is probably around 2020.

I work for a farming company and we go out to farms and ranches delivering seed products, all that kind of stuff. Well, there's this one farm I was told I had to go to to deliver some seed. So I go up there and see a bunch of people running around with rifles and shotguns. And one of the hands comes up to me and he says, hey, you just watch yourself. I'll follow you and help you do what you need to do, but

then you need to get out of here. I asked the guy what's going on. He said, we just saw a panther. They said it was just a giant, solid black cat. And I didn't see it. I didn't hear it. But they had all seen it. They were starting their morning. And it just right through their shop there, just ran right through. And they were fearful because they've got animals. They've got dogs.

One of the farmers' homes is there, so they've got their families, all the hands. Just everybody start grabbing weapons just to keep themselves safe and to kind of search for this thing.

But I never heard anything back about it. I've gone back to the place a couple of times, but they never said anything. So, of course, I mean, we don't have anything around here. We have some mountain lions because Uvalde is like the gateway to the hill country. Like north, you've got Texas Hill Country. South is Flatland Plains. So, I mean, it's very vast land.

Thank you, Chris. You know, Texas is one of those rare locations that might have a big cat as a resident. Naturally, the America's largest big cat, the jaguar.

was known to inhabit parts of southern Texas well into the 1940s and sightings still occur to this day. And the jaguar has a known melanistic or black variation. So unlike most of tonight's calls, this one might have been explained by a resident big cat. A big cat, literally. The jaguar can grow up to be eight foot from nose to tip of tail and weigh in at a whopping 250 pounds.

It's more than highway. So finding yourself in the wide open, where one of these things was just seen, is not where you want to find yourself. But Chris, we were happy to hear that you were able to escape unscathed. Thank you again for taking time to make the phone call. Now folks, I have all sorts of ABC calls to share with you here this evening. But first, these messages. If you or a loved one were injured in an accident...

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Now it's not always just one of these cats that is seen. Lane in South Carolina. As a perfect example of what I mean. Hey Derek and Monsters Among Us. This is Lane from South Carolina. And I had a sighting yesterday on October 13th. Which was Friday the 13th as well. But that may or may not have anything to do with this situation.

Anyways, I was just coming out of work with my mom. This happened in Prosperity, South Carolina, and we were heading towards Chapin, South Carolina. And in this little stretch of road, two black masses run across the road. At first, we thought they were dogs, but they didn't run like dogs. And after, like, talking about it with my mother...

Everything was pointing to cats. But the problem is, in South Carolina, we only have bobcats as a native species. But after listening to your show, I know about the ABCs, the alien big cats. But it was crazy because the heads...

They weren't dog-like at all. And my mother says the tails were long, longer than the dogs would be. And I would say, if I had to guess, the bigger of the two came up to my waist and the other one was a little bit smaller than that. Yeah, so there were two black cats that just ran across the road. It was around 9:21 in the morning.

And it was honestly a really nice day. It wasn't too hot. It wasn't too cold. I never thought I would see a big black cat in the wild. And like, maybe they could have been just weird dogs. But I grew up with dogs and I know dogs and these did not look like dogs. And all the accounts you shared and I've heard, it's always been one black cat.

Thank you, Lane.

And thank you for waiting to get to a quiet location before making your phone call. Did you guys happen to hear how good he sounded? That was a wise choice, my friend. Now, Friday the 13th and big black cats. There are some folks out there that'll tell you that there certainly is a connection there. I, on the other hand, just see it as a fun coincidence. But these alien big cats are real. I've seen one.

So that part cannot be so easily explained away. Now, given that there were two of these creatures in this experience, you might be asking yourself, I wonder if these things are reproducing? Well, as it turns out, this next call just might confirm those suspicions. Please welcome Chloe from Tennessee. And just a quick warning, the following call does describe injuries to an animal, just so you're aware.

Hi, my name is Chloe and so when I was around 21, so probably, I don't know, a dozen years ago, my parents owned a property with a few apartments on it and I happened to get one of them. This place was very rundown, infested with brown recluses, but it was kind of off in the country a bit, down close to Nashville, Tennessee.

And little known fact, I grew up my whole life and didn't know it, Tennessee actually does have black panthers. They're very, very rare, but they are seen. Well, I don't know necessarily that that's what this was, but when I was living down there, I actually saw one out at the back end of the property, oh, 50 yards at the most away, and...

It could have been like more of a kind of wild domestic cat, but solid black, super muscled. I mean, I've never seen a domestic cat with this much muscle on it. And this thing was huge. I actually have a couple of black cats myself. And my big boy, he's maybe 14 pounds. This cat would have dwarfed him.

This would have had to have been probably around the range of 25 pounds. So, really big cat. Well, not long after that happened, I actually found some kittens out on the road, a little park close by, and took two of them. I had a front porch that didn't actually have a door to it, but it was screened in.

The door was just kind of laying in there, so I took the door and turned it sideways so that the kittens couldn't actually get out of the front porch, and that's where I was going to raise them when they were little. I hadn't actually taken them to the vet yet, hadn't had them deflead. I wake up one morning and it's like, I don't know, 4 a.m., 5 a.m., barely getting light, and I'm just hearing this crazy commotion.

I run outside and I see this black cat jump over the, you know, laid down door and take off streaking around the house. Well, one of the kittens, the little boy, actually had hustled with this thing. And through some warning, it had actually ripped open its jaw on one side and dislocated it.

So this was a powerful cat and unfortunately had to put down the kitten. It was very, very sad. Well, a few years later and about 10 to 20 miles away, my parents are living in another location with a really long driveway. My mom says she sees a

huge black cat that spanned almost the length of the driveway. So six foot long, probably something like that.

So she said that, you know, yeah, she saw the panther down there at the end of the driveway and flares to it. I actually only found out about that roughly a year ago. But I called to confirm with my mom and she said that, yes, the cat she saw was absolutely a black cat and that it took up like the entire length of the driveway. Now she saw it from...

Oh, goodness, it's quite a long driveway, so it wasn't enough to see much detail, but she said it was absolutely black, and the way it moved, it was definitely a cat. And the one I saw, again, it's roughly the size of, like, the smaller clouded leopards at the Nashville Zoo, so it's at least 25 pounds. Just kind of curious, since they're so close together, location-wise, and the, you know, size-slash-year difference,

Maybe what I saw was a young one and what she saw was it grown up. So yeah, I was listening to your podcast, just recently found it and heard that you like the black cat sightings. I don't think there was anything supernatural about these, but yeah, I mean, you can actually go online and look up black cat sightings in Tennessee and there's a map with like the little hotspots.

I did find a TWRA, so the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency. Their website actually has a map of where cougars have been spotted in Tennessee again. There's at least 10 confirmed sightings via trail cam and then you can find a few more on like YouTube and stuff.

But during all of that, I came to find out that what we think of as Black Panthers, I think you might have actually said this on one of the podcasts a while back, but they don't come in black. So what did I see is kind of interesting. I don't know. So I thought it was pretty cool. I didn't want to know. All right. Thanks. Thank you, Chloe. Poor little guy. Sounds like he put up a hell of a fight, though.

But that's typical tomcat behavior. Now Chloe touched on something that sets a lot of these sightings apart. The size of the animal. On a recent episode, it was talking about a large mountain lion that we've been dealing with. One that was preying on a feral cat colony that we were trying to manage in our area. And when you see it on the camera, you instantly realize just how big these things are. And powerful. As Chloe had mentioned.

And from the sounds of things, they might be reproducing. That is, if the kittens that Chloe found were indeed its offspring. It sounds like at least one of the kittens survived. So I have to ask, did it grow up to be normal or did it grow to an enormous size? And Chloe is not wrong about big cats in the state of Tennessee. They're confirmed to pass through from time to time. But we'll talk more on that here in a bit.

But for now, let me tell you how you can submit your own spooky story. You can do so one of two ways. By calling our toll-free 24-7-365 hotline at 888-608-NIGHT. That's 888-608-N-I-G-H-T. Or you can record a voice memo and email it to me at monstersamonguspodcast at gmail.com.

No matter how you send it in, we appreciate each and every call that we receive. And if you called in and haven't heard your story yet, please be patient. There are a lot of calls to get through. And if yours involves a common subject, like ghosts or UFOs, it takes even longer because I have so many of those entries to get through. But I promise I'll get it in there.

And if your call has a glitch or the quality is bad or something, we will be reaching out to you so you can resubmit. There are some pretty good stories that I'm not able to play because of that reason. So hopefully we get a second chance with them. Anyway, that number is 888-608-NIGHT. And we can't wait to hear from you. Now this next entry takes us to another southern state with an abundance of ABC sightings. Please welcome Gavin Harkin.

From Louisiana. Hey Derek, my name is Gavin. I got a short one that I figured you'd like a lot. I just moved back to Louisiana with my family. A few weeks back, I was talking to my grandma and she's in her late 60s.

We were just visiting together and we were sitting down watching, I think it was the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet, something like that was just on TV as we were talking. And happened to come upon a story about cats and big cats in general and panthers specifically. And I made a comment that people have been seeing them around in Louisiana, but they're not supposed to be. And my grandma made the face at me and was like, I've seen them. She was like, I know they're there.

I asked her to explain it to me because I was just like, I don't know about that, Grandma. She insisted and she said in the late 1970s, somewhere around there, she was driving down a road going home and it was the middle of the day and she saw a very large cat. She said it was bigger than a dog. It walked out in front of her car and it took a big leap to finish across Tulane Road. So it took it about two strides across Tulane.

Thank you Gavin. You know strangely enough my uncle had a sighting of something similar way back in the early 1970s. Coincidentally only 6 or 7 miles from where we would end up living some 15 or 20 years later.

the very location where I had my experience. Now from what I remember, my uncle said that it was a large dark grey or black cat that turned to look at him over its shoulder before darting off the narrow road they were both on. And the point here being that these older sightings are just as interesting as the newer ones.

And those older sightings offer clues as to what these things might be and just where they might have come from. So thank you again, Gavin, for sharing your grandmother's experience with one of these phantom felines. They're building a team that has a different way to play.

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Now up next, we venture to my boyhood home of Ohio. Please welcome Brian to tonight's program. Hey, Derek. My name is Brian Mullaney, and I am calling from Central Ohio, which is actually where I had my experience as well. So I recently just found your podcast, and I am a huge fan, so much so that I went back

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maybe 45 minutes to an hour outside of Columbus, the capital city of Ohio. And my parents' house was positioned up on a big hill. So the front of the hill is cornfield or bean field, depending on the year. The backside of the property is a wooded area. And along the edge of the property runs our main freshwater source for our small town, which is a creek. So I tell you all that because...

I just wanted you to know that my house, it was like deer heaven. So from a very early age, we saw lots of deer. We saw them up close, saw them far away, you know, big deer, little deer, buck stoves, everything. And very familiar with deer and what they look like.

But not only deer, I mean all the small wildlife in Ohio is on my parents' property. We have coyotes, turkeys, raccoons, possums, minks, whatever, you know. So, you know, very early on I knew what the wildlife looked like around my area and I was very familiar with it. So that was just kind of set the story. I'll get into it now. I was in third grade and we had some sort of two-hour delay.

So we were leaving the house a little later than normal. It was probably like 8 o'clock in the morning, so it was daylight out. And it was a very clear day. It was a beautiful day. It was me, my mom, and my little sister. We're all in the car heading to school. I mentioned that the house was up on a hill. The driveway was about a quarter of a mile long. We're heading down the driveway. And first you go towards the neighbor's house. Then there's a bend. Then we go down the hill.

So we go around that bend and we're going down the hill and at the same time we all look into the neighbor's field and we see what we think is a massive deer. Like massive. Bigger than any deer we've ever seen in our entire life. And I think the reason why we all thought it was a deer was because of its coloring. It was very, very dark brown, almost black. Kind of like the big bucks that we would see. But

It was weird. It was a weird shape. And we all saw it. My mom stopped the car and we all just started looking at it. It was very low to the ground, which is weird for a deer, right? And then, you know, almost out of nowhere, we all said it has a very long cat-like tail. And then it just kind of snapped into focus. We're like, holy crap, we're looking at a big cat. Big, dark brown, almost black cat in central Ohio.

Our little cats.

We'd get in the car and we'd go to school and we didn't see it anymore after that. And I went to school and told everybody I saw a mountain lion. And my teachers told me, you know, there's no mountain lions in Ohio. We did some research on it and that's true. Officially, there's no mountain lions in the state of Ohio. I know recently people are seeing them in Kentucky.

We do have bobcats in Ohio, but there's been no confirmed sightings of bobcats in my county ever. And a bobcat is a smaller cat. This was much bigger than what a normal bobcat is. And bobcats have a much lighter fur. I mean, they're almost yellow, like a blonde fur, and they're spotted.

This was a solid dark color, so it doesn't really fit the bobcat description. But then we came home, we told my dad about it, and he just kind of said, "It has to be a mountain lion that's very far away from home." So we never saw it again. You know, that was, I think, in the fall. Then that winter, my dad was doing work around the farm, and he would find massive tracks, massive cat tracks. And then it just kind of stopped after that.

So not really sure what it is. The tracks could be explained by a bobcat because they have bigger feet. They're a small cat with giant feet. But to me, the likelihood of us having a cougar and a bobcat on the property when we've never had any type of cat sighting before is pretty odd. I mean, you would think that the two were related, but it's also kind of odd that after that winter season,

we never saw it again. So like I said, this happened when I was in third grade. I'm 29 years old now, so I think this would have been, you know, the late 90s, like '98, '99. So I'm not sure when you had your big cat experience, but maybe we saw the same thing, you know, maybe it was around the same time. If it truly was, you know, a mountain lion or a cougar that was far away from home, it very conceivably could have been traveled from

you know, central Ohio down to southeastern Ohio, especially if it's from Kentucky or the Appalachian Mountains. Anyway, I just thought you'd like to hear that story and go Bucs. Thanks, Derek. Bye. Thank you, Brian. And go Bucs. Indeed.

Well, since Brian brought it up, perhaps it's time that I re-shared my ABC experience. The experience that kickstarted my interest in the subject of cryptozoology. Like Brian, I grew up in the state of Ohio. Southeast or East Central, depending on how you look at it. Near I-77 and I-70, for those that take the interstate.

Now we grew up on a 13 acre plot of wooded land and we had a neighbor that had another seven acres and a son around our age. So me and my brother quickly made friends with them and together we began exploring the 20 acres behind our houses on our very first excursion down to the woods as we called it, which in reality was only 200 or so yards from our back door. We had a strange experience. We stood on the bank of a small creek

probably drinking from our Masters of the Universe thermoses, went from the hill ahead of us. We heard a sudden explosion of rustled leaves and broken branches, as we'd obviously startled something that was on the ground some 50 feet up the hill from us.

The mystery animal was running through thick underbrush, but we could see enough to make out that it was huge, twice or three times the size of the coonhounds that our neighbor raised. And it was all black, jet black, shiny, like one of the big cats that you would see on National Geographic or Wild America or something. And from what we could see, the creature was very cat-like, aside from all the noise it made fleeing the area, of course.

but everything else about it was very feline and it was fast. We attempted to cut it off. It was headed for a cleared pipeline that we were situated next to, but it was long gone before any of us could reach the tree line. And we could not wait for my dad to get home from work to tell him what we had seen, only for him to tell us that he'd seen the exact same thing just days prior, drinking out of the spring that was only about 100 feet up the hill.

from where we had our sighting. Now the fascination had been activated after that point. I asked everyone I knew what they thought it might have been. One of my uncles had a nice set of encyclopedias that I would thumb through whenever I was visiting, hoping to somehow stumble on an image that would help me explain what it was we saw. And in researching the subject, it introduced me to other cryptids. The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, Mothman, etc.,

So that's how it all started. All because of a sighting, just like Brian's. And in the same state, no less. So welcome to the club, Brian. I don't know for sure what these things are, but I do know that they're out there. So thank you for sharing your experience with these mystery beasts. Now folks, this next one takes us to the show-me state. That's right, Missouri seems to have them too.

Please welcome tonight's only anonymous caller. Hi, Derek. I'm calling out of Missouri here, Southwest region. Not really a story, just kind of something I wanted to share about your black cat stories and stuff like that. I've been listening to your podcast and I'm way behind, but I started listening to it while I'm mowing. And I got up to an episode specifically on black cats and I,

It made me think back to a recent time here. There used to be a time in my region of Missouri where mountain lions were not specifically verified, I guess you could say. They weren't said to live here, even though they used to be native. And for the longest time, the conservation department would not acknowledge the fact that mountain lions were still existing in this area until recently. We also had the same thing with...

Black bears in this area used to not be acknowledged by the conservation department until a recent time, whenever it was kind of hard to say they don't exist, whenever there was a lot of people who had it photographed at running across a Walmart parking lot. I guess this just kind of verifies the fact that, you know, black cats could be out there and stuff like that, and just not as commonly accepted.

Because, I mean, you could still cruise around areas of Missouri here and not see, you know, a black bear. I've lived here my whole life and never seen a black bear. But, I mean, stuff like that just kind of verifies people's story, I feel like. Anyway, love your show. Bye. Thank you, caller. Now, we did this with most of the states covered here tonight, so check the show notes for others. MonstersAmongUsPodcast.com and click the show notes tab.

but Missouri actually has some figures on confirmed mountain lion encounters within the state. In fact, it looks like the most recent confirmed mountain lion sighting was on February 26th of 2024. 120 reports in total since the creation of the large carnivore response team back in 1996.

Each year, the LCRT investigates hundreds of mountain lion sighting reports. Of the thousands of reports received since 1994, less than 1% have yielded enough physical evidence to clearly confirm the presence of a mountain lion. Now much of that information is courtesy of the Missouri Department of Conservation. So what they're saying is that mountain lion sightings do take place in Missouri, but they're super rare.

Now imagine there are only a few in the entire state. The chances of anyone ever seeing that cat is very, very slim. And that's just regular cougars. Forget about this strange black variety that is yet to be confirmed. So thank you again, caller, for sharing the info. Now be careful out there on that mower.

Now our next entry takes us back to Tennessee. Please welcome Nora out of the Volunteer's Day. Hello, Monsters Among Us. My name is Nora Gower. I'm calling from Rock Island, Tennessee. This is my story today.

I want to preface and start by saying that I lived with my family, my four children, my husband, in Nashville for 20-something years before we moved out here to Rock Island. It's important to the story. So, we move out to Rock Island. I'm very directionally challenged, so I'm very aware of my surroundings.

In Nashville, in the city, there are lights, streetlights, where you can see the road. And you proceed down the road and you can see. Well, in the country, in Rock Island, there are no streetlights, no lights, hardly anywhere. So as I'm going to work and I get up at like 3 and I was going in, leaving about 3.30pm.

So I'm driving down the road, it's still night, darkish, and there's always this dog like laying in the road. So as I kind of come around these really curvy roads, it's dark and it's really early morning. So I'm watching, slowing down for the dog, usually laying on the road. This particular morning, I'm really hyper aware of the dogs and reason.

And I'm looking at the spot where he's usually laying. And I see big yellow eyes. Blacker than black. Black cat. And I could see his tail curled up around his body where I could see his tail look so big. Anyway, I couldn't believe I had seen it. I thought almost I was imagining it happening.

And it was big, too. Like, if I would have gotten out of the car, it would have been, I mean, you know, not my shoulders, but thereabouts. Like, I'm five foot. It would have been big. Anyway, that's my story. And also, I started getting up even earlier. So I'm getting up at 2, and I'm leaving the house by 2.45. And I am also on the same road.

I'm used to the road by now. This is five years later. And this huge gray wolf, I guess it was a wolf. It was almost like it was on the side of my car. It's like I get hit with one on the side of my car. It was like, you know, running. And then as I'm slowing down, it goes across my car. No deal. No deal.

Except for when my headlights hit the arms of this big, huge, gray wolf. I promise you, it almost looked like a human muscle. You know how like when you make a muscle and the muscles kind of round like that?

Thank you Nora, and thank you for the bonus encounter there at the end with the wolf.

A dozen or so episodes ago, we talked about how red wolves are making a comeback in parts of Tennessee, thanks to a breeding program they have set up there. So perhaps that is what you saw, although that doesn't explain the human muscle on the arm.

But as far as the big cat is concerned, the last cougar to be confirmed in Tennessee was back in 2016. But that was a regular, tawny-colored cat, not one of these mystery black cats that everyone's reporting. So who knows? But we are thankful that you took the time to share the experience with us, Nora. So thank you again for calling in. Now let's slip in one more story before our final break.

Another rare entry from west of the Mississippi River. Way west. Please welcome Hannah from the state of Oregon. Hello Derek, my name is Hannah. Love your podcast. I had a very unusual experience this morning. I'm a photographer here in southern Oregon and I was loading up photos to bring to the gallery here in Bandon.

When I was loading up the photos, what I saw about 30 feet away from me was a dark silhouette. It was about the size of a medium-sized dog. It had a cat's head. It had pointed ears and a big, long tail. Not sure what this was. I have seen lynx. I've seen cougar. I've seen all kinds of animals here in Southern Oregon. But I've never seen this.

Actually, it looked like a cutout of a large cat. It saw me, and I saw it. Got a good three-second look at it. It took about two seconds for it to understand that I was watching it. It jumped in two jumps about 10, 12 feet apart and went into the side bushes.

I don't know what I saw. I think it would be a cougar, but I know cougars don't have that kind of dark fur. This was in the morning. It was complete daylight. It looked like a cutout of a cat, just a dark shape of a cat. Again, the tail is the one thing that I really could see last from my vantage point when I went into the woods. Maybe a foot and a half long tail. Very long tail, full of fur.

I immediately put my photographs on the ground and went back inside. And I have been looking online to see what kind of animal would match this, and I can't find any. I appreciate your show. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Thanks, Hannah. Yet another puzzling mystery. Because mountain lions or cougars do live throughout the state of Oregon. But as Hannah had mentioned, it wasn't the correct color.

And as we've already established on past episodes, there have been a couple of albino mountain lions photographed over the years, but never a black one, or a melanistic one, as they're often called. Now I should mention that it's a bit ironic that a photographer wasn't able to catch a photo of this creature. But thinking back to my experience, even if we had iPhones back then, I still wouldn't have been able to take a picture. It was just that fast.

So regardless of what it was, Hannah, we appreciate you sharing that report here with us. Now there is one state east of the Mississippi that has a sustained mountain lion population, the state of Florida. But like our previous sightings from Oregon,

This next one doesn't seem to be describing that species either. Please welcome Bill, who currently resides in the state of Alabama. Hello, Derek. My name is Bill. I'm calling from Alabama. Love the podcast. I've been listening for the past few weeks. Started at the beginning and up to season six now. Know that you've had a black cat experience. And I thought I'd call and share my black cat experience that I had.

I was about eight years old. We lived in central Florida, and this was 1978. We lived in the middle of nowhere. Parents had bought some land. It was all hunting land that people hunted on. They had got five acres of land in the middle of these woods. Our closest neighbor was probably two or three miles. One lane dirt road that went down. We were almost at the end of it.

I was playing in the yard one day and I had a swing set with monkey bars and slide swings and stuff like kids have. I was playing in the backyard. We were surrounded by woods. Palmetto bush was growing in the woods with pine trees. Anything in the woods you'd hear stepping on the palmetto rack and brakes, you could hear anything. There was something in the woods before it got to you. Well, I heard something in the woods and looked up and there was a

Big black cat. Black panther. And it was crouched down like it was stalking me. And I ran to my swing set. Found up on top of the monkey bars and started hollering for my parents. And it ran over to the swing set where I was at. My dad had heard me yelling. He had looked out the window and saw it. He grabbed his rifle and come out the back door. And guess he didn't want to shoot it.

They fired a shot off in the air to scare it. When he fired off the gun, it scared it and it ran. We had a black lab that got his attention. We had some beagles that got their attention. They all decided to take the chase after it. They chased it into the woods. It ran back into the woods. The beagles gave up before the lab did. We heard the lab fighting with it. We heard him yelping.

he come running back to the house. But the cat had took a chunk out of the top of his head. Pretty good sized chunk of scalp missing. Took us a while to get that healed up. As a matter of fact, my dad had talked to some people around there. There was actually at that time quite a few people that had seen that same cat in those woods while hunting. I know there was black bear out there, I've seen black bear in the woods there, but

That was the only time I saw the black cat. But at that time, in the 70s, nobody seemed too surprised, you know, to see a black cat. Because nobody knew there wasn't supposed to be black panthers. It wasn't until later on in life, I heard, you know, that there's no such thing as black panthers. Yes, nobody has ever caught one. I always thought that was strange because what I saw was a big black cat. What my dad saw, he always said it was a big black cat.

Thank you, Bill. Another older encounter, and I love them. The fact that these older accounts exist means that this sort of thing has been going on for quite a while, which to me at least makes it that much more believable.

making it more realistic that there really could be something out there. Now I don't want to paint these creatures as villains. While big cats do attack, it's rare and not at all a common occurrence. So I hate to perpetuate a bad reputation, but I can't help but wonder if this cat was looking to have a little boy for lunch, eyeballing Bill who was playing on the monkey bars. In other words, it was hunting.

And the dogs essentially saved Bill's life. Now there's not a ton of information out there about these alien big cats. But I did manage to find a map that was assembled by the Eastern Puma Research Network. And shares data collected between July 1st, 1993 to December 31st, 2000. And it essentially gives sighting totals for each state east of the Mississippi.

And it further breaks down the sightings by color of the creature, or if cubs were present. And some of these states have some impressive black cat sighting numbers. Pennsylvania had 282 in that span, New York 146, Wisconsin 98, and West Virginia 76.

And though the sighting numbers on this map are nothing too impressive for the state of Alabama, that's where these last two stories stem from. So from the Yellowhammer State, please welcome TJ back to the program. Hi Derek, this is TJ from Salem, Alabama. About 14, 15 years ago, somewhere around 2004, 2005, I was about 15 or 16 years old.

There's almost never quiet there. You always heard dogs barking.

you know, stuff going on. I'm out there smoking a cigarette and the best I can describe is I hear this growling noise that kind of like what you would imagine the boogeyman to sound like even. I can't even compare it to any animal that I know of. I thought it was my imagination. Well, I noticed that suddenly everything was quiet.

There were no dogs barking, nothing. A little eerie, I just glanced over at the road and walking down the road is this enormous black cat. Had to have at least stood four feet tall. It was almost as tall as the fence around my dad's yard. And I just froze. Just in terror, just froze. I didn't know what to do. I thought anything might draw attention to me. And a lot of big cats attack when they see movement.

And I watched it walk up the road, and then it disappeared into the woods. My whole childhood, I've heard stories of Black Panthers living in the forests of Alabama, and I think a lot of people have heard that, but they say that that's supposed to be impossible.

Thank you, TJ, for ringing in. That's a perfect example of a typical experience.

A fleeting glance is all you get of these mystery creatures. If you're lucky, that is. And if you don't believe me, just ask Josh. Because he too is calling in from the state of Alabama. Hey Derek, this is Josh. I live in the state of Alabama. Like the northwest corner. I had a story for you.

I was hunting. We have like about 80 acres. It's a farm and we have horses and then we have a lot of woods. And so I'll hunt, you know, from time to time. And so I was out hunting one morning, you know, a buck had walked up. I mean, I had just gotten the woods and when I walked in, you know, I was stomping around and I felt like nothing was going to come. But this is really not pertinent to the story. But the buck walked up and I shot and this was the first buck that I'd ever shot at.

and I'd killed, you know, deer before but never a buck like this. I shot and I missed and long story short, you know, he ran off and I searched the area, I couldn't find it. And so...

I don't know, maybe two or three days it went by and, you know, I really felt like I'd maybe hit the deer because it was, you know, pretty close range. But when one comes up, you know, you're kind of shaky and you get buck fever. And so I was coming home from work. It was middle of the day. I don't know if I said, but this was probably about three to four years ago.

I remember it was cool outside. It wasn't cold yet. So probably like fall. And as you're coming down my road, my neighbor's property, they have like 70 something acres and they had clear cutted all their trees. They had done this probably two years ago. And so there was an old logging road that was kind of grown up. And so I had seen some buzzards flying in a circle around in that clear cut at a far off distance.

I was thinking, what if I could go out and find my deer? So I got out of my car. It was kind of creepy that day for some reason, because I seen paw prints and stuff in the mud there. And I was thinking, you know, wow,

I just had this feeling like, what if a bobcat or something was to jump or attack me or something like that. I don't even know why I really thought that, but I just had that go through my mind. And so I hurried up, I started climbing back up the next ridge and I was standing on top and I was trying to look around to see where were those birds flying and there were some stumps and stuff. Everything was cleared off. There was a big clear cut.

It had the sage kind of brush looking stuff as you know, three, four foot tall, whatever. So I was looking around and about that time, something caught my eye and it was a black animal. It was like walking straight away from me on the ridge right next to me. This thing, I mean immediately when I saw it, my blood ran cold. Like I knew it was a cat.

It was huge. I mean, when I say huge, I'm talking like way bigger than a house cat. Like, I mean, this was bigger than like a normal dog. You know what I mean? And it was walking straight away from me. And the tail went down almost all the way to the ground and then curled back up.

Almost like an upside down candy cane. Just like a cat's tail. I've never seen any dogs in the area that had any sort of features like that at all. I mean, I knew for a fact what I was looking at was the back end of a big cat. I could not see its face because like I said, it was walking straight away from me.

And for some reason, I seen at the very bottom of this ridge, there was a couple little beagle dogs that were like, you know, maybe like neighbors dogs. But, you know, they were just house dogs and they were on the trail of something like they were smelling the ground and they were looking. And so I whistled like you would, you know, for a dog. And immediately the dogs looked up, their tails were wagging.

But the black animal up the top of the ridge, like it was trying like, you know, maybe to get away from them, but it was walking like real stealthily, just like a cat would walk away. I know what animals are in my neighborhood and I know what dogs look like when they're walking away from you versus what a cat looks like when it's walking away from you. The black animal will say, never looked back and the tail never moved.

We have a, you know, indoor house cat that my wife got, by the way. I'm not a big cat fan, but anyways. And I know how she walks around the house and how she acts. And we have dogs, and so I know how dogs act. And I could distinctly tell that whatever this was walking straight away from me, that was probably, at the most, 30, 40 yards away from me. And I would say that it was...

gosh, I would say two and a half feet tall and the tail looked to be, you know, two to three foot long. But, you know, it was down and then curled back up and it just kept walking. You know, it never acknowledged the whistle and the other little dogs that I noticed at the bottom that they were like smelling something and they were on like the trail of this, probably this cat or something. You know, they looked right at me and this black cat at the top dwarfed the two dogs at the bottom.

I've lived in Alabama for pretty much my whole life. I've always heard stories of, you know, Black Panthers and I've heard your story and was kind of nervous about calling in and everything. But after hearing your season eight episode zero, I was like, man, I'm gonna call in because I know what I saw that day. And I know for a fact it was no house cat. I know for a fact it was not a dog.

I just do not know of any other animals that live in the state of Alabama that, you know, I would have mistaken this big black cat to be. I mean, immediately when I saw it, I didn't have any kind of weapon on me or nothing. You know, I was coming home from work. I mean, I'm telling you, my blood ran cold. I know what I saw. I love the podcast. It keeps me awake at night. Keep doing what you're doing, man. Love Monsters Among Us. You have a good day, buddy. Bye-bye. Thank you, Josh.

You know, those dogs are awfully lucky. They could have easily become blanched to whatever that thing was. Now, as far as sightings in the state of Alabama are concerned, there's one that has become a bit famous, or at least it used to be. Another strange black cat, but this time, the witness was able to obtain proof by way of a body.

The following was pulled from the book Shadowcats, The Black Panthers of North America by Michael Mays, one of the only publications on this subject. A reader sent me a clipping from the January 25th, 1975 edition of the Mobile Register.

detailing the capture of a Jaguarundi outside of Birmingham by a man named J.N. Biddy. According to the article, Mr. Biddy heard his three dogs baying and went to investigate. What he found upon arriving at the scene was a small, cat-like, reddish-brown animal with a 10-inch tail, rounded ears, and an unusually long body. Mr. Biddy popped the cat on the back of the head with a stick when it hissed at him.

and then he pinned it up in an old chicken coop. Eventually, Mr. Biddy turned the cat over to the Birmingham Zoo. Zoo director Bob Truitt said, I'll bet somebody bought him in a pet shop and turned him loose. Truitt estimated the young cat was only five months old. The article was accompanied by a photo of Mr. Biddy with what is unquestionably a Jaguarundi.

The real question here is whether this cat was an exotic pet that was released by its owner when it became too difficult to handle or if it was born in the woods of Alabama. Now I've attached that photograph in tonight's show notes if you want to take a look. But the animal mentioned in this article is a strong suspect for these mystery beasts. The Jaguarandi, a 20-pound black cat native to Central and South America.

And there are some reports from southern Texas, which is at the very northern tip of its range. But many wonder if these elusive, relatively harmless creatures have made their way further north than that, filling a void in the food chain left by the now extinct eastern puma. And like I said, I did link to that photograph in the show notes. Visit MonstersAmongUsPodcast.com and click the show notes tab to take a look.

I can't tell for sure if the animal is still alive in the photograph, but he sure is a cute little guy. And folks, that's going to do it for this episode. I love the subject, and it's not just because I had an experience. No, I'm a cat guy. I have a couple of black house panthers myself. And I'm also an animal guy. I've always had a fascination with the wild kingdom. And I also love wild places.

You can't have a wild place without wild critters. And what's more wild than an unknown, monstrous, big black cat? Now Monsters Among Us was written and produced by me, Derek Hayes. Copyright Red Crow Media. Additional support was provided by Sarah Carter Hayes, Delaney Bowers, and Connor Ryan. All media used in this production is done so under the protection of fair use. Give us a like and follow at our social media accounts.

Follow us on YouTube, if you would. And leave us a rate and review wherever that sort of thing is possible. Don't forget you can catch the show every Saturday evening at 10 p.m. Eastern on the Unexed Digital Network. Just visit unexednetwork.com to learn more. And tonight's score was provided by Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse, Co.agmusic, and Carl Casey at White Bat Audio.

Now don't forget to watch our film Shadows in the Desert, High Strangeness, and the Borrego Triangle. There are no phantom big cats in that documentary, but we cover just about every other phenomena you can think of. Visit borregotriangle.com to learn more.

And our shop is still on sale for just a couple of more weeks. MonstersAmongUsPodcast.com and click the shop tab. As of now, everything is 20% off. And it'll be that way until at least June. Alright folks, I'll catch you all back here on Thursday for a brand new installment. Until then, keep it spooky. And above all else, have yourselves a good night.