Category // 9 files

Phantom cat

Big cats where none should be: English moors, Scottish hills, high savannas. The most “plausible” category in the atlas — panthers really have escaped — and yet among the hardest to prove: a discreet cat in dense countryside is nearly invisible.

• Case file Nº019 Début du XXe siècle

  Wampus Cat

  Phantom cat / 35.96°N 83.92°W

  Appalachia's phantom cat — half woman, half cougar in some tellings — a living oral tradition with no sighting file behind it.

  Class 1

• Case file Nº061 Folklore ancien

  Mngwa

  Phantom cat / 9.99°S 39.71°E

  A donkey-sized grey cat blamed for deadly night attacks on Tanzania's coast in the 1920s; the killer was never identified.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº062 1931

  Marozi

  Phantom cat / 0.42°S 36.70°E

  The spotted lion of Kenya's Aberdare Range: one very real skin shot in 1931, and no confirmed population before or since.

  Class 3

• Case file Nº068 1871

  Queensland Tiger

  Phantom cat / 18.27°S 146.03°E

  A striped cat reported in Queensland since 1871; some saw a surviving marsupial lion, but nothing tangible ever surfaced.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº071 1992

  Beast of Bodmin Moor

  Phantom cat / 50.55°N 4.62°W

  A dark phantom cat reported on Cornwall's granite moor since 1992; a six-month government inquiry found nothing verifiable.

  Class 3

• Case file Nº072 Années 1970

  Beast of Exmoor

  Phantom cat / 51.14°N 3.63°W

  A phantom big cat blamed for killing a Devon farm's sheep in 1983 — hunted, without result, by Royal Marines marksmen.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº073 Années 1960

  British big cats

  Phantom cat / 52.56°N 1.46°W

  Thousands of exotic-cat sightings across Britain: a few genuine captures on record, but no established population ever proven.

  Class 4

• Case file Nº079 Années 1990

  Beast of Buchan

  Phantom cat / 57.53°N 2.00°W

  A black big cat reported for decades across Buchan's farmland in north-east Scotland — persistent testimony, no physical proof.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº080 Années 1990

  Beast of Dartmoor

  Phantom cat / 50.58°N 3.92°W

  The black big cat reported on Dartmoor since the 1990s — the newest layer on England's most legend-laden moor, never proven.

  Class 2