Residents of a Renfrewshire village are claiming that a black leopard has been spotted in the neighbourhood. Out walking near the primary school early on Monday morning, a resident of Lochwinnoch could not believe his eyes. A five feet long, black cat like creature stood before him . It was in nearby woods that the mysterious creature was last spotted, locals say it ran in here and vanished without a trace.Experts say it could be a black leopard, in the past year there have been more than 200 sightings in Scotland. Police are keeping an open mind, even using their helicopter to search the surrounding areas. Superintendent Daniel Dyer from Strathclyde Police said: "We are trained to deal with anything and everything, if you are suggesting we require a serious cat squad its possibly something for the future. "Letters have also been sent home to parents of schoolchildren as precaution, a move which seems to have caused more excitement than concern.

One local said: "My daughter keeps an eye out, after she heard it she's always looking out of the window to see if its in our woods."The beast is said to have left scratches and bite marks on cars. Reports say the creature is much larger than domestic cats, and is unlikely to come through a cat flap near you.

View: Full Article | Source: Scotland Today

One thing that gets me about big cat sightings, they have been going on for so many years you would of thought a body of one would of been found by now. Also with all the sightings you hear of you don't get the coresponding reports of dead wildlife or dead/missing farm animals that these cats must feed on to stay alive

Maybe it's a shapeshifter! This would explain the intelligence of just living off woodland deer and keeping clear of the farmlands!

One of the Night World series is about a shapeshifter named Keller who could shift into a Panther.....I believe somewhere there will be an incident of attackeed farmland animals.I live not long away from there,i think.Stirling....Renfrewshire,yeh not too far away.May go down.

Wild animals are already smart enough to avoid human contact usually and out of all the cryptids, Big Cats are definately the most plausable, so i don't think we need to add in lycanthropy to the mix.

You can never know about these things.....but yeah cats are most likely to blame.

Ah, Renfrewshire...right slap bang where Paisley is

Anyway...Big cats are about the only 'crypid' (they're not really crypids in any sense of the word...just wildlife in the wrong place) that are generally accepted to be really out there by most scientific circles.

As much as I don't like the fact that there are big cats lurking out there. I'm a cat lover and don't want to see these animals get hurt. Also has any thought at all where the might have come from? I mean cats just don't spring up from no where right? Kinda creepy. IM me or email me you have a comeback.

They mostly are escapees from private zoos - some are theorised to be decendants from private zoos from the victorian age when such things where popular and breed with other wild cats in the area, Lynx etc

I know paisley an lochwinnoch wasnt a big cat more likely one of the locals its an easy mistake to make over there lol eh sera

Sadly, you may be correct...I've seen and heard some rather disturbing sights around here, especially since those so called schools got closed down, and all the morons from Mertsworth were sent to the main school in Paisley

The things they let into public education nowadays...

ooh now thats a very snobish attitude to have sera, i went to one of the "worse" schools an i was given a perfectly good education lol

Where I live .. next to the Smoky Mountains... there have been several black panther sightings.... and of course there has not been any proof that any exist here.

Of course the Smoky Mountains have some very isolated spots and officials believe that if a black panther is on the loose in the mountains it is probably a pet that someone turned loose or a pet that got loose.

There have also been sightings of Mountain Lions or Cougars in our area.... and they are not native here but scientist and rangers are doing a study and investigation to see if maybe some may have migrated into the Smoky Mountains and are now being established here.

It is an ongoing argument here... either you believe they exist or you don't.

I think its pretty much accepted that theyre here, just when the big cats act was passed all the owneres just released em into the wild, smart i know but then neither is keepin one in your house either lol.

yes like i said there are big cats and your a snob lol so am i theres nothing wrong wrong with it, we cant help it if we're a rung above them in the evolutionary ladder lol

[COLOR=blue][SIZE=1][SIZE=7][SIZE=7]Been busy and also haven't been well at times, but I finally made it back.

By the way, I forgot to mention -- coyotes, a critter exclusive to the western U.S., have been seen in the outlying areas of New York. There are still wilderness areas there. When I lived near there, there was an area in N. New Jersey where it is said that one could journey for over 20 miles through thick wilderness never witnessing any sign of civilization (if you want to call it that) along the way. A liger (cross between a lion and a tiger) was seen and filmed in the wilds near Atlanta, I saw it on the news.

Even though OOP Critters (Out Of Place Critters) could thrive in such an environment, they would still be seen from time to time by hunters, hikers, naturalists, etc. But as with the case with other cryptids, they seem to spring forth overnight.

The natural environment is endowed with a sentient consciousness (which quantum mechanics [qm] does, according to its precepts, validate.) Man has such a consciousness and is also a part of the environment and is thus a part of/within nature's consciousness. It is possible that nature and our deep unconscious are acting in unison to project or create (mind, according to qm, fashions or shapes our surrounding reality) entities that are not normally a part of a particular location. Why? Sluch locations are sites with geo-magnetic faults, natural springs, and quartz stones. Perhaps such things as these interract with the unconscious of man and nature bringing forth entities such as big cats, bigfoot, etc. from our unconscious. Once manifested as a projection, phyical or merely an image, it remains dormant and is reactivated again and again over time by subsequent people. Quartz does possess interactive abilities with electricity and thus perhaps with geo-magnetic forces as well. Springs often result from geological faults within the earth. Not all people are fortunate to witness ethereal or eldritch entities, lucky are they who have the ability to do so. such people are said to be psychic to begin with.

A really bizarre critter was seen nearby 3 or 4 years ago. It appeared as a rattlesnake with two front legs from which protruded claws with coarse hair also protruding from around the claws. I'm going to investigate this report when I can.

Many replying to this site are from Scotland. Does anyone know of/been to the mountain there (I believe Ben Mcdhui?) whereon individuals are suddenly overtaken by extreme panic for no cognizant reason? I believe it is microwaves that have this characteristic also. But this was ocurring long before we could generate electricity let alone micro-waves.

I like big cats.

Too bad that here in the U.S. we can't have them as pets.

I'd buy one of them cats!