Category: News

Talk at Moyse’s Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds – report

I had a successful talk in the spectacular 12th-century building that is Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, in February 2025. I got a lift from Bury Station to our accommodation from a local big cat witness who’s a taxi driver. Once again, the talk was almost sold out.

The audience included an old friend from way back when who lived locally and who kindly drove me around on big cat investigations back in 2015 before I could drive. Her husband, who was an adviser on Mystery Animals of Suffolk on whether “carp the size of pigs” were possible, also showed up. (Carp the size of pigs were reported in a now vanished 18th-century pond in Middleton, Suffolk. While not possible in 18th-century England, global warming means they’re now not far off as a feasible thing.)

I had brought along – I thought rather optimisticly – ten copies of Mystery Animals of Suffolk to sell. To my surprise I sold the lot. I also took testimony from audience members who had experienced big cat encounters. One had seen a black panther-like cat with a long tail that curled up, crossing the road on the southern approaches to Mendlesham back in 2017, along with their mother who was also in the audience.

The same witness described another strange experience involving phantom East of England hellhound Black Shuck, “many years ago” when they were in their early teens. It was during the peak of a time in which she had a premonition of murder, then she heard banging on the back door of the family home and swearing – it was her brother screaming to be let in. He said he had been chased to the back door by a “huge black dog” which then stood their growling at him and then “gradually vanished away.” For more unsolicited reports of Shuck see “My dad saw Shuck in the Seventies.”

I’m also now following up on a report of a big cat encounter by another audience member in Horringer, near Bury.

My talk co-incided with the Museum’s exhibition on Superstition so it included some creatures of Suffolk folklore – wildmen, evil freshwater mermaids, Shuck and the fairies. (These are all covered in detail in Mystery Animals of Suffolk.)

I unveiled at the talk my most recent map of sightings of big cats, received between July 2024 and February 2025. Also on show was my updated analysis of Suffolk big cat sightings by probably species. I showed some rather stomach-churning recently received photos of Suffolk big cat kills too.

For future events see here. Sign up to the mailing list including future events via the homepage, scroll down. 

The 12th-century stone wall of Moyse’s Hall wasn’t very adhesive! My map of big cat sightings in Suffolk fell of it soon after this photo was taken.

 

Thanks to Jane Inglesfield for the photos.

Map of recent reports of big cat sightings in Suffolk – June 2024-February 2025

This is my map of recent big cat sightings in Suffolk (one in Norfolk and a report of footprints in Essex) received between July 2024 and February 2025, ahead of my recent talk at Moyse’s Hall Museum where it was shown for the first time.

 

It includes “historical” big cat reports going back to 1990s, but reported within this time period.

There’s a cluster of big cat kills reported in the area around Wickham Market on this map. I have photos of these, see the photos here. 

I neglected to explain the multiple exclamation marks !!! in the key. This is a report of “sawing” sounds thought to have been made by a big cat at Wantiseden near Woodbridge.

For an analysis of recent trends in Suffolk big cat sightings, see here. See also more maps.

More black leopards, fewer pumas again – data from big cat reports, July 2024-February 2025

 

 

As I prepare for another talk, I’ve taken a look at the data that’s come in to bigcatsofsuffolk.com since my last talk, which was in July 2024. (For more on trends in sightings for  most of 2023 and 2024, see here.)

The pie chart above shows the total number of all credible big cat sightings in Suffolk that I’ve heard about up to February 2025. I’ve included any sightings that are just over the other side of the Suffolk border and less than two miles within Norfolk, Essex or Cambridgeshire.

That’s a total of 228 reported sightings going all the way back to the earliest credible report of a big cat in Suffolk, from way back in 1976 or 1977.

There are 35 new reports that came in during the last six months. I’ve excluded a few reports that were very vague or in which the witness was very unsure of whether they’d seen a big cat or not.  

An analysis of big cat sightings reported to bigcatsofsuffolk.com between July 2024 and February 2025 shows that there are more reports than previously of sightings of melanistic (black) leopards, with fewer pumas (just one reported in this period) and fewer lynxes too. There was an increase in pumas and lynxes reported in the twelve months from July 2023-July 2024, but this trend seems to have tailed off again.

In most “county samples” from different regions of the UK, there’s a trend towards about three quarters of the sample being black leopards, less than a quarter pumas, and a small percentage of lynxes. These proportions are about the same in my sample from Suffolk, except that about a quarter of the sample is “indeterminate” big cats, where the witnesses were unable to say what type of big cat they had seen, or where a newspaper report or police FOIA disclsoure just mentioned a sighting of a big cat without giving further details.

This current trend towards a proportion of about three quarters of the same being black leopards, less than a quarter pumas, and a small percentage of lynxes is more in line with “county samples” from around the UK.

Out of the 35 encounters with big cats that were reported in the past six months, 15 of these encounters had taken place very recently – within a a few days or in some cases of a few hours of the sighting. Of these, 12 big cats were described by the witness as being like a black leopard, with just one puma and one lynx reported, and with just one “indeterminate” big cat of an unknown big cat reported.

There was an increase in what I call “historical sightings”, recent reports of sightings that happened years ago, some from the early 2010s or even the noughties. I was able to match one recent report of a historical sighting, in Coddenham back in 2010, with a sighting that showed up in a Suffolk Police Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosure. There were 20 such “historical” sightings reported in Suffolk in the last six months.

There was a slight increase in reports of indeterminate big cats – where the witness didn’t say what type of big cat they’d seen. This is particularly true for recently received “historical” sightings. Some of these indeterminate cats sound from their brief description like an absolutely enormous feral domestic cat – I’m hearing more reports of these, particularly from around the Woodbridge-Martlesham area. There were nine such “historical” sightings featuring “indeterminate” big cats in this period, nine melanistic leopards seen a while ago and two lynxes seen in recent years.

Recent geographical clusters of big cat sightings have been around Bury St Edmunds in October 2024 and around the Wickham Market area up to January 2025. At the request of witnesses I am being vague about these locations. Both clusters involve reports of melanistic leopards. The trend in reports from the Bury cluster was in reports of smaller than usual black leoapards, including a possible melanistic leopard cub.

Another recent trend is that there are more reports of sounds or vocalisations thought to be made by big cats. But I’m cautious about these, as expert analysis of of two such recordings sent to me turned out to be from a fox and a red deer. I’ve excluded these two from the sample.

For most of the past five decades, a significant majority of big cat witnesses in Suffolk have been male. This was partly to connected to traditionally male occupations that saw men out and about and travelling (usually driving) around dusk and dawn, when bug cats are most active. Since I launched the website in late 2023, though, there has been a noticeable increase in female big cat witnesses. With the last 18 months, a significant majority of witnesses are female. A greater diversity of witnesses would tend to increase the   credibility of the reports.

Several kill signs from around Suffolk – photos

I RECEIVED photos of seven different suspected big cat kills – three different species of deer, a lamb and a swan – from around Suffolk. The photos were provided by the same witness, who found these kill sites over the past five years. I interviewed the witness in January 2025.

We agreed to be vague about the exact location of one of these possible big cat kills. I name the others. Two of the kills, the swan and the muntjac deer with its back half missing, were in the same village.

The witness said that in his village he’d also noticed a pattern of lambs going missing, and putting this down to lambs dying of “misadventure” after wandering into ditches, only to find a lamb skull in the local woods later.

Three photos of a fallow deer found in March 2023 in the “Wickham Market area.” It appeared suddenly, “tucked under a tree… tucked away next to a game trail” in woods bordering a river. The witness said there was signs of something returning to the corpse later to carefully lick flesh of its head and ribs.

This muntjac was found in the Letheringham area in December 2020, it had been “dragged down a bank.”

 

The remains of a swan,  “not much of it left, licked off flesh” was found in Letheringham, the same village as the muntjac above, at around the same time (early December

 

Around the village of Hoo, in the open near a wood, this muntjac was found in January 2023. It was just bones and a “bag of skin,” the way the flesh was removed was neat and “surgical”. The ground around it had been flattened, there was blood around it.

Yet another suspected big cat kill, this one a fallow deer from the Saxted area, this one a fallow deer. It was on “fairly open ground, near a farm.” It was basically a skeleton with the skin stripped off, there was still fur on only one leg.

This one is a red deer yearling, found in Helmingham on Boxing Day 2023, also in the Wickham Market area. The witness has also heard two reports of a deer found  up a tree from the same location. (I heard secondhand reports about a deer found up a tree in the same place back in 2015, with rumours that someone had kept the bones, but my investigations drew a blank.)

The young red deer was a fresh kill when it was found. Its lips and ears had been “licked clean”. Its front legs had been removed, there were signs of puncture wounds on it, there was blood on the ground. The witness reported that the local red deer herd was “very vigilant when I investigated.” The witness has also noticed a “strong cat urine smell” in the local woods, which his dog refuses to enter.

Finally, the witness gave me this photo of another local likely big cat kill, he asked me not to name the location. This is a recently shorn lamb, found on 27 November 2024. It had its “middle bitten out”, with what looked like claw or tooth marks on it. A vet came to the scene and “the authorities (were) called…then everything went quiet.” Vet came and the “authorities called”, then “everything went quiet”. According to the witness, the vet said the lamb had been “suffocated”, via an attack on its windpipe or nose.

Photo of big cat kill from the area around Bildeston, Suffolk

Muntjac killed by big cat, from the area around Bildeston, Suffolk, found January 2025. Supplied to bigcatsofsuffolk.com with permission of author, who requests anonymity. Copyright is with author, who is known to bigcatsofsuffolk.com

The above photo was sent to me by the person who found this muntjac carcass in the area around Bildeston in Suffolk in the first days of 2025. They requested anonymity and that I be vague about  the location.

I ran these photos past zoologist Richard Freeman, zoology director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology. He commented: “The deer is typical cat kill with the bones left mainly untouched and the soft organs gone.”

The nose bitten off is a characteristic of attacks on prey by pumas, and – less commonly – leopards.

The witness also photographed some footprints found locally, which are clearly from some kind of cat. But these are only 5cm across, so too small for a big cat.  Richard Freeman thought these photos of the prints were “too small to be an adult lynx” but they  could be from a “from a savannha cat, a serval / domestic hybrid, though this is unlikely to be what killed the deer.”

Talk on The Mystery Animals of Suffolk at Moyse’s Hall Museum, Bury, 21 02 25

I am presenting a talk on “The Mystery Animals of Suffolk” at Moyse’s Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds, on Friday 21 February 2025. Kick-off is at 6.30.

For details and to book a ticket see the Moyse’s Hall website.

The talk will briefly take in some of Suffolk’s fantastic animals of ancient folklore – wildmen, the fairies of Stowmarket, Black Shuck, evil freshwater mermaids (including some around Bury) before examining in more detail some far more plausible and recent mystery animals of Suffolk – big cats!

There have been quite a few sightings of these in the area around Bury, so there will be a hyper-local look at recent Suffolk big cat sightings.

As ever, signed copies of Mystery Animals of Suffolk will be on sale after the talk.

I’ll be in the Bury area from 20-24 February if you want to arrange to meet to show me any locations for big cat sightings round there.

Reconstruction of one of many sightings of “the Haverhill puma” around the Steeple Bumpstead Roundabout  on the edge of the Suffolk town of Haverhill in 2010s

Read More

Mystery Animals of Suffolk – now available as an e-book

Mystery Animals of Suffolk is now available in a pdf e-book edition, at £10.00. To buy a copy, contact mysteryanimalsofsuffolk@gn.apc.org.

Print copies are available for £15.00 plus postage from my distributor, Bittern Books, you can order a hard copy here.

For an up to date list of bookshops in Suffolk that stock Mystery Animals of Suffolk (and some in Norfolk too!) and for more on the book see here.

Signed copies are on sale direct from the author at forthcoming talks and other events, see here.