The county police forces of both Suffolk and Norfolk had multiple call-outs in April 1985 following a wave of big cat sightings in West Suffolk, according to newspaper articles from that time that I recently tracked down in the British Library. There was also a big cat alert at the time around the local RAF Honington air base.
This is significant as credible reports of big cat sightings in Suffolk in the 1980s are very rare. There was a lion escaped from a safari park shot dead in Cromer, Norfolk on 6 January 1984, there was “the Debenham Lion” seen in the Suffolk village of the same name around 1982 – but this could well have been a misidentified Maine Coon cat. (This breed of domestic cat was then new to the UK and still unfamiliar at the time.)
Other than that, there are a few anecdotal contemporary accounts of foresters being warned to stay alert for “big cats” around Nacton Woods, but there’s nothing else by way of Suffolk big cat reports. Suffolk big cat sightings don’t seem to have become a thing until the early 1990s. Most of these accounts of early Suffolk big cat encounters from over 30 years ago have come my way through witnesses contacting me within the last year to relate their experiences from more than a quarter of a century ago.
The news reports from 1985 that I recently found also make intriguing references to a previous big cat alert, “some years” earlier at RAF Lakenheath, which ended with the conclusion that the incident was an “elaborate hoax.”
I was first alerted to the April 1985 West Suffolk big cat alert by Janet and Colin Bord’s near-contemporary book Modern Mysteries of Britain, (1988, 1991). This was written before studies of British big cats had become a thing.
I recently contacted Janet Bord, who told me that in the subsequent four decades or so, she no longer had access to her original sources on the 1985 Honington big cat flap. I suspected, though, that her source was likely to be one of a very small handful of Suffolk local newspapers.
An afternoon in the News Room of the British Library later, and – bingo! The East Anglian Daily Times (EADT) of April 1985 and April both had articles on the Honington cat flap. (A 2023 cyber-attack on the British Library means that its newspaper collection is once again available on microfilm only for the moment.)
The two EADT articles “Suffolk police on ‘safari’ duty” of 20 April 1985 and “Police mystified after ‘panther’ is seen again” (23 April 1985) describe five sightings of big cat in total over a period of seven days.
The first in that early mini-wave of mid-1980s Suffolk big cat sightings came early in the morning of 15 April, near the Elveden War Memorial by the side of the A11 road. The War Memorial is famous for being the tallest in England, it’s quite a landmark. The witness was reportedly a lorry driver – lorry drivers are higher above the ground in the cabs of their lorries than most motorists, which gives them a better view of the road and the ability to see over some roadside hedges.
Then at around 1am on the night of 19 April, a “serviceman” at Rymer Point on the A1088, just outside RAF Honington nearby saw a big cat. They “telephoned” (Telephoned who? The Police?) to say that a “panther” had jumped onto the road in front of their car. This would presumably have been seen in car headlights, it being the middle of the night. At the time, RAF Honington was a base for Tornado fighter-bombers. Today, RAF Honington is an RAF base without any planes, it’s become the depot of the ground-based RAF Regiment and the headquarters of the RAF Police.
There was more detail on these sightings in the EADT article “Police mystified as ‘panther’ is seen again”, which appeared three days later, on 23 April. This included a report of three more sightings.
The first of these was in Thetford Forest on 19 April, also at night, so also presumably seen from the road in car headlights. The witness described the animal as “large and black with flaming red eyes” – cat’s eyes show up red in headlights.
All the other sightings in this April 1985 wave were in Suffolk, but the latter of the two article refers to “police from two counties”, which suggests that for at least this one sighting it was Norfolk Police that were called out. This would probably put the sighting in the Norfolk end of Thetford Forest – it’s the largest lowland forest in England and it straddles the Norfolk-Suffolk border, with most of the forest being in Norfolk. (The EADT misprinted “Thetford” as “Thetfod” in the second of its two contemporary reports.)
Norfolk Police commented of the Thetford Forest sighting that they could not confirm that it was a “black panther, only that was a large black animal.”
Then there was a sighting on 17 April on the “Elveden Estate”, about half a mile east of the Elveden War Memorial along the A11. (In both articles, Elveden was mis-spelled “Elvedon”.) The Elveden Estate’s head gamekeeper, Ted Barfield, gave the time of his sighting as around 8.45pm and said the animal he saw was heading towards Lakenheaeth, so towards the west. Barfield followed the animal through binoculars but admitted he couldn’t get a good enough look at it to be able tell whether it had a tail like a dog or like a cat, but was convinced it was “not a hoax”.
Police advised Mr Barham to leave out animal carcasses in the area with a view to trapping the animal, but he had seen no evidence that the animal had “returned” since.
The final sighting of the 1985 Suffolk cat flap was late on the night of 21 April at Barham Camp, part of the RAF Honington complex, once again after dark. The EADT reported only that a “serviceman” had seen a “black panther” at that location.
All the sightings seem to have involved a “black panther”, likely a melanistic leopard. A Mr George Washington contacted the EADT to report his belief that the “black panther” was in fact his black chow dog Tarka, who had gone missing in the area after an earlier camping trip. As that great chronicler of strange phenomena Charles Fort often noted, the “perfectly rational” sceptical explanations for anomalous encounters are often deeply unconvincing, and this “black panther was my escaped chow dog” theory is no exception!
These sightings and police call-outs were all (just) within the county of Suffolk, with the possible exception of the Thetford Forest sighting. Suffolk Constabulary is the UK’s smallest county police force, Norfolk Police has always been much better resourced, so the first responders for a local police callout is more likely to be Norfolk Police than Suffolk Police, even within Suffolk. Hence the involvement of both police forces. The two forces now collaborate and have “joint units”, sharing infrastructure such as helicopters and their Freedom of Information department.
What’s noteworthy is the fuss caused by a few of big cat sightings over a few days back in 1985, with the police sending out cars to investigate every reported big cat sighting and EADT giving it space in their columns. Suffolk folk seem much more blasé about big cats today than they did four decades ago, and much less likely to report these to either the police or their local newspaper – if there still is one! Police today certainly wouldn’t issue advice to leave out animal carcasses with a view to catching any reported big cats.
Compared to 1985, the East Anglian Daily Times now seem much less likely to answer the phone, if at all, and good luck reporting a big cat on the loose to Britain’s smallest county police force these days – never mind expecting them to actually send out a patrol car to have a look!
Both articles mention an incident “some years ago”- so probably in the late 1970s early 1980s – in which a “black panther had been seen to jump over the fence at RAF Lakenheath, a still functioning base for USAF fighter jets in an empty corner of West Suffolk close to the border with Cambrideshire.
According to the EADT, this earlier big cat incident at Lakenheath had seen “police” organise a “panther hunt” around the airbase after a “black panther” was seen to leap over the perimeter fence there. A “special watch” was kept on the base, plaster casts were said to have been taken of footprints and “panther excrement” was scattered in an attempt to attract the animal with a view to its capture. (The panther poo presumably came from Kilverstone Wildlife Park, just over the Norfolk border, which closed in 2011.). Both articles refer to a subsequent admission that the whole Lakenheath big cat incident was an “elaborate hoax.
Which “police” forces were called out to this hoaxed big cat incident is unclear – Suffolk Police? RAF Police? USAF Air Force Security Police?
Back in 1985, Lakenheath was a busy base for American fighter bombers in what was peak Cold War. Nuclear weapons had been stored at Lakenheath, there was a nuclear “incident” there in the 1950s. were stored there, this was never officially admitted. There were all sorts of rumours about which of the many Suffolk air bases had “the nukes”, a lot of which was probably Cold War psychological warfare ops to befuddle Soviet agents or a very active 1980s popular movement for nuclear disarmament.
Rumours of strange goings-on around Suffolk airbases culminated in the Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident on Boxing Day 1980. Some claimed this was all a hoax by local military police, while years later another claim emerged, that it was a prank by the Special Air Service. The suspicion now, though is that the story of it being a hoax was itself an April Fool. There was also the Lakenheath-Bentwaters incident back in 1951, with a series of local radar and visual contacts with UFOs.
In any event, rumours of “elaborate hoaxes” around Suffolk airbases have to be seen in the context of possible Cold War psy ops, possibly with the intent to throw people off the scent of some Cold War shenanigans such as top secret weapons testing. Could the reported “elaborate hoax” around a black panther sighting at RAF Lakenheath some time before 1985 have been one of these?
Any information on the “elaborate” black panther hoax at RAF Lakenheath would be gratefully received.