Truth Proof Report 268 ~ black cat sighting

2020

Hi Paul.

Good afternoon,

I recently came across your website and wanted to tell you about a sighting from about 5 years ago.

I was on an early morning train to London, Kings Cross from Baldock, Hertfordshire.

It was around 7:00 to 7:30 on a clear summer's day. The train passes through Stevenage, and then Knebworth Station. I was at a window seat looking at the countryside just outside of Knebworth. The train line is on a kind of raised track which passes over a bridge and we came to an area of open countryside, with the bridge over Witch Elm Lane giving a clear view of the fields and woods from a height (see attached maps and google photo.)

I often see early morning dog walkers with dogs, but this time I clearly saw a large, black, cat-like beast that was larger than a dog running very fast up the shallow incline towards the woods at the crest.

If there are dogs, I always see the owners, the area is wide open and this was a solitary animal. No one else was around.

It was only later that I was reading the Welwyn Hatfield Times, which is nearby to the location, that I came across an article that there was a big cat sanctuary just outside of Welwyn village on the road to Codicote called the Cat survival Trust which had leopards, pumas and other big cats. This was located on the other side of the woods that the beast I saw was running into.

It was run by a man called Terry Moore.

But, at the time, in 2020, it was still running. he was interviewed in 2016 and stated the following (link attached), the article is also about a Freedom of Information request on big cat sightings around this area. The article starts...

Big cats prowling Welwyn Hatfield, Freedom of Information request revealsM

26th November 2016

"Nearly 30 big cat sightings in and near the Welwyn Hatfield borough have been reported to the police over the past five years, a Freedom of Information request can reveal. Herts Police confirmed that between 2011 and 2016 there were 26 reports of big cats prowling in the wild.

The majority (11) were of a panther, with one informant, in 2011, saying that after seeing a sheep being eaten by a panther, they “ran all the way home and our dog was going crazy, barking and yelping”.

This paper recently spoke with Terry Moore, founder of the Cat Survival Trust which looks after an array of wild cat species on a 12-acre site in Welwyn, who said “fortunately” none had escaped their enclosure. He and volunteers at the sanctuary have seen a black leopard visiting the site’s perimeter, particularly during mating season."

More of the article

Regards

Andy

Paul: Thanks for this Andy - an interesting sighting from a train. At least it goes to show that some of the spooky things we see that look like black cats, might actually be, err, black cats!