The Beast of Bodmin Moor: 1983 Cornwall Sightings

In February 1983, Bodmin Moor farmers found three sheep torn open in the night, with tooth marks too wide for any native animal in Cornwall. The police measured prints in the mud: four inches across, clawless, and deeply sunk into the earth-far too large for a fox or dog. That week, the sightings began-dozens described a black cat as big as a Labrador, slinking along the hedgerows, vanishing at the edge of headlights. By March, a schoolboy named Peter Hall claimed the Beast of Bodmin crossed the road right in front of his bicycle, and the next morning, hair samples found nearby under an oak were tested. Laboratory analysis said the hair belonged to a species that never existed in Britain: Panthera pardus, the leopard.