Luke Phillips's Blog - Posts Tagged "leopard"
Scarier and stranger than fiction...
When I started research for Shadow Beast, my first source of information was some of the many dedicated groups around the country that collected the sightings reports of mysterious big cats.
Officially, the UK has only one resident species of fantastic feline - the Scottish Wildcat. So the 2,000 odd reports collated every year that depict so-called black panthers and cougars (that's the mountain lion, not older, sexually active women!), are a little disturbing, but more often just dismissed.
But this year alone, 122 such animals have been reported in just my area of rural Kent. 65% of these were melanistic (black) leopards. 20% were pumas. The rest were smaller species like jungle cats and so forth. It just makes you wonder what people are seeing doesn't it?
I referenced real-life historical sightings and places (Scotland) in the story, because this is where the roots very much were planted. Although hopefully nobody will come across anything as formidable and fang-tastic as the creature found in the pages of Shadow Beast, maybe you are better off staying in by the fire and curling up with a good book instead!
Officially, the UK has only one resident species of fantastic feline - the Scottish Wildcat. So the 2,000 odd reports collated every year that depict so-called black panthers and cougars (that's the mountain lion, not older, sexually active women!), are a little disturbing, but more often just dismissed.
But this year alone, 122 such animals have been reported in just my area of rural Kent. 65% of these were melanistic (black) leopards. 20% were pumas. The rest were smaller species like jungle cats and so forth. It just makes you wonder what people are seeing doesn't it?
I referenced real-life historical sightings and places (Scotland) in the story, because this is where the roots very much were planted. Although hopefully nobody will come across anything as formidable and fang-tastic as the creature found in the pages of Shadow Beast, maybe you are better off staying in by the fire and curling up with a good book instead!
