TIM MATTHEWS: Are big cat hunters the new UFOlogists?

Tim Matthews is one of my best friends, and also - coincidentally - one of the most controversial figures in contemporary forteana. He has been involved with the CFZ for nearly a decade now, raising eyebrows wherever he goes. Now he has started to write fiction. But like other works of fiction produced by CFZ worthies, it is fiction where the lines of reality and make-believe meet.

In the distance the threatening sound of a Police helicopter and the all-powerful beam of Big Brother’s searchlight hitting the ground below. A while away the flashing blue light on the vehicles the mystery cat almost hit suggest an incident in the making...Panicked police officers to-ing and fro-ing in a frantic search for their elusive pray.

200 miles away, sat in front of a computer, a Big Cat Expert looks admiringly at his camouflage gear, his shelf of books indicating his fascination in such unusual subject matter, his stomach heaving over his jeans. By the bin in the corner of his darkened room a pile of Macdonalds cartons indicate a less than healthy attitude to diet but he needn’t worry about such matters as he is King Of The ABC Forum! From here he can control his dozen troops and think of himself as The General.

Ah yes! Sightings, and more sightings! Sightings of something, four-legged. Must be an ABC even if any resulting pictures and publicity could be evidence of nothing more than a local cat photographed at an unusual angle or seen by somebody who is not given to gathering effective data on animals mystery...or otherwise.

And how, a local reporter asked him last week during an interview for the Little Chiddington Gazette, can these thousands of sightings be taken at all seriously given the almost total lack of photographic evidence for their existence. “But the sightings, and, most of all the peeeeeeople,” answers The General shuddering at this oikish journalists questions. “They can’t allll be wrong,” he adds, wondering at the disbelief on show from the man across the table at the local cafe.

“We need to meet somewhere anonymous,” the General had told the journo. “Better that way. I don’t want too much public recognition. Especially not since the book was published.” (Total sales so far, 36.)

Sightings. Yes. Proof. All those people, over all those years seeing.....something. Just like UFOs. Sightings. Yes. Proof. All those people, over all those years seeing...something. Ah, we are caught in a time loop or are we repeating history? What would the General say if he’d met himself on a remote hillside with his camouflaged friends back in the 1990s by Ashurst Beacon Watching The Skies!

1999. A helicopter passes overhead but it’s....just....so...weird. GASP! Further proof and all those people can’t be wrong. Perhaps, as one commentator seriously suggested, it is really an alien spaceship posing as helicopter. “They’d never think of that.” Thousands of sightings. A whole lot of “evidence” proving what exactly?

2009. A helicopter passes over South Gloucestershire. It is chasing a mystery animal but it doesn’t come from the local zoo in Bristol. All their animals are safe and sound, says the zookeeper. What has been seen has “Large paws, a long tail and a loping walk". Proof. Sightings.

The General reaches for his notebook then logs on to the ABC Forum.

“Would you answer my question,” asked the reporter. “About all these sightings. I’d like to include some sort of visual evidence in my article.”

“Ah yes well we presented you with a good photo of us In Country”, replies The General. “Such pictures are few and far between!”

“And why do you think that is,” he is asked.”

“Because there is a Paranormal element at work,” insists The General.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/8061265.stm