Spook Sightings Of Yester Year No.6 - The Big Border Cat-Dog

Originally I was going to post a much bigger collection of various odd-things that have happened to me over the years, but then with being at college yesterday and generally being a bit burnt out after a long month of posting, I've decided to save some of those tales for next year's Countdown....

I did however promise to tell you about my own potential Black Shuck sighting in a previous post, so I'll go ahead an do that to wrap up this Halloween's spook sightings!

It all began with a trip to my Auntie Peg's house where my brother and I were going to stay the night with our cousin Lorraine. They lived in a spooky old house in the Scottish Borders called Langton Kennels, which is maybe where the person in charge of the dogs for Langton House Estate lived back when the grand old house itself still existed. But Langton House was demolished in the 50s, leaving behind a few of the surrounding houses of which this was one...

As you can see from the picture, it was quite a spooky place indeed, and had a path in the back garden that led to a forest, and a nearby saw-mill cut wood from the forest trees. Also nearby was a plant nursery, and there were lots of old walls and remnants of the old estate dotted around to make the place even more interesting to explore....

All of which has nothing really at all to do with the story, other than to give you an idea of the sorts of settings I used to hang around in! The whole place felt like something out of a horror movie, but not in a bad way...if that makes sense? It had an air of familiarity about it even if you were visiting for the first time, and although the house was welcoming and likable it also had a sense of the past around it, and when the sun went down its close proximity to the woods, big giant saws and freaky old walls added to its spooky atmosphere, which as a group of kids in the 80s brought up on late-night-horror TV, we all loved!

Anyway, like I said, this has little to do with this story other than that is where we were headed for the night. After getting picked up by my Auntie Peg, we drove to my Granny Kirk's house, where she had collected together bags of old clothes that my brother, cousin and I were to try on, see if any fitted us, and then take any that did away..

I remember being annoyed about this, because we discovered that my Auntie had nipped to my other cousin's house beside my Gran's to watch the second part of the V  mini-series which was being aired on TV that night, and my brother and I had really wanted to see the resolution of the alien baby cliffhanger! This is a very handy point to remember because it means that with the wonders of modern technology and old TV guides, we can accurately date the sighting to August 1984 ...

So after an hour or two of trying on clothes, the ones we were keeping were bundled up and put into black bags, and placed in the back seat of my auntie's car. Us three kids went into the boot of the car, which had been converted into a caged-off dog area so my auntie's dogs could go in the back without clambering over into the back seat. We didn't mind this at all, as it was quite fun to be caged off in our own little space where we could pretend to be dogs, or prisoners of aliens, or whatever else our imaginations could come up with.

 Finally we set off along the old hill road, over the Lammermuirs towards Langton. It always seemed to be a road that was covered in fog, and visibility was often poor with drivers only being able to see a couple of feet in front of them, and tonight was one of those nights!  A bit further along the road, when we were up in the hills and chatting away amongst ourselves, we suddenly saw something at the side of the road....

As I remember it, there were two gleaming eyes and a set of big sharp pointy teeth snarling back at me from the dark, and a faint outline of a big dog-shaped creature attached to them! It clearly wasn't happy about us being there and passing it, and we were clearly all shocked into quietness by it's appearance....

My Auntie drew the car to a sudden stop, muttered something about escaped Pumas, and then opened her door and jumped out of the car, leaving the door wide open as she wandered off into the fog....

"Here puss, puss......here kitty......" her voice got quieter and quieter as she got further away.....

Now I know what you're thinking. This is not necessarily the first thing that would occur to any normal person to do upon sighting a big snarling hell-beast at the side of the road on a foggy night! But my Auntie Peg is no normal woman...born and raised in the remote border hills between England and Scotland, I struggle to think of anyone tougher, man or woman, and more able to handle themselves against a hound from hell or alien big cat! Also, by her logic, we were pretty safe behind the cage in the back of the car, so any incoming pumas or shucks wouldn't be able to easily get at us....

A puma is what she believed it to be, and indeed knew a man locally who kept such beasts,  and so she thought that it might have been one of his that had escaped and thus not quite as dangerous maybe as it would have been if it was a totally wild cat. This explains her willingness to go into the fog, but whether or not it was a good idea, I'll leave for you to decide!

For my cousin, brother and I sitting in the back of a car with the door wide open, and a potential devil hound or hungry feline roaming about outside, it was more than a little scary! After a minute or two though, Peg appeared back saying she couldn't see anything and whisked us off to Langton so she could make some calls to enquire about missing big cats.

I definitely remember it being more dog like than cat like, but the opinions vary, and as a memory from a seven year old brain being recalled from a forty year old one, the details are a bit sketchy! My brother remembers it having a sort-of more squashed in face, therefore making it more cat like, although I guess depending on where we were sitting, we would all see it a bit differently.....But we had all definitely seen something snarling at us from the side of the road that was bigger than usual, noticabley angry and totally out of place! I do also seem to remember it looking very black, and as the actual existence of black pumas is somewhat contentious, especially running wild in Scotland, this makes deciding what it actually was a bit trickier....

Phone calls were made, but no-one was missing any big cats. I can't really remember much more being said about it at the time, although the story would sometimes be recalled when we all got together, and even recently my cousin mentioned it on Facebook, so we can all still remember it and it clearly made an impact on us.

My Auntie Peg's theory of escaped Pumas makes even more sense when you take into account that it was far from the first sighting of big cats in the Lammermuir Hills, with may sightings of alleged Pumas going back several years. One such sighting is chronicled on the Scottish Big Cat Trust site, and so here's a transcript of that as it appears there....

"Report from Ronnie Patterson

The Beast of Lammermuir

Sheep stalking at Garvald, June 1982

On a Sunday morning early in June 1982, Mr Thomas Catleugh from Garvald, East Lothian, saw what seemed to be a puma stalking sheep in a field at Garvald Mains Farm.

He recalls. "The animal was about twenty inches high with a long body and a tail measuring about three feet. It was dark grey in colour and I noticed a dark sheen along its back. As I watched, the animal neared the sheep, moving very stealthily crouching down on its forelegs. The sheep moved away and it lay down where it had been. Its large rounded ears lay back on its head and its jaw constantly opened and closed. I have never seen an animal with such a deep jaw, the way it studied the sheep I was sure I was going to see a kill. I was less than forty feet away and I had a very good view, but as I am not all that quick on my feet, I thought by the time I warned anyone it would be away."

Mr Catleugh had hoped that a car would pass so that he could ask the driver to inform the police, but none did. After about an hour the animal walked away, Mr Catleugh told the farmer, Gavin Hamilton, who called the police and the SSPCA. The area was searched but without success.

A few days later, a monk at the nearby Nunraw Abbey reported that he had seen the animal run across open fields. Mr John Williamson of the SSPCA was certain that a puma was at large, he then said: "A sheep was killed last weekend and I have not seen a carcass like that before. Previous evidence linked to the latest story makes me believe that a puma is in the district."

June 1982"

So what did we see that night? A big cat that has been roaming around for ages? A local dog that had wandered off and was angry at being lost? A ghostly Black Shuck warning us about some form of impending doom? Some sort of collective mistaking of a particularly vexed sheep?

I guess we'll never know the answer. We never saw any sign of it ever again, although rumours still persisted about roaming big cats for a good few years afterwards. A few years passed and my Auntie and Uncle moved from Langton too, meaning we no longer get to experience the freaky splendor of that place anymore either, although my Auntie and cousin still live nearby...

Whatever it was, it certainly makes for an interesting story I'm sure you'll agree. And as I've said before it's one of many such weird happenings that have occurred to my family and I over the years, so if you come back in say...oh, about 11 months.....I'll have a few more tales to tell!