The Beast of Bexley

There is nothing small about Steve Gardiner. A strapping six-footer with a girth as generous as his personality, he doesn't scare easily. But even he froze in terror when he saw the Beast. It was black, more than four feet long, and it stared at him with yellow, flashing eyes from less than four paces away. "I was terrified, but it didn't seem the least bit concerned by me," he recalls. "It was a big cat - I don't mean a big house cat, I mean it was like a panther. I was sitting in my armchair in the living room, and it just looked in at me through the open patio doors.

"What I remember about its size was that, as it walked away, its nose disappeared from the edge of one door while its back legs and tail were still visible in the other. Now, that's a big cat." This week, Mr Gardiner, 41, was named as one of 1,077 people across the country who had reported seeing a big cat in the wild last year - a figure up by more than 100 per cent on 2001. They had seen - or thought they had seen - a puma, leopard, jungle cat, panther, ocelot, or some hybrid large enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Traditionally, spotters of big cats have been labelled as cranks or fantasists. But one word rarely ascribed to them is "Londoner". From now on that will have to change.

For Mr Gardiner is not a farmer from Dartmoor or shepherd from the windswept peaks of Wales, and this is no tale of fearsome animals stalking the deer of Bodmin Moor. Steve Gardiner is a bricklayer from Plumstead and he is just one of a growing number of people to have seen The Beast of Bexley. That's right, a panther-like creature that has been attracting sightings in double figures along a south- eastern corridor from Gravesend and the Dartford Tunnel to Shrewsbury Park and Shooter's Hill.

"No one would believe me at first," says Mr Gardiner. "But since the sighting last September, I've found out that I'm not alone. Other people have seen this cat. It's about the size of a labrador dog and about this high ..." He lifts his hand to a height of around two-and-a-half feet from the floor. "It was muscly and sleek, and as it walked it could almost bend its body in two. My neighbours have cats, but believe me - this was no moggy."

After his close encounter Mr Gardiner and his wife, Karen, rushed upstairs to check the family's security camera video recorder. After examining the tape, the British Big Cat Society, which released this week's figures, said it did not amount to compelling evidence of a panther, an animal more correctly called a black leopard. The society's secretary, Danny Bamping, described the image as a "blob". What he did agree on, however, was that it was a very large blob indeed.

Since shortly after the Second World War, farmers and ramblers have reported seeing puma-like creatures thought to be descended from cougars brought into the country as mascots by US servicemen who let them go when hostilities ended.

"Animals escaped from zoos, travelling circuses and private collections," says Bradley Clough, one of the Big Cat Society's representatives in Kent. "Then, in the late Seventies, the Dangerous Wild Animals Act required people with exotic big cats to get them licensed. But it was incredibly expensive to get a licence, with all sorts of requirements on food, treatment, summer quarters, winter quarters and so on. A lot of collectors simply decided to let their animals go free.

"We don't know for sure how many are out there but we are pretty sure that some of them must be breeding. The one thing we can be certain of is that with all these reported sightings, sceptics can no longer say people are simply seeing things."

Walking through Oxleas Wood, which seems to have been adopted by the Beast of Bexley as its territory, the tight, dense trees fight for light. Only about 10 miles from Westminster, along the A207, this is where the commuters of south-east London and Kent walk at weekends with their families. Now I am here looking for evidence of big cats - usually territorial mounds scraped out of mud, or industrial-sized scratch marks on trees. Bradley is convinced they are becoming bolder and will eventually be as much a feature of London life as urban foxes.

"After the whole of Scotland, with 209 sightings, and Devon, with 97, Kent was the third busiest place for sightings last year, with 92," he says. "Our job is to find proof that they are there, and to ensure people don't try to harm them once we have found that proof."

While investigating Steve Gardiner's claims, Bradley established that a taxi-driver had had an eight- minute sighting of a black leopard-like creature on a path next to the Gardiners' home, one week before Steve had seen his. There were also sightings in Hillview Cemetery, off Shooters Hill, and in Dartford, near the M25.

Says Bradley: "The eyewitness evidence is mounting. These are very secretive animals that hunt at night and can travel hundreds of miles in search of food or a mate. Just because there are lots of sightings doesn't mean there are lots of big cats; the witnesses are most likely seeing the same one."

Frank Mortimer, a 58-year-old security worker, says he saw the Beast in October 2001 in the Princess Road area of Dartford. It was shortly after 8pm and he was walking his West Highland terrier, Tamm, when the animal appeared in front of him.

"It was no more than 10 to 15 feet away from me," he recalls. "It was black, about four-and-a-half feet long with a curly tail and it had yellowish eyes. It took me completely by surprise. My initial reaction was one of shock to come face to face with such a large animal. Then Tamm started barking and tried to chase after it and it bounded off.

"I have no doubt that it was a panther. I have seen them in the wild on various holidays in Africa. This was definitely not an ordinary cat, even an unusually large one. At first, people didn't believe me - they would ask if I had been drinking, which I hadn't."

Back in the woods with Bradley, stalking big cats just a short drive from Docklands is beginning to seem more than a little eccentric. Then he hears a noise and points up. "Look," he says, "green parakeets." He has to be kidding; but, sure enough, green parrots with long tails are flying in groups among the trees. They breed here in the wild. If they can, why not swift, agile, cunning big cats?

Mick Cole needs no convincing that they are out there. Last January the 42-year-old optician from Gravesend noticed what he thought was a fox running off with a wriggling rabbit down an alleyway next to his home.

"I like rabbits and I decided to try to save it," says Mr Cole. "I had read that if you run at a fox waving your arms, it will drop its food and run away, so I ran forward, screaming like a banshee. At the last minute, just as I had stuck one arm out to catch the rabbit, I suddenly realised that this was no fox; it was a very angry big cat. It lashed out just once, and left huge gashes down my arm, and then it ran away. It was my mistake; the animal wasn't attacking me - as far as it was concerned, it was simply acting in self-defence.

"Immediately I thought it was a lynx because of the black tips on its ears. I ran back inside the house with my arm bleeding heavily but, before I went to hospital, my wife and I logged onto the internet and looked up 'lynx'. Up came a picture and there it was; exactly like the one I had disturbed."

In Hillview Cemetery, Bradley is still trying to gather evidence. Colin Harrison, one of the graveyard workers, confirms there have been sightings here. "I haven't seen it myself but a number of people who have come to visit graves have reported seeing a very big black cat to members of staff," he says.

Bexley council confirms it has had reports of an animal far larger than a housecat. "There have been several reports of a big cat," says the council's spokesman. "None of our employees has seen it but it was large enough for some people to feel the need to tell us about it." Sceptics point to a lack of hard evidenceto support the presence of significant numbers of big or wild cats (officially, only cats that can growl are entitled to be called "big"). Some sheep, cattle and horses are occasionally attacked but not in the numbers they would expect in order to support the appetites of feline hunters.

However the Big Cat Society has established that, since 1980, the bodies of five leopards (including black leopards or "panthers"), one puma, two lynx, three jungle cats and one caracal - a species of African wild cat that often makes its home in woodland - have been found.

"We believe 99 per cent of big cat sightings are bogus - but that means one per cent are genuine," says Paul Paterson, senior keeper at Glasgow Zoo. "They tend to be escapees from zoos and wildlife parks, or unscrupulous owners have let them go for reasons of cost. To keep a black leopard properly would cost £700 a week."

So, are they breeding and could we be seeing them in the wild? Well, Mr Paterson says, all the animals could breed within their grouping but others - such as a puma and a domestic cat - would be genetically incompatible. However, jungle cats from Africa and domestic cats could - with the resulting animal the size of a cocker spaniel and with a coat that could be a variety of colours. This, alone could account for many sightings, possibly even The Beast of Bexley.

For the time being, then, and until the big cat hunters find incontrovertible proof, there will be those who argue that our beast is no more real than the Hound of the Baskervilles. How wonderful it would be, though, if Bradley and his friends at the Big Cat Society were right, if graceful and exotic creatures were loping about the capital at night, more scared of us than we are of them.

"I think a world in which they existed - even if you couldn't see them - would be more exciting than one in which they didn't," muses Bradley. And how many Londoners would disagree with that?