If one had happened upon the Ecuador village of La Cuadra recently in the middle of the night, they may have noticed something strange. Villagers had armed themselves with implements of destruction ranging from machetes to firearms and flashlights and were systematically searching the surrounding area in the hopes of discovering a mysterious creature that has been terrorizing them. If one were able to speak with them and ask what they were looking for, the scene would have gotten far stranger.
It’s often a scene we see in horror movies from eras bygone, with the people of a village getting fed up with a mysterious monster terrorizing them and in their anger taking up pitchforks and torches roaming the streets demanding to see the monster. And this modern day Frankenstein story is now playing out for the terrified villagers of La Cuadra. The story, originally posted by Javier Ortega on his blog Ghost Theory brings an old concept once thought to reside primarily in horror fiction of the early 20th and late 19th century to life. And with the first reports of big black cats being sighted in the area now making the rounds, the mystery is now heating up.
But there is another element to this story that gives it a more sinister air. Why were the villagers up in arms over a simple panther sighting? It followed a series of grisly animal mutilations reminiscent of large animal attacks. Something tore through these animals and left their carcasses often largely intact. One of the photographs posted on Ghost Theory shows villagers surrounding a slain calf, its head pulled from its body and a red mess where its throat once was. This image shows in graphic detail the method this creature may have used to kill, attacking the throat to bring the animal unconscious quickly and bring it to the ground. Some witnesses have suggested the big black cat could have escaped from a local privately owned zoo, though no one has reported such a creature missing.
So if there is a black cat somewhere in the woods killing cattle, this does bring about evidence for other big black cat sightings worldwide. After all, if one can escape why not others? Of course this isn’t necessarily paranormal or a mystery in itself, but there are other theories of big black cats that seem to suggest something more is going on here. For instance, there have been hundreds of sightings worldwide in the past few years of panthers suddenly appearing out of the blue in areas and environments not conducive to panther survival. And yet despite this, there have been very few reports of dead panthers being discovered even in the sometimes densely populated areas where the creatures are often said to roam. So if there are no bodies, do they exist? The mystery runs even deeper if it proves to be something else
Every hemisphere of the globe is now reporting sightings of mysterious big black cats including regions that are said to be far too cold for Jaguars (which are one of the main species of big cat to have genetic traits making them all black). In fact, the sightings are so widespread in unexplainable locations now that the creature is quickly approaching near Bigfoot status in the cryptozoological field. The problem is so widespread that in Britain an official report was drafted earlier this year in order to decide once and for all if the creatures posed a threat. The official story was whether they existed or not they were not considered a threat, although if the cows of La Cuadra were able to, they would most certainly disagree.