A shocked dad reckons he caught the big 'black panther' locals fear is roaming a Cheshire town on his doorbell camera.
Luke Hickman, 30, says he captured the video of an animal walking past his home in Warrington at around 11.00 pm on October 13.
It comes after a spike of other sightings in the town and across the Peak District.
He says that although only half of the creature can be seen, it is clearly to be bigger than an average domestic house cat.
The clip shows a black animal with a long, curved tail moving around behind a silver vehicle before walking out of sight.
The dad-of-one says he has since put meat around his garden in the hope of capturing more footage of the suspected predator, which are usually found in tropical forests and Africa.
Luke said: “It was last Thursday at around 11 pm. I checked the app on my phone and it said that the doorbell had been trigged. It looked like a big cat walking off.
“There were reports of a sighting last Tuesday in Warrington. This was in Newton, which is about a ten-minute drive away. So this was two days later.
“I have been leaving little bits of food around, little bits of chicken, to try and get more footage. I’ve been trying chicken bits from the supermarket at the moment."
Luke’s remarkable footage follows a possible panther sighting in Warrington last week, where a mum reportedly saw the predator “charge” at her moving vehicle.
Julie Murphy was driving home with her daughter Lois when she says she spotted the fearsome predator arcing towards her car.
She said: “It looked like a long, black cat.
"What made me think it was a panther was its tail - it had a long, thin, curved tail.
"Even though it was dark, I could tell it wasn't a fox."
This follows another suspected sighting by a McDonald's delivery driver in December 2020 and a further claim by a man that he saw one walk past his house in February 2021.
