The Beast of Truro, the Pamet Puma of Cape Cod

Truro is the smallest town on the Outer Cape, a stretch of dunes and pine woods on Cape Cod. September 1981. House cats began turning up dead across town. About a dozen of them. Some were mutilated and left uneaten. In early November, more dead cats were found along the Head of the Meadow bike trail, and dog officer Mark Peters was told of "a pile of dead and mutilated cats."

Truro had seen a scare like this before. In the 19th century, a wildcat scare known as the Truro Hyena ran through its woods, blamed on a lion escaped from a ship. Wellfleet physician Thomas Stone wrote a poem about it.

Autumn, 1981. In daylight, William and Marsha Medeiros were on a path near Head of the Meadow Beach in North Truro. "He was in the path and didn't see us at first." It was all brown, "about two feet high, about up to our knees." William put it at 60 to 80 pounds. A small head, short ears, whiskers. A "very definite cat face." And a long, rope-like tail, curved like the letter J.

"It started slinking away slowly, like a cat. Then it looked back at us and we saw its face." It did not rush for cover. It walked slowly and casually along the path, then disappeared into the nearby woods. Accounts differ on how long they watched. About five minutes, says one. Close to half an hour, says another.

December 16, 1981. Truro police officer David Costa found his 175-pound hog with its flanks ripped by deep claw marks and a chunk of flesh ripped out of its neck. The marks were "long and almost looked like someone did it with a razor blade." The hog was put down. "There's no way a dog could have done that," Costa said. Four days later, two more pigs were clawed in their pens in South Truro.

The reports kept coming. A New York man phoned Selectman Edwin Oswalt about "something resembling a mountain lion" in North Truro. William Waters of Brooklyn saw "a big cat off South Highland Road." One resident was woken by an animal "shrieking loudly." In February 1982, Officer Rodney Allen spotted a tan, noticeably thin cat on patrol off Pamet Point Road. "The animal froze for a second or two and turned its head. It then dropped over the edge of the banking."

Oswalt urged a full investigation. The New York Times took the story national on January 17, 1982. In late January, an anonymous Polaroid arrived at The Cape Codder. A night shot, taken with flash, and a note: "I am not giving my name and address because people will think I'm crazy." The paper ran it on February 5, 1982. Its editors wrote: "We suspect someone is pulling a trick on us, but we can't prove it."

Louis Schlotterbeck of the state Division of Fisheries and Game called the photo a hoax, most likely "a mounted animal." Eastham taxidermist Charles Lada also saw a stuffed mount. Vytautas Montvila called it "an elaborate ruse." The town settled on a dog or dogs. Others suggested an escaped exotic pet or a fisher. Columnist Gayle Fee joked about a Bengal tiger. A former Provincetown zoo had once kept mountain lions, but they had been sold years earlier. In the sandy soil, there were no clear impressions.

After the Polaroid was dismissed, the sightings stopped. The mystery was never settled. The Pamet Puma passed into local folklore, revisited in Don Wilding's 2021 column in The Cape Codder, in blog posts by Peter Muise and others, in a CapeCast video and in a podcast on the creepy cryptids of Massachusetts.