Black panther of Lorraine, Belgian Luxembourg and the Grand Duchy (Bascharage police search)

Summer 2009. The border country where France, Belgium and Luxembourg meet. On 24 August a walker in the woods at Réhon, near Longwy, reported a "large feline". Others came forward. Of about ten French testimonies, one from a natural-sciences teacher was rated "highly credible".

France's wildlife agency, the ONCFS, took a cast of a paw print. The verdict was "a large feline imprint, probably a black panther". The gendarmes alerted their Belgian and Luxembourg colleagues.

More reports followed at Mexy and Fresnois-la-Montagne. On 6 September came the first Belgian sighting, at Habay-la-Neuve. Then the Anlier forest. Then Léglise, where first deputy mayor Pierre Gascard told the press: "The panther was seen at about 07:00 this morning by a resident of Léglise." Armed police patrolled most of the morning.

At Rulles, it came up to a man's mobile home. He saw a long tail and a speckled undercoat. More reports came from Martelange, Meix-le-Tige and Udange. At Freylange, near Arlon, paw prints went to Belgium's Natural Sciences Museum. A large triangular palm pad. Four teardrop-shaped toes. The museum's conclusion matched the French one.

Claude Caquard, a motorist at Léglise, met it on the road. "The panther crossed in front of my bonnet. It was a metre from me. Then it turned its head towards me. Its eyes shone like a cat's eyes do when light hits them."

Late afternoon, 22 October. An off-duty officer of the Semois et Lesse police zone was driving home on the road from Dohan to Mortehan. He saw a black animal about 1.2 m long. "In two bounds the animal was up on top of the embankment." Commissioner Wilvers of the anti-poaching unit came out and found traces resembling feline paw prints.

Then Malmedy, where Jean-Claude Gabriel and his wife were picking mushrooms in the woods at Pont-Ligneuville. At first they took it for a big black cat. Then they saw it was "bigger than my 15-kilo dog". Their dog reacted with fear. Gabriel filmed the animal and handed the footage to the Stavelot-Malmedy police zone.

Belgian officers carried rifles fitted with hypodermic syringes, and a Flemish company specialising in capturing exotic animals was called in. There were beats, traps and bait. Near Malmedy a deer carcass was hung from a tree. Police spokesperson Michel Velz said that "the attempt to lure the animal with the cries of an imported baby panther and sedate it failed". After four men at Burg-Reuland reported a "black predatory cat", the press called it the "Eifel-Panther".

Sunday 25 October, 15:30. The Bommelscheuer industrial zone at Bascharage, in the Grand Duchy, 12 km from Longwy. Police spokesperson Vic Reuter: "We sent several patrols with dog handlers." A helicopter with a thermal camera searched the area. Nothing. The operation was called off in the late afternoon. The Luxemburger Wort headline read "Viel Tamtam um eine schwarze Katze". Police had found no panther, only an unusually large house cat. In the days that followed, the animal was spotted all over the country.

No animal was ever caught or identified. No owner came forward, while no circus or zoo reported a missing cat and Amnéville zoo denied that any panther was missing. ONCFS specialist Rodrigue Duhaut said: "If it was raised in captivity, it presents no danger." Hunters in Lorraine suggested it "could equally be a fox or a deer with brown-black fur". Writing in 2024, André Kramer of Netzwerk Kryptozoologie linked the animal to a search near Trier in October 2010, but no closing report ever surfaced.