People are seeing large cats this spring in the Northeast, and getting serious about finding proof.

One resident had had as a lab partner in college the renowned tracking guru Tom Brown, Jr., who had started an organization called Tracker SFI (for “search and forensic investigation”).

SFI deployed a Brown acolyte named Shane Hobel….

The construction site where Hobel first saw the cat tracks was just south of the lot. A crew was there grading gravel. “You guys looking for the phantom panthers?” one of the men said.

What is a panther? What is a phantom panther?

The magazine The New Yorker, June 8, 2009, has published, in their famed section, “Talk of the Town,” a level-headed and insightful column on cryptic large cats being reported in the Palisades of New Jersey. It is authored by Nick Paumgarten. The piece is entitled “Suburban Legends: Panther(S)!”

Hobel replied that the panthers were not phantoms. The man said, “People actually saw them? Did they have a couple of cocktails in ’em?” Hobel laughed politely and then dropped into a thicket off the road.