Yes Black Panthers exhist but I very much doubt in South Georgia. There are always stories of that kind even in the UK where we have no wild cats at all. Unless they escaped from a zoo and I think that would be noticed.

I have lived in Florida most of my life and I have seen many black panthers driving north on I95.. they do exist, I have no idea if they are in Georgia.. but then again they are "touching" states..

The Black Panthers started in California back in the 70"s. They attempted to move their organization from California and spread it into the southern states. This only worked for a short while. One camp was set up in Birmingham, Alabama. Neighbors would constantly call the police to check on men marching all hours of the AM hours. The camp was located and known to the local Birmingham Police, but since no laws were being violated, the police hands were tied. One Birmingham officer drove by the house one night and noticed that long rifles were being pointed at his police vehicle, from the underhouse air vents. the officer kept driving. this information was passed on to the FBI. The police needed a legal way to enter the Black Panther camp. it was decided that a helicopter would fly over the camp and take surveillance photos of its members. one panther member was recognized as having an outstanding felony warrant. This was the break the police needed and a reason to storm the camp. but, it came at a cost. several police officers were killed as well as Black Panter members. Next door to the main Panther camp house was another "safe house", that the police did not know. a tunnel lead from one house to the other. the Black Panther leaders escaped. The wanted felon was arrested and the camp dispersed. Inside the main house, the walls had been fortified with sand bags to the top of the ceilings. many weapons were confiscated, along with a stockpile of food. Also recovered, were printed books for elementary students, teaching them to hate the police. This, more or less, ended the rein of The Black Panthers in the south. Also,

I hope they can all be rationally explained! 1) "Werecats (also written in a hyphenated form as were-cats) are creatures of folklore, fantasy fiction, horror fiction and occultism that are generally described as shapeshifters who are similar to werewolves, except that they turn into creatures that are based on some species of feline instead of being based on a wolf. The species involved can be a domestic cat, a tiger, a lion, a leopard, a lynx, or any other type, including some that are purely fantastical felines. Typically, an individual werecat can only transform to one unique feline, not to a number of different species, and each individual type of werecat may be known by a more species-specific term such as "weretiger". The word "werecat" was not coined until the late 19th century, so it was not directly used in legends from earlier eras, only by later folklorists' commentary." "In the U.S., Urban legends tell of encounters with feline bipeds; beings similar to the Bigfoot having cat heads, tails and paws. Feline bipeds are sometimes classified as part of cryptozoology, but more often they are interpreted as werecats." "In Caitlín R. Kiernan's Alabaster, Dancy Flammarion comes upon a sort of werepanther trapped in a cage, kept as a roadside attraction in southern Georgia." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werecat Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabaster_%28book%29 2) "In Florida, a few melanistic bobcats have been captured; these have also apparently been mistaken for panthers. Ulmer (1941) presents photographs and descriptions of two animals captured in Martin County in 1939 and 1940. In the photographs, they appear black, and one of the hunters called them black." "Another possible explanation for black cougar sightings is the jaguarundi, a cat very similar genetically to the cougar, which grows to around 30 in (75 cm) with an additional 20 in (50 cm) of tail. Their coat goes through a reddish-brown phase and a dark grey phase. While their acknowledged natural range ends in southern Texas, a small breeding population was introduced to Florida in the 1940s, and there are rumors of people breeding them as pets there as well." "Another possibility would be the black jaguar which ranged into North America in historical memory. Melanistic jaguars are uncommon in nature and, significantly, jaguars in general were persecuted to near-extinction in the 1960s. Though they do not look exactly like cougars, they have the requisite size; it is conceivable that there could be a breeding population hidden in, for example, the Louisiana bayou. The jaguar has had several (photographically) confirmed, and many unconfirmed, sightings in Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and southwest Texas, but not beyond that region." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_panther 3) "Jerry D. Coleman (born October 3, 1951 in Macon County, Illinois) is an American writer and researcher of anomalous phenomenon. For several decades, he has investigated reports of Bigfoot, thunderbirds, phantom cats, and other paranormal entities throughout the United States. He is the author of two books, Strange Highways and More Strange Highways, and he is the younger brother of Loren Coleman, a sociologist best known for his books on cryptozoology. - Phantom cats Coleman later became interested in the so-called "phantom cat" phenomenon in North America. His brother Loren Coleman had coined the term "phantom cats" in the 1970s in response to unexpected reports of big cats in places like Iowa and Illinois. Many of these phantom cats were said to be dark in color and unlike any known species. Since the early 1980s, Jerry Coleman has investigated dozens of reports of anomalous felines throughout the American Midwest and American Southeast. He claims to have personally seen a black panther near Byron, Illinois in 1995 , and in 2004 he investigated and photographed a taxidermic mount of a strangely-colored big cat in a North Carolina trading post. Dubbed the "Cherokee Cougar", it was rumored to have been shot in Tennessee, but Coleman was unable to verify the origins of the specimen . - Road trolls Coleman was also the first investigator to collect reports of a paranormal being known as the "Road troll" or "peg-leg". Truckers have allegedly encountered this being along roadways throughout the United States, describing it as a seven-foot tall, hairy, limping humanoid with tattered clothes. According to Coleman, witnesses say that the being moves very slowly and stares at drivers as they pass by. Coleman has theorized that "Road trolls" may be nothing more than human beings with unkempt hair and clothing, although he has suggested that it may also be a ghostly entity. In his book More Strange Highways, he describes reports from Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, Illinois, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Tennessee, ranging from 1981 to 2003 ." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_D._Coleman

well im from LA (lower alabama) and i believe they are here

I'm originally from east-central Mississippi. In the early 1970s, in mid-afternoon on a clear, sunny late-summer day, I was driving from Shubuta (Clarke Co.) to Waynesboro (Wayne Co.) on what's now known as 'old' Hwy 45. A few miles south of Shubuta, a cougar leaped down from an 8-foot embankment on the west side of the highway and ran across the road right in front of me. It was just barely far enough away that I wasn't worried about hitting it -- definitely close enough for me to see it very clearly. I'm absolutely positive it was a cougar -- it was the usual tawny color (not black), was almost 6 feet long from nose-tip to tail-tip, about 2 feet tall at the shoulders, and looked exactly like every cougar I'd ever seen photos of and tv shows about.<p> At the time this happened, I knew seeing a cougar this close in broad daylight was a rare event, and so felt quite privileged. I didn't find out just how privileged until several years later, when I ran across an article in the newspaper which said the MS Department of Wildlife was asking for anyone who saw a cougar, or saw what they believed to be cougar tracks, to contact them immediately. The reason the Dept. of Wildlife was emphasizing that people should call them immediately was because, although they continued to receive anecdotal reports of cougar sightings from time to time, there hadn't been a documented sighting of a cougar in Mississippi since 1903! So, as someone who actually seen one of these rare large cats in MS - seven decades after the last official sighting, I think it's entirely possible there may still be a breeding population of large black cats somewhere in the southeastern US as well.<p> Kat Denver