I blogged about phantom cats recently. Well, now they’re coming to a movie theatre near you. And probably literally, not just in movie form.

The mystery big cat thought to prowl the Blue Mountains is set to star in a horror movie.

A Sydney-based team will start filming in the coming months, drawing inspiration from repeated sightings of the giant cat, whose existence has yet to be officially verified.

Yes, Australia’s own version of the Nottingham Lion.

I have a few questions.

1) When will people hold off believing in stuff until better-than-anecdotal evidence comes along?

2) Will the exposure from this movie help intelligent people realise that the phenomenon is fake (like ‘The X-Files’ did with UFOs), or will it cement the idea of phantom cats in the consciousness of more credulous people (like ‘The X-Files’ did with UFOs)?

3) What is it with cats?

Update: I do see that stories of phantom dogs are out there, too. Notice this quote from the page:

Phantom black dogs have been witnessed too frequently in modern times to parcel the phenomena as pure folklore and legend, but then folklore and legend often has origins in real events.

Uh, wrong. No matter how many anecdotes you get, it never equates to reliable data.