Bodmin Moor encounter - something definitely not a dog or sheep

Right, I'm going to try to be as detailed as possible because I still can't quite believe what happened and I'd like some perspective. This was about six weeks ago, mid-September, around 4:30 in the afternoon.

I was walking the Bodmin Moor circuit - the one that goes near Brown Willy - with my mate Sophie. Lovely clear day, loads of other walkers around, very normal. We were probably two miles into it when we both saw this... creature isn't quite the right word, but that's what I'm going with.

It was large, definitely bigger than a dog, but moving with this weird undulating gait. At first I thought it might be a big cat - we've had reports of those - but the movement was all wrong. It didn't have a distinct head shape, more like the outline was blurred or shifting slightly. Dull greyish-brown colour. And here's the thing: neither Sophie nor I wanted to look directly at it. We both felt this instinctive thing telling us not to maintain eye contact, like our brains were actively avoiding focusing on it properly.

It disappeared into the rocks within about ten seconds. There were other walkers maybe 50 metres away but none of them seemed to react or notice. When we asked them afterwards, they said they hadn't seen anything unusual.

I'm not sure what we saw but it wasn't a normal animal. Has anyone else seen something similar on the Moor?

That's genuinely creepy. The detail about not wanting to look directly at it is really interesting - that's a detail that comes up in quite a few paranormal encounter reports. It's like there's something psychologically unsettling about the creature that makes our brains instinctively look away. Very odd if it was just a misidentified animal.

It was large, definitely bigger than a dog, but moving with this weird undulating gait.

There's been a theory going round the cryptozoology community about something they're calling the "Bodmin Phantom" - separate from the Beast of Bodmin which might be a feral cat. Your description matches a few others from the past few years. Has Sophie had any weird experiences or dreams since? Sometimes these encounters have secondary effects.

Probably a large deer viewed from an odd angle combined with afternoon shadow and tired eyes. The brain loves to fill in gaps and make weird things out of ordinary stuff. The part about not wanting to look at it directly is just confirmation bias - you expected something odd so you manufactured it.

You should file a report with the Centre for Fortean Zoology - they maintain detailed records of these sightings. The more documentation we have, the clearer the pattern becomes. Also, did either of you experience any unusual symptoms afterwards? Headaches, missing time, unusual dreams? Just asking because some cryptid encounters have electromagnetic components.

I'm not trying to be dismissive but could it have been a big cat? We definitely have pumas and panthers living wild in the UK - the evidence is pretty solid. They can move strangely when startled, and they definitely have that unsettling quality where you don't want to look at them. Just a thought.

This is brilliant documentation actually. The detail about the blurred outline is particularly significant. Some researchers think certain entities might exist slightly out of phase with our reality, which could explain the visual distortion and the instinctive avoidance response. Definitely worth investigating further.