Never been to Knoxville personally but this kind of report is really consistent across the whole Appalachian region and honestly the Pacific Northwest too. We get similar accounts out here in Oregon, big black cat, longer tail than any known native species, moving through the treeline usually at dusk.
The thing that strikes me about these eastern US reports is how concentrated they get around certain ridge lines and valleys. Makes me wonder if theres a geographic or geological component - certain terrain types that large felids prefer or that support enough prey density to sustain a breeding population nobody's officially documenting.
The "black panther" reports in the US are genuinely puzzling because melanism in cougars basically doesnt exist in documented science. So either people are misidentifying something else, there's an escaped or released exotic animal situation, or we're dealing with something that the current classification system isn't accounting for.
Would really love to hear more specific details from anyone who's had a sighting near Knoxville - time of day, distance, terrain type, whether it was moving or stationary. That kind of data builds up into something useful over time.
