“What Is It?”, by Amy Dalberg

A normal night at the cabin. Everyone finds there beds and fall asleep. In the middle of the night I get up to go to the washroom. There is no running water so the washroom is an outhouse not too far from the cabin.


I get my headlamp and shoes on and set out for the outhouse. To my horror, I am not the only one outside. On the edge of the small clump of trees next to the outhouse is an animal! I can’t tell what it is and I am freaking out! Looks like a really over sized raccoon or something with a bushy tail.  It moves into the trees a bit but no way am I going over there. I am panicking, jittering around, and confused about what to do. I quickly look towards the cabin. I debate if I need back up.I don’t know! I look back and it’s still there!


Now it looks like a huge 3 ft tall crab! What am I going to do?! I run back up on the cabin deck. Should I wake someone up to help? My panic is starting to wear off and I am more confused than anything about what I should do. After a while which was probably a minute it finally came to me and I remembered.


I walk out and use the outhouse and back into the cabin to bed. All the while amazed at myself and the whole event. Do you know what it was? My Dad’s pedal bike! Why? I was next thing to sleep walking. The flashlight and chrome off the bike wheels and frame created weird shadows and in my panic, combined with movement and light I made it look like it was moving. I didn’t remember it was there and was so groggy my mind went from 0 to 100 in no time.


Weirdest thing. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before, at least not to that scale or worth remembering. The next morning I told my parents. They laughed and said good thing I didn’t wake them or I would have never lived down the giant crab story.