Cabin Fever

This story was sent in by someone who wishes to remain anonymous:

This takes place five years ago, right after I married my wife. It started the night we arrived at our cabin near one of the many lakes in Canada. For privacy reasons I won’t say where, since most of my inner circle know I used to own that particular cabin and I don’t want them finding out about the real reason I sold the cabin. I feel like it’s important to note that both me and my wife had spent the previous winter at the cabin, converting it into an off grid homestead for us to live in after we got married. We didn’t have encounters during that two and a half month long period, and we didn’t find anything sign of something else living there.

The first day went as normally as anyone would expect. We went hiking, had some fun back at the cabin, spent the evening fishing before going to bed around 10:30. We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, however my wife did point out during our hike how there was a lack of wildlife in the area. There should’ve been plenty of deer and a strong pack of wolves, along with a whole bunch of other wildlife I unfortunately know little about despite being a semi-regular hunter (I’ve only ever hunted deer for the meat). I had noticed it too, but hadn’t thought much of it at the time. I didn’t much care either way, I was too busy staring at my wife (she’s always been absolutely beautiful to me).

The next day we started to notice the first signs of something strange going on. We’d got up early so that we could go fishing. Problem was, we’d left our fishing gear out on the porch the night before only for it to go missing by the time we woke up. It didn’t help that we were no where near other people: the nearest town was probably a hundred miles away and the nearest road was probably a good fifty miles or so. It made even less sense for some animal to simply come up to our cabin and steal our fishing gear, or so we thought anyway. We spent the rest of the day trying to find the missing gear without any real luck. Eventually we gave up and decided to simply sit outside by the campfire. My wife was and still is an avid guitar player, so she spent the evening playing her guitar while I read books on my Kindle.

It wasn’t until around none o’clock or so that we started to hear howling coming from the forest. This isn’t unusual, plenty of animals howl for one reason or another. What was unusual was it seemed to be coming from the small island in the middle of the lake. As far as we knew, the only kinds of animals that lived on the island were birds, which we doubted would be making any sort of noise that time of night. The howling kept going for another couple of hours, maybe two or three before it stopped. After that there wasn’t much we could do but try and get some sleep.

We were woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of scratching on the cabin walls. It almost sounded like a tree was scraping all along the outside of the cabin walls, which couldn’t be possible as I had spent the winter clearing all the trees around the cabin to use for firewood (and to avoid damaging the building during the growing seasons). At first I thought it might be a bear, but then the scratching gave way to the loudest howl I’ve ever heard. It was a blood curdling scream that seemed to go straight through me. I knew my wife felt the same way by the way she clung to me. The howl seemed to go on forever, but it did eventually stop. There seemed to be only a few moments of silence before the whole cabin started to shake. It wasn’t like there was something being thrown at it, no it was more like someone was trying to pick the whole thing up with a forklift. We were thrown out of our beds and I immediately went to grab my hunting rifle from the storage room. The shaking lasted no more than a minute or so, then everything seemed to return to normal.

We spent the rest of the night staying in the storage room, where we felt the safest. We only dared leave once we knew morning had come. The place was a mess. Everything not nailed down had been thrown all over the place by the shaking from the night before. What we hadn’t somehow noticed from the night before was that all the windows had been smashed. Someone had been throwing big rocks at the windows and had ended up smashing all of them in. Through it all, however, the door had remained shut and locked. Whatever was outside all night hadn’t tried to enter the cabin, which I’m very grateful for.

We called in for the seaplane to come pick us up that morning and spent most of the rest of our time there packing what belongings we could to take back with us. We didn’t say it out loud, but I have no doubt neither of us wanted to return to the cabin. About an hour before the seaplane picked us up, I was outside trying to clean up the area around the campfire when I saw it. There was something just inside the trees just to the left of the cabin. I don’t know what brought my attention to it, I guess I just had a feeling something might be there. I don’t know what it was I was looking at. It must have been eight or nine foot tall and standing on its hind legs, or at least I think it was. I thought at first that it must have been a bear, but I then realized that it didn’t look like a bear. It didn’t have the ears and its fur must have been the deepest black I’ve ever seen. I just stood there frozen in fear, even though I was holding my rifle at the time. That thing, whatever it was, was just staring straight back at me. Then it stepped away into the forest. I ran back into the cabin and was immediately confronted by my wife. She’d seen it too and asked me what it was while crying. I told I didn’t know, but I did have an idea. I never believed in Bigfoot, I still don’t really. But I can’t forget what I saw that day.

We sold the cabin a few months later. I only went back twice. Once a few days before the sale to make repairs and take the photos and again when the guy I sold it to wanted to have a look. I’m only thinking about it now because the guy who brought it supposedly went missing during a fishing trip to the cabin. When someone went to the cabin to look for him, they found the cabin had been almost destroyed. People are saying it could be a bear or wolves. I’m not. I know what did it. And I know he’ll likely never be found again, at least alive. I hope I’m wrong about that though.