The skittering black thing in the alley

I don’t associate sunny hot days with encounters with strange unknown entities. Such events  seem more appropriate to dark stormy nights. So a recent encounter took me completely by surprise.

I was walking along  a path approaching a narrow alley. It was a bright, sunny hot  day. However, the alley is surrounded by thick vegetation and shrouded in deep shadows.  I could barely see a thing as I entered the alley. There was another factor affecting my sight. I wear glasses and they go dark in bright conditions. They had been duly darkened by the bright sunshine so when I entered the dark alley I could barely see anything.

What I did see was disturbing. There was a black shape skittering directly towards me along the ground. It was basically elliptical in shape maybe 15 cm across. It was only a couple of centimetres high. And it was completely black! The overall impression was of a jet-black crab running towards me, though I could see no appendages. I should explain that while I like and am fascinated by most animals, I’ve never been keen on crabs. I know it’s silly but crabs just unsettle me. So that probably explains why I froze and stared at the bizarre approaching black thing with trepidation.

To my relief the skittering black thing stopped just before it reached me allowing me to look at it more closely. It turned out to be a fragment of black bin liner propelled by a lively breeze. It’s not the first time I’ve been surprised by how strange a windblown bit of plastic can look, especially in poor viewing conditions. I’ve no doubt such objects have generated reports of anomalous phenomena.

One point of particular interest here is how my glasses affected what I saw. When interviewing a witness it is easy to assume that if it was a bright sunny day they would have had a good view of an anomaly. But if they were wearing glasses that get dark in bright conditions, or sunglasses, and entering a shady area …