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Classic Archive Merged: Spider Spirit?

RachelVK said:
zygmunt


This story has just jogged my memory (yes, I know it took me til page 3)

Anyway, I was about 12/13 and spending the evening in with my mum (dad doing usual trick downing pints down the pub) when a spider, the size of a human hand, made an appearance above the gas fire attached to the chimney breast. Both being scaredy cats, mother and I jumped on the sofa when the thing started to sprint towards us across the carpet. Lots of screams averted it back to the chimney breast where I swear it ran from one end of the chimney breast to the other left to right, and top to bottom. I have never seen a spider so large, move so fast, for so long. We watched it for over half an hour, just waiting for it to disappear. In the end, we both ran to a neighbours house and the strapping young chap returned with us. It was gone. We moved furniture, lifted carpets, nothing. Bizarre.
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Ugh. Reminds me of an amusing event that took place at my in-laws' place. My brother- and sister-in-law live in a wooded area in the Quad Cities along the Mississippi in northern Illinois. Not exactly big-bug central: In the midwest we don't get the monstrous beasts they do in the Southwest, although we do get the (extremely) occasional Black Widow and Brown Recluse. Anyway, we generally don't get spiders even nearly as big as the house spiders you folks have in the UK, but once in a while something wicked this way comes. My niece and nephew have a shed that their dad built out in the woods behind the house. One day when we were all over, we were all out back there shooting the breeze. My brother-in-law was sitting on a bench in the shed when we all spotted the biggest spider we'd ever seen on the wall above his shoulder. It was gray, furry, and bigger than any of the tarantulas I've ever seen. So large was it, that we all initially thought it was a fake placed there by my nephew. Until it moved. It started ambling down the wall toward my BIL. We all screamed like 12-year-old girls, turned tail and ran. We haven't been back there since - and that was nearly two years ago!
 
I found a spider in my bed the other night. It's a good thing I always check under the covers before I go to sleep or I would have squashed it. It wasn't monster sized, luckily.
 
I remember distinctly a local news report on TV, it must have been early nineteen seventies (and I was staying with grandparents in Bexhill), about a woman who had seen a spider the size of a football in her house. I remember clearly because I was an arachnophobe at the time (not so bad now, don't know why). The fire brigade were called (?) . I naturally watched local news for follow-up, but surprise, surprise no more mention was made of it. Ring any bells with anyone? Just a silly season story, I guess.
 
I should so not be reading this thread!!!

I crap myself when those big bastards run across your living room carpet in the autumn. Once my wife has peeled me off the ceiling, she'll say something like "it's ok, it's gone now". GONE WHERE, FOR GOD'S SAKE!!?

I occasionally have "spider dreams" when I'll leap out of bed in the middle of the night, convinced they're in my bed, and whip the duvet off and start frantically brushing at the bed...

The image of that monster lurking in the tree will stay with me for a very long time.
:nooo: :eek!!!!:
 
If crabs can grow that large there could be a rational explanation...

My father once showed me a crab in our back garden, in Belfast, about 5miles from the lough and maybe 15 from the sea. I understand that such things can be carried inland by birds.

A very large crabby spider thing from the sea could be scooped by a large sea bird and carried a fair distance inland. It would certainly live for a period of time and move a bit if provoked.

Just a thought. I have seen some nice big seven inch spiders in the North. One was strong enough to open the tupperware lid of the box I tried to catch it in.
 
lemonpie said:
Until I finally calmed down and went to bed. There. In my pyjamas. Waiting for me. The BASTARD!
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A spider wearing pyjamas ... that is big!:eek!!!!:
 
standinghere said:
If crabs can grow that large there could be a rational explanation...

My father once showed me a crab in our back garden, in Belfast, about 5miles from the lough and maybe 15 from the sea. I understand that such things can be carried inland by birds.

A very large crabby spider thing from the sea could be scooped by a large sea bird and carried a fair distance inland. It would certainly live for a period of time and move a bit if provoked.

Just a thought. I have seen some nice big seven inch spiders in the North. One was strong enough to open the tupperware lid of the box I tried to catch it in.
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Is that a European Swallow or an African Swallow?
Onwards Patsy, klip klop klip klop, the sound of two coconut halves being knocked together.;)
 
I wonder what it is about spiders that gives people the creeps? Even the biggest ones are much smaller than you are. Flies don't bother people anything like as much.
 
Ah, c'mon...its the way they move, the complete and ridiculous redundancy of legs, the way you find them UNDER stuff, the...God, actually, I don't know. I think it MUST be an evolutionary strategy to be scared of them, same with snakes.
 
We are scared of them because on the planet our ancestors came from the spiders were bigger than us.
 
Thestral said:
Ah, c'mon...its the way they move, the complete and ridiculous redundancy of legs, the way you find them UNDER stuff, the...God, actually, I don't know. I think it MUST be an evolutionary strategy to be scared of them, same with snakes.
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I can remember a time when I wasn't afraid of spiders. I think it may be learned behavior that is passed down: you see mom freak out and scream when a spider skitters across the wall, you start to think maybe there's something to be scared of -- that sort of thing. Also, logically speaking, most spider bites are harmless. However, getting bitten as a rational adult is one thing; being 2 and having this creature inflict pain is something else. Maybe the fear stems from early experiences like this?

I can remember catching spiders in our basement and showing them to my grandmother. It was shortly after that that I recall being terrified of the things. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I'll bet it has something to do with grandma getting quite upset, and either reacting very strongly, or telling me something horrible about spiders that stuck with me.

The time my friend from across the street threw a tupperware container writhing with "banana spiders" he'd caught in the field behind our school on me didn't help matters. I can still feel their black, spiny legs cascading down my arms and chest ...
 
kev99sl:I can still feel their black, spiny legs cascading down my arms and chest ...



:eek!!!!:


Actually, I recall being chased on my tricycle (so that would make me about 3 years old?) by my older, evil brother while he dangled a grandaddy longlegs as he ran after me. That set up a lifelong love of them.

A friend of mine, (the one who saw a rectangular UFO float over the trees in his backyard,) hates spiders, too. He told me a story of a canoe trip where he and his companion stopped in a picnic shelter to avoid a downpour, and as they stood there feeling all cozy and sheltered, glanced up to see the ceiling was writhing with thousands of grandaddy longlegs. (Do you call the long legged spiders with the little bulbous bodies "grandaddy longlegs" in the U.K.? Anyway, their legs are about 4 or 5 inches long.)

And not too long ago, as I stepped off a curbing in front of my house one night, as I entered into a streetlamp's light, I walked eye-to-eye into a spider the size of a walnut. I shrieked. Now in the fall, when these animals are spinning webs across areas the size of Australia, I wave my hands in front of me to knock down any webs strung across my sidewalk. From a distance I probably look like I'm either performing a blessing or a Satanic Ritual, take your pick.
 
Originally posted by sudi
(Do you call the long legged spiders with the little bulbous bodies "grandaddy longlegs" in the U.K.? Anyway, their legs are about 4 or 5 inches long.)
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If we are talking about the same thing I always knew them as harvest men or harvest spiders but a wild life book calls them Daddy-long-legs Spider or Pholcus Phalangoides. When I was at school we used to think that the female should be a Mummy-long-legs. :)

Edit: There are two Species - I was being confused!

Daddy-long-legs Spider Pholcus Phalangoides

Harvestman Phalangium opilio

I think the last one is the really bug one!
 
From Austen:

There are two Species - I was being confused!

Daddy-long-legs Spider Pholcus Phalangoides

Harvestman Phalangium opilio

I think the last one is the really bug one!

--------

Thanks for the info!

I had some time this morning to search photos out on the web (even though the spiders I am referring to don't spin them, :) ) and found these sites...this one:

http://spiders.ucr.edu/daddylonglegs.html


follows up with some photos on the Harvest Man (I like that name, reminds me of "The Wicker Man" for some reason...)

This one has great photos (don't look if you HATE their legs!) --you might have to follow a few links to get to the harvestman/longlegs page...)

http://www.arachnology.org/

and this one:

http://www.backyardzoo.com/Spiders/Daddy_Long_Legs/Default.asp


shows the actual "granddaddy longlegs" I have seen and so loved here in Virginia (U.S.A.) my whole life. It also shows their creepy propensity to clump together, often seen under the eaves of suburban homes around here, and seen by my friend on his canoe trip.

YICK.

-Sudi
 
spiders - those mothers are bad shit..

I've had too many duels with them to recall but one stands out - one night your typical UK house spider scuttled it's way across my bedroom floor, big hairy black legs thrashing about as the bastard bulleted towards my bed.
Being a veteran my spidey senses kicked in & I leapt up, grabbed the nearest wighty tome from the bookshelf and aimed a precision encyclopedia bomb onto the speeding monster.

With a loud thump it was flattened & all was well.

Or was it...?

After an hour or so I needed to get up so on my way I picked up the book & yes, you guessed it the spider 'sprang' up and off under my bed leaving me shrieking like a girl and pondering a night sleeping with the enemy.


Also, I'll tell you what I

**** HATE ****

Those do-gooders who like spiders & when there's one on the bedroom ceiling they always say "Don't kill it - I'll catch it and set it free".

Now, experience tells me to gently usher them out of the room so I can get on with the job of converting our 8 legged friend into a 25 legged dead friend. In the past I've made the mistake of letting them try to catch it - almost always ends with them dropping the damn thing onto my bed where it promptly disappears or they manage to throw it in my direction, resulting in a furious scramble to get away from them.

So next time they try to help, just say

N O !!!!
 
Edward Bungalow said:
We are scared of them because on the planet our ancestors came from the spiders were bigger than us.
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John Keel maintains that the reason most people are afraid of spiders is that at some point in distant prehistory, our planet was ruled by gargantuan arachnids, and that humans were their primary food item. As a result, we retain a stored race memory of those times when spiders were at the top of the food chain. Of course, this is the same John Keel who claimed that he was on Mothman's personal mailing list, so, y'know, who knows.
 
Oh, dear. Please don't tell me I'm on the same wavelength as John Keel. That is one wavelength you do not want to be on.

Uh-oh. There goes the 'phone again.
 
I remember a few years back the Local Press here reporting that a large batch of Peruvian spiders had escaped/ been lost upon delivery to Bristol Zoo. Posters even appeared on lamposts in the area. I barely slept for a week, and mapped my own exclusion zone within a 2 mile radius of the area in question. Eventually, a friend of a friend who worked there said it was a "hoax", and I relaxed, slightly, but who really knows?

I was tormented by a house spider throughout my childhood, who lived in one corner of the room, and could apparently read my thoughts by appearing almost on demand.

My current abode appears spider free, which I thank the cat for, although perhaps they are just waiting, and watching...
 
I'm from the UK, so yes I know the arachnids we get here aren't poisonous and the worst they can do is get their webs in your face when you're doing your paper round at 7am (I'm 32 now so this was a while ago). But I hate 'em. Hate 'em, hate 'em hate 'em. Evil little buggers with too many bloody legs. And eyes.

Any hoo. Once upon a time, I was about 19 I think and still living at home and still had a cabin bed with a sofa underneath, I was sat on said sofa watching TV when I caught movement with my peripheral vision and there on the wall up and to the left of my TV...WASN'T a 4 foot arachnid demi god, but one of its smaller 7 inch minions, which had obviously been learning from the same school as our ninjutsu posting friends from earlier in this thread. The light was off so I was seeing by the light of a flickering TV, I leapt up grabbed a slipper and aimed an exoskeleton cracking whack at its head. Hah ! The bloody thing dodged it I swear ! In a kind of matrix style bullet time manouver. Still, I managed a second strike and hit the evil minded little sod. This just seemed to annoy it and it leapt (ok fell) off the wall and made use of some of the martial art concealment and camoflage techniques alluded to by Luciferrofocale earlier in this thread, and the dusty wire infested area behind my stereo speakers. K, now I was crapping it cos now I had a fully mobile, slipper proof, 8 legged beast of terror lurking behind my speakers just waiting to take my leg off at the knee. I went to turn my light on and could have sworn I heard a Muttley style snigger as the light blazed into brightness. Braver now (lights do that) I moved my speaker and a blurry streak of greybrown lightning sprinted across the floor and under my sofa bed thing. BASTAD ! K now I had to move the whole fecking thing cos there was no way I was gonna go to sleep, with it sat there, under the sofa amongst my old spectrum games plotting my demise. After about 20 minutes of struggling with the bed and making spider scaring noises (please please don't ask), I realised i was locked in a battle of wills, human ingenuity Vs arachnid hunting skills. I managed to pull the bed out enough to force the spider into making a fatal error. It made an attempt to leg it towards me and scuttle up my trouser leg, which it managed to do. I was stunned into a paralysed state of fear when it made it's initial charge, but unfortunately (for it) it ran up the outside of my jeans and somehow the sheer effrontery caused by this attack broke through my fear and caused a reflex action in which I grabbed it with a free hand. I could feel it wriggling in my fist. Urgh! So with the battle over and the deadly arthropod neutralised. Did I free the prisoner and salute him as a worthy adversary ? Nope. No way. Uh uh. He got flushed. And when he diappeared, I flushed some more. Humans 1 Spiders 0.

:blah:
 
Blimey,

You could make that into a film! I felt like I was there!

I must admit, if the beast has made a run for me and got anywhere near to my leg, let alone trying to get up my trouser leg, I would have passed out and probably found myself sheathed in a web being kept for dinner later.........

I hate the bloody things.
 
I got this in an e-mail today...Dunno if it's true or not.


A true story and its source was the Australian Quarantine Inspection
Service in Adelaide.

A bloke and his family were on holidays in the United States and went to
Mexico for a week.
An avid cactus fan, the man bought a one-metre high, rare and expensive
cactus there. On arrival back home Australian Customs said it must be
quarantined for 3 months.

He finally got his cactus home and planted it in his backyard, and over
time it grew to about 2 metres. One evening while watering his garden
after a warm spring day, he gave the cactus a light spray. He was amazed
to see the plant shiver all over, he gave it another spray and it shivered
again. He was puzzled so he rang the council who put him on to the state
gardens
people.

After a few transfers he got the state's foremost cactus expert who asked
him many questions: How tall is it? Has it flowered? etc. Finally he asked
the most disturbing question. "Is your family in the house?"

The bloke answered yes. The cactus expert said get out of the house NOW,
get on to the front nature strip and wait for me, I will be there in 20
minutes. Fifteen minutes later, 2 fire trucks, 2 police cars and an
ambulance came screaming around the corner. A fireman got out and asked
"Are you the bloke with the cactus?" I am, he said. A guy jumped out of
the fire truck wearing
what looked like a space suit, a breathing cylinder and mask attached to
what looked like a scuba backpack with a large hose attached. He headed
for the backyard and turned a flame-thrower on the cactus spraying it up
and down.

After a few minutes the flame-thrower man stopped, the cactus stood
smoking and spitting, half the fence was burnt and parts of the gardens
were well and truly scorched. Just then the cactus expert appeared and
laid a calming hand on the bloke's shoulder.

"What the hell's going on?" he says. "Let me show you" says the cactus
man. He went over to the cactus and picked away a crusty bit. The cactus
was almost entirely hollow and filled with tiger striped bird-eating
tarantula spiders, each about the size of two hand spans.

The story was that this type of spider lays eggs in this type of cactus
and they hatch and live in it as they grow to full size. When full size
they release themselves. The cactus just explodes and about 150 dinner
plate sized hairy spiders are flung from it, dispersing everywhere. They
had
been ready to pop.

The aftermath was that the house and the adjoining houses had to be
vacated and fumigated: police tape was put up outside the whole area and
no one was allowed in for two weeks.
 
As a footnote to my spider encounter a coupla pages back... The flat where I saw them was near to the old Spitalfields fruit market (as was) in London's East End... it's occured to me since that the spiders might have been descendents of creatures that came over in fruit consignments.

We've moved since then to a house with a garden. The room that backs onto the garden has it's share of large arachnid visitors, and we always find them in exactly the same place, in the same corner. Almost like there's something that attracts them to that spot.
 
Took a while to re-locate this thread-
Concerning unidentified giant beasties, earlier in the thread the point was made that there were some strong similarities between the accounts from the UK spider spotters . I think I can provide a viewing opportunity for anyone who is really brave and fearless. It seems we have a monstrous beast living in the virginia creeper outside my teenage son's room (name withheld to protect the wimpish).
I asked him to take the bug screens down and clear some of the attractive- but- rampant foliage away around his window,he forcibly and uncharacteristically declined.
His reason was simple, there is a large, pink and brown mottled spider that peers in at him in a mencing way, it was so big he thought it was a bunch of leaves caught on the screen until he opened the window to brush it off and it moved towards him.
Further questioning elicted the information that it's body was the size of his palm and a mottled pinkybrown, the legs seemed quite thick and it was able to walk easliy over the surface of the bug scren without getting stuck. He usually sees it in the evening.

Although he admits it's smaller than him and unlikely to carry him off, there is no way he will open the window again or remove the screen for cleaning in case it brings it's friend along.

Any one fancy a monster hunt in Midsummer ?:eek!!!!: :eek!!!!:
 
Would it be possible for him to try and keep a camera handy and photograph it, as he seems to see it fairly often? Bath! That's not far from me.....:( Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!
 
Giant Spiders

I'd love to come by and see it, but unfortunantly I'm across the pond. In fact I'm about 600 miles from the pond and then another. . .what? 4000 miles across.

Heh, don't see me making it anytime soon.
 
Jorougumo

While this lady isn't *fortean* as such.. she sure is a big mama of a spider! She lives in Japan and I met one last Saturday! She's shiny black - looks like she's made of black plastic, with yellow bands round her legs and yellow and green and red markings on her back. I took a photo with my brand new digital camera and as soon as I find a website to put photos on I'll upload the pic here if anyone is interested in seeing it. She was surely the biggest spider I've ever seen!
 
One night, I was curled up on my sofa, when I saw a hige brown spider scuttle across the floor. It was bigger then usual UK house spiders, and light brown. I caught it and threw it out the window (I live three floors up, so that wasn't kind at all) and sat down....only for another fecking one to make it's appearance five minutes later! That one soon went the way of his friend, and I thought no more about it (apart from the fact I live near Heathrow and there's always stories about vicious human-killing super-ninja poisionous spiders who can kill you with a glance escaing from insane spider smugglers at the airport.). However, the next day, I was talking to my friend, who lives about five mile away, and she had had exactly the same experience....two light brown, identical spiders..except her boyfriend killed hers, as she's terrified of spiders. (I used to be, but every big strong tough boyfriend I ever had was reduced to a quivering weeping whimpering wreck at the sight of the spider, I realised i had to learn to cope with them myself).

I just think it's wierd we both had exactly the same slightly unusual spider experience the same night.
 
Atleast she didn't have two huge light brown spiders land on her head from three stories on that same night.:D
 
kev99sl said:
Ugh. Reminds me of an amusing event that took place at my in-laws' place. My brother- and sister-in-law live in a wooded area in the Quad Cities along the Mississippi in northern Illinois. Not exactly big-bug central: In the midwest we don't get the monstrous beasts they do in the Southwest,
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I have seen these spiders on the Iowa side of the river in housing near grassy fields and/or woods.

In October of 1983, a neighbour caught one and kept it in a large 5-litre jar. Grey, hairy, huge, with a large abdomen and 10-15+ cm leg span and all that jazz. Stories circulated that it was eventually killed by being shot to bits with an automatic pellet gun and/or doused with alcohol and set on fire after some kind of incident.

Then I killed two of them in the basement of our house, one with multiple blows with a large boot in late December of 1983, then a second by shooting it with a slingshot and smacking it with a length of pipe three weeks later.

I was told that these were called wood spiders. They fit the description above.

After a further sighting of this huge type of spider, the whole neighbourhood was searching for them the next spring, with one neighbour intending to incinerate or blow it to bits with petrol, fire-crackers, and even a tennis ball filled with home-made Anfo. I suggested mixing petrol with dish soap and spraying it on the piece of shit if it showed up in the open. We never saw another spider but it became the Great Centipede BBQ.

Creep-creep-creep-creep...BOOM!
 
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