EEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKK….I have a special scream. Samwise calls it my ‘spider’ scream. I’m arachnophobic. So how does someone terrified of spiders end up writing about werespiders in the Otherworld Series, and now—Myst, a queen who works with the magic of spiders and mist and snow in Night Myst? I dunno—just quirky, I guess. And even though I’m afraid of spiders and if they come in my house, they’re fair game, I do understand their importance in the cycle of life. And I find them fascinating, if prone to inhabiting my nightmares.
So today’s Night Myst contest is about spiders! (Woohoo, I knew you’d love that one!). Are you afraid of spiders? Do you like them? And what’s the freakiest incident you’ve had with one?
Leave a comment with your answer AND your email address, and one person will win a $10 gift card to Amazon.com. This contest is open to U.S. and international fans. You must be 18 or over to enter, and you must leave your email address in the comment that you post. Enter by 11:59 on 6.7.2010 to be eligible. Winner will be posted on Saturday’s blog.
CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED! PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ENTER!
Yasmine
43 comments:
I am so afraid of spiders. I just find them so unnatural with their 8 legs and their beady little eyes....*shivers* It's freaking me out just thinking about it. I always have to call my hubby to come rid me of them because I'm always afraid that if I try they will jump at me (even if they aren't jumping spiders). *shivers again* Okay, okay I can't talk about it anymore. It's giving me the heebie-jeebies :)
silversungoddess@hotmail.com
I truly hate spiders. I have to say anything with more than 6 legs = wrong. Wrong! They move strangely and too fast. The experience that freaked me out the most was actually a couple of weeks ago. I came home from school and while walking through the door I brush off a couple of gnats....nope, about 500 baby spiders had decided to live in my front door between the storm and inner doors! I walked right through them and felt like they were all over me for hours! Raid for flying insects works well for spiders too;) Shudder.....
cgavigan1@rochester.rr.com
Years ago when I first lived with my kids father, I thought I would be cute and wear nothing but this little robe. (I was very not cute at 18) I felt something tickling me in between my breasts.
So I lifted up the robe and asked nicely " hey babe can you get rid of this hair or what ever is stuck on my robe"
Needless to say the man went dead silent and then made a very small squeaking noise in the back of his throat.
I look over the damn *cute* robe. It was a freaking wolf spider crawling on me!
I had to try to remove it myself!
Since then I have developed a health dose of spider yuck.
Nor was I very forgiving about the lack of a helping hand ;)
The night was very short lived!
I wouldn't say I was afraid of them, they just have to stay out of my immediate world and they are safe.
Thanks for the blog. It was fun to remember that wonderful experience :)
Still can make me laugh.
I am over 18
jennirimbaugh@gmail.com
Jenni
Spiders don't bother me to much but my mom is deathly afraid of them. She worked at a grocery store when she was younger and was putting away produce in the back and felt something move over the top of her foot. When she looked down it was a tarantula that had come in from a crate of bannanas. She was so freaked by this that she ended up quitting this job. tWarner419@aol.com
I'm ridiculously paranoid when it comes to spiders! We just moved from an apartment to a house and I'm finding that there are way more spiders and other creepy crawly things that make their way into my basement than there ever was at the apartment!
I have this mantra that a say while hopping back and forth on the couch so I'm not even on the ground with the bloody thing: "Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!" And then it changes to "Ohmygawd! Honey, there's a spider...get it! Get it! Get it!" At this point my voice has also reached a higher pitch than I and my husband ever thought possible! And what does my husband do? He picks the spider up...YES, IN HIS HANDS!...and carries it outside so he can let it go! All the while I am shuddering with disgust he laughs at me! Why oh why can't he just squish it? I don't know, 'cause the things sometimes manage to make their way back into the house! UGH!
Worst experience? Back when I was about 12 years old, I was coming home from school one day and although we usually went through the back door of the house, for some stupid reason I decided I wanted to go in the front door. So I'm standing there fiddling with my key trying to get it in the lock when I feel this "plop" on my shoulder. Now the first thought that ran through my mind? How the heck did a bird manage to poop on me so close to the house? So I look over and...you guessed it (no, I have no idea what kind it was), there was a HUGE spider about half the size of my childish fist sitting on my shoulder!!! I don't think my neighbors ever fully recovered from my terrified scream! What made it worse was that I was too freaked out to brush it off and I just started running around screaming, awkwardly shaking my shoulder in an attempt to get it off me. My sister finally heard me and came running, she was freaked out but managed to get the HUGE mother off me!
Needless to say, I never went through the front door again. And to this day I still look up before going in ANY door!
astewart305(at)rogers.com
I'm not really afraid of EVERY spider I see. I can look at them, but if I'm surprised by one, it's pretty much dead. I'll do my best to capture and release one if I find it in the house. When I moved into my first apartment, by myself, while in college, I was sitting on my bedroom floor unpacking and this "seemingly" huge spider crawled out from under the baseboard heater. I saw it, and I was prepared to capture it, because it just stopped and "looked" at me. Then, I swear on everything holy, the thing ran at me! I jumped up and threw whatever I was unpacking at it, but it kept coming. I finally stepped on it with my shoe while almost hyperventilating. It was like a scene out of Arachnophobia. It's a hilarious story now, but I can tell you that I swore every little itch in bed that night was a spider crawling on me.
viper6dulce9@gmail.com
Haha!!! No I am not afraid of spiders. I remember the boys in school would catch spiders and chase the girls with them The girls would all run off screaming their silly heads off...hehe!!!
Only I would stand my ground and ask if I could hold it, and I did.
I have always wanted to hold a tarantula in my hand, haven't yet.
Valerie
in Germany
valb0302@yahoo.com
I do not fear spiders but I am in house full of others who are. You just do not realize when you hear MOM that you will be on spider patrol.
Now for the worst moments I have had with spiders is the day Dandy one of our beloved furry people was biten by two Black Widows. He was a Boston Terrier and come to find out Bostons have so many allergies. He had just a short time to live and I ended up being to late.
We lost our boy in less than 24 hours. I do have to becareful because I have so many furry people to care for and where we live Black Widows are every where. So it was my worst experience, and a heart breaking one as well. We love our Dandy man.
Rachel
yankee_rose@blomand.net
I hate spiders and am verryyy afraid of them. The time that freaked me out the most was when I had just woke up and was sitting here enjoying my coffee, trying to wake up, and reading emails. Needless to say a freaking spider dropped down by its web and was dangling in front of my face. I screamed and fell off my chair spilling my coffee on me lol :(
Stupid spiders.... :)
Forgot the email...
derna4u@gmail.com
I LOATHE spiders. Afraid? Oh YES. Only fairly recently though...
Freaky:
When we (stupidstupid stooooopiiid) moved from the PNW to the South for 2 years we were bitten by all kinds of truly nasty types. My hubby got bit by a brown recluse. The bite was real close to very sensitive areas... it turned purply blue / red, formed a nasty hole and the skin died as the bite area spread... I found that sucker... fun times were NOT had by all....
We treated with my special spider herbal+ infusion, a bit caustic but it worked... 'course he screamed ALOT.
lavendersbluegreen@yahoo.com
When I was a teenager I rented a basement apartment. I had two friends staying over and I had fallen asleep while they stayed up talking. Suddenly I woke up screaming and swatting at my hair and face while my friends stared at me bemusedly. When I finally calmed down enough to tell them that there had been a spider on my head, they didn't believe me. So my guy friend goes around the room pretending to look for the spider with the plan to "kill" a spider so that we could all go to sleep. Suddenly he lets out a shriek. He had found the spider that I had flung across the room. It had landed on a painting and was as big as my palm. He swiped it off the painting and spent five minutes beating it and stomping on it. I cralled back into bed and proceeded to go back to sleep. My friends just sat there staring at me. Finally, "How can you go back to sleep after that?" I just rolled over. I figured anything that big would have eaten every other creepy crawly in the basement.
Meaghan - mehc@hotmail.com
Spiders terrify me. I don't like them at all, not even the ones that can't even bite you.
When I think about spiders I'm always reminded of the time I was sitting at church and I looked down to see a spider with an abdomen the size of my pinkie fingernail crawling up my leg. I freaked a bit, swatted it off and it landed on my friend's skirt. I swatted it again and it landed on the ground where it started crawling back towards us, and my friend, now aware of the spider, was also freaking out. We were trying really hard not to scream as the preacher was in the middle of the sermon, but thankfully the guy sitting next to us saw the gigantic spider and squashed it with his boot. I don't think I've ever seen a spider so big before indoors and if I ever did I'd probably just run in the opposite direction.
woozles@gmail.com
I'm not really afraid of spiders, although if they're in my hosue, they are soon to be found in the great Hereafter. Certainly not a fan of them ON me either, but I actually owned a Mexcian red-kneeed tarantula for about 3 years.
She was gorgeous and I loved watching her, although I never got the guts to pick her up, she wasn't terribly freindly,and I was more afriad of her butt hairs stinging me than her biting me, but she was awesome to watch and study. The best story about spiders I have though is this, when I lived with my mother we'd get the regular garden variety spiders around the yard. One October, a HUGE spider decided to take residence in our front yard. He was a smart little sucker,and built a gigantic web over our security light. He knew the bugs would fly into that light and thought, easy peasy meals, right?
The web was so big it stretched to the other side of our patch of graden, which was at least 12 foot across. I was very mindful about not disturbing it when I decorated for Halloween and he was the perfect addition. The kids trick-or-treating really loved it too, since he was real and clearly visible. I've actually got another creepier sotry, but will save that for another time.
Heatherlyn
hezashade@yahoo.com
Okay...
I'm not afraid of spiders, at all, though the big yellow garden spiders are intimidating and I'll give them a with berth. Tarantulas occasionally migrate through my area (I live in central Texas), so at times, there are very large hairy arachnids crawling all over my ground floor deck (at which time, we shut the windows and doors until they pass by - lest they lose their way andget inside and become a rather gross kitty snack).
My husband, however, is terribly phobic. A few years ago, when we lived in California, a large brown spider had found its way into our kitchen. Now, at the time, I was SICK. As in, being treated for cancer, on loads of medication, trying to get some damn sleep sick. It was 3am and my husband had gone to the kitchen for some water, and then got himself "stuck" there, because of this spider. He actually called to me and begged me to get out of bed to catch the spider. That was my worst experience with spiders, thus far.
lunamoth42@ymail.com
Having grown up in Florida before air conditioning was common, huge banana spiders were always hanging out in the corners of our ceilings.
We used to shine a flashlight from one angle or another to try see different shapes in the spiders' shadows. Okay, this was also before computers or video games and, BTW, we also tried to see shapes in the clouds. Stop laughing!
My daughter is wildly frightened of spiders. She refers to spider webs as Satan's Snowflakes. I can only assume she read that somewhere because, goodness knows, she would never have looked at a spider web closely enough to see any resemblance to anything.
Oops, I got so into the whole banana spider recollection I forgot to add my email address.
Donna
donnafisk at bellsouth dot net
I do not like spiders, but I understand their importance. I just find them incredibly unnatural, robotic even in their movement.
I live in the Mohave Desert of Arizona and we have camel spiders. I am terrified of these particular spiders as they are HUGE, scorpian- like, wicked fast and terribly aggressive. If I see one, I have to get my husband to kill it. The very first time we encountered such a creature, we were working in the backyard and my husband had a shovel in his hand. When he reached out to smash it, the spider grabbed the edge of the shovel. I handed my husband the hose and he sent a jet of water toward the best. It was blown backwards with the force, but when we shut the water off, the fiend came rushing back. This time my husband was triumphant, slicing the spider in half with the blade of his shovel. The pest control people were invited the very next day.
Any time we see a camel spider on our property from that time on, we call the pest control company to come and spray. I can handle the scorpions and the black widows, but those camel spiders are too much, by far.
smroy77@gmail.com
I am terrified of spiders. Funny story is I was just outside before hopping online and a Daddy Long Legs crawled right around my leg.LOL. I may not like spiders, but I too am facinated by them. In my writing, and in life. Their webs are facinating, and some of the most venomous ones are really interesting. I would hate to actually get bitten, but the little eight or six legged things are facinating. I also dont mind the four spiders that make thier homes on my porch at night. Local Bug Killers. But most of my terrifiying issues come from when they are in my room, or laying next to me. My email is philski155(At)AOL (DOT) COM My name is Phil.
Spiders scare me to death! But I'm fascinated by them and thoroughly enjoy watching horror films with spiders - yep! I squeal and keep my feet up off the floor and enjoy every minute of it...
Which leads me to my spider story. As a teenager, I was in the living room with my brother watching "Something Wicked This Way Comes..." and it was the scene where the tarantulas were in the boys bedroom - coming through the window and covering the walls. I was beside myself scared watching this when suddenly something dropped into my lap! I jumped up so fast I about shot the couch backward, knocked (and broke) the table lamp off the table and was absolutely screaming my head off thinking that a gigantic tarantula had landed on me!
Turns out, my brother had shot a rubber band at the ceiling and it deflected right into my lap!
He lived. :)
elzbeth@comcast.net
I really do not like spiders. I have been known to jump up on a chair and yell for my hubby. the weirdest was when in the shower I saw a spider and I yelped and wound up on my backside outside the shower (no one but the spider was hurt). very embarrassing.
Alexx
ritbsdoni@gmail.com
I grew up in Florida so I have tons of spider stories. When I first became afraid of them I was 5 or 6. I went to take a bath and forgot to pull the shower curtain out of the tub. While I was sitting in the water I reached over to put the curtain on the outside and this huge red water spider came out and started after me across the water. I remember srceaming and screaming and trying to climb up the shower wall to get away from the spider gliding towards me in the tub. Every since then I've been terrified of them. And in Florida the spiders can get the size of your head. My Mom had one stand on it's back legs and hiss at her when she tried killing it with a broom.
heroquest@verizon.net
I am not a spider fan. I'm not 'run away screaming' terrified of them, but I avoid them whenever I can. I'm more afraid of getting spider web on me!
Sigh - I also forgot my email - jguldy@yahoo.com
I am not sure I'm 'afraid' of spiders, but I definitely do not like them and they can freak me out easily if they startle me. I have become paranoid recently because we have black widows here. Big, shiny, juicy black widows. Did you know their young become airborne and travel? Yeeeaaahhhh.
My son is a heart patient and I live in fear of one of these things biting him.
My little story is about my uncle who thought he was a funny guy. I was 11 and had gone to spend a few weeks with him (and family) The first night there, we were all sitting in the darkened living room watching TV when something suddenly just dropped into my lap. I looked down and saw a huge hairy spider. I let out a scream and jumped up, doing the "agggggghhhhSpiderSpider" dance. My uncle thought this was hilarious but since he had a mean streak I wasn't surprised. I was surprised when I looked at the floor and realized the hairy monster was encased in acrylic.
Uncle had thought it would be amusing to toss it onto my lap.
I hate spiders and snakes. Both of these freaks of nature scarred my childhood. I will save the snake story for a different time, but the spider - she was truly an awful experience. I don't know how old I might have been, but likely younger than 8 years old. I had come home with my dad (he is not the fearless leader type that some folks may remember their dads being) and we were loaded down with groceries (which for me, likely meant that I had a soda in one hand and a candy bar in the other) and there was this huge spider (probably the size of a bottle cap, but when you are little, that’s a big bug!) that came out of the wood box and crossed dad's path. He shouted a colorful string of choice words at the spider and performed what appeared to be a jig while holding an arm load of groceries. One of his awkward stomps landed on the spider and all should have been right with the world again. Nope. This particular creeper was apparently carrying her egg sack or whatever the freaks do to spawn their hundreds of young, and the little plagues on eight legs spilled out from where ever many-legged-momma had been toting them! I'm sure that it is normal, but this freaked me out and didn't do my dad any favors in his feelings for the critters, they scattered so fast that there was no hope in stomping them all. As far as I know, this is where my fear of the little buggers began because I know that it wasn’t always this way as I had been known to tease my older brother for being afraid of spiders prior to this event.
kalorah81@yahoo.com
I am terrified of spiders! Alive or dead, I don't care! It's gotten to the point now that I'm too afraid to kill them, I'm afraid I'll miss them and just piss them off instead of killing them. ;) My most eventful experience with a spider recently was when I came home to the house I was renting by myself one night. I started walking up to the door and so a GIANT spider moving around on the wall next to the door. It was moving up and down on it's spider silk in that freaky way spiders have. I was freaked out and on the phone with my mom, asking for my stepfather to drive 20 minutes to come kill it and then I was saying that I'd just leave and go stay with her to avoid the spider! I was denied and I spent over 10 minutes trying to walk to the porch but I was too afraid to get close to the spider. I finally went and got the hose (which had an attachment to make it more pressurized) and sprayed at the spider for several minutes until it was finally knocked loose from the wall. I grabbed a box of my training workbooks from work that weighed a couple of pounds. I ran to the porch and dropped the books on the spider. I put more weight on the box and left it there. The next morning, I checked on the spider. It was a fat one but it became a pancake. I was traumatized! ;) Here are some pics of the Ebil Spider: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45947746@N03/sets/
Congrats on finishing the book!
Sorry, I forgot my email! myrandaroyann@gmail.com
Thanks again!
I loathe spiders. They seriously freak me out. I woke up to one crawling on my face once and I cannot stand them! They give me the willies!
Charchelar@aol.com.
I have mixed feelings about spiders. I can appreciate their usefulness when it comes to getting rid of other insects, but they'll never shed their creepy factor. I've never had a horrible experience with a spider though. If I do one day, I'm sure I'll start hating them.
i do hate spiers too! they are always hiding some where that they can't be seen. i was in the bed and one feel down on me,i SCREAMED so lound that everyone in my family can running in.they all laughed at me because it was a little spider. i stayed mad at them for weeks.and did i say that they scare me to death!!! mandyhonea@yahoo.com
UGH! Spiders! Twice in the past few years I was laid up for weeks from a spider bite on my leg since I am SEVERELY allergic to them. On the more recent of the two my skin actually started to die ><. So, needless to say I am terrified of the critters. As far as the freakiest incident, well I was sitting on my couch messing around on my computer when all of a sudden something tickled my forehead at the top right near the hair line. I scratched at it, but nothing was there. This happened two more times, and then on the third time when I reached up, a big black fuzzy spider dropped on my nose. It was HORRIBLE! In my panic to get it off of me I lost track of it and never did find the sucker. Needless to say it took me a long time before I could sit on the couch again.
kclapsadl@comcast.net
I am super afraid of spiders, and I just got all scary when I read they were in the books. How about a cheat sheet so I can skip certain pages. I have to admit that I closed my eyes through the spider scenes in Harry Potter & LOTR. They give me nightmares...that icky feeling like they are crawling on you.
How about some nice were-bees instead?
I don't really like spiders, but living in GA, I have to deal with them. *shudders* I can handle the smaller ones, as my girls (4 daughters) freak when they see them in the house. But show me one of the black widows or one of the wolf spiders, and I FREAK n run the other way! Had a wolf spider run across my bedroom floor one night and I HEARD the dang thing running on my rug! Had one even scream at me as I tried to take it out with a shoe. I ran and got my husband. I DO think the orb spiders are pretty cool, tho. I leave them alone, as their webs and even their markings are pretty cool.
Stacy
dragn_lady@yahoo.com
I have no love for little crawlies. They all make me squirm. Yet, I look at myself and the little bug with some awe. How could such a little thing be so utterly terrifying!? I do not even like to squish, touch, cup, capture or blow on them. I call for husband every time.
robin [at] intensewhisper [dot] com
I despise spiders and am completely terrified of them.
I even know when my fear started. I was about ten years old and tomboy that I am was climbing a tree. Apparently a spider-egg sack had newly hatched and it somehow wound up in my hair. By the time I figured out what was going on I'd had about 100 of the horrid thing crawling all over me.
I jumped in a creek.
I hate spiders, I know I already said that but it bears repeating.
rachel.coldsmom@gmail.com
Ironically enough, my creepiest spider moment just happened about a week ago! I was going to clean the ladies bathroom at work and there was a spider on the floor, in the corner. Now, usually, I'm not overly scared of the critters. If they're in my space, I move them if possible, or squish them if necessary, but I'm not too squeamish about them. THIS night, however, I went to shoo the spider into the dustbin so I could toss it outside, and it started SQUIRTING OUT BABIES!!! Hundreds of teeny tiny little creepy crawlies going EVERYWHERE! The mom just ran down the length of the wall spewing out the mini's all along the way. I have to say, I freaked the heck out and sprayed them all with as much bleach water as I could. Then I proceded to feel bad for it, like I sprayed Charlotte and her brood. I left to go clean the men's room, letting the spray finish off the lot of them so I could clean them all up without something still moving. When I came back... THE FREAKING MOTHER WAS GONE!!! I don't know how she did it, or where she went, but I couldn't find her!! I cleaned up the mess, and cleaned the rest of the bathroom looking all around and over my shoulders to make sure she wasn't creeping up a wall somewhere. I kept having this irrational feeling she was going to get me for spraying her and her young. Couldn't help myself, though... all those legs were just too much for me. Especially not knowing what kind of spider it was. One, I can handle, but that night gave me the heebie jeebies. Luckily, I was off the next day. LOL
Spiders don't really bother me, but I agree with an earlier comment that suggests that they're more likely to end up dead if they come into my home. However, I surf and scuba dive, and sharks scare me to death. So do sea snakes. Not regular snakes; just sea/water snakes.
The Contest is now closed! Any entries made after my post are ineligible to win. We will choose the winner soon!
~J.L. (Yasmine's Personal Assistant)
I read somewhere once that the average person will swallow about 10 spiders in their sleep during the course of their lifetime.
You're welcome. :-P
Thank you for sharing the lovely spider swallowing thing. I hope I can sleep again
That is too funny!!!
Valerie
in Germany
valb0302@yahoo.com
Spider cocktails! http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/830440-tarantula-cocktail-the-worst-cocktail-ever
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