Phew… What a season! I cannot begin to express how thankful I am that Justin posted on twitter he wanted to start a podcast on horror. As you know if you are long listeners or readers of the blog, I have always loved horror. Being able to critically review games and films, both in writing and on the podcast, has been exactly what I wanted it to be. Justin and I wax reminiscent on the podcast this week, so I am not going to do that here. Instead, I am going to share with my listeners my deepest fear…. Spiders.
Most people may not remember exactly why they fear something. But for me when it comes to my fear of spiders, I can recall the three instances that lead to my phobia. I promise to my readers that each of these stories are true and unexaggerated. So let’s dive in.
1) Arachnophobia (1990)
The first time I saw this movie, I was five. I was watching it at home, with the lights out with my parents and sisters. I wasn’t afraid of spiders at this time, but it was this viewing of the film that entrenched the fear in myself. Watching these small, house hold spiders crawling all over homes, into popcorn, into football helmets disturbed me terribly. But it wasn’t the film that caused my fear to take root. About midway through this movie, I had to go to the bathroom. So as I make my way across the living room, I have to pass in front of the TV and my parents on the love seat. Then, in my bare feet I step on what I swear to this day I truly thought was the spider come to life from the movie into my living room. I screamed, I ran up on the couch, and I started to notice my Dad’s laughter. I hadn’t noticed, since my eyes were focused on the TV, but he rolled a small foam ball in my path to the bathroom. I was humiliated in front of my family, but the worst part was that in my head I saw a spider under my foot and I thought for sure I would end up as dead as the people dropping like flies in the movie. Even today, after multiple viewings of this film (John Goodman is a revelation in this film by the way) it still terrifies me.
2) A surprise under a blanket
Let’s jump forward a few years. I think I had to have been around ten years old. My bedroom was in the basement and I loved it. The basement was finished, it was the biggest room in the house, and it was my refuge away from my family. But anyone who knows anything knows that basements, whether finished or not, are havens for the eight legged monsters. I knew this as well, so I took great lengths to fight them. I dusted corners at least once a week. I didn’t leave clothes on the floor, and I would be damned if any food was left sitting out. But even through all my efforts, they still found a way to get to me. I was getting ready for bed, and the light switch was on the opposite side of the room from my bed. So I hit the switch, made my way to my bed and crawled in. And something was by my feet. Not a big thing, but a moving thing, hairy, and certainly alive. I screamed at the top of lungs, threw the covers away and ran for the light switch. With the light, came my worst realization. A spider had made its way under my blankets and had waited for me to crawl in and join it in the dark. That was the last night I used heavy blankets to this day. I only use a sheet, and I ruffle the sheet each and every time I crawl into bed. It was the truest fear I had ever felt, because it was real and I knew that no matter what I did it would most likely happen again.
3) A torturous science experiment
By the time I reached high school, the fear was entrenched. And my Dad was annoyed. He is a land surveyor, and I would sometimes join him at work. That sometimes meant lumbering around woods and looking for property markers. We were walking along a corn field when I saw them. Big yellow and black spiders had made webs across trees and I wanted to get sick. My dad needed me to get on the other side of them in order to locate a pin. I refused to walk through the webs and started using my shovel to remove the webs. My father ever the impatient man was upset I was wasting daylight and saw that it was spiders that was ruining his schedule. He yelled at me to grow up, and he got the shot and we went home.
The next day I came home from school and my dad told me he had a surprise for me. We had been talking for a few weeks about what my freshman science project would be, and I had tried to convince him to let me work with a friend doing a project focused on wet lands (fun fact: my senior year of high school I did work with this friend and he and I got third place at the International Science Fair in Reno, Nevada). But my Dad had different plans. We went down into my bedroom and there were six empty mason jars on my desk. But they were not empty, they had small branches in the jars. And on the branches, there were the yellow and black spiders. He had gone back out to the survey site and collected some of them to bring back. He wanted me to feed them different diets (maggots versus crickets) and see which grew larger. I am not going to get into the details, but I want to highlight two points. First, spiders talk at night. They rub their legs together to make noises. And this happens similarly to how humans have conversations, with pauses and overlaps and pitches. Second, about four weeks in one of the spiders escaped. It must have crawled out of the gap between the air hole and the mesh wire. I bought a bug bomb and used it on my bedroom. So by my freshman year in high school, fear of spiders was entrenched in the fiber of my soul.
I am still terrified of spiders. I constantly search for them. Knowing they are always there destroys me when I think about it before I fall asleep at night. Sometimes I will come across one on twitter or Instagram and the bastard who posted it gets blocked immediately. I know some may think my fear is irrational, but I don’t care. Spiders are out there, they are incredibly smart, and they are going to kill us and take over the world.
------Larry-------