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Wherever a soldier happens to be deployed, aside from the dangers of combat, they'll come to find that the new and unfamiliar environment itself plays a pivotal role in defining the experience.
While there are plenty of temperate corners of the globe whose natural elements make for comfortable outdoor living, military personnel are more often expected to live and fight in some of the most hostile environments on Earth. Ask any soldier who's deployed to Iraq and they'll tell you about the blistering dry heat and massive blinding sandstorms, or the soldiers in Vietnam who have nothing nice to say about its climate.
Likewise, the sailors and marines who have found themselves stationed throughout Asia and the Pacific, like myself, can attest to the many frustrations presented by operating in the jungle. The humidity, the torrential downpours, the dense undergrowth, and we cannot forget the bugs. Having never traveled to Asia prior to enlisting,
I honestly never knew mosquitoes and centipedes could get so big. And then there were the spiders. There is nothing like walking through the jungle in the pitch dark at night and putting your face through a cobweb that actually pushes you back, like walking into a literal net, and then you feel something with long spindly legs crawling across the back of your neck.
But after some research, it seems that my collective experiences with giant venomous banana spiders, orb weavers, huntsman's and the like are nothing compared to some of the arachnids other men have encountered. Eight-legged creatures that eat not only cats and other small animals, but purportedly humans.
From the equatorial jungles of Africa and Asia to the deserts of the Middle East, these are true stories of military encounters with unbelievably massive spiders. I'm Luke Lamanna and this is Wartime Stories.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the African nation of the Congo found itself in the clutches of the Belgian government. Ironically dubbed the Congo Free State, the country was, in reality, under the private ownership of King Leopold II. Under the guise of bringing humanitarian aid and economic opportunities to the developing nation, Leopold instead sought to exploit the Congolese people and their land, laying claim to most of the Congo Basin in 1885.
Within its seemingly endless expanse of lush jungles lay vast amounts of valuable natural resources, such as ivory, palm oil, and rubber, all of which the Belgian monarch was eager to cash in on.
As the Congo Free State was not yet a formal Belgian colony, its people were not subject to the protective laws and labor regulations of the European state. And so, under the private jurisdiction of Leopold II and his appointed European overseers, the Congolese people were forced to work, often at gunpoint, on the numerous plantations sprouting up all over the country.
Enforcing Leopold's will was the Force Publique, a paramilitary faction whose ranks consisted of mercenaries from all over Africa, led by European officers. Through sheer brutality, these soldiers kept the population in line. The force was also chiefly responsible for defending Leopold's Congolese assets from any territorial rivals seeking to muscle their way into the monarch's business enterprise.
With Arab slave traders establishing themselves in the region during the early 1890s, the force publique was mustered to push them out. During the conflict, which spanned from 1892 to 1894, many armed patrols would be dispatched into the jungles, their objective being to eliminate Arab encampments and shut down their human trafficking operations. So the story goes, perhaps during one such mission, one of these many Belgian patrols would fail to return.
they had mysteriously vanished. For many days after their departure, nothing was seen or heard from the well-armed company of men, likely sparking much concern amongst the Force Publique senior officers. But eventually, and much to the surprise of their leaders, two of the company's men would finally emerge from the jungle, badly dehydrated and clearly driven to the brink of insanity by fear.
The two soldiers consisted of a young African mercenary and a Belgian officer by the name of Remy Janssen. When questioned by their superiors, they are reported to have relayed a horrifying and unbelievable story. It would have been easier for their commanding officers to simply presume they had fled from battle in an act of cowardice, or even murdered the rest of their company to cover their crime of desertion.
but considering this story still circulates today if it is derived from an actual military report perhaps it was so incredible that the belgian officers could not possibly believe these two men cowards or not would have fabricated such a ridiculously far-fetched story if it wasn't true according to these two crazed men there was something far more terrifying than enemy soldiers lurking in the jungle depths something that had attacked their patrol
and had eaten their companions. We have been walking in circles since yesterday. You are supposed to know these jungle stalkers. I want to get the hell out of here. Sir? What is it? The birds, sir. They stop.
According to the lone Belgian officer who had survived, the Force Publique troops, while en route to confront the Arab slave traders, were ambushed by hostile mercenaries. Sustaining heavy casualties in the ambush, the commanding officer ordered his men to pull back into the jungle interior, hoping to lose the pursuing mercenaries in the dense undergrowth. While they succeeded in breaking contact with the enemy, the Force Publique troops now found themselves hopelessly lost in an unfamiliar forest.
For days, they aimlessly wandered the jungle depths, many wounded men soon succumbing to infections and heat exhaustion brought on by the unrelenting humidity. The rest marched on, hoping to find a river, a road, or anything that would lead them back out of this godforsaken jungle and back to their camp. But one afternoon, as they stopped to rest, the jungle around them suddenly fell eerily silent, and their situation suddenly got much worse.
Emerging from the jungle underbrush came spiders. Spiders with bodies the size of large dogs, their leg spans reaching up to five feet across. The creatures now swarmed the petrified soldiers, knocking men to the ground, sinking venomous fangs into them, and then dragging them kicking and screaming back into the underbrush or even up nearby tree trunks, disappearing high into the branches.
Panicked gunfire filled the jungle, the swift spiders outpacing even the men who tried to run, often being tripped by vines and brush. Watching as the men around him were carried away or mauled on the spot by what seemed like hundreds of these massive spiders, in understandable terror, the officer who later recounted this story likewise broke rank and fled into the jungle, managing to escape.
The screams of his fellow soldiers carried on, but eventually became muffled as Lieutenant Janssen stumbled deeper into the jungle. Janssen and the one other surviving soldier would be the only men in the company to make it out alive. To their European superiors, the account of the giant spiders certainly must have appeared to be the ramblings of two crazed men, driven mad by both combat and the hostile jungle terrain, perhaps the result of heatstroke and hallucinations.
However, when the story was imparted to the native Congolese people, they were unsurprised. The men's seemingly fantastic story carried with it an unnerving degree of truth. They said the Belgian troops must have trespassed on sacred grounds, those belonging to one of the Congo's most elusive and terrifying predators, the Jubafofi.
Also referred to as the giant Congolese spider, Jubbifofi, similar in appearance to a tarantula, would far exceed the size and human terror of any known spider species. With a leg span reported to be anywhere from 3 to 6 feet in length, these spiders, armed with speed, strength, and potent venom, are said to dwell in concealed huts consisting of webbing and leaves. As for diet, the Jubbifofi are said to hunt small mammals, birds,
And according to legend, even humans, who are unfortunate enough to cross their path. The spider, said to be now rarely seen due to a habitat loss and a decline in available prey, is still rumored to stalk the deepest, unexplored depths of the Congo's vast jungles. Regrettably, or perhaps more fortunately for the rest of us, it is only these rumors and bits of local folklore that stand testament to the Jabbafofis' existence.
Even documented military records detailing the Force Publique's troop movements and operations conducted during the Free State era are hard to come by, making Lieutenant Remy Janssen's account of the doomed patrol nearly impossible to verify.
As it stands, like all fantastic tales of the strange and unexplained, wherever this story was originally derived from, it has clearly fallen prey to alterations and mistellings. If one were to research Remi Jansen's story, they would more often find an account of a Belgian officer fighting, not in the Congo in the 1890s, but in Vietnam, 80 years later.
This version of the story does otherwise say that while in Vietnam during the 1970s, the Belgian officer witnessed his men being swarmed and killed by hundreds of large spiders as they attempted to evade slave-trading gangs in the remote jungle.
This, however, would make no sense historically. Belgian troops have never been deployed to Vietnam in any capacity in known history, nor are there any reports from American, Vietnamese, or other forces during the Vietnam War about encountering Belgian troops or slave-trading gangs.
So saying, given that the Belgian forces did war against Arab slave traders in the Congo during the early 1890s, it is then perhaps safe to assume that if this story truly came from a Belgian officer, it more than likely surfaced in the Congo Free State during the years of King Leopold II's occupation.
Now, more than 120 years later, it would be no surprise then that the story has become convoluted through various retellings. And perhaps we might assume that even the spiders got bigger with every retelling. However, that may be the one part of the story that remained consistent. Because even today, the Congolese people, namely the Baka communities, maintain their belief in and fear of the Jabbawphofi.
And unlike us, these people are not living far flung from the jungles where these spiders are said to dwell. These are people who, presently continuing to survive as hunter-gatherers, explore these jungles every day.
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I'm talking about stories like Ana Montes, one of America's most trusted intelligence analysts who lived a double life for 20 years, feeding our nation's most sensitive secrets to Cuba, and the mysterious explosion at Idaho's SO1 nuclear reactor that left three soldiers dead. Was it truly an accident? Or was it something far more sinister? The stories are real. The secrets are shocking. So, if you're ready to go explore some of history's most startling revelations with me,
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Though stories of these massive arachnids have long existed in Congolese oral history and legend, the creature was first brought into the global spotlight in 2001 by Scottish explorer and cryptozoologist Bill Gibbons. While exploring the Congo Basin in his quest to shed light on the Jabofofi legend, he would encounter many locals who were eager to share their knowledge of the creature, both in historical accounts
and their own personal anecdotes. One story of note, set in neighboring Uganda during the early 1890s, rings eerily close in both time and proximity to Remy Janssen's tale, but instead concerns the ill-fated journey not of a Belgian patrol, but of an English missionary named Arthur Symes.
While en route to a village on the coast of Lake Nyasala, Arthur, along with two porters aiding him on his trek, found themselves carving a trail through a section of dense jungle. Suddenly, the trio became ensnared in a tangled mess of what could only be described as webbing, strung out amongst the trees and jungle floor. Struggling to cut themselves loose, the trio were then attacked by what Arthur Symes described as "two spiders of great size, their legs spanning at least four feet in width."
The creatures pounced on his two porters, sinking their fangs into the helpless men still trapped in the unnaturally strong spider webs as they thrashed and screamed in panic. Managing to reach for his pistol, Arthur said he fired wildly at the spiders, forcing the two creatures to abandon their prey and hastily retreat.
However, the damage was already done. The two porters, ravaged by the spider's venomous fangs, quickly succumbed to swelling and fever, leaving a terrified Arthur Symes all alone. Many days later, the now deranged missionary would arrive at his village destination, telling the villagers of the terror he witnessed in the depths of the jungle. For outsiders, his story would have seemed the ramblings of a madman. For the villagers, however, his tale was entirely believable.
if not something more like an everyday occurrence. I first became aware of a giant ground-dwelling spider through Miss Margaret Lloyd, formerly of Rhodesia and now living in England. Her parents, Reginald and Margaret Lloyd, were exploring the interior of the old Belgian Congo in 1938 when they spotted something crossing the jungle track ahead of them.
At first they took the object to be a large cat or a monkey on all fours. When they stopped their vehicle, an old forward truck, to allow the animal to pass, they were thunderstruck to see that it was a very large brown spider, similar in its appearance to a tarantula, though leg-span at least four to five feet.
Mr. Lloyd trembled so much with excitement that he was unable to retrieve his camera in time to take a snap, and Mrs. Lloyd was so distraught that she wanted to return home to Rhodesia immediately. A creature is known as the Jabba Fawfi. Jabba meaning great, or giant, Fawfi meaning spider. Spiders of all kinds are called Fawfi.
As Bill Gibbons continued his search for the infamous spiders, he reflected on the story which had first prompted his trip to the Congo, one which he had heard through another resident of the UK, a woman who had emigrated from Africa. Considering that stories of giant, man-eating spiders are understandably the kind of creature fodder we'd expect to see only in mythical films,
It would no doubt seem bizarre to us that encounters with arachnids similar to the ones described in the tales of Arthur Symes, the Lloyds, and Remy Janssen are by no means rare. And for whatever reason, many of these stories seem to pop up during times of war.
Barely a year after Reginald and Marguerite Lloyd's horrifying encounter in 1938, World War II would see tens of thousands of civilized men sent to the front lines, many of which were in remote and largely unexplored regions of the world. Finding themselves trudging across the jungle islands of the Pacific, Allied soldiers would apparently face not only Japanese fighters, but eight-legged creatures that caused them to question whether they had already died
and had woken up in hell. The following story came to light in 2005 during an episode of the Coast to Coast AM radio show featuring cryptozoologist Rob Morphy.
During the show, a caller by the name of Craig shared a war story told to him by his grandfather, an army veteran who served in Papua New Guinea during the Second World War. Doubtlessly, for many young American soldiers who grew up in North American climates, the islands of the Pacific Theater, their jungles overflowing with exotic life, might as well have been alien worlds. Papua New Guinea was no exception. And as Craig pointed out during his call, it's an island nation with no shortage of
of strange animal sightings. Though one of the world's largest islands, the lush jungles covering most of the nation were, as they remain today, largely unexplored. It stands to reason that the American soldiers defending the nation's capital of Port Moresby during World War II, besieged by Japanese air raids throughout 1942, were among the first men to ever set foot in the jungle interior on their many patrols, and Craig's grandfather was one of them.
Slicing through the dense undergrowth with a machete, the American soldier found himself paralyzed with fear, having nearly walked into the web of a giant emerald green spider. With his machete already in hand, as any red-blooded American soldier would do, his immediate impulse was to chop it to pieces. It was a spider and it scared him so much he hacked it up with his machete.
Even his grandson Craig said he had a hard time believing the story, but otherwise said that he had never known his grandfather to lie about anything.
And at the time he shared the story on Coast to Coast AM, his grandfather was still alive and had answered all of his questions and provided him with more than enough details to be convincing. Again, as baffling as such a large arachnid is to accept as fact, Papua New Guinea was a land seemingly lost to time, its untouched jungles and many yet undiscovered species going undisturbed until the war brought humans into its inner depths.
Sharing its largest island with the country of Indonesia, it also wouldn't be the first time the world laughed at the seemingly ridiculous idea of strange oversized creatures being found in the island region.
A hundred years ago, scientists openly laughed at the idea that giant man-eating lizards lived in the island region of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Most lizards documented in Europe and America at the time were harmless and only a few inches long.
But in 1910, with Indonesia being a European colony, a Dutch military officer, Lieutenant Stijn van Hansbroeck, having heard tales of 20-foot land crocodiles, went exploring and came back with a dead 6-foot lizard, saying there were others as long as 10 feet.
Sixteen years later, explorer W. Douglas Burden traveled to the island to research the creatures and returned to New York City with two of them, alive. He named them Komodo Dragons.
displaying the two animals in the bronx zoo this single discovery prompted the next century of western fantasizing about gigantic undiscovered animals including dinosaurs living on remote islands when army air service veteran and film producer marian c cooper visited the zoo seeing the giant lizards is what inspired him to write the 1933 classic king kong
Perhaps, as was the case with the Komodos first being said to be 20 feet and only being half that size, stories of giant spiders might be similarly embellished. And as with the Komodo dragon, the proof of any new creature lies in the evidence we have to go on.
So while we wait for some brave explorer to go out and wrestle one of these monsters into a box and bring it to our local zoo, we might ask: Was an American soldier the only man to report seeing giant spiders in Papua New Guinea? Fortunately for the giant spider enthusiasts, but unfortunately for the soldiers who fought there, he was not.
Like their American counterparts around Port Moresby, Australian troops tasked with flushing Japanese forces out of New Guinea's remote Owen Mountain Range throughout 1942 and 1943 would likewise come out of those jungles with horrifying stories. Alright, leaf, leaf, there's a good leaf to what the hell is this stuff? Cumpwebs. Bugger's been busy around here. Alright, you've got my attention.
According to Australian cryptozoologists Debbie and Peter Hines, the father of one of their friends, himself a veteran of the Second World War, shared a story in which he lamented on his encounter with a terrifyingly large spider. Since no name was provided for this unknown Australian veteran, we'll refer to him as Jackson.
During one of the many armed patrols along the Kokoda Trail, a near 60-mile footpath running through the inhospitable mountain range, Jackson, taking advantage of a momentary pause in their advance, broke off into the jungle for a long-overdue latrine break.
Squatting in the dense thicket, pants down around his ankles, the Australian took notice of what appeared to be large cobwebs clinging to the surrounding trees and shrubs. This in and of itself wasn't enough to faze Jackson, whose homeland was practically overrun with large, sometimes hostile spiders whose presence he'd long been accustomed to. However, the unnatural creature he then noticed mere feet away from his face, watching him in perfect stillness from the undergrowth, was something else.
The spider's jet-black body, excluding his legs, he said was the size of a small dog. Its legs, while short, were thick and hairy, like those of a tarantula, not unlike the description offered for giant spiders living in the same latitude in the African Congo. Locking eyes with the spider, Jackson, now squatted in his compromising position, acted with slow, deliberate movements, never once taking his eyes off the creature.
Step by step he put distance between himself and the spider, finally arriving back on the relative safety of the Kokoda Trail. While it is said that such verbal accounts of massive insects were frequent among the ranks of Allied soldiers in the Pacific, if it ever was something to report, it would seem very few, if any, made their way into official records.
Still, as the saying goes, there is no smoke without fire, or perhaps no cobwebs without spiders. And the Papua New Guinea encounters certainly wouldn't be the only time Australian or American soldiers came face to face with a breed of terrifyingly large arachnids. With the end of World War II, the power vacuum left behind in the country of Vietnam devolved into another violent conflict.
As communist forces sought to overtake the southern region of the country in the 1960s, a new generation of American men soon found themselves trekking through even more jungles largely untouched by humans. And like their World War II brethren, they too came home with wild stories.
Though armed with a wealth of military experience from World War II and the more recent Korean conflict, the nature of fighting in the Vietnam War was unlike anything the Americans had previously encountered. While North Vietnam had a formal standing army consisting of uniformed soldiers, armored divisions, and aircraft, it was the spreading web of communist-aligned guerrillas crawling into the South, known as the Viet Cong, that presented the greatest challenge to US forces.
Hidden in both plain sight amongst the local populace and deep within the country's remote jungles, fighting the Viet Cong, or VC, was a tedious affair for American troops. In order to effectively root out the insurgents from the rural South, the US military turned to its newly developed Special Forces units to execute the task. Operating in small, highly mobile groups, these elite soldiers would be dispatched into the most remote, unreachable corners of the country.
From there, they would gather information on local guerrilla bases, supply networks, and troop formations, all to be later targeted by airstrikes or other large-scale ground offensives. By all accounts, the soldiers within these elite units were well-versed in all aspects of jungle warfare and felt reasonably well at home in the hostile environment, much like their enemies.
However, the Viet Cong, their booby traps, tigers, rock apes, venomous snakes, and giant centipedes weren't the only dangers creeping around deep within the country's malevolent jungles. Oh, hold up. What's up? Something moving over there by the river. All right, weapons up. Let's check it out. Oh, what the hell is that? Good God, is that a spider? Shh, keep it down. Whoa, everybody back.
The man who shared this story online, operating under the handle Mr. Maxima, did so on behalf of his father-in-law, who was a Vietnam veteran. With his father-in-law and his five-man team spending months scouting in the jungle at a time, he said they encountered the creatures on several occasions.
I have known him for many years and have never known him to lie or make up stories. He rarely talks of the war. He thinks it was a waste of too many American lives. While in the jungle, he swears he saw spiders with a body the size of a common dinner plate. Says with the legs, the overall span ranged 20 to 30 inches across. He says he saw more than one, always near creeks or water sources.
He also said they scared the hell out of the entire unit. They shot a few with their M16s and unloaded full magazines and they were still moving around. Just thought I'd add this. I feel where there is a will, life will always find a way. There are living things in every environment known and unknown to man. We as mankind have only found an estimated 25% of the total species on this planet. So how do we know? Some of the spiders didn't evolve in a different way.
While this story, similar to those shared by Allied soldiers during World War II, are of course difficult to verify, the idea of undiscovered species of large spiders lurking in the jungles of Asia and the Pacific seems to be less far-fetched the more they seem to pop up around the world.
Although there are no wartime encounters known, there are similar reports of large spiders even living in the jungles of Central and South America, likewise near the equator, where the climate is warmest and most tropical. And like with the Komodo dragon, new discoveries are always being made. It was only in 2001 that what we now know as the giant huntsman spider was first seen by human eyes, found lurking in a remote cave system within the jungles of Laos, Vietnam's western neighbor.
With a leg span of 12 inches, it's certainly not the 20 to 30 inch monsters supposedly seen by American soldiers. So again, perhaps the stories did get embellished by the time the rest of us have now heard them. Although not as large as the giant huntsman, one documented spider known to inhabit the jungles of South America is the Goliath Birdeater. Its name speaks for itself.
But far from jungle climates being the only ones to lay claim to massive spiders, what would we think if we were a soldier deployed to Iraq, already well outside our normal environment, and we saw what he did? A spider big enough to eat a house cat. Words of the wise, never pound two rippets after eating a vomlet. So that's what that smell was. Damn, dude. I thought something died. Uh...
That was my stomach. Warfighter tested is right. That's what they meant. They're testing them on us. Right? Warrior approved? My ass. I mean, who even thought you could put an... Oh, shit! Spider! Spider! Spider!
In the early years of the 21st century, the United States would again find itself embroiled in another controversial overseas conflict. This time, however, the lush tropical backdrop of Asia would be replaced by the blistering heat of Iraq. However, whether squared off against grizzled Republican Guard veterans or young religious fanatics, there was one enemy at home in the Iraqi desert that left a lasting impression amongst the soldiers and other service members who served there.
Camel spiders. Measuring about six inches in length, armed with a menacing set of fangs and an attitude to match, these arachnids, resembling an unnerving cross between a crab, a spider, and a scorpion, were capable of sending even the most battle-hardened men into hysterics. Such was their aggression that the spiders were said to chase down fleeing soldiers. However, the camel spider's horrifying reputation is possibly unwarranted.
Their bites, while painful, are non-venomous, and though the camel spider is known for its aggressive posturing, it only resorts to such measures when it feels cornered or threatened. To the soldiers who saw the horrifying sight of one of these horrible little monsters sprinting towards them, the spider likely had no ill intent. In their efforts to stay out of the intense desert sun, camel spiders will seek shelter in whatever shade they can find, including the shadows of human beings.
Chances are that what you thought was a murderous spider chasing you halfway across the fob was simply an ugly little friend trying to cool down in your shadow. However, this next story isn't about a camel spider. It comes from an army veteran who was deployed to Iraq in 2009. He personally reached out to me over email a couple years ago to tell me about a massive spider he saw there.
One whose size and aggression would likely make the camel spider appear cute and cuddly by comparison. "I was in Iraq in 2009," Bill writes in his email. "We were at a forward operating base called Brassfield Mora. It was a very small fob about the size of four football fields. At this time the army was closing its smaller fobs, moving everyone to larger ones, so I only spent two or three months there.
One night, walking back from Chao, there were four of us. We just walked into the area where our CHUs is. The area looked like an aircraft hangar with no roof and brick walls about 7 or 8 feet tall. The CHUs, short for Containerized Housing Units, looked like small office trailers. They were running down the right and left side of the walls, maybe 10 or 15 of them. Then down the middle there were these wooden sheds that were offices, but only like four if I remember right.
Now, on this fob we only used red lights at night. We also had a few cats that roamed the area normally. On this night, we were walking down the right side between the chews and the wood sheds. And we see this cat, just in fear, with its hair standing up. The cat was hissing and going crazy. So then we looked to see what the cat was looking at. Now, the chews were elevated two or three feet off the ground, sitting on top of bricks.
All we saw at first were these two foot long, about one to one and a half inch wide, about two to three foot long poles. They were sticking up at about a 45 degree-ish angle just under the edge of the chew. Then we all saw what it really was. They weren't poles. They were legs. It looked just like a wolf spider. The body, not including the legs, was about the size of a two liter bottle of soda. I swear on my life, I am not exaggerating in size.
Now, it was not a camel spider. Camel spiders don't really get that big, only about the size of a tarantula. It didn't look anything like a camel spider. Camel spiders look more like scorpions mixed with a spider. This looked like an all-black wolf spider. We were about six feet from it. Then it ran out extremely fast, grabbed this cat, was fighting and killing this cat, and then almost in a blink of an eye it ran off with the cat back under the chew.
This whole thing took 20 seconds, if that. On the other side of the Chu was this brick wall. Now, we could not see the other side without walking down to the end of the Chu's to go behind them, but it had to have gone over this wall, because after we regained our composure, we looked around to see if it was still in the area.
A few days later, near the trash pit, we found what was left of the cat. It was crazy. Bones and skin and fur. Nothing else. It was all ripped up, but no meat or anything. We never saw this spider again, but to this day, I am so glad that we saw the cat first and did not walk past this thing. When we finally rotated out, we were all glad to leave that fob.
To this day, I still have nightmares about giant spiders. I never in a million years would have thought when I deployed to Iraq, I would have run into something like that. If anything, I was just lucky I had people with me. We all saw it, so at least we didn't get looked at like we were crazy.
From a scientific standpoint, it's argued that it would be incredibly difficult for any spider species on Earth to grow to the epic proportions cited in these stories. Primarily, this presumption is based on what is known about the way spiders breathe. Maybe eons ago, massive spiders would have been as common as dirt. But the present-day oxygen levels combined with the forces of gravity seem to imply that arachnids would be limited in their scale.
As indicated though, how many other undiscovered species of animals have flipped science on its head when they were found? Doubtlessly new species will continue to be found for the foreseeable future. Personally, I'm not really hoping for the spiders to be one of them. I have my own stories with average-sized spiders in the jungles of Southeast Asia that are less than fond memories.
What about you? What's your best, or should I say worst, spider story?
Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke LaManna. Executive produced by Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Written by Jake Howard and myself. Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Lacascio, and Whit Lacascio. Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham. Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain.
Production supervision by Jeremy Bone. Production coordination by Avery Siegel. Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden. Artwork by Jessica Clarkson-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picotta. If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartimestories.com. Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.