For most people, a rolled up newspaper or a shoe will get the job done. But some people have an extreme fear of spiders and when they see one, they don't react like a normal person would. Here are some of their stories.
On September 21, 2016, a woman in Portland, OR rolled her car off the road when a spider dropped from the rearview mirror, scaring the living sh*t out of her. Luckily, the driver escaped with a relatively harmless scratch on her hand. Police searched for the spider, but were unable to find it. It's unclear whether it was injured.
man in Detroit tried to kill a spider while gassing up. His weapon of choice? A lighter. Apparently he forgot about that whole "no smoking" rule at gas stations and the pump burst into flames.
In 2014, a Welsh woman decided to kill a spider in a truly imaginative way, by dousing the spider in aerosol and lighting it on fire. If that sounds nuts, it's because duh it's totally effing crazy. The fire quickly spread, turning the spider fire into a full on house fire.
A British man almost won a Darwin Award in 2010 when he tried to kill a house spider by spraying it with a flammable aerosol can - and then sparked a lighter to see if it was dead. The spark caused an explosion so powerful that it blew the man off of his feet and caused several flash burns to his head, and hands. There's no word on if the spider escaped the scene unharmed.
On January 7, 2018, a man in Redding, CA, thought he had a brilliant plan: exterminate an unwanted wolf spider in his apartment by setting it on fire. He successfully torched the spider – but as it died, it ran across his mattress. It lit up, and soon the whole apartment was engulfed in flames. Fortunately, firefighters put out the blaze before it consumed the entire building. The fire caused an estimated $11,000 in damages.
Unfortunately, her 9 year old son was still in the car, and when he tried to stop the car - he hit the gas instead. The car was propelled straight into a school bus, but luckily everyone was okay.
Police officers pulled over an Ohio driver who they saw veering onto the other side of the road in May 2015. She claimed that there was a spider in the car who was keeping her from driving safely.
A farmer with a fear of spiders was driving through Cornwall England in 2012 when a spider fell from the sun visor and caused the arachnophobic farmer to totally freak out and drive his truck across the highway into the path of an oncoming car. The other driver suffered serious back and leg wounds.
In the Sydney-suburb of Kirribill, a 66 year old woman is claiming that she chased a spider under her washing machine where she attempted to spray it with bug spray (natch). The problem is that the machine was running at the time, and when the spray came into contact with the hot engine, there was a massive explosion that nearly killed the woman.
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