Giant
spider sculpture in Ottawa, Canada (© Markus Bühler)
Last year, I posted a 2-part ShukerNature
blog article of mine (click here and here to access it) concerning the alleged
encounters during 2005 and 2007 by various Louisiana-based U.S. army personnel
with some incredibly huge spiders. Unsurprisingly, it attracted a great deal of
attention, especially as by all the fundamental laws of biophysics such
creatures shouldn't – couldn't – exist. The information concerning these
immense arachnids was provided to me by one of their reputed eyewitnesses, and
he gave me full permission to publish all of it, on the sole condition that I
did not make public his identity, which I have not done. Instead, I refer to
him merely as Sgt S.
My 2-part article engendered a fair few
comments from readers, some of which queried certain technical and military
aspects of Sgt S's testimony. As a result, I have recently received some
additional information from him, not only addressing those queries but also
providing further insights into the creatures that he and others allegedly
encountered. Moreover, he has provided me with a series of truly startling,
thought-provoking scale drawings that readily reveal the supposed sizes of
those spiders alongside an average human. As noted above, the zoologist in me
cries out that such creatures simply cannot be. Equally, however, Sgt S's
extensive, impassioned communications are ones that ostensibly originate from
someone who was truly terrified and still patently haunted by what he claims to
have seen.
As before, Sgt S has kindly granted me
full permission to publish these updates under the same condition as before,
that he remains anonymous, and to which I fully accede. Personally, however, I
can see no feasible way via which the diametrically opposite, mutually
exclusive disparity between the biological incongruity of the spiders and the
apparent honesty of his belief in what he claims to have seen can be resolved.
So I choose instead to present Sgt S's additional information and scale
drawings herewith without comment from me, but in the form of a new article
that will serve as a publicly-available record of the latter data's existence,
which I feel needs to be done.
I
received the first of Sgt S's new emails to me just over a fortnight ago, on 14
March 2021, in which he stated: "I finally
saw your blog postings of my accounts with the giant spiders at Fort Polk.
Thank you so much for bringing this story to light and keeping my name out of
it. After reading it all over again I remembered a few more details from the
2005 sighting, regarding the animals' behavior that are significant enough to
include".
On 18 March, Sgt S. added:
I was so traumatized by
these events that I became disassociated, as if this were too unbearable to
think about or as if it happened to someone else. To be clear on the retelling
of these parts of the story, I did not fully recall the entire play-by-play of
events, as it was so hard to deal with, that I blocked it out trying not to
think about it. I have not talked about it at all with anyone until writing
about it with you, 15 years later. Now it haunts me to even see a large dog
lose in the park as that is the general size of the creature’s torso, without
the 6-inch venomous fangs and long creepy legs. I was finally able to talk
about it with a friend from work who is very open-minded to this sort of thing
and that helped me to decide to write these additional details. You have my
permission to publish as agreed upon before.
I must discourage anyone
from trying to get near one of these things, or even walking in their area as
they are extremely dangerous, venomous, man-eating, ambush predators that can
move with tremendous force and speed.
He then presented an extensive
account, which he revised slightly during some subsequent emails. This is his
finalised version. Be sure to check back to my previous 2-part article in order
to set the scene and read in context what is now presented below:
2005 Sightings
Animal Type 1A
On the night of the first
encounter in 2005, when I first saw this thing that I will label Type 1A, I
could not believe what I was seeing. In the heat of the moment, I charged
forward and used my M4 carbine weapon’s buttstock to smash Type 1A in the head
repeatedly, swinging wildly with my weapon at its legs while kicking and
screaming at it at the top of my lungs. The flashlight shining directly in its
eyes illuminated the eye tube itself making it appear light blue. I can compare
it to being in a dark room and shining a light into to the bottom of a clear
glass bottle filled with clear viscous fluid or clear jelly. The eyes of course
were outwardly convex and had no eyelids. Before I charged, Type 1A tilted its
head to the side and around so I could see the light all the way inside its
head and there were increasingly smaller rings inside the eye tube. I think the
adrenaline from my fight or flight instinct kicked in when I saw it moving. Type
1A backed up and sprayed a mist of foul-smelling liquid at us from about 5 or 6
feet away. The pheromone-laced liquid came out from the animal’s mouth, (or
likely from glands near its mouth) and initially fanned out like water from an
automotive windshield wiper nozzle, before dispersing into a mist. It happened
very suddenly while I was firing blank 5.56mm rounds in its face, so it may
have been a defensive response. The scent was a mix of ammonia and strong
animal musk, like the scent of a cat marking its territory but much more
pungent. The smell was not as bad as Skunk spray but more of a wet, swampy
undercurrent of stench. With the sound and flash from 30 blank rounds, Type 1A
turned its back and fled very clumsily, tumbling into its own legs, and
smashing into the trees and sticks on the wooded area and was feeling its way
around trying to find a path to escape before it scampered out of sight. I
believe these things cannot see very well like most spiders and instead follow
their noses (or whatever olfactory organs a spider has).
After I cut SGT Becky loose
from the thick threaded silk, I became entangled and stuck to the ground. While
SGT Becky was screaming and running back to our tent, I was nauseated from the
pungent spray and basically frozen in fear, unable to move my legs. I then
changed magazines in my weapon and made a Morse code S.O.S signal by firing a
three-round burst, followed with three separate single-round shots, finishing
with another three-round burst. I did this pattern three times. I could still
hear movement in the trees from the direction where Type 1A fled, so I
frantically cut away blindly at the dirt trying to free myself until I could
get up and run like the devil back to our tent. I was very disoriented, dizzy,
and itchy on my exposed skin as was SGT Becky. In retrospect, I believe this
was due to a neurotoxic effect on the inch-long bristles or hairs we found all
over our uniforms that I believe were ejected from Type A1 in a defensive
reflex. Common tarantulas are known to shoot bristles or urticating hairs from
their abdomens, to ward off predators. The bristles were black, white, and tan.
Some of these were collected in a zip lock bag but the senior leadership took
these away with any other evidence.
Later when they asked me to
describe what I saw, I recalled thinking Type 1A looked like an old, frail man.
Its head was not covered in hair, but the face and fangs were covered in long,
light-colored bristles. This gave it the appearance of a bald, bearded elderly
man, with its long, thin legs giving it the appearance of frail, bony arms, and
legs.
When the senior leadership arrived one of the soldiers recognized the scent on
us and ordered his men to go get bottles of ammonia and Simple Green (a
degreaser popular with the Army). He ordered us to wash our hands and faces
with ammonia and warned us to burn our uniforms or wash them three or four
times with the Simple Green to get the smell out, or ... “she’ll come after
you”. He did not elaborate further.
Scale drawing showing a Type 1A spider alongside an average human (© Sgt
S)
----
Animal Type 2A
When everyone calmed down
from all the excitement I headed back to my cot. SGT Becky returned from the
Aid station under assistance as they had given her tranquilizers. She was
removed from training the next day under a command referral due to her
traumatized state. My tent mates began complaining about the musty smell on me,
so I threw the scent-marked uniform in a laundry bag outside, next to the tent
about 20 feet from the door. After I changed and made a coffee I started
heading out to the showers and laundry, and stood just inside of the door
frame, getting my eyes adjusted to the dark. I had a black shaving kit/
toiletry bag in my right hand outside the open door when I felt something hit
the bag. There was a whitish, silver-dollar-sized material connected to a thick
string against my black bag. As I turned it slightly to look, it was pulled
away from me suddenly and with great force, smashing my wrist into the metal
frame of the door and snatching it out of my hand. Just then another soldier
leaving the portable toilets, about 40 feet perpendicular to the door, started gasping
in silent screams, pointing at a dark mass, about the size of a man and low to
the ground along the outer wall of the tent, where my laundry bag was (this [creature]
I will label as Type 2A). He threw a plastic spit bottle at the shape on the
ground, splashing tobacco spit all over Type 2A, and it turned in his direction
making a hissing sound. Immediately I threw my hot coffee and canteen cup that
I had in my other hand. Type 2A turned again now with its back to me and raised
with its head topping off at about five feet from the ground. Its 2- to
3-inch-thick front and side legs then spread out, shaking menacingly in the
air, spanning 6 or 7 feet in circumference! Type 2A's back legs were dangling
straight down like it was on its tiptoes and its abdomen was about 1 foot thick
by 3 feet long. All this happened instantaneously, and in a split second, it
leaped 50 or 60 feet horizontally away! (I suppose it could have run on its
back legs but it covered 50 to 60 feet of distance in a split second!) It reached
the edge of the "200 man" tent and without stopping it rounded the
corner, crashing into another tent alongside ours. It clumsily clambered over
the next tent ripping holes in the fabric then disappeared into the woods.
Animal Type 2A was much darker in color, with a thicker coat of bristles, much
thicker in body mass. Its abdomen was more elongated than bulbous, and its
overall size was greater than a large man. I did not see its fangs as it was
dark and quickly turned its back to me, but overall, it gave the appearance of
an enormous tarantula. Someone found my bag the next day by the wood line and
it was punctured, with the shaving cream can exploded and the other contents
mangled. Again, the senior officers collected it and ordered us not to talk about
the incident. The soldier who threw the spit bottle already had a phobia of
spiders and this event so traumatized him that he could no longer speak
intelligibly. He became so uncontrollably stressed that he was also removed
from the training under command referral.
Scale drawing showing a Type 2A spider alongside an average human (© Sgt
S)
In my first email to you on the 2005 event, I mentioned another soldier woke up
to what he said looked like a bearded old man wearing large black goggles,
looking at us at the base of our open tent door. To elaborate further on that
event, that night of the first sighting I placed Army issue cots upright,
lengthwise around my sleeping cot in a feeble attempt to protect myself with a
wall around me. In the night I awoke to a loud metal banging sound at the rear
tent door near where I was sleeping. But when several of us got up there was
nothing to see. In the morning one of my upright cots was gone. I found it
crumpled up in the field behind our tent with more sticky silk around it. I
assume one of the spiders returned and spit silk at where their scent was
coming from, catching an upended cot instead of me. The cots are made of sturdy
aluminum intended for years of military use and not easily crumpled up by human
hands.
After these incidents, the senior leadership came back and ordered me to
surrender my boots and any clothing I wore when I was sprayed by Type 1A. I
washed my equipment including my helmet, flashlight, and weapon with the
Army-issued M295 Decontamination Kit (this is a charcoal powdered mitten that
has a disgusting rotten fish oil smell). I also used the M295 kit on my head,
face, neck, hands, and arms. I repeated this process a few times to get the
smell off me and we sprayed the area down with Army issued STB, or super
tropical bleach, (the M295 and STB are for chemical weapons defense). After the
decontamination, a few showers, new uniforms, spraying down the tent area with
STB, and pouring STB into the hole where Type 1A appeared, the creatures did not
return. I was quietly praised for being a survivor and openly mocked for seeing
something that was not there or feeling stressed about an event that never
happened.
2007 Sighting
Animals Type 1B & Type
2B
I would like to label the
2007 daytime sighting of the large, light-colored trapdoor spider, Type 1B, and
the night-time sighting of the gargantuan spider on the roof as Type 2B. [see Part 2 of my previous article here for
details of Sgt S's 2007 sighting.]
OBSERVATIONS
1. Nocturnal, occasionally diurnal.
2. Burrowing and tunneling.
3. Creates Trap Doors with
silk feeder lines to capture and ambush prey. Alerted by vibrations.
4. Large venomous fangs,
and potentially venomous tailhook/ stinger.
5. Spitting silk to capture
prey from at least a 20’ distance.
6. Makes a hissing sound
when agitated.
7. Urticating hairs with a
neurotoxic effect.
8. Raises up and rattles
its forelegs legs before jumping horizontally at high velocity to 50 or 60
feet.
9. Pheromone marking and
hunting.
10. Inferior sight.
11. Superior olfactory
senses.
12. Prey baiting.
13. Easily startled.
14. Returns to scent marked
hunting of prey even when startled.
15. Follows scent marked
prey over many miles and many days.
16. Moves silently under
cover of darkness.
17. "Bags" prey
in silk to carry off to burrows.
Scale drawing showing a Type 1B spider alongside an average human (© Sgt
S)
ASSUMPTIONS:
1. I assume the creatures were hunting after the scent marked on my clothes and
body by Type 1A and Type 1B. I propose They may work communally or
competitively going after each other’s scent marked prey.
2. Type 2A spit a sticky
web hitting my bag and pulled it away from me, perhaps as a way of capturing
prey from a distance, like the spitting spider, Scytodes thoracica.
3. I think it reacted to
the liquids thrown at it like many common spiders do, by raising up and jumping
away, albeit with extraordinarily terrifying force and speed. If I were in its
path it would have undoubtedly taken me with it.
4. Animal Types 1A, 1B, 2A,
and 2B may all be the same species but different sex and at different life
phases. I believe the lighter colored, smaller Types 1A and 1B are the males,
as both male spiders are usually smaller, and each performed the scent-marking
behavior. I believe Type 2A and Type 2B are the females. Both being larger,
darker colored and followed the scent of Types 1A and 1B. One theory is that these
are four different animals at two different life stages. Another could be that
these are two animals that have enlarged from 2005 to 2007. These could be
mated pairs.
5. I speculate that these things may have a long lifespan where they hibernate
or have years of inactivity where they remain in their tunnels.
Sgt S concluded his testimony with the
following telling comment contained in an email to me of 26 March 2021:
Putting together
the scale drawings made me sick with anxiety. I feel nauseous just looking at
them again. If I did not see it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe that
venomous spiders as large as grizzly bears could actually be roaming around
freely in the Louisiana woodlands. I don't care if anyone else believes it to
be honest because gravity doesn't care if you believe in it either. Go ahead
and jump off a tall building and try not to believe in gravity if you want.
Scale drawing showing a Type 2B spider alongside an average human (© Sgt
S)
So there we have it, make of it all what
we will, but undeniably fascinating.
I have already stated my personal opinion
as a zoologist regarding the biological feasibility of such spiders, based upon
what is currently known concerning arachnid anatomy and physiology. As for
whether the U.S. Army would – or could – keep such extraordinary events a
secret or alternatively endeavour to seek out and either capture or destroy
anything as inimical as these arachnid entities, I am not a military man, so I
have neither the theoretical knowledge nor the practical experience to answer
such questions. Nor do I have any means of either confirming or discounting Sgt
S's testimony. Like so much evidence put forward in cryptozoology, it is
entirely anecdotal, unsupported by any physical, tangible evidence.
Nevertheless, in view of its detail and depth, I have decided to document it
herewith, because I feel not to do so would be both judgmental and remiss, and
might even mean that if there is other, independent evidence out there that
could substantiate its claim, it might not be brought forward. But now it
might, so now we must wait and see.
My sincere thanks to Sgt S for sharing
his testimony with me and, as before, for most kindly permitting me to make it
publicly available.
For further details concerning giant
spider reports, be sure to click here to read a detailed survey on ShukerNature,
and also check out the comprehensive chapter devoted to such creatures in my
book Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History.
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