SOURCES:
"The Valley of the Spiders" by H. G. Wells (March 1903) Pearson's Magazine
Web by John Wyndham
 

DESCRIPTION: “And then he saw first one and then a second great white ball, a great shining white ball like a gigantic head of thistledown, that drove before the wind athwart the path. These balls soared high in the air, and dropped and rose again...Once a stray spider fell into the ravine close beside him—a full foot it measured from leg to leg, and its body was half a man’s hand...”(“The Valley of the Spiders” by H. G. Wells)

NOTES: The killer spiders in both Wells' story and Wyndham's novel are not unsual in size but in their behavior. Spiders tend to be solitary creatures. These spiders have a community and cooperation that make them dangerous similar to the Intelligent Ants.

HISTORY: Larger than natural spiders date back to Wells' in fiction but can be found in mythology before that. In fiction, Edgar Rice Burroughs uses the giant spider in his Venusian novel Pirates of Venus, J. R. R. Tolkien uses them in The Hobbit and The Two Towers and J. K. Rowling in Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets. On film thre were gigantic spiders attacking cities but on a smaller scale in 1990's Arachnaphobia and 2002's Eight-legged Freaks.

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