Fact or Fiction? Giant Spiders in Africa...and USA

New research has been conducted into the J’Ba FoFi (Giant Spider) in the Congo, said to have a leg span of five feet across. Records of this monster have been documented in African Folklore for centuries, however further studies have unearthed encounters with westerners and, according to one, this creature has also been spotted in the United States of America.

Photo: Fact or Fiction? Giant Spiders in Africa...and USA

Fact or Fiction? Giant Spiders in Africa...and USA

New research by Terrence Aym* has documented tales from African folklore, of a species of giant spider living in the Congo, Uganda and Central Africa in densely forested areas. More than this, he has uncovered testimonies from Western travellers in the area, who confirm the reports of a monster spider with a leg span of five feet across.

Terrence Aym’s piece in his site helium.com tells of massive spiders living in forests near African villages, with webs stretched across pathways and trip-wires to ensnare passers-by, including humans, who are then pounced upon and injected with venom by the creatures’s fangs.

Aym’s research shows these monster arachnids are more than flights of fantasy in African folklore: there are documented encounters with explorers. Cryptozoologist George Eberhart writes of an encounter between a British couple and the J’Ba FoFi in 1938, when what they thought to be a cat or a monkey crossing the path in front of them turned out to be a giant spider three feet across.

Another cryptozoologist, Willian J. Gibbons, was told of the J’Ba FoFi by the pygmies inhabiting the Congolese jungle on his third expedition to the region. Their description of the J’Ba FoFi was the same as that told in other accounts, namely a giant spider which can reach a span of five feet across, brown on top with a purple abdomen which weaves nests of leaves and web. The article reveals that this creature was once very common in the region but its numbers have dwindled in recent years due to the destruction of its habitat.

Other sightings have been made, one as recently as the year 2000, when two Americans were informed by a village leader that a giant spider had built a nest in the forest behind the village.

Sighting in the USA

However it is not only in Africa that the giant spider has been seen: according to Cryptomundo** there was a sighting in Leesville, Lousiana one evening in 1948, when a spider “as big as a washtub” crossed the road in front of a family of church-goers.

*Terrence Aym is a US-based writer. Read the original article:

http://www.helium.com/items/1824206-possibility-of-the-existence-of-the-congolese-giant-spider

** http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/giantspiders/

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru