TW: >!Giant enemy spider!<
This is something that’s been mind-fucking me over for years, and I refuse to live in a house with a basement anymore. Anyone I talk to about this will dismiss my story and act like I’m bullshitting them, but I just need to get this off my chest. I won’t bother you with any extra clutter, so here’s my story.
I was 12 years old when this happened, in the late summer of 2013. I don’t know the exact date, but somewhere around mid-August. To be totally honest, I didn’t really care about the date, and I’ve never kept track of the days that much anyways. It was a warm day, about afternoon, and my mom was out getting groceries for dinner tonight. My dad was out at work too, so I was home-alone and given a sheet of chores to do.
After doing the first few chores, I was bored out of my mind, so as usual, I would pop in a game for my Xbox 360. Looking through my shelf, I picked out Minecraft since it was the first game I saw. I plugged in everything, turned it on and popped the disc into the console. It had been around 4 minutes since I started up the console, and a little after I entered the game, when..
Bzrrrtt.
All the lights in the house went out. Of course, me being a stupid kid, freaked out and blamed it on Herobrine or something. And, as you could guess, I was still bored and wanted something to do. But instead of doing the sensible thing like going over to a friend’s house to wait it out, I grabbed a flashlight and a cheap school pencil (just in case things go wrong because, y’know, a pencil’s gonna do something to a ghost apparently).
Oh yeah, speaking of ghosts, you know those “ghost hunting” shows on those reality TV channels? I watched a lot of episodes of one of those and actually wanted to be on a ghost-hunting team, but I was too much of a pussy to even sleep without my night-light on.
This time, I actually worked up the courage to walk around my house in complete darkness. I walked downstairs from my bedroom, and it was unsurprisingly dark.
Well, not completely dark. The sun was beaming through most of the windows, and wherever there was a skylight (like in the living room), there was usually full illumination throughout.
But there was one place in the house that was always dark. One that I had dared not to enter, not even for such mundane tasks like moving boxes around the house. And that was, of course, the basement.
After wandering through the house, I went past the kitchen over to the door leading into the basement, and I was faced with a dilemma. Test my courage and go downstairs? Or act like a wimp and give up? Of course, my mind had to fight an internal battle. And obviously, the stupid part of my brain won out. So I took a deep breath, and walked over to the basement door to take the plunge.
My head was peering over my shoulder every 2 seconds, with my eyes twitching all over the place. My fingers lightly gripped the doorknob, and with a slight twisting, the door creaked open.It was dark. Pitch-black dark. It almost looked like a black hole, and that’s the kind of dark I’m talking about. I took one step at a time, reaching the bottom slowly but surely. Every creak made me flinch, and think of what things could lie underneath. After reaching the bottom, I took one step into the black abyss, and turned on my flashlight.
Moving the light around, the basement was a lot bigger than I thought.. So many boxes laid out in a disorderly manner, and crap strewn about like broken Christmas ornaments on a fake tree. No windows. No light. Nothing but the beam emanating from my flashlight and the mess of cardboard that lay before me. And then…
I saw something behind a box, but as soon as I squinted at it, the thing skittered away like a rat. It kicked garbage around as it went, creating a cloud of dust that obscured what it was. I let out a scream like a little girl, and then I got my first look at it.
The thing came back and crawled over a pile of old boxes, scaling them quickly and swiftly. It was not a person. Nor was it a ghost. It was some sort of giant spider, larger than a full grown man. The fucking thing was huge..
It had long fucking legs that wrapped around the walls and boxes and garbage like ropes twisting around and round. It had these metallic, sharp claws on each foot, that could probably split my stomach open with one swipe. And its face.. It had some sort of elongated human face, with four fangs that I can only compare to that of a camel spider.
And it fucking talked to me. It spoke to me, at first telling me my name and my current thoughts in heavy detail, however hazy they may be, and it told me that there was “nothing to fear”. It told me that I was safe down here in the basement, that I could tell my emotions and dreams to it. It sounded.. guttural and.. raspy.. Almost like it was choking but still had the ability to speak.
I screamed in utter horror; almost hoping that somebody would hear me, and bring me out of this hell, but the thing persisted to remind me that there was “nothing to fear”. I knew this was a lie, and I kept screaming. The fucker opened his mouth, and revealed a mass of teeth and tongues and all the instruments of death, as a piercing screech unfurled and took me aback.
My mom had just got home after getting the groceries. Fairly quickly in fact, since she didn’t really need to get too much. She heard me screaming like a banshee downstairs, and charged down the basement, turned the light on, and yelled at me. After she saw I was curled up on the cold floor, sobbing uncontrollably, she pulled me off the ground and walked me upstairs. She laid me on the couch, and waited until my dad came back.
The last thing I could remember was them talking inside the room with me. I had an, honestly, fairly uneventful rest. No dreams or nightmares, just sleep. My brain was probably too tired to make up shit like dreams anyways. My mom woke me up and I heard the most relieving thing I’d heard for a while. My mother said;
“Wake up, sweetie! Me and dad want to talk to you about the basement.”
After hearing the most concerned, but gentle voice possible, I jolted awake, flinging myself off the couch, while my mom backed up a bit. My dad was surprised, too. He was obviously worried about what happened in the basement, and kept asking my mom questions.
I was obviously scared as shit. Mom kept asking me about a spider, or something. My mind was so muddled that I didn’t know what they were talking about. I was tired, and all I was able to utter was; “Spuh.. eyidurr..?”. I started to get a hold of myself, and mom asked me about a spider that was in the basement.
Mom told me there was a little spider on the floor in the basement.
A petty house spider.
I was confused, and told them about a giant spider. I was shivering in fear, and was trying to tell them about my story. My mom told me it was just my imagination, and that we can go see a therapist if it frightened me so much.
My dad looked at me dead in the eyes. He was shivering too, but I didn’t know why at first.
I didn’t feel very well throughout that entire week, or that month, or that year. I felt paranoid through my whole teenage years then-on. My dad kept ignoring me every time I spoke to him about the whole spider ordeal, and it seemed as if he was withholding some sort of information from me.
I recently spoke to him in late 2021 about the basement. After asking him a few questions, he caved in and started talking to me.“When I was your age then, I used to live near that neighborhood. I heard stories about a kid there who went into his parents’ basement, and had to be sent to therapy for years cause’ of it. His story was as close to yours as one can get.And that’s why it worried me so much.”
As the beginning suggests, I’m never living in a house with a basement again. But some of my family’s homes have basements, and I occasionally go over to visit them for the holidays. If I listen close enough, I can almost hear a voice down below. Beckoning me.
“Nothing to fear.”