A woman who was so terrified of spiders that she would cry if she saw one conquered her fear after finding a cure at a horror convention and now keeps 32 live tarantulas. Mum-of-two Claire Jones, 48, went from fear to fascination overnight after accompanying her graphic designer husband Rick, 51, who has a sideline in horror photography, to the convention in May 2016, where she allowed a venomous tarantula to sit on her hand.
Astonishingly, not only did her terror lift, but she also decided to take on a bird-eating tarantula, Angelica. She was, however, forced to hide her in a cupboard as Rick, like her, has arachnophobia – or an intense fear of spiders.
Claire, of Dover, Kent, who runs YourOneLife, a healthy weight solutions firm, said: “We both absolutely hated spiders. The only difference was that I’d never kill one. I wanted them released outside. Rick wanted them dead. We’d argue back and forth if there was a spider in the house over who’d catch it.
“Before all this, I couldn’t even know a spider was loose in the house. If I spotted one and it ran away, I couldn’t sleep. Now I find them fascinating. At one point I had 50 of them.”
Claire, who has a daughter Katherine, 27, and son James, 25, cannot remember how her arachnophobia started, but recalls running from rooms in tears if one of the eight legged creatures sauntered in.
She said: “I can’t remember when I first felt scared of spiders. It was always there, like a primitive thing. If there was one in my bedroom when I was a child, I’d scream and run from the room until my dad got rid of it. I couldn’t sleep if I knew one had been spotted in the house and not caught.
“Even as an adult, I found them terrifying. I remember once one climbing on my hand as I sat on the sofa. I jumped 10 feet in the air and was hysterical as I ran from the room. My fear was all-consuming.”
Forced to face her fears when she had children, Claire resorted to buying spider catchers, so she could dispose of the creatures if they entered her property: “When I had children, I realised I had to grow up a bit as I was a single parent for a while.
“I bought two long-handled spider catchers from Amazon and would take deep breaths and catch spiders for the kids – but only if I really, really had to. Even then, I’d be terrified.”
And she found a kindred spirit in Rick, when they met in 2002, as his fear of spiders rivalled her own. But that changed in the unlikely setting of horror convention HorrorCon in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, in May 2016.
As Rick worked, Claire was exploring the other stalls when she came across a woman offering to cure people of their arachnophobia.
She said: “I saw the stall but stayed far, far away when I spotted the woman was advertising that you could hold a tarantula to cure you of your fear. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day.
"I kept walking past, back and forth. It was like my fear suddenly became a fascination.
“Eventually, I walked by and saw someone else was holding the tarantula. I realised it wasn’t actually doing anything scary. It was just sitting there. Next thing I knew, I’d agreed to try it and there it was on my hand!”
Stunned by her own actions, Claire proudly posted the picture of her holding the creature on Facebook, only for her friend Mike Butler to get in touch saying he owned more than 100 spiders and would happily help develop her new-found courage.
She now declares the date she visited his home on August 16, 2016, to be “the day I got over my fear”. She said: “I was so nervous in the lead-up to going to Mike’s that my friend had to come along as moral support.”
First, an anxious Claire simply walked past the cases containing the spiders, then she held one of their skins, which tarantulas shed as they grow. “At the end of us being there all day, I put my arm out and Mike put one of his tarantulas on me,” she recalled.
She added: “He sat right next to me in case I freaked out and flung it off. I only lasted a minute, but I realised it wasn’t so scary. It was exhilarating. A weird mix of curiosity, fascination and terror.”
As she prepared to leave, her friend Natasha Bizarra asked Mike if she could keep one of his baby salmon bird-eater tarantulas and, to her surprise, Claire found herself asking if she could have one, too.
She said: “Mike agreed to take it back if I couldn’t manage. It was only as I walked away with this baby spider in a box and some crickets to feed it that I thought, ‘How am I going to tell my husband?’”
Claire decided to put it off, hiding the spider – which she named Angelica, although she later turned out to be male – in a cupboard in her office, where she would check on it regularly and follow Mike’s instructions, by feeding it half a cricket once a week. But when, two weeks later, she was rushed to hospital with a tear in a disc in her back, she knew she had to come clean to Rick.
She said: “I told Rick I had something to tell him as I lay there in my hospital bed. He asked if I was planning to tell him I was having an affair, so I explained about the tarantula in the house, and he went pale. He said he’d rather I was having it off with someone else!”
When Claire was discharged four days later, she says caring for Angelica helped with her recovery and stopped her from going back to her old habits of binge eating when bored, while unable to exercise for a few months. Within a month, Rick had agreed she could have a second spider on the proviso it was kept in a container and could never get out.
And when Natasha then discovered she was allergic to tarantula hair, Claire also adopted her three spiders.
She said: “I spoke to Rick and promised I wouldn’t get any more after having those five. But I just couldn’t resist it. Next thing I knew, I’d bought another three.”
Claire became so fascinated with the creatures that she began keeping handwritten notes detailing every time she bought a new tarantula and every time they moulted. She also began to use a microscope – bought for her by Rick one Christmas – to inspect whether each animal was male or female.
Throwing herself into her obsession, Claire’s collection soon outgrew her cupboard and was moved downstairs onto a bookshelf in her living room. Due to the £60 to £100 cost of an adult tarantula, she also began rearing them from babies, when they can be bought for less than £5 each – and became fascinated by watching them grow.
Claire said: “Rick eventually gave up fighting me. At one point, I had 52 tarantulas. That number has come down a bit now though, as adult females can live for 30 years, but males die within about a year of becoming mature.”
To ease the emotional pain of her loss, she has found a way of immortalising her eight legged friends by having her favourites stuffed. So far, four have been taken to the taxidermist and, after Angelica passed away last month, the spider’s body is currently in the freezer awaiting postage to the taxidermy specialist, Laura, at a company called Dead Set.
And Claire displays the stuffed spiders like artworks, under a dome, in pride of place on her bookshelf, alongside her current hoard of 32 tarantulas – all of which are alive and kicking and mostly have names. Claire’s obsession has become so all-consuming that she is even considering who to bequeath any of her remaining eight legged friends to when she dies.
She said: “Some of the spiders may well outlive me. I’ve got to think about who I want to look after them in my will. I’d never, ever sell them or rehome them. They’re with me for life.”
Sadly, Rick will not be receiving the unusual legacy. She said: “He still hates spiders. I can understand that as even I can still get a little jumpy when they’re out of their containers. It’s hardwired. But I love each and every one of them.”
Claire, who has never been bitten, admits that her most venomous spider – an Old World tarantula – would make anyone it nipped “very, very poorly”. But this does not put her off and she has even created Instagram and Facebook pages for her pets.
She said: “As I fell more and more in love with keeping the tarantulas, I’d post them on my main social media pages. People kept messaging me, saying they were terrified and had to unfollow me, though, so I made the spiders their own pages, as I know that fear all too well!”
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