tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6079987435882253832.post-51475973836753536482008-04-03T12:22:00.000-07:002008-04-03T12:24:01.284-07:00<p>Let me preface this story by telling you that I have no phobia's. Spiders, snakes, heights, the dark, etc. None of it bothers me. I have no unwarranted fears that I am aware of.</p> <p>I went to look at a bank repo house yesterday afternoon. It's been for sale since early November and I suspect the owners or previous tenants must have abandoned it sometime late last summer. They left behind a lot of junk and old furniture. I don't believe the electricity has been on in the last 6 months. When we looked into the kitchen sink, there was an amazing spider web stretching across the entire sink area. It was milky white and extremely thick. You almost couldn't see through it. It was similar to the web a wolf spider makes, but on a much grander scale. The desiccated bodies of flies and other unfortunate spiders lay scattered about. It was in the mid 60's yesterday, but inside the house it was about 10 to 15 degrees cooler so it was a bit cool for the spider to be stirring.</p> <p>I decided to go inspect the basement. Armed with the realtor's small, weak flashlight, I slowly descended the debris littered stairs into the darkness. Upon reaching the bottom I panned the flashlight across the floor to discover that the debris had reached the first step. Unsure of the risk involved in stepping into it, I paused to examine more of my surroundings. As I moved the flashlight across walls and ceiling, a scene that could have come straight from the movie Arachnophobia was slowly revealed in the dim light. The entire ceiling and every crevice and crack in the walls were covered in layer upon layer of spiderwebs just like the one in the kitchen sink. In places you could barely make out the floor joists, the webs were so thick.</p> <p>Ducking low to avoid brushing any of the ceiling dwellers constructions, I carefully stepped onto the debris and from there to the concrete floor of the basement. Continuing on into the dark reveled more and more webs. To my left, the basement wall opened at about shoulder height to reveal dirt floored crawlspaces stretching off into the darkness. A musty and dirt covered couch hid in a dark corner ahead and to my left. What little light in the basement other than that provided by my pitiful flashlight, came from a broken basement window behind another massive pile of broken furniture and assorted junk ahead of me to the right.</p> <p>Cautiously moving to the most open area of the basement, I glanced nervously to the ominous couch on my left with the dirt floored crawlspace cave opening above it, to the massive debris piles forming in front and to the right of me. Far ahead dark shapes and shadows loomed. Looking upwards provided a reminder that hundreds, perhaps thousands of spiders had found this basement an inviting place to spend the winter. I began to wonder what else may have chosen to take up residence here.</p> <p>This was surely something straight out of a horror movie or an episode of the X-files. This is the part where you're screaming at the person to get out of there because they're about to be killed or eaten in the most horrendous way. The air was still, the silence deafening. This was the point at which I wanted 2 things. One was a bigger, stronger flashlight. The second was a pistol.</p> <p>Of course this wasn't a horror movie, it was a house showing. My biggest real concern was encountering a pissed off raccoon (or perhaps several hundred hungry rats). I decided to retreat and not return without a bigger flashlight.</p>Sandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08031881975630647735noreply@blogger.com