At the end of my video on misconceptions,
I mentioned the supposed fact that people swallow 8 spiders a year while sleeping,
but unlike the other misconceptions in that video which I explained away,
I turned this one into a cheap joke and left it at that.
This wasn't because it's true, but because the story behind that myth turns out to be a bit of a mystery.
The first place that I remember coming across the 8 Spiders fact was years ago on the lid of a Snapple can.
Snapple used to print facts of dubious value on their drinks, and though they've tried to hide it,
The Wayback Machine reveals that, "8 Spiders," was one of them.
Take a trip to Snopes.com, the go-to site for debunking urban legends of all kinds,
and, sure enough, the 8-Spiders-A-Year thing is listed.
Scroll down and Snopes says the story comes from Lisa Holst in 1993, when email was still fairly new
for most people and messages with subjects like:
RE:RE:FWD:RE:RE:FWD: AMAZING FACTS!!
were a higher proportion of network traffic.
Lisa Holst, says Snopes, wrote an article called, "Reading is Believing," in PC Professional, listing all kinds of made up facts that people would believe,
and 8-Spiders-A-Year was one of them. This, I thought,
was the perfect misconception to finish the video, like a little moral on why you should be less credulous.
Out of interest, I went looking for the article to see what other fake facts she mentioned,
but Googling for her brought up nothing.
Well, not literarily nothing, but nothing helpful; moslty it's other articles debunking the 8-Spiders myth
using the exact same language as the Snopes article, which looks suspicious.
Intrigued, I contacted Snopes myself about their source, but got back a formed reply.
I don't know if ignoring their contact form is their usual way of doing business,
along with copy-paste blocking and pop-under-ads,
but it seemed odd for a site dedicated to exposing the truth.
Further digging yielded other articles about people like myself, trying to find Lisa Holst and verify Snopes' version of the story.
There's a page on Metafilter and Stack Exchange and even a website called eightspiders.com that went looking for her.
The guy who runs that last one even went so far as to contact the Library of Congress, who said they didn't know of any magazine called, "PC Professional."
Which leaves us in an odd, XKCD kind-of mood about Snopes.
If the Lisa Holst-version of the story is real, then why can't anyone find any record of her or her article?
And, if it's not real, is it just a mistake on Snopes' part?
If so, why haven't they replied to any of the people who brought it to their attention?
Or, perhaps we've gone through the looking glass, and the Lisa-Holst-made-up-the-8-Spiders-fact IS the myth,
promulgated by none other that Snopes themselves.
It wouldn't be the first time, as Snopes does have a purposely fake article on the site claiming that Mr. Ed was actually a zebra.
I wasn't able to go any further than this, but if you happen to know anything about Lisa Holst or the deal with Snopes,