J’ba Fofi

Stories of giant spiders come from all over the world, but the most famous one is the Jba Fofi, a massive arachnid that’s believed to live deep in the African Congo. The largest known spider is the Goliath spider, with a leg-span of 14 inches (35.5 cm). That’s enough to make most grown men shiver.

But the J’ba Fofi is supposed to be several times that size—a four foot (122 cm) leg-span in most cases, and eight feet according to at least one report.

According to a tribe of pygmies indigenous to the region, the giant spiders will spin large, circular webs at ground level and crouch in the middle of them, eating birds, rodents, even forest antelope. Other stories say the spiders dig holes in the ground with a hinged trapdoor, like Ctenizidae spiders And the stories aren’t centralized in one region—similar stories have come from tribes in Uganda to the east and the Central African Republic to the north.

Tales of giant spider cryptids aren’t specific to Africa either—in 2011, a filmmaker named Richard Terry was told of giant four foot wide spiders living in deep holes in the Amazon jungle.