Once upon a time in the city of not-so-far-away Pocatello, Idaho, Alyssa Brook was having a rather non-incidental day. Little did she know the hairy horror that awaited her.

No sooner had she entered her bathroom to take care of some business than a spider the size of a football landed on her head! What did she do?

“I screamed and ran around,” said Brook, a freshman from Pocatello, Idaho.

Okay, now that she thinks about it, the spider wasn’t quite that big, but it definitely was gross.

“I hate spiders. They give me the creeps; I hate the way they crawl,” Brook said. Although this reaction might be a bit animated in comparison to the actual danger at hand, Audrey Rhead, a sophomore from Rexburg, understands Brook’s fear.

“I once heard a quote that people are more scared of spiders than vehicles, even though vehicles are more deadly,” Rhead said. “That’s true. [Spiders] just creep me out. I’ve never liked them.”

Rhead’s bedroom at home is in the basement, so she has seen quite a few hobo spiders in her time. Her description is that “they’re ugly.” Rhead has noticed that these “creepy crawly creatures” make a special effort to come out and celebrate the holiday.

“[The amount of] spiders increase when the weather gets cold. There are more spiders in the basement during the winter than in the summer,” Rhead said.

This is not good news for Heidi White, a sophomore from Littleton, Idaho. She, too, has little respect for the insects.

“They’re really sick. They have so many little legs, and they’re really small so they could be everywhere! They could crawl up your pant leg and you’d never know about it,” White said.

White swears a little spider with red eyes stalked her from her ceiling, turning to watch her everywhere she went. Not everyone is disgusted by the thought of a spider up their leg.

“When I see them, I don’t go ‘eek!’” said Jeremy Farthing, a senior from Salem, Ill. “I don’t kill them, but I might take them outside.”

Farthing sees past the crime of their “ugliness” to understand their place in the ecosystem.

“I think they’re necessary because I don’t want a whole bunch of insects around. I’d rather have one spider than ten mosquitoes,” Farthing said.

And he would know about mosquitoes. Illinois is home for more than the descendants of the early saints. Farthing has seen all kinds of insects like wolf spiders, lady bugs, wasps and bees. He’s actually grateful to the spiders that keep the insect population down.

For example, once Farthing and his brother found a “really, really big” wolf spider. Since they were two young boys and an object that would scare their sister had come into contact with them, the outcome was inevitable.

“We kept it in a jar for about a week,” Farthing said. “We fed it another insect--I think it was a dead cockroach--and the spider caught it and ate it whole before it even touched the bottom of the jar.”

But even Farthing can’t get over them.

“I don’t like to hold them,” Farthing said. “But I do like to look at them. They’re kind of neat looking.”

For students deathly afraid of spiders, perhaps the consolation that might be offered this Halloween is they’re so small, they certainly couldn’t eat you whole, and you might not even notice that one has crawled up your pant-leg.