One the freakiest things I have ever seen in the city! In any city!

photos: JasonW


They were the size of small dogs and kept groaning “brains!”. OK, I’m exaggerating. Here’s what really happened…

We were cycling back from a nice meal out last night around 11.30pm, and were just about to cross over the Seine at the Pont du Change, near the Conciergerie and Châtelet. On one of the lampposts of the bridge I could see something wispy and wondered what it was, but as soon as I got close it became obvious that the whole thing was infested with

SPIDERS!!!

Perhaps it’s phenomenon much more common that I think, but it’s the first time I’d ever seen anything like it. The whole lamppost was crawling with hundreds of spiders. The effect on the streelamp was quite impressive…

Many people were crossing over the road there, resting their hand on the lamppost whilst waiting for the lights to change. Little did they know that spiders were crawling almost all around them. One man nearly had one crawl onto his arm!

We were fascinated and repulsed by it at the same time. I supposed that a spider had laid its eggs there and they had all hatched. Anyway, it was a pretty impressive site..


If you’re in Paris, perhaps you could go down tonight (19th October 2008) in the hope that they are still there. Here’s the map to find them. And click here to see the Flickr photoset with some more creepy photos!

Bigger map here