Well, something came to mind. Actually, it's a story a friend told me, that he swore was truthful. I have to take him at his word since he has yet to lie to me...

Well, where we used to live, there were water drainage tunnels that were big enough to walk through, they ran throughout the city. Well, it so happens that my friend and one of his friends were "exploring" the tunnels when they came upon something.

In the dark (they had one flashlight) he told me he saw a silhouette of a huge spider like creature (bigger then a full grown man). After they were able to see what it appeared to be, they ran out of the tunnels as fast as they could, not looking back.

I dunno, what do you think?...

My best guess is your friend either became scared of the claustrophobia of the tunnel and imagined the whole thing or he got ahold of some really really good pot.

I'll have a bit of whatever your mate was on that day

Only kidding.. Perhaps it was true, who knows?? Will you ever know??

Could it have been the reflection or shadow of some little bug or other creature? You know things can look huge if you shine the light properly in a dark room-try it with a bug or animal..

But then, who knows? Could have been some wicked genetic deformity or mutation on some creature?

*Over here in Okinawa there are these mutated creatures that live in caves and a friend of ours saw one and got it on film and the sucker was spiderlike but as big as a frisbee or bigger-the Okinawans say it was a mutation from the bomb set off here years ago and if you see 'one' there are about 100 more near and they will literally attack you and make you very ill or kill you*

So I really wouldn't discredit anything nowadays~
Magestica

may have seen the movie "IT" before creeping through the sewers....

lsd is bad for you.

Yeah, I was always skeptical of this story, but I wasn't gonna tell me friend he's a damned liar. Anything is possible, but they were probably huffing some paint or something that day.

Probably the flashlight cast an eerie looking shadow, and your friend overeacted.

XAOS

Hey, you never really know! When you start talking about animals that are born, live, and die underground, you get into some unusual characteristics. I remember spelunking in a cave system, and running face-to-face with a cave rat. Damned thing just had skin patches where its eyes SHOULD have been.

Really ya never know, there are cases of animals growing to amazing sizes for weird reasons...But a spider as big as a man, sounds a little exagerated....Kinda like a Gilligans Island episode I saw once. They lured it out of it's cave using "Spider Cider" you could always try that??? Kidding, but seriously, if I lived near him I would probably get geared up and explore them caves and see if I could find any evidence. Just make sure I was real prepared first...like shotgun prepared ya know. But if it was a friend that swore to it, I would have to know for sure.

On a related subject, have you ever heard of the catfish that live down by the pipes of some dam. It's been a while now so I kind of forget the details but supposedly divers that would go to investigate the pipes at the bottom of this dam would have photos of huge eyes like 3 feet apart and the catfish would grow to roughly the size of a car..8ft or maybe even longer...I forget the details but I'll see if I can find anything...From what I heard the catfish would just feed for years and years down at these pipes and would grow super huge.

That's why I love the movie Phantoms so much. Just remember how little we do know of our own planet. There could be creatures living in the molten core of the planet for all we know.

The huge catfish stories are urban legends. I live in Ohio. The largest fish ever caught in the state of Ohio was an 82 and one quarter pound shovel head catfish caught in Clendening Reservoir. There been stories in this state about divers going down somewhere and seeing catfish big enough to swallow a man. One story stated that the divers were working on a dam and came back up when they realized that one of the divers was standing on the back of a huge catfish. The story went that the divers refused to go back down. Well I was bought an inflatable boat (a metzler), the dealer where the boat was purchased ran a dive shop (the boats were a sideline). I stopped out at his shop several times just to talk. One time I asked about the catfish story and he laughed about it saying that he never saw a fish in fresh water big enough to scare him. He said that one of the stories was definitely made up because he was a member of the dive team which worked on the dam in the story and while he did see some nice sized fish, there were no monster fish.

I wonder if the guy in question saw some strange diverter valve setup or other mechanical device and mistook it for an animal. If he was a little high, then it would be easy to do.

Maybe it was that giant spider from Harry Potter? Or it could have been an unknown species of spider. I don't know.

There is a limit to how big spiders can grow due to thier lungs and the fact that they use diffusion to get oxygen to all thier organs. Book lungs as they are known will only support a spider up to a certain size. Earlier in the Earth's history, when there was more oxygen in the atmosphere, arachnids and insects could grow much larger, and they did!

Of course, evolution may have found a way around this. It's not impossible.

Life finds a way.....

[edit on 30-1-2010 by Chonx]

A spider that size can not survive, it's simple biology.

Originally posted by jagdflieger
One story stated that the divers were working on a dam and came back up when they realized that one of the divers was standing on the back of a huge catfish. The story went that the divers refused to go back down.

I wonder if the guy in question saw some strange diverter valve setup or other mechanical device and mistook it for an animal. If he was a little high, then it would be easy to do.

This quote just made my morning. Imagine that situation! Maybe they puff little bit herb before spelunking into alien water world, and uh, get little bit too paranoid and start seeing huge catfish! Imagine the divers at the surface later. I'm sure at one point they were cracking up laughing about it. Oh man. Funny stuff.

Ok, now remember this is just a story i read, but scientists that have been exploring the Amazon rainforest have came across tribes that have been living there for a long time and they have told the scientists stories of seeing spiders as big as large dogs in the forest. Of course the scientists dismiss these stories as false but who is to say that these tribe people who know the forest far better than scientists are not telling the truth just cause modern scientists havent seen anything like it?

This isnt to offend anybody, just re-telling a story i read once on the subject of giant arachnids.