Where did the 'we swallow spiders in our sleep' claim come from?
The clever comeback to this gross-out factoid — that it was cooked up by a 1990s tech columnist to prove how fast fake facts spread — is itself a fabrication. The myth comes wrapped in a second myth, and almost nobody notices.
8 established, 2 disputed, 2 debunked, 1 unresolved. We do not pick an answer; the evidence places each claim. How we decide
48 citations from 9 independent sources - 39 echo the same voices and count once. Graded B1-D1.
Added 3 Jul 2026 - updated 6 Aug 2026
What the four states mean
- Establishedsupported, uncontested
- Disputedcredible sources disagree
- Debunkedrefuted by the evidence
- Unresolvedno settled answer
Established 8supported, uncontested
'Lisa Birgit Holst' is a perfect anagram of the phrase 'This is a big troll.'▰▰▰▱▱ likely4 points
Supports- 'Lisa Birgit Holst' is a perfect anagram of the phrase 'This is a big troll.'Lisa Birgit Holst — Snopes primary
- Snopes states the name many readers have decoded is an anagram of 'This is a big troll,' rendered on the page as 'tHis is a Big troLl.'Lisa Birgit Holst — Snopes primary
- LEMMiNO records that Mikkelson confirmed 'Lisa Birgit Holst' was a deliberate anagram for 'tHis is a Big troLl,' a solution earlier spotted by Reddit users.The Eight Spiders — LEMMiNO analysis
- The Cougar Call independently notes that the byline is a perfect anagram for 'This is a big troll,' troll being internet slang for a deliberate prank.Circular Reporting: The Lisa Holst Problem — The Cougar Call analysis
Snopes planted the bogus origin as an Easter-egg in-joke around 2001; its founder publicly admitted the prank in 2021.▰▰▰▱▱ likely4 points
Supports- Snopes planted the bogus origin as an Easter-egg in-joke around 2001; its founder publicly admitted the prank in 2021.The Eight Spiders — LEMMiNO analysis
- Snopes describes the Holst material as an 'easter egg' created in April 2001 as a wink to long-time readers familiar with the site's early-internet trolling.Lisa Birgit Holst — Snopes primary
- LEMMiNO: on August 31, 2021, David Mikkelson finally admitted the anagram — dating the confession five years after the 2016 video that first questioned the story.The Eight Spiders — LEMMiNO analysis
- Mikkelson, quoted by The Cougar Call, framed the lesson: it is just as much a mistake to let a usually-reliable source do all your thinking as to believe every unsigned email that comes along.Circular Reporting: The Lisa Holst Problem — The Cougar Call analysis
Spiders actively avoid sleeping humans because our breathing, heartbeat and snoring broadcast warning vibrations.▰▰▰▱▱ likely4 points
Supports- Spiders actively avoid sleeping humans because our breathing, heartbeat and snoring broadcast warning vibrations.Fact or Fiction? People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep — Scientific American analysis
- Crawford: vibrations are a huge slice of a spider's sensory world, and a sleeping, breathing, heart-beating person is not something a spider would willingly approach.Fact or Fiction? People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep — Scientific American analysis
- Britannica: as we slumber we make noise through heartbeat and breathing, creating vibrations to which spiders are extremely sensitive, so they would do all they could to avoid us.Do We Really Swallow Spiders in Our Sleep? — Encyclopaedia Britannica summary
- Burke Museum: for a sleeper to swallow even one live spider would require so many highly unlikely circumstances stacking up that the possibility can be ruled out for practical purposes.Myth: You swallow spiders in your sleep — Burke Museum analysis
The 1954 book cited as Holst's source — Lucy Clausen's 'Insect Fact and Folklore' — is real but contains no such claim.▰▰▰▱▱ likely3 points
Supports- The 1954 book cited as Holst's source — Lucy Clausen's 'Insect Fact and Folklore' — is real but contains no such claim.Lisa Birgit Holst — Snopes primary
- Snopes: the 1954 book Insect Fact and Folklore is real, but page 24 says nothing about people swallowing eight spiders per year — a rumor that likely originated decades after the book.Lisa Birgit Holst — Snopes primary
- The Cougar Call: Lucy W. Clausen's book has no section on spiders at all; about the only spider fact a reader takes from it is that spiders are not insects.Circular Reporting: The Lisa Holst Problem — The Cougar Call analysis
No real 'PC Professional' fits the citation: magazines with similar names launched too late or in other countries.▰▰▰▱▱ likely3 points
Supports- No real 'PC Professional' fits the citation: magazines with similar names launched too late or in other countries.The Eight Spiders — LEMMiNO analysis
- LEMMiNO catalogs the candidates: the UK's PC Pro debuted in November 1994, with other 'PC Professional' titles being Danish, Swedish or German — none matching a 1993 English-language column.The Eight Spiders — LEMMiNO analysis
- The Cougar Call reaches the same dead end: the closest real title, PC Pro, only began publishing in 1994, one year after the article was supposedly printed.Circular Reporting: The Lisa Holst Problem — The Cougar Call analysis
There is no documented case of a sleeping person swallowing a spider in any scientific or medical literature.▰▰▰▱▱ likely3 points
Supports- There is no documented case of a sleeping person swallowing a spider in any scientific or medical literature.Myth: You swallow spiders in your sleep — Burke Museum analysis
- Burke Museum: Crawford asks why, if it happened to everyone several times a year, there is not a single eyewitness account on record of a spider even trying to enter a sleeper's mouth.Myth: You swallow spiders in your sleep — Burke Museum analysis
- Scientific American: there are no documented eyewitnesses and no concrete evidence for an event the myth claims happens to nearly everyone, multiple times a year.Fact or Fiction? People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep — Scientific American analysis
Specialists put the real odds near zero — 'a better chance of winning the Powerball.'▰▰▰▱▱ likely3 points
Supports- Specialists put the real odds near zero — 'a better chance of winning the Powerball.'Why Does Everyone Think We Swallow Spiders In Our Sleep? — IFLScience analysis
- Smithsonian entomologist Floyd Shockley, quoted by IFLScience: you have a better chance of winning the Powerball than of a spider falling into your mouth while you sleep.Why Does Everyone Think We Swallow Spiders In Our Sleep? — IFLScience analysis
- Scientific American: Bill Shear says that even were it to happen, it would be a strictly random event — not the routine, repeating occurrence the statistic implies.Fact or Fiction? People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep — Scientific American analysis
The factoid mutates between tellings — four a year, eight a year, eight in a lifetime, even a pound — the signature of folklore, not data.▰▰▰▱▱ likely3 points
Supports- The factoid mutates between tellings — four a year, eight a year, eight in a lifetime, even a pound — the signature of folklore, not data.Myth: You swallow spiders in your sleep — Burke Museum analysis
- Burke Museum lists competing versions — four spiders a year, twenty in a lifetime, a pound over a lifetime — noting four a year would imply an absurdly short five-year human lifespan.Myth: You swallow spiders in your sleep — Burke Museum analysis
- Snopes cites a 1999 listicle, '50 Top Pieces of Trivia,' whose twelfth entry instead claims the average human eats eight spiders in their lifetime after they crawl into the mouth during sleep.Lisa Birgit Holst — Snopes primary
Disputed 2credible sources disagree
The 'fact about fake facts' became a live case of the very phenomenon it described, propagated even by fact-checkers.▰▰▰▱▱ likely1 against4 points
Supports- The 'fact about fake facts' became a live case of the very phenomenon it described, propagated even by fact-checkers.Circular Reporting: The Lisa Holst Problem — The Cougar Call analysis
- The Cougar Call argues the Holst tale spread by circular reporting: outlets cite Snopes and one another for the origin without checking, exactly the failure the fictional Holst supposedly warned against.Circular Reporting: The Lisa Holst Problem — The Cougar Call analysis
- IFLScience: the popular 1993-article origin is itself an urban myth, the author's name being an anagram of 'tHis is a Big troLl' — a debunking of the debunking.Why Does Everyone Think We Swallow Spiders In Our Sleep? — IFLScience analysis
Against- Snopes pushes back on full blame: it says the urban legend pre-dated its own debunking, so it manufactured the false origin story, not the spider rumor itself.Lisa Birgit Holst — Snopes primary
The closest real spider-in-mouth incidents involve people who were awake outdoors, not sleepers swallowing spiders.▰▰▰▱▱ likely1 against3 points
Supports- The closest real spider-in-mouth incidents involve people who were awake outdoors, not sleepers swallowing spiders.Myth: You swallow spiders in your sleep — Burke Museum analysis
- Crawford concedes anecdotal reports do exist — once or twice a year someone tells him they found a spider leg in their mouth, which some take as a kernel of truth.Fact or Fiction? People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep — Scientific American analysis
Against- Burke Museum: the documented mouth and ear cases it found involved waking people — e.g. a child who had a wind-borne 'ballooning' spider blown into her mouth outdoors — not anyone swallowing one while asleep.Myth: You swallow spiders in your sleep — Burke Museum analysis
Debunked 2refuted by the evidence
The viral 'eight spiders a year in your sleep' statistic is fabricated and runs against both spider and human biology.Refuted by
Bill Shear, a former president of the American Arachnological Society, says spiders regard us like a big rock — we are so large we are just part of the landscape, and a bed offers no prey to lure one in.
refuted3 against5 pointsThe claim rested on- The viral 'eight spiders a year in your sleep' statistic is fabricated and runs against both spider and human biology.Medical myths: We swallow 8 spiders a year in our sleep — Reader's Digest summary
- Burke Museum curator Rod Crawford says that once or twice a year someone tells him they recovered a spider leg from their mouth — the closest thing to a real-world report of the phenomenon.Fact or Fiction? People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep — Scientific American analysis
Refuted by- Bill Shear, a former president of the American Arachnological Society, says spiders regard us like a big rock — we are so large we are just part of the landscape, and a bed offers no prey to lure one in.Fact or Fiction? People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep — Scientific American analysis
- Crawford: no such case is on formal record anywhere in scientific or medical literature, despite millions of people having watched others sleep over the centuries.Myth: You swallow spiders in your sleep — Burke Museum analysis
- Britannica notes experts concede a spider could conceivably reach a sleeping mouth, but the odds are so slim as to be effectively negligible.Do We Really Swallow Spiders in Our Sleep? — Encyclopaedia Britannica summary
The famous origin — a 1993 'PC Professional' column by Lisa Holst written to expose gullibility — is itself a fabrication.Refuted by
Snopes' hidden page admits 'PC Professional' and columnist Lisa Birgit Holst do not exist, and that the cited 1954 book says nothing about the rumor, which likely arose decades after it.
refuted3 against6 pointsThe claim rested on- The famous origin — a 1993 'PC Professional' column by Lisa Holst written to expose gullibility — is itself a fabrication.Do People Swallow Eight Spiders Per Year? — Snopes (fact-check) primary
- Snopes' own fact-check still tells it as fact: in a 1993 PC Professional article columnist Lisa Holst listed made-up 'facts' to show how gullibly email rumors spread, and in a delicious irony her spider stat became real misinformation.Do People Swallow Eight Spiders Per Year? — Snopes (fact-check) primary
- Reader's Digest repeats it as settled history: in 1993 a journalist called Lisa Holst wrote about early email myths and quoted this entirely false statistic as an example of how gullible people were.Medical myths: We swallow 8 spiders a year in our sleep — Reader's Digest summary
Refuted by- Snopes' hidden page admits 'PC Professional' and columnist Lisa Birgit Holst do not exist, and that the cited 1954 book says nothing about the rumor, which likely arose decades after it.Lisa Birgit Holst — Snopes primary
- LEMMiNO's investigation: in August 2021 Snopes founder David Mikkelson finally confirmed the name was a deliberate anagram, meaning the 1993 PC Professional article never existed.The Eight Spiders — LEMMiNO analysis
- The Cougar Call: there is no English-language magazine called PC Professional; the similarly named UK title PC Pro did not begin publishing until 1994, a year after the supposed article.Circular Reporting: The Lisa Holst Problem — The Cougar Call analysis
Unresolved 1no settled answer
The myth's true origin is unknown — and it demonstrably predates the bogus 1993 attribution.▰▰▰▱▱ likely3 points
Supports- The myth's true origin is unknown — and it demonstrably predates the bogus 1993 attribution.Lisa Birgit Holst — Snopes primary
- Snopes admits it is still hunting for the origin and asks readers for the earliest instance, conceding the legend was already circulating before the site addressed it.Lisa Birgit Holst — Snopes primary
- LEMMiNO traced the oldest verifiable mention to a March 20, 1997 Usenet thread, and a reader later surfaced an April 1992 article — both predating the fictional 1993 PC Professional column.The Eight Spiders — LEMMiNO analysis
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