YOU SWALLOW EIGHT SPIDERS A YEAR
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It’s believed that this myth started in 1993 when a journalist called Lisa Holst wrote an article about myths and folklore that quoted this entirely false statistic. Despite Holst clearly stating it to be untrue, it’s since become a common misconception. It’s not that you don’t swallow eight spiders, but rather you don’t swallow any spiders while you sleep. There have been no formal studies that state spiders seek out our unconscious mouths or indeed would benefit from climbing into them. There’s also the chance that if a person is sleeping with their mouth open then they are also snoring. The thunderous sound of a snore is likely to scare off any nearby spiders. In the highly unlikely event that a spider is still drawn to the cavernous allure of a person’s mouth and ignores the snoring siren, any person would likely be woken by the sensation of spider’s feet crawling over their face and into their mouth.