At the end of my video on misconceptions, I mentioned the supposed fact that people swallow eight spiders a year while sleeping.

But unlike the other misconceptions in that video, which I explained away, I turned this one into a cheap joke and left it at that. This wasn't because it's true, but because the story behind that myth turns out to be a bit of a mystery. The first place I remember coming across the eight spiders fact was years ago in the lid of a Snapple can. Snapple used to print facts of dubious value on their drinks, and, though they've tried to

hide it, the Wayback Machine reveals that Eight Spiders was one of them. Take a trip to Snopes.com, the go-to site for debunking urban legends of all kinds, and, sure enough, the eight spiders-a-year thing is listed. Scroll down, and Snopes says that the story came from Lisa Holston, 1993. When email was still fairly new for most people and messages with subjects like

Re, re-re-forward, re-forward, amazing facts were a higher proportion of network traffic. Lisa Holtz says Snopes wrote an article called Reading is Believing in PC Professional, listing all kinds of made-up facts that people would believe, and eight spiders a year was one of them. This, I thought, was the perfect misconception to finish the video, like a little moral on why you should be less credulous. Out of interest, I went looking for the article to see what other fake facts she mentioned, but Googling for her brought up nothing. Well, not literally nothing, but nothing helpful. Mostly its other articles debunking the Eight Spider's myth using the exact same language as the Snopes article, which looks suspicious. Intrigued, I contacted Snopes myself about their source but got back a form reply. I don't know if ignoring their contact form is their usual way of doing business, along with copy, paste blocking and pop under ads, but it seemed odd for a site dedicated to exposing the truth. Further digging yielded other articles about people like myself trying to find Lisa Holt and verify Snopes's version of the story. There's a page on Metafilter and Stack Exchange and even a website called 8Spiders.com that went looking for her. The guy who runs that last one even went so far as to contact the Library of Congress who said they didn't know of any magazine called PC Professional, which leaves us in an odd, XKCD kind of mood about Snopes. If the Lisa Holtz version of the story is real, then why can't anyone find any record of her or her article?

And if it's not real, is it just a mistake on Snopes's part? If so, why haven't they replied to any of the people who brought it to their attention? Or perhaps we've gone through the looking glass and the Lisa Holst made up the eight spiders a year fact is the myth, promulgated by none other than Snopes themselves. It wouldn't be the first time, as Snopes does have a purposely fake article on the site,

claiming that Mr. Ed was actually a zebra.

I wasn't able to go any further. by none other than Snopes themselves. It wouldn't be the first time, as Snopes does have a purposely fake article on the site

claiming that Mr. Ed was actually a zebra.

I wasn't able to go any further than this,

but if you happen to know anything about Lisa Holst

or the deal with Snopes,

please feel free to get in touch or leave a video response.