The McCoy House...

(And Other Horrors)


by
Goldey
©2014

It was 27 years ago that our dream of living in Hawaii came crashing down around us. This is the story of why...

If you have a fear of spiders, I suggest you don't read it. If you know anyone who has such a debilitating fear, maybe this will help you understand it.

~ ~ ~

By the time I was 32, I had seen enough of Europe and the western United States to know that, without a doubt, the Santa Clara Valley was the only place I ever wanted to live.  Add the fact that I had lived there those entire 32 years and had roots that stretched back through five generations of Californians, it didn't look as though I would be moving away any time soon.

But that changed during our first visit to the Big Island of Hawaii; two glorious weeks in November of 1984.  The prior spring my husband and I spent a week visiting Maui and Oahu (a belated honeymoon) but for us they were too crowded with tourists and natives alike.  Except for year-round warmth, Honolulu could be Any Major City USA.  Not our style of living.

We had heard the Big Island was different.  It is more than twice the land size of all the other islands combined yet has only 10% of the state's population, most of whom live in Hilo.  Of 13 different types of climates in the world, 11 can be found on Hawaii.  It boasts the only constantly active volcano and is one of the few places you can surf and snow ski the same day.

But it also has a slower pace of life.  A lingering Hawaiian mood of "no reason to rush, we'll be here tomorrow".  A drastic difference from the fast-paced, high-tech, get-it-done-yesterday world of the Silicon Valley.  Since we were seeking a change, we decided to take a closer look.

~ ~ ~

The first time I saw the Kona Coast was at dusk.  Twinkling lights up and down the volcanic mountain beckoned me from the airplane, offering respite from nine hours of travel.  Later we stood on the balcony of our condo and listened to the gently crashing waves below.  A soothing sound.  Refreshing.  Like a shower washing away the grit of cars, airports and planes.

The 14 days that followed were perfect.  Balmy and 90° in downtown Kailua.  A gentle breeze off the ocean kept it comfortable.  We explored the entire island, every road we came across, especially off the beaten path.  We snorkeled, body surfed, ate and drank and the more we saw the more we wanted to stay.  Nowhere else had I been seduced so immediately and succumbed so entirely.

We discussed (dreamed of) living in Kailua and even picked the general area:  along Highway 180 just below the afternoon cloud line.  (Highway is a misnomer.  The narrow, two-lane road snakes through the lush brush and trees about a thousand feet up the slope of the Hualalai Mountain, a dormant volcano providing the town natural protection from the elements.)

The last night of our vacation we sat in the open-air bar at the Kona Inn and planned our dream.  My husband, an accountant, calculated preliminary numbers on a cocktail napkin and concluded that if we worked, scrimped and saved, spending only what was necessary, we could move to the Big Island in eight years.  Essentially retire.  At ages 40 and 46.  What a concept.  What a dream!

But dreamers we are.  And childless, which meant we could live anywhere we wished without giving thought to typical parental concerns.  So we returned home and scrimped and saved.  As an incentive, I had a T-shirt printed for each of us with the slogan Kona '92 proudly displayed on the front.  We knew our goal.

~ ~ ~

But in March of 1987 the goal suddenly and drastically changed.  My husband was laid off from his job at a local high-tech company.  Mixed emotions rapidly followed:  no income; collect unemployment benefits; look for a job; WAIT:  that could be done just as easily in Hawaii as in California; move to our dream island; leave my family; start a new life.  And just as rapidly as we discussed the events above, we lived them.  Six weeks later we were on our way to Hawaii.

After we sold one of our cars to my mother, shipped the other two, (my Rabbit and my husband's MG) to Hilo, we packed our worldly goods in a 16 foot container and clutching our one-way tickets in our nervous hands, bid my parents a teary good-bye.

I remember we were the last to board the plane.  Everyone else was laughing and having a good time, anticipating their vacations.  I was crying, knowing it would be months, maybe years before I would see my family again.  The mixed emotions continued.  I was excited to be moving.

~ ~ ~

We spent the first ten days in an old hotel in downtown Kailua-Kona called Uncle Billy's, after the owner, a "character" who at the time owned half of Kailua.  Each day we toured house after house in the areas where we wanted to live and each night we dined on sandwiches and popcorn at the beach, enjoying the brilliant sunsets.

On the ninth day we found the perfect house.  Perfect!  It sat 1,500 feet up slope, out of the heat, near the rain line.  It was built the prior year in the middle of the former McCoy Coffee Plantation, now a subdivision of one-acre, custom-home lots.    Close to civilization yet far enough away to be considered rural.  No home mail delivery.  No garbage pickup.  (Although it was hooked up to County Water, a must if you wanted fire insurance.)

The house was 2,400 square feet.  The entire upstairs was a thousand square foot master bedroom.  It faced west and on a clear day we could see 30 miles down the Kona Coast, one of the most beautiful views on the island.

The owner-builder was in the process of selling it to a couple who lived in Hong Kong.  We would sign the paperwork for a six-month lease at the end of the month when the sale was final.  In the meantime, while the owner looked for a place to live, we rented an inexpensive, pay-by-the-day, one bedroom condo.  (It was much nicer than Uncle Billy's.  It had a full kitchen, not just a sink and hot plate.)

We changed our address, ordered checks and credit cards from our new bank, licensed our cars, ordered telephone and electric service, and cable TV (the only way to receive stations broadcast from Honolulu).

~ ~ ~

The night before our Matson container arrived with our household goods, we stayed in our new home.  We sat on the plush carpet of our sunken living room and gazed through a wall of sliding glass doors.  (I had spent the day cleaning them inside and out while my husband worked in the yard sweeping the walks, watering, and moving all the large garden spiders and their webs from the eaves to the garden.  I was afraid I wouldn't see one and would walk right into it.)

The view of the ocean was spectacular.  While we watched the sun set over our avocado tree, the tallest in Kona, we talked about our garden and the fruit trees, flowers and vegetables we would plant.  Our discussion died down, giving way to our thoughts:  silent plans, hopes and dreams.  It grew dark.  

And through my hopes and dreams the screen doors seemed to grow spiders.  Big spiders.  Big, tan, hairy spiders.  The biggest spiders either of us had ever seen.  Suddenly they appeared EVERYWHERE!  They were drawn to the moths and cockroaches lured to the porch light.

~ ~ ~

(A side note:  Locally they are called Cane Spiders, although we were unable to find them in any book about arachnids.  My husband, who lived on Oahu as a child, remembered them scurrying out of the cane fields when the fields were burned in the process of making sugar.  Harmless and good, they eat mosquitoes and cockroaches.)

~ ~ ~

It was difficult to tell if they were on the inside or outside of the screen, but it didn't matter.  It was impossible to hit one to kill it.  They were fast!  My husband would swat one and in an instant it was five feet down the screen.  And there were so many, all moving in different directions at the same time.

I panicked.  I was dizzy.  Warm.  Shaking.  Beginning to lose control.  I was drawn back through the years.  Other times.  Other places.  Other horrors.

~ ~ ~

I was an ambitious five-year-old and yearning to earn money would perform almost any chore around the house, except cleaning the toilets (I thought I would save that ugly job for adulthood when I had no choice).  My favorite chore was vacuuming.  Everything looked tidy and clean with a minimal amount of effort.  And it was something my mother wanted done once a week.  Job security.

One day I was vacuuming my bedroom (with three brothers and no sisters, I had my own room) and saw a spider on the ceiling.  It wasn't very big.  It was a spider.  A fly I would have ignored.  NOT a spider.  But I wasn't going to do anything about it.  I called to my mom.

Mom came into the room and laughed at the silliness of my fear of such a small creature.  She feared snakes.  They were big and slimy.  Compared to a snake, a spider was nothing to fear.  And rather than let me live with my fear, she thought she would help me overcome it and told me to suck the spider up with the vacuum cleaner.  She thought she was doing the right thing.

She switched it on and handed the wand to me.  But I wouldn't move.  Couldn't move.  I wasn't about to go near the critter.  Mom had other ideas.  She grabbed my hand and pinned it between hers and the cold metal wand.  I was trapped.  She jabbed the wand towards the ceiling.  The unsuspecting creature was doomed.  Hardly my thoughts at the time.

In a split second the spider was sucked into the body of the vacuum, but I felt it creep down the inside of the wand.  Slowly it crawled across my still-trapped hand.  I felt each of its eight legs pause on my palm, then move on.  I yanked my hand out from under my mom's and threw the wand across the room.  I lost control and became hysterical, sobbing and crying that it had crawled across my hand; screaming that she had forced me to do it.

She slapped my face.  Hard.  I was stunned.  But I did stop crying.

~ ~ ~

Through the years I had many encounters with spiders.  They seemed to congregate in my room, never in one of my brother's rooms.  Big, fat black ones would hide in the folds of my yellow curtains and surprise me when I closed the drapes at night.  I would call to my mom and by the tone of my voice she knew she had to kill a spider.  It came to be known as my spider voice.

I couldn't look at a picture of one in a magazine or book and when one appeared on a nature program on TV, I would automatically turn away and wait for someone to tell me it was gone.

A major reinforcement of my fear came in high school.  I was sitting on my bed, resting my head against the wall, and a friend was testing me for an upcoming exam.  Suddenly the look on her face changed.  She told me not to move.  (I finally knew what others heard in my spider voice:  I saw it on her spider face.)

Instinctively I ignored her advice and shot off the bed into the hall faster than the vacuum had sucked the one off the ceiling.  I looked back.  BIG MISTAKE!  A few inches on either side of where my head had been leaning were two of the biggest spiders I had seen in years.  They were about the size of a quarter.

I screamed my spider scream and my mom ran up the stairs.  She was followed by my obnoxious older brother.  (He made Wayne on the Wonder Years look like a saint.  Probably because he was my brother).  My friend pointed at the spiders.  My mom got some tissue.

My brother yelled "BOO!"  I jumped ten feet.  I was instantly overcome by the feeling of helplessness and started to shake.  I was losing control.  On the verge.  Unable to stop my plunge into hysteria.  

I don't remember how I came back to reality, but I remember later considering killing my brother.

~ ~ ~

I learned to live with my fear by asking someone else to do the dirty work.  There was always somebody around to save me from the invading creatures.  The baton had been passed from my mom to my roommate to my husband.  I would only have to call his name, stressing the first syllable, stretching the second, and ending it with a plea so real he would grab a tissue and rescue this forever indebted maiden.  Believe me, in my eyes he was a prince.  A gallant knight rescuing his love from the fire-breathing dragon.  And he never once complained, teased or belittled my fear.

~ ~ ~

Other times.  Other places.  

~ ~ ~

This horror was here.  Now.  And the old feeling of helplessness seeped back into my veins.  I was losing control.  On the verge.  But this was our dream.  I couldn't let my fear ruin it.  I had to be courageous and see it through.

The following four nights and three days were hell.  Capital H-E-L-L ! ! !  Those of you who fear flying, imagine yourself stuck on a non-stop flight around the world, for four days.  Those who fear heights, imagine you are teetering on the edge of the Grand Canyon or the top of the Empire State Building.  Claustrophobics, you are sealed in a very small box.

But you are also beginning a life in a new state and you aren't going to let something like this destroy your dream.  Besides, tomorrow is another day.  You'll feel much better after a good night's sleep.  Sleep.  Hah!

I have never been unable to sleep at any time in my life.  I was a typical teenager and spent most of my time sleeping.  I would go to bed at midnight and awake at noon.  I could take a nap at the drop of a hat.

But I was not to know sleep for 96 hours.  I was to know surprise and terror and fear intimately.

~ ~ ~

These creatures were very sneaky.  Although their legs were long like a tarantula's, they had little or no body and could go anywhere.  A N Y W H E R E ! ! !  I would open a drawer and one would look up at me.  Or open a cupboard and one would peer down at me.  My husband was killing five a day and he didn't tell me about the ones that got away.

They are also ecto-skeletons.  Like a snake, they periodically shed their skin.  Their hairy skin.  And leave it where they shed it.  Hanging by a thread from the ceiling or curled up in the corner of a room.  I was never sure if it was an abandoned skin or a critter lying in wait.

The morning after the second sleepless night, my husband was in town buying a ladder and garbage cans.  I was left to line the kitchen drawers.  Searching for the rolls of liner, I pulled the top off a box.  I was greeted by the biggest spider I had seen yet.  

It (I had no idea if it was a female or male) was the size of my hand.  It peered at me with two clusters of eyes.  I peered back, determined to deal with it myself.  The fact that I had no choice didn't matter.  This was my chance to prove I was not going to be controlled by a creature smaller than me.

I plugged in the vacuum cleaner, connected both wands for maximum length, and switched it on.  I took a deep breath and plotted my strategy.  I would quickly jab the wand into the box and pull it out even quicker.

I took another deep breath.  I screwed up my determination and, reaching deep down in my soul for any courage I could find, I jabbed the end of the sucking wand into the corner where the critter lurked.  I pulled back, exhaled and took another breath.  I leaned over the box.  DAMN!  I missed him!

Okay, once more.  Don't pull away so fast this time.  Give it a few more seconds.  I talked out loud to myself.  I took a deep breath (hyperventilating was next on my agenda).  I thrust my sleek silver saber into the box and pulled it out.  This time the critter was gone.  Whew!  God, I never thought I could do it.  But I did.  I was in control.

I was also shaking.  The control slipped through my fingers.  My knees buckled and I had to sit down.  Right in the middle of the living room floor.  I watched my trembling hands tape over the end of the wand.  If the critter had survived the sucking and the dust in the bag, and was still able to crawl back down the tube, it wouldn't be able to get out.

My hands continued to shake.  In my detached state of mind, I watched them pour wine into a large glass.  My husband returned and switched off the vacuum cleaner.  I was half way through the glass of wine.  It was 10:30 in the morning.  I knew I was in deep trouble.

The final 24 hours were the worst.  To admit our dream was slipping away and then try to salvage our life was difficult enough, but realizing it was my fault undermined any sanity I might have had left.

And my vivid imagination, usually on my side, wasn't helping.  It conjured up images of pulling a blouse out of the closet and a spider jumping out of the sleeve.  Or opening a cupboard, grabbing a glass and finding one hunkered down, ready to pounce.  Or the worst, driving my car and one crawling out of the air-conditioning vent.  On one of those steep roads I would be over the edge, mentally and physically.

For three sleepless nights I had sat in bed and watched the patterns of stars move across the sky while I alternated between watching some critters creep across the ceiling (I feared one would fall off right into the bed on top of me) and others crawl across the screens on the windows.  Big windows.  Lots of critters.

I was being held captive and tortured by a pack of hairy yet harmless creatures.  In our dream home.  And while I kept my vigil, my husband slept.  I envied him.  At least he could escape the prison for a few hours.

I am not sure he knew how constricting my prison, my mental prison, had become.  Although I wanted, with all of my heart as I have never wanted anything in my life before,  to make this work, I was failing.  It seemed we were losing our dream.

~ ~ ~

The last night in the "McCoy House" confirmed our suspicions.  We could not stay any longer.

To add insult to injury, horror to terror, I encountered my last cane spider.  Late into the evening I decided I would try to sleep.  I hoped I would be overcome by my advanced state of exhaustion and I would know blissful nothingness until morning.

I kissed my husband goodnight with all intentions of crawling (interesting word) into bed after checking it for critters.  I bravely climbed the stairs to the master bedroom.  My eyes leveled with the carpeted floor.  Right in the middle of the doorway, guarding my sleep sanctuary, was the biggest spider I had seen.  

My world gave way beneath me.  I was dizzy and warm.  The earth disappeared.  The ground on which I precariously stood for the last three days ceased to exist.  In an instant it was gone.  I was falling into nothingness.
I panicked.  Hysteria followed.  I screamed.  Sobbed.  Cried.  Swore at the world and life in general and asked the eternally unanswerable question, "Why me?".  

I fled down the stairs to the "safety" of the living room and tried, but failed miserably, to get the critter out of my mind.

My husband went upstairs to slay the dragon.  He chased and fought for what seemed like eternity.  Finally he came down, forced a smile and a lie and told me he had killed the beast.  He took me into his arms and caught me before I hit the bottom.  The floor of hell.  I was close.  But he comforted.  Consoled me.  And loved me.

We went back upstairs together and he helped me search the sheets for creepy crawlies.  We didn't find any.  But a few hung out on the window screens.  Their eerie skeletal shapes were outlined by the light of the crescent moon.  They were sentinels.  Guards of the prison.  Reminding me they were in charge here.  Not me.

I stayed awake and again watched the star patterns and pale moon advance across the black sky.

~ ~ ~

The following day we rented a condo and begged the manager to let us stay the night even though the electricity wouldn't be turned on until the next day.  Over Memorial Day weekend we moved.  It was a more settled part of town where they sprayed for bugs every three months.  Civilization had pushed the critters into the country.  The only ones we saw were geckos.  Cute little lizards.  They didn't bother me.

But the condo did.  It bothered both of us.  We could hear every foot fall upstairs.  Our privacy was interrupted all the time - we lived on the 16th green of the local golf course.  And without a yard to work in, our lawn mower, clippers and rakes were abandoned to the corner of the Lanai, an 8 x 14 foot concrete patio.  It wasn't our style of living and after a few exasperating weeks, we decided to move back to the mainland.  But not until we fully enjoyed ourselves in paradise.

~ ~ ~

For three months we thoroughly enjoyed our sabbatical and I did my best (which in Kailua-Kona isn't too difficult) to regain control of my life.  We wore shorts and T-shirts most of the time.  Shoes were optional.  We were tanner than we had ever been and we didn't even lay in the sun.  

In my husband's MG sports car, we explored the island from Hawi up north to Ka Lae, the southern most point of the United States.  We ate our way through Waimea and Kailua town.  Snorkeled, body surfed and even skinny dipped in the cool of the pool on hot humid nights.

In the middle of July I lost track of the days.  I didn't know if it was Tuesday or Wednesday.  Looking at a calendar didn't help - it had no reference point.  And I wasn't keeping a diary.  Reality once a day was plenty.  I didn't want to relive it to write it in a journal.  The weekly letter to home was enough.

~ ~ ~

A letter arrived from home with an article about the medical center at Stanford searching for people with spider phobias.  More than curious, I called them, left my name and number and a brief description of my childhood experiences, our current situation and my sincere desire to overcome it all.

Almost immediately I received a 30 page questionnaire from the doctor in charge of the study.  The questions were designed to determine the severity of the phobia.  They did not want alcoholics, claustrophobics (the fear of small places), agoraphobics (the fear of open places), or any other irrational behavior.  They wanted only those who feared spiders (arachnophobias).

I completed the first few pages, basic background information, without a problem.  But the questions turned to the spider phobia.

"Can you look at a picture of a spider?"

"Can you touch a picture of a spider?"

"Can you touch a spider with the end of a toothbrush?"

I couldn't answer these questions.  Just reading them released my suppressed images of cane spiders jumping out of drawers.  They were too vivid.  It was too soon.  I wrote across the form that I couldn't continue.  I watched my shaking hand sign my name.  I mailed it back the same afternoon.

A few days before we left the island I received a letter from Stanford.  The doctor said I was definitely being considered among the first hundred participants and possibly one of the first 30.  I would be notified soon.

~ ~ ~

We moved home.

~ ~ ~

Out of the frying pan.  Into the fire.  The final insult to injury came the day we flew back home.  We unlocked the front door and stepped into our empty house.  The renters had moved the prior week.

After inspecting each room and finding everything in order, we decided to have breakfast out.  (We had taken the cheap red-eye flight from Honolulu and arrived in San Francisco at 8:00AM on a Monday morning.  In time for the rush hour on Highway 101.  A veritable culture shock.)

I had left my purse on the floor in the living room and when I reached down to pick it up I noticed that my white socks were now black.  Hmm.  That didn't make sense.  I didn't remember seeing thistles when I waded through the un-mown, two foot high front lawn.

I noticed the black on my socks was moving and I realized, Oh my God!, they were FLEAS!  Hundreds of them!  They were crawling up my legs.  Down my arms.  I swatted them off my socks but it was futile.  There were too many!  And I remembered the renters had a dog.  I also remembered the rental agreement said outdoor pets only.

I screamed and began to dance like an Indian praying for rain.  I ran out the front door and stood in the middle of the driveway, swatting my socks, brushing my arms and jumping up and down until I hoped they had all fled my tantrum.

We rushed to the store and bought flea bombs, cans of spray and collars.  We sprayed the house, set up a bomb in each room and left the highly toxic poison to do its dirty work.  We went to breakfast wearing the flea collars around our ankles.

Seventy-five dollars worth of commercial products later we had to call a spray service that guaranteed to kill them or they would return until the fleas were gone.  They sprayed three times in three weeks.

During those three agonizing weeks, while we awaited the arrival of our container, we slept on a thin mattress from an old sofa bed.  It was in our bedroom¼  On the floor¼

~ ~ ~

We were home.

~ ~ ~

I started my new job.  My husband took and passed the CPA test.  I called Stanford.  A pre-med student, Michael, finally called me.  He said because my phobia was so severe, exactly what they were hoping to find, I would be one of the first participants in the study.  It was a dubious honor.

~ ~ ~

The first of two sessions began one Friday afternoon at a two-story redwood building behind Stanford University.  I had met Michael the week before when I signed the necessary release forms and he explained the study.  They were investigating endorphins and how they control anxiety in times of severe stress.  The severe stress would be induced by a step-by-step program to (hopefully) cure my debilitating fear of spiders.

The first 30 participants were divided into two groups.  Each group would be given the same white pill.  One was a drug given to heroin addicts overdosing in a hospital emergency room.  The drug shields the nerves, allowing the heroin to proceed through the body with minimal affect.  The other was a placebo.  We wouldn't know which pill we had been given.

After taking my pill and hooking myself up to a heart monitor, Michael took my blood pressure and pulse, jotted them down in a note book and pressed the record button on the tape machine.  For three anxious hours I was gradually re-introduced to spiders.

Michael was wonderful.  He told me he wouldn't ask me to do anything he didn't do first and I could stop or quit the program at any time.  It was strictly voluntary.  I was free to stay.  I was free to go.

He pulled out a picture of a spider and looked at it.  He asked me if I would look at it.  Did I think I could?  How confident was I that I could?  At various intervals we paused while I filled in forms and answered questions, such as:  How did I feel at that moment?  How did I feel about life in general?  What was the degree of fear I was feeling?  Of anxiety?  Of lack of control?

Michael took my blood pressure and pulse.  He touched the picture of the spider and asked me if I would touch the picture.  Did I think I could?  How confident was I that I could?  We continued for two more hours.  It was almost as terrorizing as the four days and nights in Hawaii.

But by the end of the session that I had begun by screwing up my courage just to look at a picture of a spider, I was touching a live spider (small, tan, garden variety) with the tip of a toothbrush.  We went through many steps to reach this point, repeating those needing reinforcement, and I realized, little by little, I was overcoming my fear.

After the session, I barely reached home before I became violently ill.  I wondered if I had been given the drug, since at no time during any spider encounters had I ever become physically sick to my stomach.  I called Michael over the weekend and explained my symptoms and concern about the drug.  Since he hadn't been told which participant received which pill, he said he would contact the doctor who issued them.

~ ~ ~

My apprehension mounted as the second session neared.  Although I was excited about the progress we had made the week before, I now feared the drug and its affects.  I did not want to experience that agony again.  I expressed my concern to Michael.  He had talked to the doctor who confirmed I had been given the antidote, not the placebo.  They agreed I would not take a pill.  I was relieved since I had already decided I wouldn't take one.  I hoped it wouldn't bias their study.

With a different apprehension I hooked myself up to the monitor and we started from the beginning by looking at a picture of a spider.  Funny, it seemed easy compared to last time.  Soon I was chasing a flustered critter around a plastic box trying my damnedest to touch it with the tip of a toothbrush.  Our swift progress through those steps encouraged both of us.

We put on surgical gloves and rubber-banded plastic bags with the bottom cut out around our wrists to prevent the spider from crawling up our arms.  I watched the critter dash across one of Michael's hands to the other.  I tried to touch it with my finger but it moved too fast.  Michael suggested I put my finger on his hand and let it run across it.  I did.  And I felt those tiny legs sweep across my fingers.  What a strange sensation.  Like a feather lightly brushed across your cheek.  Or the gentle kiss of a warm tropical breeze.

By the end of the session I had a spider, a little larger than a dime, crawling across my gloved hands.  And I realized I wasn't only gaining control of my fear but of the spider too.  Or did the latter cause the former?

I cried all the way home.  I had never felt more relieved in my life.  I knew I could fly if I tried.  Walking on water would be effortless.  I had conquered my fear of spiders!  I was free!  At least those were my feelings on the way home.  Later that weekend I found out for sure.

~ ~ ~

A few months before I began the treatment, I wrote the story of our move to Hawaii.  It came to a grinding halt at the point where we moved into the McCoy house, the house of horrors, so I skipped ahead to the condo, our visits to Oahu and Kauai, our occasional guest, and our return to California.

Two days after the second session at Stanford, I sat down at my computer and completed the missing section.  I detailed the terror I had experienced without a problem.  And I cried.  A cry of relief and a belief that I was cured.  And the proof was I could now write about the fear I had let control my entire life, including where we wanted to live.  I knew it was never going to have an affect on me again.  It was exhilarating!  It was a power I had never known.  I was ecstatic!

Later that night, long after my husband had gone to bed, I was still sitting at my computer editing my story.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a movement.  A very large (the body was the size of a quarter), very black spider appeared on the table near my elbow.  I looked down and very calmly said, "Oh, hello."  I knew this was the test and my chance to prove, beyond a doubt, that I was cured.

I dashed to the kitchen and grabbed the tallest clear glass I could find.  I ran back to my study and damn!  He was gone!  I pulled the computer hutch away from the wall and searched for him.  He darted out from underneath and zoomed across the carpet into the middle of the room.  I lunged towards him and clanked the glass, mouth side down, over him.  He was trapped.

He was also agitated and raced around frantically, his body clinking loudly against the glass.  I tried to think of a way to pick him up.  I saw a file folder lying on the floor, reached for it, slipped it under the glass and, surprisingly, under the spider.  I flipped the glass right side up and he fell to the bottom.  He sped around and around.  I held the folder tight over the top of the glass and carefully but quickly, while keeping an eye on the spider, rushed to the living room door, slid it open, pulled the folder away from the glass and dumped out the critter, setting him free in the garden.

I sat on the couch and cried.  I was cured!

I suppressed an urge to wake my husband and tell him all about it.  The following morning he was glad I had waited, although at 6:00 AM he had to hear the story as if I had performed the miracle moments before.  He was as pleased for me as he could be in his sleepy state.

~ ~ ~

I am very grateful to my husband for his unwavering compassion, support and understanding of my disability.  I am also very grateful to Michael for his patience and gentle pushing to help me cure my fear.  He told me later I had one of the four most severe spider phobias of the 30 people they treated.  And the other three most severe, who also received the drug, experienced the same violent side effects.

He also said they used spiders in the study because they were readily available (literally go out and beat a bush), they eat virtually nothing, and are small and easy to control.  None of these things are true about snakes or similar creatures.

~ ~ ~

I am amazed at my reaction each time I encounter a spider now.  I usually leave it where I find it.  If one comes in on the roses I pick from the yard, I let it crawl onto a plant on the window sill.  I keep a tall glass and 3 x 5 card handy and use them instead of tissues.  And, my spider voice is gone.

But what surprises me most is that a fear I suffered with for so many years could be cured in such a relatively short period.  We have even discussed moving back to Hawaii.

~ ~ ~

On a subsequent visit to the island, I went to the McCoy house and talked with the woman who moved in after us.  To prove to the mainland skeptics how large and ugly the creatures were, I took my camera with me.

The woman said it took eight months of constant spraying, swatting and early morning cat patrols (one of their cats loved to catch and eat them) to rid the house of the pests.  None were left for me to photograph.
She also told me about some of her encounters with the sneaky creatures, including the day she was driving her car when a large one crawled out of the air-conditioning vent.  Although she didn't have a spider phobia, she said it was a very un-nerving experience.

~ ~ ~

I wrote this story right after my sessions with Michael in 1988.  Certainly not enough time to truly test a cure.  I recently edited the story and can honestly say while I am not cured, like an alcoholic is never really cured, I no longer have the debilitating fear that rendered me incapable of moving or thinking.  Although I do not enjoy catching spiders (I admit I would much rather lay in the sun on a beach in paradise), I do not fear them and can easily remove them from the house myself.  It is February, 1993.

~ ~ ~

It is now April of 2014, 27 years since we moved from Hawaii.  I still miss it at times, but I don't think I'd like to live there.  I really do like it here in the Santa Clara Valley.

My spider fear is still under control.  I do ask my husband to remove those that I can't reach, but I remove the rest to the back yard.