This Paranormal Life - Jba Fofi The Giant Spiders Of The Congo

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

In 1938, English explorers were driving through the Congo when something crawled onto the road in front of their car. They rushed for their cameras but it was already too late, the creature had scuttled off into the trees. They didn’t know it at the time, but they had just seen the legendary J’ba FoFi, the giant spider cryptid that’s both deadly and delicious… apparently Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our Secret Society Facebook Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get access to weekly bonus episodes! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Official TPL Merch!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thisparanormallife.com/store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Intro music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.purple-planet.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Edited by Philip Shacklady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Can other creatures get possessed, or is it just humans? If I die mid-podcast, is my ghost cursed to podcast forever? All of these questions you can find the answer to on this paranormal life. Hello everyone and welcome back to this paranormal life, the comedy paranormal podcast where every week we investigate a brand new paranormal tale and come to a conclusion at the end to decide whether or not it truly is paranormal. as Rory Powers. Across from me, sits Kit Greer Mulvena, and as always, we are here today to bring you an exciting paranormal story brought to life using music and sound effects,

and then quickly shut down by inevitably saying that we don't think it's real. Well, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Well, you don't know what this episode is about. All right, clearly. The audience do. They've seen the title. They have seen the title, and let me tell you, if you read the title of this podcast

and still decided to hit play, kudos is what I'll say. You're a braver man than I, because this episode is quite a terrifying one. It is a listener submission by Danan Mikalir, who said, Hey guys, Danan here, recent listener and instantaneous Patreon supporter.

That's my favorite kind of listener. Danan. Love the pod so much that I've already blitzed through all the episodes, regular and bonus. It's given me so much joy during lockdown. Uh-oh. Okay. Needless to say, I think we received this email a couple of years ago.

Slightly old email. So thank you. However, I'm amazed that you haven't gotten around to doing an episode set in the Congo, a country with possibly the most cryptids located within its borders. It's one of the few areas of the earth where there are still unmapped regions

and dense forests and lakes, untouched by perhaps any human eye. So were true. He went on to list a number of paranormal creatures that are supposed to reside in the jungle, but one in particular caught my attention. This is home to a primitive native Indian tribe called the Piero. But the people here say this jungle is home to something else. Monster spiders. That's right.

Today, I am conquering one of my greatest fears. Not commitment, but spiders. Giant spiders. Yeah, you're not kidding either. I think you don't like spiders. No, no, no, no. I mean, not everyone, most people don't love them. Let's be honest.

They're not cuddly, lovable. They don't kind of, you know, I've said it before on the podcast. I'm team mammal. For sure, yeah. I'm vegan. I like all animals to an extent. extent. I think they're all pretty neat. But specifically, team mammal. I think we share a lot of, obviously, evolution. I think we feel the same kind of chemical receptors. You know, if you're a

mammal, you like hugs, warm cups of hot chocolate. Nipples. Nipples. You like milk. Both having and sucking. Yes. We're kind of on a level, kind of mutual understanding. Yeah. Spiders, I don't think they even know what hot chocolate is. What are you? I think they have a different, like, way of looking at the world and not only because they have eight eyes. Yeah. If you can shoot sticky fluid from your ass, you're not one of my buddies.

Yeah. I don't know what you are. It looks like you came to Earth on a meteorite. You're not welcome at the cookout. No. It's a weird thing. I don't like it. Whereas even when I watch the Planet of the Apes movies, I'm kind of like, I'll join

the monkey side. Yeah. I see my brothers there. Like, to prove the point, aren't there children that were raised by wolves? Not just Romulus and the other one. But I think there are real people who've been raised by animals. Because when push comes to shove, even a f***ing near cat will be like close enough. Yeah.

I'll see a human baby and I'll be like, that's fine. No child has been raised by spiders. And if they have, I don't want to meet that child. It walks like in the ring. All right, well, let's dive in. to this week's episode of the podcast. A quick reminder that you can get every episode of this podcast ad-free on patreon.com. And if you go on our website, you can also pick up tickets to our upcoming US and Canadian tour. Check it out. And just before we jump into today's episode, I am so excited

to finally announce that we are going back on tour around the UK and Ireland this October. This Halloween will be taken to the stage for some live podcasts in. Glee Club, Glasgow on the 28th of October, New Century Manchester on the 29th, Sugar Club Dublin on the 30th, our first time in Dublin, Ireland. Very exciting and rounding it all out, the big one, in London, Clapham Grand on the 2nd of November. Tickets are available at This ParanormalLife.com forward slash tour. They're going on sale on Friday at 10 a.m. UK time, that's the 1st of August. but patrons always get tour ticket presale so they will get first dibs on tickets on Thursday at 10am

if you do want to get access to that pre-sale sign up to Patreon and get a bunch of other cool rewards at patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life link is in the description of this podcast so that's Thursday 10 a.m. for the presale Friday 10 a.m. for the general sale please pick up a ticket come see us it's our first tour in like two years around the UK We could not be more excited to see you there this Halloween. Our story today begins all the way back in 1938.

We're in a place we don't visit much, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. English explorers Reginald and Marguerite Lloyd were driving down a bumpy dirt road through the thick, lush jungle. It's a good thing we left when we did. I wouldn't want to be in this jungle after dark. Heavens, no. You never know what sort of creature you might. Good heavens, Lloyd! What is that? Lloyd slammed on the brakes, his car skidding along the dusty trail. In front of them was a large shadowy figure crawling out of the bushes and across the road.

What is it? Some sort of jungle cat? No. A monkey? Or some kind of human? As the creature crawled into full view, the two explorers couldn't believe what they were seeing. It was an enormous spider, roughly the size of a wolf, scuttling across the road in front of them. Mards! Mudge! Gets my camera! Lloyd scrambled to get his camera,

but it was too late. By the time he was ready, the creature was gone. He had eaten the camera. Like Spider-Man, it went, whipped it out of his hands. No photos, bitch. They didn't know it at the time, but they had just encountered

the legendary Jabah Fofi Whoa The giant spider I like that name Yeah it's pretty cool I don't know what the What the Because there's probably a number of languages

In the Congo I'm guessing Yeah Yep yep I don't know specifically which one this is But I can't break it down for you Jaba meaning giant And Fofi is the word for a spider Like any spider

Yeah If you saw one you'd be like Fofi Yeah that's kind of scary Because if spiders are called Fofi That sounds like the average spider is foe feet high, which is extremely disturbing. Jabbar Fofi also sounds like the name of a Star Wars character. I think that's why I like it, because it sounds like Paula Tridis killed that guy on Aracas in a life fight. Like you meet him in a bar in the Degobah system.

Jabar Fofi here reporting for duty. Look, this is obviously a terrifying situation. It's lucky that they got away from it. I mean, I have to give them respect for slamming on the brakes because I'd slam down the accelerator if I saw a creature like this. An insect this size is worrying because all I know from being a kid and reading books and shit is that they would say insects are proportionally for their weight ultra strong, invincible. They said if an ants was the size of a human, it could lift up the Empire State Building itself. Yeah. It could backflip 300 times in the air and slam down the ground.

ground like Goku. Yeah. So if a spider is this large, I don't know. Your car is probably just going to crumple into a tin can if you run into this thing. Exactly. And how are you going to defeat this thing if it attacks you? There isn't a newspaper large enough to roll up in the world. Yeah.

Well, while this is one of the best documented encounters with this nightmarish creature, it isn't the only one. Allegedly, the first time this creature was spotted by a Western explorer, it cost him his life. According to the legends, British missionary Arthur John Symes and his traveling party were making their way through the jungle in the Congo, slashing through the thick brush. Chin up, chaps. I know it's a little hotter here than it is back in Kensington, but I know that if we stick together, we'll... What the?

What is this? Simes tried to move, but he was tangled up in something jetting from tree to tree. You just know that this is the part in the movie where Simes's... is like, somebody, somebody, and then his guide like puts his hand over his mouth. And he's like sweating, loads, and he points to a bush in the corner where you can hear rumbling, you know? Yeah.

Like some Jurassic Park shit. Before Simes could wrestle free, two giant spiders raced out from holes in the ground. Oh, Jesus. Good heavens! Simes wrestled to remove himself from the tangled web. He managed to lower his arm and whip out his butt out his butt. pistol, shooting one of the beasts before it could reach him.

But the other sank its spidery fangs into his shoulder. While he and his men did escape, days later he developed severe chills, eventually becoming delirious before falling unconscious and dying. My guy got bit. Yeah. Yeah. This is the problem with the jungle. It's hard to know if he was ultimately succumbed to a poison or. Or if honestly, any open wound in the jungle in this time period that goes untreated would ultimately probably cost you your life.

Yeah. I think that's what we're going to talk about a lot today is, you know, for us, city boys who also live in places where there aren't really any dangerous bugs. Yeah. This seems so foreign to us, so crazy that a giant bug could come bite you and kill you. Yeah, you live in the concrete jungle, but I don't know how we would fare in the jungle. Yeah. And you know, the Congo, that is a place where probably there's a lot of weird insects that get pretty big. Insects that if they did bite you, they will kill you. But I think today what we're going to hear is a lot of testimonies from people who know these jungles, know this region,

and even they are spotting this creature that they claim is beyond anything they've ever seen before. I've told this story on the podcast before, but I remember one time sleeping back in Northern Ireland, and I woke up because I felt a tickle on my face. And when I opened my eyes, a spider so large, it looked like a shadowy hand, was clasped onto my face. It was honestly, without exaggeration, the size of a Mickey Mouse glove. It was enormous. This is exaggeration.

And I threw it so hard at the wall. I heard a thud when it hit. And it went down. I think the biggest spider in the world, I don't remember. but I think I read in one of those books I was talking about when I was reading when I was a kid that it's like they were like think a dinner plate that is that's from leg to leg right talking a dinner plate

and those mother's eat birds yeah yeah some of them do eat birds yeah and we'll talk a little bit about spiders how they work why they are the size they are and why they usually don't get bigger a little bit later in the podcast but we need to figure out today what we are dealing with when we talk about

the Jabbar Fofi in particular. Because as you can tell, this isn't some sort of super spider. It feels like what we're dealing with here is entering the category of cryptid. Sure. Mythical beast. Despite these frankly insane stories

and the fact that I can't find any proof that Arthur John Symes actually existed, there is a lot of evidence to prove that the Jabah Fofi is a real cryptid. That was an interesting throwaway line there. Had to speed through that one really quick. Yeah. There are a lot of our...

a lot of articles that tell this story. And then I think when you dig a little deeper, they're like, cool, can I see a picture of him? And they're like, nope, he's dead. His head exploded up and the spider bit him. Yeah. And like, okay, well, that's coincidental. Spider went to Kensington and destroyed all the records of his birth and death as well. Don't worry, Kit.

I know you're going to love this section coming up. In the diary, a famous naturalist and cryptozoologist, William J. Gibbons. he wrote about a visit to Africa where he discovered more than he was looking for. You see, Gibbons was originally in Africa to try and hunt for a cryptid known as Mokole Mbembe. I thought that name might sound familiar because I think we maybe talked about him in that episode. Yeah, well, I couldn't remember. We've done Mokole Mbembe recently.

And I knew it was Congo adjacent, but I couldn't remember if it was specifically in the Congo. Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mokole Mbembe is, I believe, essentially a dinosaur that still exists, apparently in the jungle. We did a whole episode on it. Kit did a fantastic job.

Definitely go listen to that. That's what this explorer was originally hunting for. Doesn't it suck when you find more than you're looking for? I mean, sometimes. It rarely ends well. I guess if you're like looking for muffins. Yeah. And you find more muffins than you thought.

You're like, that was sick. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Right, but it sounds ominous. It always sounds ominous. Yeah. Like saying a guy went to go buy muffins and he found more than he was looking for, sounds like he was shot in the head in the bakery. That implies he didn't find muffins.

His life was ended. Yeah. He found a bullet in his skull. Is there ever a time where it's good that you find more than what you're looking for? Medicine? If you need medicine, that's pretty good. Yeah, or like, you know, you strike up a friendship and it blossoms into a rope. Oh, that's sweet. One could find more than what they were looking for. That's cute. I like that actually. Yeah. But that is a tiny percentage of the time people find more than they're looking for. Let's be honest. Most of the time they find an ancient dinosaur that eats them piece by piece in the jungle. Yeah. You definitely don't want to find more than you're looking for if you're a cryptozoologist. You're already looking for the most fantastical beast ever imagined. So you're already looking for everything.

He was like saying, yeah, he came into this jungle looking for Godzilla, and I found more than I was looking for. How? How did you find more than that? That's impossible. Yeah, and don't say Jesus. All right, don't say, like, faith or so. Oh, I don't want to hear that. There you go. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's usually the one that they say is the most you can find. Yeah, God damn it. That doesn't count. Well, in his search for the McColleumbe, he accidentally stumbled upon stories of another creature. He wrote,

On this third expedition to Africa, they speak of the Jabar Fofi. These giant ground-dwelling spiders are said to be extremely dangerous, not to mention highly venomous. The spiders are said to lay white peanut-sized eggs in a cluster. They're once very common, but now a rare sight. The Baca chief, Timbo, casually mentioned

that a spider had taken up residence behind his village when I'd last visited him. He did not think that we would have been interested in the, creature, as our interest was focused on Mokole and Bembe at the time. Valuable evidence has eluded us. On questioning our group of six backer guides, they said they have all seen these spiders at one time or another, and state they are quite capable of killing a human being. So not only do we have a written record of these things actually existing, but the locals in

the region talk about them like it's not a big deal. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is something we kind of see a lot, whether it's McColle and Bembe or this. It's kind of an interesting side to crypto zoology. I mean, we're talking about going to places where, okay, to us, it might be a mythical, never before heard of creature. But if it is real, then this is just daily life for the people who live there. Yeah.

They don't know, you know, they don't know to lead with that information. You know, you shake hands with the guy in the Congo. and, you know, is it his job to be like, he's like, oh, welcome to the Congo. You're probably going to want to hear about, yeah, the giant spiders and the giant dinosaurs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, because they don't know.

They'd be like, oh, wait, you don't have those? Yeah. What, you're, how big of the spiders where you live? How do you guys get around? How do you get to work without the giant spiders? Right? It's like, honey, I shrunk the kids. They turn up riding an ant.

Whoa, Betty, feed it a crumb. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Same way that if they came to Kensington, in the case of our fictitious explorer, apparently, he wouldn't know what to lead with. Like, hello, we eat beans here. And they're like, Jesus, what's that? What are those?

Yeah, I can't think of an animal that we have that they don't. They're like, are you eating foefy eggs? I was like, no, no, these are baked beans. These are peanuts, yeah. Yeah, it's fine. Don't worry about it. That's a traditional saying in the Congo. How do you like your foe-fie eggs in the morning?

Scramble foe-fey eggs. Yeah, it is worrying that the eggs of this creature look essentially like peanuts. Because I would go on record and say that I do not have the instincts of a survivor. And if I was lost in a jungle like the Congo and I pushed some branches aside and see a bunch of peanuts on the floor, I'm going to start eating them. Yeah, you don't know when you're going to next see food. Yeah, totally. I was trying to think, does that work? Because that sounds small, but then when you think about how small real spiders eggs are, which I don't like thinking about, I know. But they are microscopically small. Super tiny. And then they grow into something reasonably big. So yeah,

probably. Yeah, if you're, if you start off life as a peanut, if you're a peanut spider, yeah, you probably are going to grow to be the size of a FDafo-California redwood. You're going to, yeah, you're going to be pretty big. The Baca people reported that the Jabah Fofi have been known to trap and eat animals as like. large as an antelope. An antelope. An antelope. Kind of, if you're not familiar, similar to like a small deer, I would say.

You know, a mammal that can run. The back of people say that the Jabah Fofi are not seen much in the jungle anymore. And that may be because, although the creatures can be poisonous, they're also delicious. Really? Even considered, they're considered a local delicacy. I mean, that's at least a cooler plot twist than I thought you were just going to say, like, climate change, just sadly destroyed the fofey population. Yeah, the peanut eggs, they taste like peanuts. Yeah, they're really good, it turns out. No, I guess, I guess, I don't know, spider legs.

Like, people do eat bugs. Yeah, huge proportions of the world eat insects. We just don't do it that much here. Well, listen up. Although, don't get me started on lobsters, bugs of the ocean. All right, and you guys are pretty okay with eating those, apparently. Did you know I looked, this up? I need to get this fact right, because every time I say it, it sounds like, Like, my brain is short-circuiting. But I saw an article the other day that scientists were saying that it's a misconception that people think shrimp are the bugs of the sea when in reality, bugs are the shrimp of the land. No.

Put on the dab rig for those scientists. Put on the dab rig. Put down the edibles. That is not science. It is because. But you're saying everything started in the sea. Everything came from the sea. Yeah.

So you're saying like, oh, the fish and the, they're the bugs that live in the sea. It's like, no, the bugs are the shrimp of the land. That's what they originally were is like crustaceans. It's kind of crazy, isn't it? It is crazy. Yeah. We're fish of the land. Things, that, but I think the reason the ones in the sea are so disgusting, like the tetrapods or whatever they're called and lobsters and stuff like that is like, it's because they're so big.

Like, that's what bugs look like during dinosaur times on land. Pretty big. Which I don't necessarily understand how that works because you'd think if you're a bug of the sea, the amount of water pressure you're dealing with means you're not going to get that big. Right. Yeah, yeah, I guess.

I don't know, maybe fish are affected differently by that type of thing. I guess they must be. Yeah. God damn it. Whereas we're like a bunch of rich people tried to go down in a submarine and it imploded underwater.

Like, we're not built to go that deep. Yeah. We're really not. What I'm hearing is if you bring one of those bugs up to land, they're like Superman. Like Superman, he was like, oh, the gravity is 10 times less on Earth than on... Right. What a f***ing for Krypton? Yeah, I think so.

Something like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was, because on his planet, he was a bitch. That was the whole point of the show. Yeah. He was like a weak little baby that they sent away. Whereas on Earth, he's a chat. Yeah.

Oish, oesh. That's why we need to fund NASA to find... the nerd planet in our solar system, full of, like, weak little aliens. Yeah. So, like, I can go down and I'd be, like, a god to them. It's kind of just the moon, though. Like, like, if we're just, it's unfortunate that there is no population on the moon that we know of,

let's dig, let's dig under and find them. But let's say, if there was a basketball league on the moon, oh, yeah. Humans would f*** dominate. I would be in the NBA, the Moon Basketball Association or whatever it's called. The MBA. The MBA, I would be dunking on people left, right and center because I would just simply just glide, like in space jam using the zero gravity.

Dunking from half crater, just floating through the air for like 45 seconds. Hell yeah. And I can't remember, I don't remember what Mars gravity is like, because Mars is a good, like, we might, you know, Elon Musk might get his way, we might get there as a civilization. Do you remember what the gravity is like on Mars? I think it's quite close. to Earth? Let me search it up.

Apparently, the average gravitational acceleration on Mars is about 38% of the gravity on Earth. Oh, all right. So you're good. It's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We could dunk from half crater.

Easy. Forget half crater. We could dunk from the equator. Jump at the equator and slam a basketball through a hoop at the North Pole. Yeah, wow, that's crazy. So, yeah, the moon is really. really, really low gravity.

What's it? Do we know? The percentage. I'm looking at a lot of weird graphs here. But if the Earth is 100, the moon is 16. Damn. Yeah. Because this was just to sprinkle it in there. But yeah, kind of insane people like Terrence McKenna, you know, philosopher, madmen,

who kind of pioneered the psychedelic movement. They wrestled with this idea of why humans have so much so-called junk. DNA? Did you know that DNA only something like 15% of it actually codes for anything? Wow. Most of our DNA sequence seems to code for all, or we don't know what it codes for. And Terence McKenna was like, it activates when we go to space. He was like, we are intergalactic beings. And being on Earth means that DNA doesn't activate.

But as soon as we get into space and something about the zero gravity and the radio, will activate all the so-called junk DNA. Whoa. And we'll actually turn into like space beings. I mean, that hasn't happened and people have been to space. Hasn't happened yet. But we have, but like, you know, they've barely been up there, right? They barely.

I bet if you take off your helmet in space, it'll activate. It'll activate something. Let me tell you. It'll activate the blood vessels in your head exploding into a million pieces. It would have been great if we, while doing the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the mission to the moon had like planned for absolutely everything, the trajectory, the rocket fuel, the gravitational pull of the planet. And they're like, okay, the rocket's going. Everything's great. They're just about to leave Earth's atmosphere and enter zero gravity. And just Neil Armstrong

just becomes a spider. Legs burst out of the side of his body. And it's like, well, we couldn't have planned for that. How could we have done that? One small step for man, one strong. Oh, I'm like, that's not on the script. Imagine that's not on the script. Houston, I have become a spider. Houston, send flies. None of the onboard food is very appealing to me anymore. Look, Kit, I know that if any of us today are going to believe that this creature, the Jabah Fofi, exists.

We need more evidence than just old-timey British explorers getting killed in the 1940s. So I'm happy to say that like all great cryptids that we've investigated, Bigfoot, Mothman, the Chupacabra, the Jabba, the Jabah, Fofi have been spotted all over the world. What? That's right. They don't just stay in the Congo. Not the UK and Ireland, though, right? Right?

I think I told you that I saw a pretty big one trying to attack me in the night. That was a common household spider. Case number one, it's 1942. And we're in the midst of the Second World War. An Australian... Nah, come on. Hold on. Fair with me.

Bear with me. An Australian soldier wrote about an encounter he had. We're in an underground experimentation chamber in Nazi Germany. When he discovered a large web, 10 to 15 feet across, in the middle of the web was a monstrously large spider the size of a puppy. Mm-hmm. It was all black

with thick hair like a tarantula. Yeah, what kind of puppy? Like, how young are we talking? It doesn't matter how long. The smallest a puppy gets is actually smaller. Not the size of a spider. Than a big spider.

That's not true. It is true. Like, a tiny newborn puppy is like three inches. That'd be pretty small. That'd be the smallest puppy you can get. Yeah, it's a newborn puppy. He saw a giant spider.

Yeah, but I just told you earlier, spiders get to be the size of a dinner plate. Listen, he thought this was worth talking about enough. He needs to be more specific. Are we talking a Great Dane puppy? Are we talking a Dachshund puppy? Are we talking a Chihuahua puppy? Look, I have another sighting, also from World War II. I don't know what was happening.

In an online post from a man named Craig, he detailed how his grandfather stumbled upon a Jabah Fofi in Papua New Guinea. Craig's grandfather was so stunned by this huge spider that he killed it with a machete. Good man. No hesitation, nothing. And I assume this is like that spider from Lord of the Rings. You cut off a leg and it's like, but it's still going, you know? Yeah.

Horrible. Yeah, we haven't even talked about, yeah, the two fictional spiders, hopefully fictional, that always come to my mind are, I never get it right. Aragog And she-lob. It's Aragog. She-Lob is Lord of the Rings, isn't it?

Yes. That's the one that Frodo almost gets killed by. And then I think Aragog was the Harry Potter one. I think there's the one Harry Potter, isn't there? Oh. I think that's it. I f*** us up every time. People always make fun of me.

But I think those are the two fictional spiders. Oh, okay. I know like giant, giant, giant ones. There could be a loose inspiration from this creature. We've seen that a lot before where, monsters in popular film are actually inspired by the legends of cryptids that allegedly did exist. I mean, I got to say, if I was a soldier in World War II and I came across a creature like this, I'd probably come out of the hole and be like, time out, guys, real quick, time out.

Look, I know that we're fighting each other because of small differences that we have. We have a new enemy. And he has a lot more differences than that, specifically legs and eyes. Yeah. Well, we do know that in war, animals are very often deployed as weapons of war. Yeah. Sometimes unfortunate ways, you have ancient war elephants through to more modern. I think didn't the U.S. Army experiment with attaching lasers to dolphins or something. You could also say horses. I think before we hit laser dolphins, they also use horses and war.

I think, dog, yeah, that's boring. I think in World War II or something didn't they strap bombs to dogs and train dogs to love tanks? They like put treats under tanks and train it's really sad to train the dogs to be like yeah there's treats under every tank

and then they strap to stick a dynamite to them to a chihuahua just let him go that I've said it a million times the most bizarre one was I think during the illegal war on terror in 2001 there was a country that like that pledged to give America like 20,000 monkeys for the war. And they were like, what are we going to do with those?

And they were like, just send them into a minefield, let them clear the mines. The monkeys will just run over all the mines. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I couldn't remember if I dreamt that or not. The monkey minefield. Yeah. Monkey minefield is a good prog band name or something. It's true.

Very few people have utilized spiders. Yeah. Bugs. Sorry, getting back to the point. Yeah. Like, that's the thing. Right before you hack its legs off with a machete, you'd be like, is this guy useful somehow? Is this guy useful?

Well, like I said earlier, ride him into battle. I got to say, though, if there are two sides of a war and you're on the side that are riding spiders into the battlefield, you're the bad guys. You are the bad guys, objectively the bad guys. No good guy has ever ridden on the bat, fought alongside spiders and bugs. I know, imagine you're like trapped in a prisoner of war camp. You've been captured by the opposing side. And then a guy riding a giant spider throws open the cage. It's like, come with me, brother, get on top.

They'll be like, I'm good. I'll take my chances in the cage. Yeah. I'm going to wait for like a chill bug to come, like a caterpillar or a ladybird. Yeah. I can't remember why we said this before, but we talked about giant beetles being like, get in, brother. Yeah. You know, it sounds like a crazy idea using insects and creatures like this in war.

Remember when we covered DARPA, the secret government organization known as DARPA on this podcast? And they declassified a bunch of their operations that they've done over the years. All we got were the names, not the details of what they were. But one of them was Operation... Insect Allies? Insect Allies. Yeah. Yeah.

It's so ominous. What a weird. This isn't a joker a bit. Like, you can look this up. Yeah. I don't know what they were trying to do. I mean, yeah. Strap bombs to bees.

I mean, that is all pretty grim. I can't say necessarily that I believe the Jabal Fofi is involved in any of that. I think we're looking at more likely some sort of ancient creature that has existed. I think the only side that Jabar Fofi is on is like some kind of lovecraftian ancient god. Yeah. I don't think he cares for the tribulations of man. Yeah, and he's not doing a good job as a god because the locals are killing and eating him.

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I briefly participated in missionary work in the Congo in the late 1980s, and I can say, hand on my heart, that me and six other locals witnessed a Jabah Fofi scurrying across the road into the bush just five feet away from us. It looked exactly like a long-legged tarantula, but it was about the size of a dog. Wow. Another user named Mr. Maxima said that during a scouting mission in Vietnam, their father-in-law, who was a soldier at the time, encountered massive spiders. that had bodies the size of dinner plates and estimated that the total length of the legs to be 30 inches.

Upon seeing the creatures, he and his team opened fire with their M16 rifles. And although the spiders had been hit, they were still moving around. Whoa. Horrifying stuff. I mean, in my head now, we're reaching, have you ever seen Starship Troopers?

Yeah. That type of level of bug. Mm-hmm. essentially the size of a small SUV walking around, soldiers just unloading machine guns into it and it's bleeding green everywhere. Yeah. Look, what are we dealing with here? You know, are we getting into a living fossil because we should address the fact that bugs used to be this size. Bugs used to be this size on Earth. Yeah, I think they used to be bigger. I mean, let's just get into this now, debating the science behind this. Dr. Carl Schuker is a British zoologist and a writer.

known for numerous articles and books on cryptozoology. And when talking about the Jabha Fofi, he says the main problem with a creature like this existing at that size is that spiders aren't able to transport oxygen through its body efficiently enough. That's one of the limiting factors as to why we don't have giant spiders is because they reach a point where they can live and they don't get any bigger. Yeah, because like I said, there was a time on Earth when bugs were different sizes. That was due to the drastically different conditions of life on Earth at that time.

It was much, much, much hotter specifically. And I think maybe even the atmosphere was made up of different gases. Yeah. Well, that is one of the explanations as to why people think a creature like this could, in theory, still exist. is because if a limiting factor in regards to growth is not being able to transport oxygen, as we know, there are certain parts of the world that do have much higher oxygen levels. Oh. Which could in theory allow a tarantula like species to grow even larger than...

I didn't know that was a thing. I mean, I knew there was places like mountains where there's less oxygen. I didn't know. There was somewhere where there's more. I think... I should go there when I'm hung over. I think so. I think it does very...

I mean, it's not going to be like super oxygen. But obviously, you know, a place like the Congo where you're just surrounded by that amount of vegetation. Yeah, the oxygen levels are very rich, I would say. Cool. Which is probably why you also then get a bunch of like wildlife thriving in there. Yeah. Well, definitely the Congo does feel closer to the conditions, slightly closer to the conditions of ancient Earth than, um, true central London. I'm going to look up quickly.

what's the biggest bug? Apparently the current title of Biggest Bug can refer to either the heaviest or the longest insect, but by weight it is the Goliath beetle. Yeah, yep. Well, what's the biggest spider being

that has ever existed? Do we know that? Biggest spider. It becomes an interesting conversation because there are some pretty huge tarantulas, which I think are one of the biggest spiders. Yeah. But then there's lots of urban legends and stories, which I'm sure you've seen before about the camel spider.

Have you seen anything about this? I remember this was like a big thing that they were like, American soldiers in Iraq have seen the camel spider. And it's like the side, it's basically what we're talking about. It's basically a Jabah Fofi. And there's like photos of this thing like roaming around. I think they are, oh, I just Googled big spider and what the fuck I look at?

There's just a ton of spiders on my laptop. Now I don't like it. I don't like it. But what's the biggest real spider? But also, I want to know, like, in history, like, do we know because we do know some bugs that used to exist? I think the problem, I think part of the problem is that something, something, insects don't leave behind, because they're invertebrates, they don't leave behind bones. So we have less of a record of them. I think we rely on insects being fossilized in amber and stuff like that to be able to know what insects were like.

According to Google, currently the world's biggest spider is known as the Goliath bird eater. Yes, this is the bird eating. Mother-I'm talking about. Pretty big. Still pretty big, I would say. By leg span, it can have a body length of up to 13 centimeters. So pretty big, still not the levels that we're dealing with today. And apparently the largest known extinct insect is the mega-neuropsis.

Permiana, which is a enormous dragonfly. Okay, yeah, that rings a bell. That's pretty cool. It has a wingspan of 28 inches. Okay, honestly... You could ride it on the back of this thing like it's Fri-Avatar. Yeah, honestly, I thought it would be bigger, but that is massive. That's crazy.

Now, Kit, I know that you wouldn't be happy today if I ended the episode without showing you any physical evidence. I don't really want to see any spiders, that's fine. This is it. You Google this. All you're going to see is pictures of spiders, which I don't want to do to you. I don't want to do to myself. Yeah. But what I do have is the only reputable footage of a Jabah Fofi in the wild.

Wow. Captured by some sort of night vision camera. I'm going to go ahead and tell you right now, footage is kind of blurry. It's late at night. The creature is in the corner. You can really barely see it. But people have said that this. is the only credible footage of the beast.

As I said, most of the other sightings took place in the late 1800s, early 1900s. But check this out. You're going to want to look at the top right of the screen. Be closely. Did you see it? Nope. I knew you were going to say that. I knew you were going to say that.

I knew you were going to say that. All right. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's worrying that Roy's got the video up here. And it says, Jabba Fufi, call on camera, brackets,

enhanced version. It's like, brother, if this is the enhanced version, I don't want to see that. There's nothing to see. So you, version.

All right. So walk me through what you see in this blank, blank, blank, blank video. Look specifically right in this corner,

my friend. I'm going to crank up the brightness for you. This corner. There it is. that's nothing. That is nothing. That is nothing.

That is less than nothing. Did you not see it? Do you want me to go back again? I don't need to see it again. It's, I mean, like, I witness, I witness movement in this, in the form of pixels changing color, because something in the camera is moving, allegedly. Sure. Sure. It's, like, I mean, when you say blur. the word blurry doesn't do it for justice.

It's like, it could be a dog. No. It could be a cloud. It could be any noun you can really think of. It really... It could be a drone. It could be... There's no, there's no shape.

There is no definition to what is happening. Yeah, you really have to... So to say it is the mythical being Jabah Fofi itself caught on video. It might as well be ringed. Doorcam footage. I think if you showed someone this footage who hadn't been prepped with the knowledge that a beast like that exists,

they'd be like, what do you mean? How would you have thought that's a spider? There's nothing to indicate it's a spider. Whereas like knowing that people think it's a spider, your brain is already like, oh yeah, I think those are the legs. I can kind of see it. It's really not that easy to see.

It's just blurry night vision footage, unfortunately. And as I said, it doesn't do our case any favors today that that is the, best and only footage, a credible sighting of this creature. You know, with these kind of cases, I think what would best inform me on how to feel about these kind of cryptids in, let's say specifically the Congo, is I think I would need to go to the Congo.

I think I need, which is not going to happen. This is an extremely unstable environment. The Democratic Republic of Congo has experienced unbelievable. Sadly, warfare, turmoil, government. collapse and stuff over the years. It's not an easy place to travel, hence part of why it's so unseen. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you can go there.

People go all the time, shoot documentaries and all kinds of things, and I'm sure, travel recreationally. But not the easiest place to get across. But I think if I did go, I guess I have the suspicion that if I went, I would feel like these people and I would realize we don't know what's going on on planet earth. I think if I had a tangible sense of that, whereas I live in Northern Europe. I live of modern life. I don't encounter nature very much outside of the beach. In my world, in my head of Wikipedia and social media, the experience of the world that I have leads me to believe

that we found everything. All the corners of the earth have been explored, that we pretty much know all the animals that are out there and the scientific consensus is that these creatures don't exist. Yeah. But I have a sense that if you are the guy with the safari hat driving through, hacking through the jungle in 2025, you probably feel differently. We've got that kindergarten level understanding of the animal kingdom. Yeah. We're like, yep, I know about all the animals. Cow go moo, chicken go cluck, she'd go bar, cat dog. Yeah, we know all of them. Whereas, Jabah, Foufi, go, hang, hang, hang, hang, hang. And shoot a web at me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once you go to these kind of environments, it is, you know, we just don't know. We just don't know. I was trying to

think about what is probably the closest I've ever been to this, because I've been to, at the most, some pretty weird places in Southeast Asia. I remember the last time I was in Singapore, and me and my brother decided to do this day trip you can take to these islands off the coast, kind of in the middle of the ocean. I was trying to look up what they're called. I don't actually remember very small little islands. But the boat essentially drops you off in the morning and then leaves. They leave you with a coconut and a bottle of water. Good luck. They say on the boat they're like, they're like, look, come with food and water. There's nothing on the island. It's like an abandoned island out in the ocean. We'll be back at 5 p.m. Don't miss the boat. This is a night shaman

this is scary. I don't like this. I wish I could remember the name of it. I was just trying to at Google. But essentially, we spent the whole day walking along these just islands, many of which are just completely uninhabited. And it's like, it's just jungle paths. And like you are, you're like walking through and there's like huge big leaves. The humidity and heat is unbelievable. You, you know, you're walking between trees and you feel like webs and stuff, or like bugs touching your neck, it feels like you're in Jumanji or something. It's very otherworldly. And even that is such a tamer version of what it would be like to be in the thick jungles of the Congo. Yeah, or deep, deep, deep in the Amazon or something.

Exactly. So, yes, I do appreciate that as armchair paranormal investigators in a cushy London studio, we can't necessarily be the final say in whether or not a creature like this exists. You know, I think I've said the story on the podcast before, but I loved it. And it's, it's one of my favorite examples of how weird the world is and how different the world is when you live in one of these places was, I think it was a year ago or two years ago when, and I believe this was in South America, maybe in the Amazon. I think was it like a plane went down and like three children were missing. And they knew they had never arrived where they were supposed to be. And so there was this panic that like we need to find these children deep in the

rainforest that are they are hopefully still alive. And we need to find them before they starve to death or die of thirst. And this enormous hunt took place to try and find them. We had government authorities, hundreds, thousands of people looking for them. And to cut a long story short, the guy that found them was like a local tribesman type guy who had taken ayahuasca. The psychedelic jungle tea, which has been used by tribes for thousands of years. And they were like, how'd you find them? And he was like, the plants told me. The plants told me where they were.

And then they talked to the kids and the kids were like, yeah, the jungle told us how to like find help. And it's like, I don't know. Yeah. These people, this is where they live. This is their world. This is their dojo. They understand these things. And we don't.

Yeah, it's very true. I'm not going to recommend that you take ayahuasca to find missing children because that's not going to happen. I'm just saying, if we have a thousand guys looking for the kids, let one guy take eyewasca. Let him cook. Let him cook the tea and take it. My version of that is me showing up to a McDonald's at 10pm and they're like, how'd you know that we were still open?

And I say, the weed told me. Yeah, the plant medicine told me. It spoke to me and said, yeah, they're still doing hash browns. The wheat said, you want a happy meal. Kid, at the end of every episode, we have to come down on a conclusion. You've heard some testimonies from people all over the years, dating back from British explorers to soldiers in Vietnam. We've even seen kind of a video of one of the Jabah Fofi crawling about in the desert.

What are your thoughts at the end of today's episode investigating this cryptid, the giant spider? Hey, you know, lots of similarities to the McColley Mbembe, an allegedly unextinct a being that is still alive in the depths of Earth's jungles and least explored places. And it just lives in that perfect sliver of possibility. You know, that's the thing with this type of cryptid. It's not magic. No. It's not floating. It's not levitating.

It's not telepathic. Yeah. So far as we know. So it gives it a little bit of plausibility. So I actually don't really know how to feel. My instinct with these sometimes, and maybe this is a cop-out, is that do I think it's there today? Hard to say, do I think it might have been there a hundred years ago? Now, that's a little more possible because, you know, you know what else was around 200 years ago?

The dodo. Yeah, very true. very very true where's your head up I guess this is where we get a little bit mixed up and a little in the weeds with figuring out

what is a cryptid and what is just an animal that is died out you know dinosaurs aren't cryptids I believe the definition of a cryptid is a creature unknown to science yeah yeah if yeah they weren't cryptids

if one was alive today it could be a cryptid yeah you know what I'm going to say if there's a world where this thing does exist, which I'm not sure about. Famously, everyone, spiders are also like fish. I feel like anyone who has an encounter with a big one, they usually try exaggerate. That's very, that's big of you to say that after your story earlier to admit that. Mine was a monster.

All right. Okay. Mine looked like someone controlling a black claw machine was trying to claim my face as a prize. Yes. I think people tend to exaggerate whenever they see big bugs in general. Unless you are an Australian listener of the podcast, you might be the only ones that are not exaggerating about the size of your bugs. So I think today, in this case, I'm going to say no. I think maybe there is a breed of spider out there that is incredibly large.

Maybe the locals don't know the term or word we would use for that breed of spider. So they have their own name for it. But I don't think there is some like missing link mythological prehistoric spider beast roaming about in the woods. I agree with that. I think it's a no, I agree. I think that even the descriptions sometimes of it being quote puppy sized. We're getting smaller and smaller. It's a like as I say puppies, that's a, there's big ass puppies out there.

Yeah. I'll give you that. Sometimes you see a big ass puppy. There's also tiny ones. So we're getting too close to where the known size of the largest spiders. Yeah. You can't have one story where it's five feet in length, like the size of some humans. Yeah.

And then also ones where it's like the size of a really big normal spider. Yeah, because now I'm thinking about it. Yeah, one story said it was like a puppy. Another story said it was like a dog. It's like, okay, so we're still in puppy territory. It's like an old puppy. Yeah, a dog. Okay.

Yeah. I think it's going to be a no this week. But thank you for this suggestion. In that email, they actually listed off a ton of great cryptids that are out in the Congo, including the Mokole Mbembe. So we might, this might not be the last time that we go back to the Congo. TPL road trip. We go to the Congo.

It is going to be dangerous. It is going to be hot. It is going to take three weeks in a canoe to get to the heart of the jungle itself. Whoa. I think it'll be worth it. Whereas if you could go to any. location on earth where there has been allegedly hot paranormal activity, where would you go?

Do you have a preference? Because a lot of people from me, they talk about Peru. I think I'd like to go to Peru. Yeah, I honestly, I do think somewhere in the, I know it's casting a wide net, but I do think the continent of Africa, I know we've just talked about it. I think there is a lot to be explored here. There's a huge, untapped world of cryptids for us there.

Hard to pin down, though. The Congo is a little much for me to bite off maybe, but somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think if we did, we would need an incredible amount of help from the locals to survive the night. Yeah, I'm going to be honest. I was just on holiday in France and I can't handle mosquitoes. There was one mosquito trapped in the bathroom and I almost had a meltdown.

Dude, honestly, this is going to sound so stupid to Americans and people who live in a place with mosquitoes. But yeah, when I was in San Francisco last, there was a mosquito in my bedroom and this motherfucker went to town on me. Like woke up and it looked like I had chicken pox. This guy was drinking hard all night. And this is maybe a little gross for listeners of the podcast who don't have a lot of experience with mosquitoes. But if you kill those guys, they're full of blood. It splats everywhere. It's disgusting.

It's horrible. And I'm like, dude. You just my blood. And it's kind of interesting because then if you... Because then if you... Sometimes you smoke them. Yeah. And there's nothing.

Right. And you're like, oh, I got him before he got me. That's interesting. A little homie was starving. Yeah, yeah. You feel kind of bad. Poor little guy. Yeah, it's like, you know what?

You can have a last meal and then I'll smoke you. Let him suck on your arm for a second and then... It's kind of like, you know when you kill someone in GTA and all the money bursts out of them? Yeah. That's like mosquitoes. You can tell if they... were rich or poor whenever you kill them, how much blood comes out. Yeah.

Gross. Very happy that we live in a place that really does, we don't have to worry about bugs. And people sometimes say they'll be like, if a mosquito sucks your blood and then it, it's, it's by weight, it is more your blood than mosquito. Is it like, it is an extension of you? That's a weird, man. Yeah, you're like, you have the newspaper rolled up. You're about to hit it and he looks you in the eyes and he's like, are there. You're like, what?

Father. I think I want to extra kill you now. I know this is trying to make me feel bad, but this is f***. I'm paying goddamn child support to a bug. We share blood, father. Shut up. Here's 20 bucks. Get out of here, all right?

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the podcast. A great listener submission. A few of your own stories that you either want us to investigate, or maybe it's a story that has happened to you personally. We want to hear about it. Send it in to this paranormal life podcast at gmail.com. Well, I'm happy to say that very soon we're going to be heading to the land of mosquitoes. That's right.

Kit and I are coming to the United States of America and Toronto. To perform live all across the country, it's going to be a blast. You can pick up your tickets for those shows right now. and come and hang out with us in person. Yeah, if you come to our US and Canadian tour this August, which is imminent, I think, you're going to feel like you're in the Congo because for some reason we thought it would be an awesome idea

to go to New York in August, to Dallas, Texas, in August. Awesome idea. Toasty, lugging around six suitcases. Yeah, it's going to be toasty, but it's going to be cool Because you know what's disgusting, New York and summer. But do you know what else New York and summer is?

Sexy. Exciting. Rain pouring. Everyone's wearing swim shorts in the street. Hell yeah. You know, it's vibrant. It's electric. So hopefully we can capture some of that weird, freaky energy.

Oh, yeah. And bring that to a live podcast on stage. Tickets in the description of this pod. Get them right now. And of course, if you can't make it to the shows, but you still want to support the podcast. The best way to do so is over on Patreon. dot com forward slash this paranormal life

didn't realize I was going to have to do the robot voice I thought the link was shorter and then but once you commit to the robot voice because I was trying to make it a thing of being like you're like like play the samba music because it's going to be a party and you were like also

affirmative you double you double you dot this paranormal yeah you started listing URL we're doing like very different vibes to wrap up the podcast You're like, it's going to be a jungle party. And I'm like, affirmative, it will be good fun. Over on Patreon, you can get a ton of amazing rewards at three episodes, bonus episodes, weekly bonus episodes.

We raffle off cool shit from the studio and from our own investigations. And of course, you can also get your very own Patreon. Shout out at the end of the podcast. Just one to do today. So you're going to get very special treatment here. Thank you to James Ball. This was the secret agent before MI5 found James Bond. And they kind of sent him on missions and he was like, the name's ball.

James Ball. But he just like he did all the parts that James Bond does, like the drinking and the gambling and smoking and stuff. And then he just never did the mission. Yeah. So they would be like, James, you'd drop the ball. Yeah, he dropped the ball. That's what they would say. So, yeah, he was quickly replaced.

I think they sent him on a mission to probably like Ecuador, but there wasn't actually anyone there or anything. Yeah. And he's like, hey, I'm here. What do you guys need me to do? The phone number is like disconnected. He's like, guys, guys, honestly, it's hot as ball in here. But good news, James, because, you know, we will, I'll be honest,

we'll take the scraps of MI5 because here in the commune, we need an intelligence program because we're dumb as fuck. So if we could kind of get you spying on rival communes. Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah. A bit of like a double agent or something like that. We'll give you a license to kill. Everyone in the commune has one, to be honest.

You can get one of those at the door. Yes. Fine. So thank you so much, James. Welcome to the commune. Thank you to everyone who supports us on Patreon. Hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Apologies to those of you, like myself,

that can be a little squeamish with spiders. Hopefully you weren't triggered and we're conquering our fear together. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. We'll see you again soon for another paranormal tale.