Eight Spiders

http://www.multilingualarchive.com/ma/dewiki/en/PC...

2012-02-08T07:47:02.229Z

http://www.multilingualarchive.com/ma/dewiki/en/PC_Professionell

Ziff Davis was the publisher. Find a German speaker to investigate, as this looks like an automated translation tool was used on this page.

this book has sites for lisa holst: http://books.g...

2012-01-25T05:11:34.993Z

this book has sites for lisa holst: http://books.google.com/books?id=jLUUxXEak1oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Don't+Swallow+Your+Gum!:+Myths,+Half-Truths,+and+Outright+Lies&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sY4fT473OsXs2QXy6_n4Dg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

2012-01-25T05:07:53.235Z

This comment has been removed by the author.

CGPGrey brought me here.

Thanks for the comment William. I don't see y...

2011-10-24T21:03:49.893+01:00

Thanks for the comment William.

I don't see your comment as mean at all but it does raise some more issues.

You'll see above that I called the editor of PC Pro magazine and he told me categorically that they have never been called PC Professional and the Wikipedia article you linked to states that the magazine was launched in November 1994.

Of course, the editor may be mistaken and the Wikipedia article is just something (peer reviewed) that I read on the internet. Tim Danton (PC Pro Editorial Director) reiterates the launch of the magazine as being in 1994 in this forum thread http://www.pcpro.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=347095&start=15

The British Library and The Library of Congress are the two largest legal deposit libraries in the world and they don't have a copy. I would not really expect to find it anywhere if these two do not hold a copy.

Do you have any copies left of the magazine you subscribed to, it may hold some interesting information such as the publisher or country of origin, for instance.

um not to be mean or anything, but I had a subscri...

2011-09-29T21:31:09.260+01:00

um not to be mean or anything, but I had a subscription to PC Professional magazine back in 1993, and yeah I believe they shortened it to PC Pro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Pro

Article writers come and go, and it was in 1993. I find it will be hard to take a magazine in that day and age and find a digital version, let alone a reference to the author anywhere else since the web hadn't exploded. Maybe if we search historical archives of a large library, but who wants to find a library that had a subscription to that magazine?

I'm glad to see people have been looking into ...

2011-05-27T02:46:38.107+01:00

I'm glad to see people have been looking into this, as I have been for quite some time. Snopes does have at least one article that they purposely posted to prove that people should do their own research, since, taking Snopes' word for it is just as bad as taking it from a random email. It's the "Sixpence" article here: http://www.snopes.com/humor/mediagoofs/sixpence.asp

I haven't ever seen any mention of Snopes putting in less obvious bits that weren't true as well, but this may well be it. Let's keep hunting.

Thanks Anonymous, please come back if it shows up....

2011-01-21T07:46:12.661Z

Thanks Anonymous, please come back if it shows up. I put an interlibrary request in from my local library but they never got back to me.

My story about this myth starts much like yours. I...

2011-01-20T23:16:17.287Z

My story about this myth starts much like yours. I just saw this comic

http://www.invisiblehairsuit.com/spider_rumor.htm

and started to look for some more information on the subject and that led me to the snopes article and then to here when I couldn't find the PC professional article. After that I checked http://www.worldcat.org/ and they have three listings for publications called PC Professional. Two are Swedish and one is Danish. So, I went ahead a put in an inter-library loan request in for the article using your citation. From here it's all up to the librarians at my college to figure out if it exists.

im so shocked at this. I'm a graphic design st...

2010-12-21T21:09:31.681Z

im so shocked at this. I'm a graphic design student and recently made 5 books that set out to debunk urban myths, one of them being about this 8 spider myth. i also used and trusted snopes and to be honest, didnt even think of checking out their sources. anyway, im really shocked to find out that there is no proof this article even exists! snopes, you disappoint me. i came across this blog looking for a quote from Lisa Holst or even some text from the article itself to add to my book, maybe i should make an extra book instead to debunk this myth within a myth!

im so shocked at this. I'm a graphic design st...

2010-12-21T21:08:59.476Z

2010-10-17T03:23:55.733+01:00

This comment has been removed by the author.

There is a German Computermagazine called "PC...

2010-10-16T11:29:29.063+01:00

There is a German Computermagazine called "PC Professionell". I read it at the German wikipedia. I can't read everything about it though (hey, my German isn't thát good)

But here is a little article about it: http://edenspiekermann.com/en/work/projects/pc-professionell

The article is called "Reading is Believing&q...

2010-02-02T10:14:11.625Z

The article is called "Reading is Believing". To me, that indicates it's a fake.

There are tiny bits of animal and insect parts in ...

2010-02-02T04:21:59.019Z

There are tiny bits of animal and insect parts in all our food. You didn't exactly SWALLOW 8 spiders, you ate the equivalent in your food.

Any update on this? I'm surprised that no one ...

2010-02-02T02:59:38.962Z

Any update on this? I'm surprised that no one from Snopes has contacted you.

Searching more, I found a bulletin board where you...

2009-10-20T04:14:08.656+01:00

Searching more, I found a bulletin board where you were also conversing about this. Oh, I see that that conversation inspired you to start this blog. The internet is a catalog of your every move.

I also found the article from 1997 from the Chicago Sun-Times. It isn't by Ellen Domke but is instead by ZAY N. SMITH, according to that paper's archives. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4397022.html

The plot thickens. Have you read that article? I wasn't willing to sign up for the "free" trial to read it.

I really wanted to read the original article to se...

2009-10-20T03:47:32.346+01:00

I really wanted to read the original article to see what else was on the list that Lisa supposedly wrote for this seemingly non-existent magazine. Could it possibly have been an email magazine that was never published in print? Lisa Holst, if you're out there, give us some sign!

Wow, thanks for this research! I'd just start...

2009-10-20T03:41:51.668+01:00

Wow, thanks for this research! I'd just started on my quest to find the original article, so this blog post has kept me from going on quite a wild goose chase. This won't stop me, though, from trying to befriend every Lisa Holst that I can find online.

I tried. Topics on the Snopes BB are pre-approved ...

2009-08-30T08:33:36.418+01:00

I tried. Topics on the Snopes BB are pre-approved by moderators and both times my new topic on the subject didn't get past the censorship.

It is entirely possible that the fact checkers and the moderators are the same team at Snopes.

Okay so I saw a link to a wikipedia article called...

2009-08-30T04:11:38.017+01:00

Okay so I saw a link to a wikipedia article called "List of misconceptions" and thought "Hey, I should add that one about eating spiders" because I heard it had been debunked when I looked it up. Wikipedia is pretty serious about sources now so I tried to find an independent verifiable source regarding the debunking information. I googled "lisa holst pc professional" and found your blog as the first result.

Have you considered posting this topic on the snopes.com messageboards? I'm sure there are some people there that would be very interested in reading this!!

Hey, came here to check out the blog linked on tha...

2009-04-17T20:02:00.000+01:00

Hey, came here to check out the blog linked on that British Blades site. Then again, I got there by googling Lisa Holst >_>

Sorry, I haven't found anything you guys there didn't.

just thought I'd say that I read your post. Nice d...

2009-02-09T23:44:00.000Z

just thought I'd say that I read your post. Nice domain name :) now get motivated!

Fascinating. I will not sleep well tonight knowing...

2009-01-01T05:52:00.000Z

Fascinating. I will not sleep well tonight knowing that there is a rip in the reputation of Snopes! Interested to hear if anymore comes to light.

Thanks for stopping by my blog to fill me in.

Thanks for the comment Mat. It does rather seem as...

2008-12-31T13:20:00.000Z

Thanks for the comment Mat. It does rather seem as though someone, somewhere has invented the whole article.

To what purpose will, obviously, remain unclear. My money is on a harassed and lazy researcher somewhere who just knew that the story was an urban myth but couldn't be bothered to check for sources.

It seems that it has come full circle now in that an attempt to debunk something as an urban myth has itself become an urban myth in need of debunking.

I don't think Snopes are likely to do that one though.