12. Being bitten by a baboon spider in South Africa is believed by some to have inspired the character of Shelob
Shelob, like Aragog in Harry Potter, is a name guaranteed to put the fear of God into any arachnophobe. She has all the horrifying characteristics of a spider that anyone scared of arachnids will tell you about: dangerous to people, devilishly cunning, intelligent, and absolutely evil. And massive, as all spiders seem to those who fear them. It’s therefore not surprising to learn that Tolkien himself had a checkered history with our eight-legged friends. As a toddler growing up in South Africa (see below), the young Tolkien was once bitten by the nightmarish Baboon Spider (above).
Tolkien however denied that there was any link between the incident and the creation of Shelob: ‘people are welcome to the notion… [but] I can only say that I remember nothing about it, should not know it if I had not been told; and I do not dislike spiders particularly, and have no urge to kill them. I usually rescue those whom I find in the bath!’ His son, Michael, to whom he told the original Middle Earth bedtime stories, however, was mortally terrified of spiders, which may account for the characteristics of Shelob.