Did or do these gigantic spiders really exist in Finland and/or Northern Europe?

Question

In the year 2000, the newspapers in a small coastal town of Finland ("Hanko"; current population: ~8k) had some very disturbing reports of a couple who had just moved into a new rental apartment/house in the central part of the town, and there encountered these monstrous spiders that look like they come straight out of a horror movie. In fact, apparently, they are literally the kind of spiders used in the classic spider horror movie "Arachnophobia"...

Digging through old things recently, I encountered the saved newspaper pages and was shocked by just how large and disgusting they look. I must have repressed this whole thing for the last 21 years, since I first heard about it when it was current. From the oddly-worded Swedish-language report (clearly not written by somebody with perfect Swedish skills), it's not made clear whether the couple was "just" working on fixing the place up, or if they actually had already moved in and saw these monsters while they were there to sleep. But the basic point is that the spiders allegedly existed at all, and may well still exist...

The article also notes that these spiders were "common" in Denmark in the beginning of the 1900s, further creeping me out. My initial assumption and hope was that these spiders had miraculously survived in their undisturbed habitat for 50 years (the article also mentions that they were "last spotted" in the 1950s), and that they were not native to Europe at all, but simply had been accidentally shipped in a crate with exotic fruits or something from some tropical island somewhere back in the day, and had not spread but simply hung around in their little basement in a place which, somehow, just happened to not have any humans going there for all these years.

The article further mentions that some kind of professor had determined them to be Tegenari Atrica spiders. However, looking them up on Wikipedia, I got redirected to the disturbingly named article "giant house spider", where it's mentioned that these are:

among the largest spiders of Central and Northern Europe.

And:

original habitat consists mostly of caves, or dry forests where it is found under rocks, but it is a common spider in people's homes.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_house_spider

The map on that page suggests that they are all over Northern Europe... But if I ever saw such a spider, I could never again live in or visit that house and would need to have it burned to the ground and then salt spread all over the ground in the extended area so that nothing can ever grow or live there again. Not exaggerating.

I actually tried to contact the newspaper about this but haven't heard anything back so far. Hopefully, it was all completely fake and made up due to a shortage of "exciting" news, but if real, I'm not able to ever revisit that place (the town in general) out of fear of encountering further such spiders.

I'm having very serious trouble believing that people ever had these huge spiders "commonly" inside their living places, let alone these days. And I wonder what "common" means in the context; to me, it means that you regularly spot them on walls or walking across the street, etc. The Wikipedia article even mentions that they have started being spotted in some Eastern European countries in "the last few years", which is very bad news for me, and really makes me wonder what could possibly explain that.

I had to dig up the old scanner and scan the newspaper pages for this question:

Scan #1 (Swedish-language article with a photo): https://i.ibb.co/yy00H2b/1.jpg (link broken)

Scan #2 (Swedish-language article, continued): https://i.ibb.co/DWfN3W1/2.jpg (link broken)

Scan #3 (Finnish-language article with the scariest photo): https://i.ibb.co/pW6gZMx/3.jpg (link broken)

I have not manipulated those photos in any way, but hopefully, the newspaper did... Maybe somebody wanted to show off their skills with Photoshop, the year being 2000? This is a place where I spent a lot of my childhood and we slept in all kinds of old houses there. I don't recall any monster spiders, but my skin starts crawling just thinking about the fact that I was sleeping quite near the area where the spiders were allegedly found... Although the exact street/address is frustratingly not mentioned in either article.

I almost get the feeling that this whole thing has been "hushed away" in order to not scare away tourists, rather than sensationalized. I would be very interested in hearing serious theories or even hard facts regarding this.

Answer 1

No and yes.

No - the articles are fear-mongering. I can see that without even being able to read a word of Suomi (Finnish) or Swedish.

In particular the Finnish article with the couple holding a picture of the spider. In this case the picture is a close-up picture of the spider that has then been expanded onto a largish photo (I would guess about 12 in/30 cm by 8 in/20 cm). In this picture you can see the texture of the cloth the spider is sitting on (seeing the texture would be unusual for a life-size photo) and a coin in the top left of the photo. I can't make out the coin denomination, but I doubt that they have a currency with approximately 8 cm (3 in) diameter coins - indeed the largest Finnish Makka was just over 3 cm (1.2 in), but this was only used between 1928 and 1939 (according to the linked Wikipedia page), so the coin is not likely to be that large. As you can see if you look at the photo, the diameter of the coin is about the length of the body, so at most the body will be about 1 inch, and the legs about twice that.

In the top-right of the same article is a photo that is much more realistic size - compared to the hand you can see that the body of the spider is about 1-finger width, so 1-2 cm or slightly less than 1 inch. If you then refer to the description part of the Wikipedia article you linked on the Giant House Spider (Eratigena atrica), you can see that the dimensions of the spider indicate body length of 18 mm (0.73 in) and a typical leg span of 45 mm (1.8 in) - so the hand picture is more realistic. They can have larger leg spans of up to 70 mm (3 in) apparently, but I have no idea how common this is.

However, the yes part is that: Yes, this type of spider does exist. They are widespread in Europe and parts of North America (introduced, but there are native Eratigena species in NA). They are mostly harmless and very unlikely to bite unless attacked. If they do bite, it will likely to only cause local pain with very little envenomation.

You are only likely to find them inside when it starts to get cold outside; as is the case for many animals, they try to find somewhere warm to live.

Note the spiders used in Arachnophobia were Avondale spiders (Delena cancerides) a harmless, but ugly looking, member of the Huntsman spider family, and a Tarantula species (I don't know which one, but there are quite a few species). Avondale spiders are from Australia and were introduced to Avondale in New Zealand, where they got their name, as they are apparently uncommon in Australia. Neither the Tarantula nor Avondale spiders are found natively in Europe.