Terrified woman scared to sleep in own home after false widow spider bites her in the night

Terrified Sarah Lucie-Payne has been left afraid to sleep in her own home - after a killer false widow spider bit her in the night.

Sarah, 47, felt a sharp pain in her left hand when she woke up in the middle of the night but dozed back off to sleep.

She developed two large red lumps from the bite and has since found a ‘nest’ behind her bed - but the spider is still on the loose in her house.

A spider expert told her the itchy marks which turned into a painful lump are typical of a false widow spider.

The dog walker - who needed strong antibiotics to stop the poison spreading - has now thoroughly cleaned and hoovered her whole house but can't find the creature.

She now has to check behind her bed every time she goes to sleep in a bid to keep the scary spider away.

Sarah, from Worthing, West Sussex, said: ‘I have to have a search around the bedroom when I go to bed and I'm looking around myself.

'I have even taken the pictures off the wall to see if it is hiding, but I can't find it.

'I'm just hoping that I can't possibly be bitten twice. That would be really bad luck.'

Sarah, from Worthing, West Sussex, was bitten in the middle of the night earlier this month and initially dismissed it as a mosquito bite.

But after the bite started to bubble and blister she discovered a false widow's web behind her bed and a friend who keeps spiders confirmed she had been bitten by the poisonous creature.

She thought the wound would heal itself but a dentist later told her to go straight to Worthing Hospital for emergency treatment when the poison started to spread.

'I woke up in the night and got up to go to the loo and though 'oh that's feel strange, I think I've been bitten' - it was itchy - but I went back to sleep,' she explained.

'In the morning I had this little red patch but I carried on with my day until it started to feel like it was rubbing on my coat sleeve.

'I looked down and it had this massive red blister - it looked like a big jelly baby.

'I wasn't that worried about it - I thought it was really weird - but I showed it to someone who is a bit of a spider expert and keeps tarantulas.

'He said it was definitely a false widow bite and said that I would know it was one because they have very messy webs.

'I knew then that it was because I had been looking around my bedroom and next to the bed I found this huge cobweb and when I saw it I thought exactly that - it was really messy.

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'It was getting a red ring around it.  They removed the blister, cleaned it, dressed it, and give me a week's worth of antibiotics.’

Experts believe seven different species of false widow spider have been spotted in the UK.