While I (21F) was living temporarily in Taipei, I made plans to meet up with some friends for dinner at a place in the Zhongshan District that one of them owned. Google Maps showed the address I was sent as a little business in an alley, but I figured it was just another case of having to find the actual house yourself due to the complicated address system in Taipei.
It was already dark outside, and I was a couple of minutes early. I arrived at the door I believed to be the one I was looking for and realized that there was no “Level 1,” as per the address I was sent. So I rang Level 2 to see if perhaps, by “Level 1,” they meant the first floor (Level 2). I got buzzed in, so I walked up the dark stairwell to Level 2 and talked to a polite but confused older lady who was clearly not who I was looking for. The only other door on Level 2 was clearly not their place either.
Realizing I must be in the wrong building—and with no one answering my calls or texts—I trudged back down the dark stairwell and prepared to exit the building. But then I stopped dead in my tracks.
Like many buildings in Taipei, to exit after coming down the stairs, you have to walk along a narrow path to a big metal door and push a button to release the latch. In this narrow, dimly lit pathway, on the wall to my left, was a monstrous black huntsman spider. What little light there was in the stairwell reflected off its eyes.
We had a standoff as I tried to keep myself composed. I inched forward, and it scurried a little to the side—and I was like, nope!—and clambered back up the stairs to safety. It was dawning on me that there was no way around it; I was going to have to squeeze by it to get out of this creepy building in this creepy alley at night. I seriously weighed my options: was waiting it out worth spending a night in a horror-movie stairwell?
So, I mustered up every ounce of will to live and ran past it, sending it scurrying in its horrifying way. I clawed the door open and slammed it shut behind me as quickly as I could.