Police dash cam footage shows the sinister moment a "giant" spider creeps up behind an officer from the Fulshear Police Department.
The unnamed officer was in the middle of a traffic stop when an absolute "beast" of a spider slowly emerged from the grass, approaching the cop in a very eerie manner.
This is the unsettling moment an intimidatingly large spider appears to stalk an unsuspecting officer during a traffic stop:The spider appears to be so gigantic that, real (and alive) though it is, it almost resembles a sort of mythical monster spider you might see in a CGI superhero movie.
But before you get too worked up - the encounter, which took place in Fulshear, Texas - is actually not as alarming as it may seem.
In fact, the spider is actually a lot smaller in real life, but appears more imposing due to the fact that it was actually crawling on the officer's windshield.
If you rewatch the footage, you'll see that the spider isn't actually so giant after all. It's also not pursuing the officer as seems to be the case upon initial viewing. The arachnid is simply making its way across the windshield.
The video was posted by the Fulshear Police Department on their Facebook page, along with the caption:
"Who needs Hollywood special effects? This little guy was positioned perfectly on the windshield of the patrol car and gave our clerk, who was reviewing the video, quite the 'Halloween scare'"
The spooky clip, posted last October, has since garnered over 60,000 likes, 579 shares, and 141 comments.
And despite the caption's disclaimer about "special effects", a number of naysayers in the comments felt the need to point out that the footage was clearly fake.
"Fake!!" one user wrote. "That spider is on a flat horizontal surface!! If it was on the windshield you'd see the underside of the spider!!"
"Fake," another chimed in. "Because the 'spider' isn’t casting a shadow."
"No spider shadow, but officer shadow," a third agreed. "I don't believe it. Officer never looked at it either, no reaction from the driver."
"We never said it was real," the department later clarifies in the comments. "It was at best, an optical illusion. The spider was walking on the windshield during the traffic stop making it appear to be a large spider walking on the road.