Brave man allows monstrous huntsman spider to live in his house for a YEAR - as other homeowners share their more horrific encounters with arachnids

An Australian man has shared a terrifying photo of a giant huntsman the size of a face perched on his living room wall.

Jake Gray initially saw the spider a year ago inside his Cairns home in Far North Queensland, only to find it had grown to a monstrous size 12 months later. 

'Check out this big girl... the mighty huntsman,' he wrote on the Australian Spider Identification Facebook page.

Jake Gray found the spider on the wall of his Cairns home in north Queensland and said it has been living there for about a year

While Mr Gray seemed to be coping with the arachnid living on his property, other social media commenters were not as excited about the size of the spider. 

'Is this a jungle?' One woman said.

'Bruh that's the spider's house now, make sure they have a copy of the deed,' another person wrote. 

'It's going to have to start paying rent soon and contribute to the upkeep,' one user commented.

Fellow Queenslanders shared their own stories about finding scary spiders in unfortunate places, with one woman finding a banded huntsman in her car.

'A few years ago while driving to school on the Gold Coast, my son in the backseat said to his brother in the front "what's that behind your head?",' one woman wrote.

'I looked and stopped the car and we all got out screaming.

Fellow Queenslanders shared their own stories about finding scary spiders in unfortunate places, with one woman finding a banded huntsman in her car

Another woman had been driving in the car last month when she found a huge huntsman crawling inside the car (pictured right)

'I picked up the spider with my daughter's blanket and threw it onto the grass.'

Another woman said she was driving in her car when she spotted a menacing shadow crawling across the window.

'I nearly crashed, the poor guys at the produce place had to get it out for me,' she wrote.

'It's the biggest one I've ever seen.'

One Queensland woman walked into her laundry to use the bathroom but found two huntsman near the toilet.

A man posted an image of a huntsman so big it's taking up much of his car's back window

One Queensland woman walked into her laundry to use the bathroom but found two huntsman near the toilet

'They gave me a heart attack and forced me to go and pee on the back lawn,' she said.

'Luckily it was late at night! I hate spiders.' 

There are more than 155 different species of huntsman in Australia.  They are large, long-legged spiders and are mostly coloured grey and brown with banded legs. 

HUNTSMAN SPIDERS: 

Huntsman spiders are large, long-legged spiders. They are mostly grey to brown, sometimes with banded legs.

They are commonly found living under loose bark on trees, in crevices on rock walls and in logs, under rocks and slabs of bark on the ground, and on foliage.

Many huntsman spiders have rather flattened bodies adapted for living in narrow spaces under loose bark or rock crevices. This is aided by their legs which, instead of bending vertically in relation to the body, have the joints twisted so that they spread out forwards and laterally in crab-like fashion.

Huntsman spiders of many species sometimes enter houses. They are also notorious for entering cars, and being found hiding behind sun visors or running across the dashboard.

Source: Australian Museum