Rhianna Benson
It's finally time to take down our Christmas trees, and though some celebrators are already mourning the festive plant's absence from their living rooms, others are glad to have their house back to normal.
One woman, however, was plunged into her worst nightmare while packing up her Christmas trees, after making a spine-tingling discovery living within the branches:
TikTok user Violet (@violentlyblonde) was clearing her house of her festive decorations this week, after buying a real tree for the first time.
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While taking the baubles and tinsel off the tree, she never imagine the horror that would transpire when she looked deeper into the fir tree.
"Look at the f*****g state of me," she recalls. "This is a nightmare."
It was then that the social media star revealed the terror that she'd discovered, in the form of hundreds of baby spiders.
"I've gone to take the Christmas tree down and the whole Christmas tree is covered in spiders!" she was seen in tears.
"Baby spiders everywhere. I don't know what to do."
It was then that Violet panned the camera around to face the tree before zooming in on an eight-legged critter, which she claims felt like it was 'crawling all over' her.
Claiming that the arachnids were 'literally everywhere', the distressed content creator admitted she didn't know what to do.
And it sounds as though many of her followers were just as haunted as she was by her chilling discovery.
"This reaction is so valid. Spiders are so scary," one viewer penned in the comments.
"I'd cry my eyes out too, I have a genuine phobia of spiders, I'm absolutely terrified of just one let alone loads, I couldn't do it, I'd be out so fast," confessed another.
In another video responding to other viewers' claims that they couldn't see the spiders, Violet opened up about her life-long fear.
"Yes, I had a meltdown about baby spiders because I am petrified," she disclosed. "My phobia of spiders isn't a joke. I genuinely am petrified.
"So I was taking the baubles off the tree. I was yanking them off. I couldn't even be a***d to even do it, and then I realised 'what is that on me?'. It was a spider.
"I had a panic attack."
And it turns out, Violet had every reason to fear her latest discovery, because if you spot walnut-sized lumps on the branches of your Christmas tree, you should be chucking it out immediately, being that these are egg sacs that can carry between 100-200 praying mantis.
Violet then admitted that she'd originally filmed her reaction video to send to her friends, but opted to upload it to TikTok when she realised it was funny.
Luckily for her, her boyfriend eventually came home and disposed of the tree himself.