Britain is said to be suffering a surge in dangerous spider bites. From toddlers being rushed to A&E to young women undergoing emergency surgery, the stories that have accompanied recent news reports about hospital admissions from spider bites doubling in the last decade were enough to have arachnophobes in pieces.

The stories were based on a Freedom of Information request about NHS figures - figures I believed because I'd been told I was a victim. Back in November, a small bite on my forefinger ballooned into a throbbing lump that doctors sliced open before pulling out a "spider fang". It was deemed serious, and if left untreated, potentially deadly. I spent hours in the hospital being pumped full of antibiotics until the infection subsided.

But the shocking flaw in my story, or indeed the whole arachnid panic in general, is that there's a good chance that I wasn't bitten by a spider at all.

Once I switched from subject to investigator, I started to suspect the eight-legged culprits, whom I'd blamed, are in fact innocent victims all along.

The doubts began when I relayed my story to two different academics who study spiders for a living. Their opinions on the idea that a UK-based creature could leave a fang that was removable with tweezers were definitive: it was "impossible rubbish".

The gaping hole in the narrative emerged as I was describing the incident to Professor Sara Goodacre, who teaches Evolutionary Biology and Genetics at the University of Nottingham. Midway through my story, she stopped me with a simple question: "How do you know it was a spider?"

"Well, erm," I replied. "That's what the doctors told me."

"But you didn't see it?" she continued. Cue my halted response: "No... I went to the hospital with a bite and they said it was a spider."

"Well, you know, they're not an arachnologist, because, frankly, arachnologists would raise both eyebrows at what you've said," said Professor Goodacre.

"Normally, a spider's fangs are like the tiniest little microscopic translucent thing. You wouldn't see it. I find it hard to believe it would penetrate human skin. But also, if a spider's that big, why doesn't anybody [who gets bitten] ever see it when it's [happening?"

And with that, my spider bite story started to unravel.

But, more ominously, so too did the reports I'd read of fellow bite victims describing the horrific effects. In almost all the stories, as Professor Goodacre said, nobody ever saw the spider do the biting.

Take the victim of a False Widow bite, who told the BBC in 2023 she thought her finger would "explode". It turned out she had not seen the creature or felt the bite; it was confirmed, as mine was, by a doctor afterwards.

Or the Welsh mum-of-two who "suffered agonies" a year earlier when a huge purple swelling appeared on her thigh. She could only recall "a sensation of something crawling on her leg", and neither saw the spider nor felt a sting.

Even in the most serious and tragic case that involved a Hull student dying from sepsis after allegedly being bitten by a spider, there was absolutely no hard evidence of the creature's guilt beyond his reporting an infestation days before getting an injury on his back.

Most articles based on the PA Freedom of Information request data blame the Noble False Widow for the spiralling figures.

The species was first spotted in the UK in the 1870s and is believed to travelled to these shores among cargo from Madeira and the Canary Islands.

Easily identified by their distinctive skull-shaped markings on their back, the spiders formed established populations in southern England in the 1980s, which the Natural History Museum says have now spread northwards.

But when you dig a little deeper, it becomes clear that the Noble False Widow is the only possible arachnid explanation for the venomous bites reported. Out of 680 species in Britain, it is the only one proven to cause wounds of medical significance.

"This is a spider with jaws that can break human skin and has venom that can cause, usually very minor, pain and irritation," says Dr Geoff Oxford, a retired University of York academic and Honorary Secretary of the British Arachnological Society.

"So inevitably, as the number of spiders in their density has increased in Britain, more and more people are potentially exposed to this spider. [But] in many cases, there is no real evidence that a swollen spot or whatever it is, has been caused by a spider."

Experts at the University of Galway's Venom Systems Laboratories who have extensively studied false widow spider bites, found that, while the species can cause a painful bite comparable to a wasp sting, in the vast majority of cases, it only causes mild, localised symptoms.

Infections that can lead to hospitalisation are typically caused by everyday bacteria entering the puncture wound rather than by the spider's venom itself.

But even then, false widow spiders are generally non-aggressive towards humans and their primary instinct is to flee to safety rather than attack. They will only bite if they are provoked or trapped against your skin. So what is going on? Dr Oxford points to another explanation for the surge in spider bite numbers - patients themselves.

"People self-diagnose via the internet, but even if they go to a medical practitioner, they are really not experienced in recognising a spider bite from any other kind of irritation," he says.

"It's quite difficult to say a particular wound is caused by a spider. So there is an overdiagnosis, or exaggeration, of real spider bites."

Dr Oxford was incredulous when he heard the ghoulish description of a fang being removed from my finger.

"When a spider bites, its jaws go in, come out and the spider moves off. I guess the doctor was probably thinking of a bee sting, where the sting stays in the skin because it has a barbed point.

"You have to ask, what training did doctors get in recognising spider bites? In this country, it's zero. In countries where spiders are really dangerous, doctors know what to look for. But, in this country, I bet only one in 100 GPs actually has experienced a true spider bite."

The consequences of the fear generated by people believing there is a surge in spider bite hospitalisations are serious.

At a minimum, it gives people unnecessary anxiety and in the worst case, it risks causing a mass hysteria event where more spider bite reports are driven by psychological and social factors rather than a real increase in problems.

In 2018, for example, four schools in east London were closed for almost a month while buildings were fumigated, a measure that experts said was both unnecessary and more likely to harm children than the spiders themselves.

As Professor Adam Hart, from the University of Gloucestershire, points out, we should be wary of leaning on stories that demonise a species many people are already fearful of.

"Spiders are familiar to most of us in the sense that they're in our homes," he says. "So the notion that spiders can cause a medical problem is exciting and it's media-friendly.

"But in terms of the actual data, it's very rare that anyone's ever seen it happen. This is not a problem that needs to occupy our daily risk assessment.

"The other danger, of course, is that people start hearing this about spiders, already don't really like them and are [therefore] quite quick to kill them.

"[But] actually, spiders form an important part of the ecosystem and do some very useful jobs, as predators. They really need more support."

As Professor Hart says, the most common consequence of spider hysteria is that cobwebs are swept away and creatures crushed, which, of course, means there are fewer of them to catch flies.

The irony is that biting flies are extremely common in the UK. Unlike spiders, they will attack humans to feed on blood, leaving a single puncture or tear that causes intense itching and swelling. This, of course, poses a risk of secondary bacterial infection from scratching.

But even that risk pales into insignificance compared to the dangers posed by tics, splinters or dogs - environmental factors we give little care to on a daily basis.

As for me, I came to realise that the spider bite provided a neat certainty to the origin of my infected wound. Without that story, I was left with a disturbing mystery: how did I end up with this strange object inside my finger? Neither the experts nor I had an answer.

I, for one, have learned something from this spider investigation. I was too quick to judge without evidence and will no longer slander those eight-legged beasts. Spiders, the case against you was weak and built on a bad reputation rather than facts, and for spreading those untruths, I'm sorry.