I still have a blood disorder with the possibility of severe reactions to insect bites or stings in the future. No one knows what caused Mrs. Kempston's terrible ordeal, but her symptoms suggest that it was the bite of a brown recluse spider. The brown recluse is a shy quarter-sized spider with a violin shaped area on the top of its head. Here in Buffalo we are well outside its normal range but the Kempstons had just returned from an Ohio campsite just within that range. This spider is known to hide in stored clothing and might have hitchhiked back to New York with them.
All spiders are poisonous.
Their venom is designed to paralyze and even partly digest insect prey. But for most species the tiny amount of venom they inject doesn't harm humans. The major North American exceptions are the black widow and brown recluse spiders. The black widow's toxin attacks the nervous system but is not tissue killing like that of the brown recluse and the black-footed sac spider, a rather common spider of this area. However, serious reactions like Mrs. Kempston's have not been reported for the sac spider.