When I was really young I had a very strange uncle also called Robert! who delighted in finding as many ways to scare me witless as he could. One of his favorites was to whisper grim stories into my ear, stories that often related the twisted deeds of a horrible boy-eating creature called simply “the Spiderman”. One night he actually went so far as to climb in through my bedroom window after the lights had been put out. I screamed for what seemed like days. The “Spiderman” stories ended that night, but my fear of of the dark and spiders persisted for quite some more time.