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Writer Chris Woodyard, author of the books "The Victorian Book of the Dead", "Ghost in Black", "Horror without a Head", "Face in the Window" and the seven-volume series "The Ghost of Ohio", published on January 9, 2018 on the website hauntedohiobooks.com a collection of stories called "Prophetic Spiders".

Woodyard begins by mentioning the familiar short story by E. B. White, "Charlotte's Web," published in 1958. As a child, Chris never thought about how White came up with the idea of a spider writing in a web, but perhaps he knew about the fashion for "trained spiders" and "prophetic spiders" in the press of the XIX and early XX centuries.

In his article, Woodyard lists the cases of the discovery of various inscriptions on the web, and wonders about the reasons for their origin. What could it be: superpowers, spirit possession, or automatic writing in spiders?

We decided to keep the story that seemed most interesting to us in this section. She talks about how the sinister comments from the spider caused the murder of a man in a Toledo bar. This story was widely publicized and covered in the press in articles with titles such as "The Spider spins the epitaph of murder" or "The Spider weaves a deadly tale."

The Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot newspaper (August 20, 1901, page 2):

THE SPIDER CAUSES HORROR

The name of the murdered man is woven into the web.

Toledo, OH., August 20, Jim Lee was killed in a saloon on Canton Avenue last Thursday, and his killer is now in jail. Jim Lee was a prominent figure, and the residents of the neighborhood were waiting for something strange to happen. And yesterday morning, something really happened that would make even a non-believer in spirits wipe the cold sweat from his forehead.

A few feet above the intersection of Jackson and Canton Avenues is a billboard, and a few feet further is a chute in which a spider has woven its web and is resting contentedly in the middle. A little higher up is the alley where Jim Lee was killed. The gutter in which the spider settled is located right next to the house where the victim lived.

Early yesterday morning, a woman living in this house was horrified to discover that the spider had woven the words "My Jim" on one side and "Murder" on the other into its web. These words, which a correspondent of our newspaper saw yesterday at about 10 o'clock in the morning, were as legible as if they were handwritten.

The letters are woven into a web and consist of the same substance as the web, and are connected to the spider by silk threads forming a web.

When the letters of the word "Murder" were partially blown away by the wind later that day, it was no longer so clear, but the words "My Jim" were still visible, written in a simple, Gothic-like font.

Alas, in fact, someone has woven a tangled web of deception…

The same newspaper Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot (September 30, 1901, p. 1) a month later, I published a continuation of this story:

The amazing mystery of the Toledo Web has finally been solved. A few days ago, thousands of Toledo residents gathered on Canton Avenue, not far from the courthouse, where the words "My Jim" and "Murder" appeared on the web. ...What made the residents of this area shudder every time they looked at her or thought about her was the fact that a web was woven on the corner of the house where Jim Lee, a colored man, was killed a day or two ago. The letters were white, and the web seemed several shades darker. However, everyone who saw it was convinced that it could not be the work of human hands.

The names appeared on other webs, but the mystery remained unsolved until Mrs. Leggett, who came here from Detroit, said that her husband had written the letters.

She made this confession to calm the maid, who showed signs of insanity due to the cobwebs in the house where Lee was killed. Mrs. Leggett said that her husband makes letters from fibers that he takes from the web. Having built a chain of such letters, he weaves them into a web. He slightly moistens the letters, and then easily blows them onto the web, and they stick to it, as if they were put there by the spider himself.

Of course, a gusty breeze soon destroys the letters or blurs them together. Leggett makes inscriptions so skillfully that no one, except those who know how to make them, will suspect deception.

Leggett made inscriptions with names to draw attention to his invention, hoping to use it for advertising purposes.

An interesting publicity stunt, especially for that time. The author points out that the web with the inscription "Murder" has gained huge popularity in the press and even gave rise to a semblance of fashion.

Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to find other references to this story, so it may turn out to be fiction. If you have links to such information that do not lead to Chris Woodyard's website, leave them in the comments.