A man obsessed with horror films has spent years building tiny horror-inspired enclosures for his 121 tarantulas.
Spider man Steve Thornton, 49, has transformed his living room into a horror fan's dream, spending £2,000 on homemade horror-movie enclosures for his eight-legged friends.
The father-of-six began his spider collection 13 years ago, with his obsession growing ever since, - meaning he now has a collection of 121 tarantulas worth £4,000.
The wood machinist from Milton Keynes started building the creepy enclosures four years ago and is in the process of building more for all 121 spiders to have their own terrifying homes.
Steve said: "I watch nothing but horror movies so thought to bring the two together it mixes my two passions.
"The enclosures are more the obsession now than the spiders, to be honest.
"The thing with spiders is that some of them are really quite boring and you never see them. So, I figured that if you built something really cool, you still have something to look at.
"My favourite enclosure is the Friday the 13th one, I think it's because it's one of my favourite horrors.
"I'm doing the American Werewolf in London, at the minute, it's a classic!
"The list goes on, whenever I'm out people are telling me that I need to do this one, and I need to do that one.
"Usually when I'm finishing one, I have the next two, three, four planned already.
"I've done a lot of 80s classics, The Evil Dead, Hellraiser, Elm Street, the Alien films, Michael Myers Halloween.
"It's quite cool, when you're sitting down watching a film in the living room and all the lights are off, it's eerie."
As a father of an autistic son, Steve has managed to raise over £2000 for charity after auctioning some of his enclosures at spider shows in the UK.
He said: "I've sold a couple for charity work that I do. I build some and auction them off at charities.
"My little boy has autism, so I did a big thing last year where we did loads of raffles and built an enclosure.
"They have spider shows here in the UK and we auctioned off an enclosure at one of the shows which was quite cool.
"The enclosures do take some time; with some taking a couple of months to build."
Steve was introduced to the world of spiders after a work colleague revealed his collection.
However, Steve still remains fearful of house spiders.
Steve said: "I got into it through a mate that I worked with. Before I met the guy and went around to his house to see them, I had no interest, and I had a fear of them as well.
"But they're not like normal house spiders, normal house spiders freak me out which is weird. And knowing that half of the tarantulas I have would rather bite me than do anything else harmful.
"If one bit you would likely inflict a pain comparable to that resulting from a bee or wasp sting. You would only really have issues If you're allergic to bee stings.
"They are venomous but very mild. After 13 years I've not been bit yet, a couple of nearly's but I'm very careful. It's an obsession!"
