Please identify this spider

Factual Questions
1

I’m having a spider infestation (have killed about 50 or 60 in the past month). I have a thread going in MPSIMS and asked for an ID of the spider in question, but figure it’d be better answered here.

Here’s a picture: sparky!'s nemesis, the spider.

It actually looks a lot larger when up and about.

Some characteristics:
it runs really fast
it usually is found on my ceiling, quite often near a wall
it can shoot down vertically on a web at the quickest threat
it’s a light brown/tan, almost cream colored
I live in NH

Any idea what kind it is? I’m at my whits end with these things and have started waking at night falsely feeling like something was crawling on me!

Anyway, exterminator will be here soon, but until then, I’d love to know what I have been dealing with.

2

I posted in the other thread before I found this, but I’ll repost here: Looks like a Yellow Sac spider. The site is from Michigan but apparently they’re in NH too. And when we get them, we get them in bunches, and they have an unnerving habit of dropping down from the ceiling five inches in front of my face. Couldn’t tell you how many times that’s happened. Gah.

And they are somewhat venomous. Sweetie got bit by…something…several years ago, ended up with a weird scabby spot a quarter inch wide on his back and felt like crap for a couple of weeks. I can’t prove it but reading up it sounded a lot like the symptoms of a yellow sac bite, and they ARE all over around here at certain times of the year. I like house spiders (go ahead, eat all the bugs thank you) but I won’t hesitate to squish a yellow sac when I see one.

3

I don’t think that’s it; the abdomen (?) of them isn’t that big.

And thank God, cause I really don’t need to think about how many potentially venomous spiders I’ve killed!

4

I was going mostly by coloring. The abdomen is a pretty variable part of the spider; and frankly, that’s the fattest yellow sac spider I’ve ever seen. There’s a pic of one on this page that looks quite a bit different in size.

Check around the edges of your walls where they meet the ceiling for little half-inch-long puffs of cobweb. They build little hammocks to hunker down in. There are actually two of them (abandoned) in the office I’m sitting in right now. Clearly I need to dust.

And I didn’t mean to sound alarmist, they’re not especially dangerous, they don’t bite often and they’ve never killed anyone; they’re just one of very few spiders in NA that can cause a reaction in humans when they bite.

5

That posted pic looks much more like my pests.

I have found a few cases where the spider was against the joint of the wall/ceiling in a silk sac. shudder

Thanks for your help; I think you nailed the damn things.

Now off to Google to learn those little bastards up.

6

name the spider Boris.