We get spiders of several kinds down here in the Florida Keys, and we also get 3 or 4 kinds of scorpions (plus some rattlesnakes and other vipers, and now pythons are moving here too). The worst encounter I've had so far was back in 1998 when I turned in my desk chair and saw a scorpion on the window drape right behind my head. It was maybe a foot and a half from my face when I turned around. The thing that made it a little scary, aside from thinking it might be able to jump on my face (and that it might
want to), was that scorpion mothers carry their young on their back, and this little mother's back was covered with baby scorpions. So I definitely didn't want to try to catch it and wind up with them all scurrying away and hiding all over the house.
(I haven't made 30 posts yet so I can't post a pic but here's what one looks like with their babies ... industryinc dot com/stuff/scorpion-with-babies.jpg )
Down here we always turn our shoes over and bang them against things to shake out anything that may be sleeping in there, and we're careful about reaching into places we can't see. But aside from that (and the hurricanes and storm surges) it's paradise!
