Desert Spider's Chain Letter

I’d like to know who wrote the first chain letter. The concept is a stroke of evil genius. I get at least two every week, all promising me agony or ecstasy, depending on my response to the e-mail.

I’ll give you an example:

To whom it may concern,

Oh boy, it’s your lucky day!
What you are reading is a magic message, penned by claws of Desert Spider himself, king of a distant netherworld. I’ve been asked by Desert Spider to do a survey on people who believe in elves. Please sign the attached list of names (after stating ‘yes’ or ‘no’) and pass it on to at least 25 recipients from your list of contacts.
Failure to pass Desert Spider’s Magic Message on will result in poverty, impotence, low self-esteem, high blood pressure and tummy aches for the next 12 years.
Remember to tick ‘yes’ or ‘no’ wisely, too. Those stating that elves are not real will be dealt with harshly in the afterlife. The sentence is generally 35 reincarnated life times as a one legged dassie in Hankey.
Please enjoy your day and keep smiling.
Hail Desert Spider!

I remember being in Standard 1 when I received my first chain letter. At the time, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the coolest thing to hit the street since Brave Star and Bionic 6. They were huge. Every child loved the program, the action figures and the costumes.

After a CNN reported on a group of kids in America who decided to jump down a manhole in New York (to search for the REAL turtles) and died in the process, the ninja turtles were deemed Satanic in Port Elizabeth. I knew children whose entire collection of ninja turtles toys were burnt and buried by their hysterical parents.

Rules were tight after that. Children were bored. Even pretending to play ninja turtles was banned at school.

Then, one fateful day, this guy named Lloyd gave me a chain letter. IT promised fatal doom if I didn’t send it to 20 people within 2 days. This scared me senseless; at 9 years old I only knew about 7 people outside my family. And I didn’t want anyone in my family to suffer Desert Spider’s hell whip for not believing in the letter’s magic. So I sucked it up and learned to use my dad’s work’s photo copying machine for something other than taking pictures of my anus.

When I distributed the sheets of paper at school the next day, the news spread like fungus in a gym shower. Kids were losing their heads badly, bawling their eyes out and phoning their parents to pick them up— saying anything to get to a copying machine and a post office by that afternoon.

Some kids were jumping on the cricket nets, pee-ing in the fish pond and sliding down banisters, under the assumption that imminent death was a license to live freely. When teachers got wind of the situation we were all addressed and told to ignore it. “This letter is the Satanists way of making little boys and girls scared! Don’t believe in it and nothing will happen!” our teacher promised us. We were told to forget the letter ever existed.

The next two days were hell. Its power was too real for anyone to forget the letter. I was sweating bullets. I made a deal in my head: if all the boys in Standard one suddenly died, I would take Lloyd down with me.

But, thankfully, nothing happened. Even though I still sleep with one eye open, fearing the appearance of Desert Spider, I delete chain letters on sight.
Hail Desert Spider