This photo does no justice to the size of this spider. I took the picture slightly zoomed and the camera was probably 2-3 feet away from the insect. If I had to guess, roughly, or larger than, the size of a golf ball in diameter. Location: Middle Tennessee (Dickson County), USA.
Fishing spider would be my guess. Very pretty.
'scary' is how I would have described it, but each one to their own :-)
It is a fishing spider in the genus Dolomedes, perhaps D. tenebrosus...
