I experienced almost the same problems that get described in
bug id #8133.
To be more specific:
 When my program called the pspell_new function from apache
or from the command line as user nobody it couldn't get a
dictionary(no segfaults). When it was run as a normal user
it run ok.
 The solution was a chmod o+r /usr/local/lib/aspell
/usr/local/share/aspell
These dirs had the x flag for all but not the r.