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    17 Unspeakably Gross Insect Horror Stories

    Why do bugs like going in ears so much?

    We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us their worst experiences with bugs. Here are some of the most horrifying tales.

    1. Never use a blowdryer

    I was living in a pretty run down rooming house. I hadn't used my blowdryer in a few months. When I finally did, I turned it on and a colony of a million cockroaches exploded onto my face.

    taeghans

    2. Never go camping

    I woke up in the middle of the night and felt a tingling in my throat and mouth. I put my chin on my chest looking down my body. Three moths were walking up my chest towards my face. I coughed and spit. Two moths had climbed inside of my mouth while I slept. One had made it far enough into my mouth it was attempting to climb down my throat. After ten minutes of coughing and spitting, I managed to get the moths out of my mouth and throat. They scurried around on the ground for a bit and then just flew away, like they hadn't just scarred me for life.

    jeredb2

    3. Never drink chocolate milk

    I mixed up a big glass of Nestle's Quik and ice cold milk. Yum! At first mouthful I felt something odd and huge on my tongue, and spit a huge cockroach into the sink.

    —Deb Gaither, Facebook

    4. Never play a recorder

    I must have been about 10 and like most kids that age had a recorder for music class. I hadn't played the thing in months and found it lying on my closet floor. When I put the recorder to my mouth several earwigs that had inhabited the instrument, decided that my mouth looked like a better home. Earwigs! In my mouth! I've never been the same...

    —Kit Hamley, Facebook

    5. Never go to sleep

    I woke up in my bed, covered in hundreds of centipedes (non-poisonous northern ones). They were curled up next to my head, crawling all over my face, and even curled up around my nether regions. I have no idea why it happened, as it never did again.

    —Joe O'Dell, Facebook

    6. Never have a boyfriend

    One time I had an ex-boyfriend throw a lightening bug at me. It managed to fly into my ear and began digging up while I screamed. My mother didn't believe it was in my ear until my ear started glowing. Managed to get it out with a safety pin and a lot of caution. Luckily, both the bug and my ex lived to see another day.

    victoriap422010704

    7. Never clean

    When I was a teenager I worked as a hotel maid. One day while I was cleaning a room, I noticed there was a ton of dust on the very top of the blinds. These windows went all the way up to the ceiling, so I had to use one of those super long dusting things and stand directly underneath it in order to reach. Then all this "dust" started falling in slow motion. Then I realized... it wasn't dust, but several HUNDRED baby spiders. They were raining down onto my face, into my hair, down my shirt... literally everywhere. I spent the rest of my shift picking baby spiders off of myself, then went home and took the longest shower of my life.

    —Erin Sheppard, Facebook

    8. Never be late for school

    I grew up on an island and had to take a ferry to the mainland to get to school. If you missed the normal ferry you had to take the freight boat, which carries all the garbage trucks. Mornings are not my thing so naturally one day I found myself walking between the garbage trucks, in the worst kind of walk of shame imaginable. When the ferry hit the dock I was smack in the middle of the freight deck and the garbage trucks started RAINING MAGGOTS.

     

    There were maggots in my hair, my bag, under my clothes—literally everywhere they could possibly get. Even at the end of the day I was still finding them crawling out of my bag.

    Islandgirl123

    9. Never have a Christmas tree

    My family was preparing presents on Christmas Eve. I went to tie a bow around one of the presents and noticed a moderately sized bug on the floor. I looked around the room to see dozens upon dozens, probably hundreds, of these bugs everywhere. They were baby praying mantises. It seems a praying mantis laid eggs in our Christmas tree and the warmth from the lights made them hatch early. To top it off, praying mantises were endangered in the state where I lived so the exterminator couldn't get rid of them. My mom was running around with a fly swatter and bug spray and my older brother was trying to catch them in a jar yelling, "You can't kill the bugs! God made them for a reason!" That Christmas our fully decorated tree sat out on the curb. We also found dead praying mantises around the house for months afterwards. It's been over a decade and I still will not agree to a real Christmas tree. Nope.

    —Kendra Rogers, Facebook

    10. Never jump in a pile of leaves

    When I was seven, I decided it would be fun to jump in a huge pile of leaves in my backyard. It probably would've been fun if there hadn't been a hornets nest in it. Twenty-six stings and many years later, I still cry when a bee comes near me.

    meganp4e71fce46

    11. Never go inside a cabin

    I was going camping with my boyfriend and we stopped at his brother's hunting cabin on our way to grab some gear that was stored there. No one had been there for a month or two. We were inside, and I noticed that my legs were black. Slowly I realized that it was the hot summer, and I'm wearing shorts, and then HOLY **** THE BLACK JUST MOVED! I was literally COVERED in fleas from the waist down. And I mean covered, as in I couldn't see my flesh underneath all the fleas. I can't even describe the horror I felt as we ran the hell out of there and frantically doused ourselves in bug spray. The worst part was that, of course, we left behind phones, keys, etc in our haste to run for our lives, so someone had to go back in there and get everything. Not me!!!

    shinysaruh

    12. Never trust a moth

    When I was 10, a moth flew in my ear and got stuck there. I could feel it fluttering in there and it was horrifying! My dad tried sucking it out with a vacuum hose but it was not any less stuck, so we ended up going to the emergency room. At first the nurses didn't believe me until they put this liquid stuff in my ear and the moth just slid out. Their eyes got wide and they both just looked at each other.

    khadeejahk

    13. Never go to Texas

    Growing up in the VERY country/ranch parts of Texas mean my absolute biggest fear in the world... SCORPIONS. A very pregnant female (and they get beastly huge) was crawling on my ceiling and started having babies that fell to the floor and scattered right above me... followed by her falling. I'm a professional paranormal investigator and I live for hauntings, but scorpions? Nope.

    alyssao442c67b84

    14. Never take a bath

    When I was little, about six or so, I had finally convinced my parents to let me take a bath all by myself, run it and everything. I got all my bubbles, washcloths, shampoo, etc., ready to go. I got naked, got into the tub, and turned on the water. To my dismay, the only thing that came out of the faucet were fucking cockroaches. Hundreds of them. Apparently our apartment complex had an infestation.

    carsontheresac

    15. Never make pizza

    During college I went on an alternative spring break trip. On this trip we were required to cook dinner for the entire group. On our cooking night we decided to cook pizza. However, upon kneading the dough we realized didn't have flour. We searched the cabinets and finally found flour. Problem solved. Everything was great, that is, until I looked down into our dough and saw a small MOVING object! I quickly alerted my partner, and she urged me to quickly remove the maggot-like creature. But upon further inspection I noticed MORE small, round moving objects right on the surface of our pizza dough. My partner and I quickly looked into the bag of flour we used and realized that it had been inhabited by weevils (flour bugs)! Friendly advice, never use old flour.

    LuckySparks17

    16. Never go to an educational bug show

    When I was in second grade, I went to an educational bug show at the local library. The audience was seated in a circle on the floor and the presenter took great delight in showing us some giant bug species (giant millipede of death, large blue beetle the size of an iPod, etc,), which he held in his hands as he went around from person to person.

    Of course, when he reached me, he dropped the beetle down my shorts, since I was sitting with my knees up. Have you seen that scene in The mummy where the scarab beetle is scurrying around under people's clothing? It's no fun.

    He tried to stick his hand up my shorts to retrieve his precious beetle before I crushed it in sheer panic. Luckily, my mom stopped him and dug out that crazy beetle before it went towards places it did not belong. The entire room cheered when she retrieved it, still alive, and flung it towards the presenter.

    —Andy Youn, Facebook

    17. Just... Oh my god

    I was in the Peace Corps in East Africa. When they take you to your site, they drop you off in front of your house (or, for myself, mud and tin hut) with all of your stuff around you. It was too dark so I didn't put up my mosquito net—first mistake. I was a good volunteer so I just draped it over me and lay down on my side, hoping the mosquitoes wouldn't get me. (They could, but I was tired!) Darkness descends. The cockroaches crawl up out of the pit toilet outside my hut (giant ones—like up to three inches), as do the camel spiders. I'm laying on a two-inch-thick pallet mattress on a gravel floor with a mosquito net draped over my body and literally hundreds of cockroaches crawling over my body just on the other side of a thin netting. The flashlight I shone once on the wall beside my head showed a solid reddish-brown mass of the bugs. I ended up with my backpack on my face to get the net and cockroach legs away from my skin, in a plank position, awake for most of the night, silently crying. Couldn't open my mouth just in case any weaseled their way under my pallet mattress and net…

    emma1992

    Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

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