aaaaaaahhhhhhh!
by John at 5/07/2007 11:24:00 AM
Doctor finds spiders in ear of boy with earache
What began as a faint popping in a 9-year-old boy's ear -- "like Rice Krispies" -- ended up as an earache, and the doctor's diagnosis was that a pair of spiders made a home in the ear.
"They were walking on my eardrums," Jesse Courtney said.
Mostly true fact: When I was 13 or so, I read a news article or short story in Omni about a boy who had cockroaches crawl into his ear canal while he was asleep. I slept with headphones on (no music) for at least a week or two after that. It was uncomfortable, but it was significantly better than having bugs in your ear, I'm sure.*
Scary story number one: One time while I was in high school I was wearing pennyloafers without socks, as was the fashion, while putting gas in the car at a gas station. I felt something tickling my foot, so I slipped off my shoe and there was a spider inside! I may have screamed, but I definitely threw the shoe across the gas station parking lot. I had to hop over on one foot to retrieve it and shake the spider out.
Scary story number two: While a graduate student, I was brushing my teeth one morning when I felt some lint on the toothbrush. I took the brush out of my mouth and looked at it to facilitate removing the lint, but it wasn't lint it was a live spider! Aaaaahhhhhhhh! I do not recall what happened next. I may have passed out.
Got any scary stories to tell? I'm all ears.
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* There is a scene like this in the film Mountains of the Moon. One of the explorers falls asleep in his tent, which is unknowingly located on top of some sort of beetle hive. He wakes up with intense pain in his ear and he is covered in beetles. In a panic, he takes a compass needle and jams it into his ear canal repeatedly. Oops - now he's deaf in that ear.
P.S. The beetles weren't trying to eat into his brain or anything. Apparently, the inside of the ear is just super sensitive and even little beetle feet can cause pain.
Labels: horror, pop culture
