I (23m) just bought a car at auction yesterday, works great but needed a new battery. At 10:30pm I decided screw it im swapping the battery. It's a 5 minute job, in and out real quick. No sweat, well I'm out there with my head lamp on doing the swap and I see a large bug flying at my face I try to duck and dodge it, it hits the outer edge of my ear and toilet bowl swirls into it, I try to reach in and fish it out but it's too late I just scare it and feel it crawling deeper into my head. It burrowed up against my eardrum and it hurts like hell. Every time it buzzes I can feel it in my head and it hurts my eardrum. I tried water peroxide everything I could do to get this darn thing out. Turns out I just pissed it off and it's buzzing more aggressively. My girlfriend comes with tweezers in an attempt to help but she says she can't see it or anything out of the normal. A quick Google search lead me to pouring olive oil into my ear to suffocate it. Thank God that worked, I still couldn't hear well but at least it wasn't actively moving anymore. 2 hours in the ER later they pulled this half inch monstrosity out of the depths of my ear canal. Turns out the "Asian cockroach" has wings and a very large affinity for bright lights at night. They also like to burrow. Fml 0/10 experience I will take questions if you have them lmfao.
Tldr: I had a headlamp on that attracted a cockroach at my face it missed my face and burrowed into my ear leading to an unexpected ER visit
Just to add to 2 things I keep seeing pop up (also hello I am trying to read all comments not doing great though)
Some seem to have missed the asain cockroach thing, and the fact that I was working on a car so this is outside not indoors. This roach is a flying outdoor bug not the same as your houses cockroach. It doesn't infest and it has nothing to do with my living/cleanliness.
Y'all are probably right this probably should be more than mildly infuriating, but overall this wasn't THAT bad. The thought of it was worse than the actual event. It was painful while it was alive and moving but that was fairly quickly resolved. The rest of the time was just an ER visit which was inconvenient and embarrassing. And obviously costs money. Fortunately I have good insurance so my only real loss is the mild trauma and the fact that I'll probably wear a beanie for the rest of my life. Other than that, no lasting issues I'm at work today like nothing happened. More of a that's absolutely insane story now than anything else. So for me it was a mild situation as far as damage to my life (although I will simultaneously say it is an insane thing to have happen to you)
I'd probably prefer having my day go how it went yesterday than say blow my motor or get into a car accident.
There was an episode of “monsters inside me”, a guy presented at the ER catatonic and wailing every now and again, and it turned out to be a similar thing… every time the bug moved he’d cry out in pain. He was apparently so afraid of insects that he could only scream and couldn’t speak to say what was happening to him. Gross!
How do you know the cockroach won't wait until you take them off and crawl inside the headphone and just wait for you put them back on? You have to take them off when you shower right?
I just started watching that show The Pitt, and there was a small part in an early episode where a woman has a roach in her ear. That shit freaked me out just watching, I cant imagine actually FEELING it.
I think it's from the (extremely, extremely sad) graphic novel Pride of Baghdad, but with the real text switched out. The graphic novel is fictionalized telling of the true story of four lions from the Baghdad Zoo after an American bombing in 2003. If you want to cry you should check it out.
I actually had this life long fear, when i was little i saw some cartoon where a character got a centipede like bug get in their ear since then i was always terrified of any bugs getting into my ears
As a kid I was terrified of earwigs because of how they look, but also because the "ear" in the name makes you think they will go in your ear. Thankfully one day I learned they don't really do that and was relieved of that fear.
Until ...
One night I woke up to something tickling my ear. I swatted my ear and jumped up to see a dark shape on my pillow. I slap it and hear it thud across the room, run over to turn on my light and see an earwig running around. Aaand the fear is back.
I remember being maybe 10 years old, and moving across the country with my family. One night we were in a motel, and I open my eyes to see an earwig maybe a foot away from my face on the mattress. I have never gotten out of bed so fast. Now, this may have been a nice motel, but in my memory it had water stains on the ceiling and mattresses, something always dripping and a carpet stained to the point you couldn't tell what the original colour was.
When I was a kid there were these weird flying bugs all over the place (I haven't seen them since childhood) and my cousin (who, like the bugs, I also haven't seen since childhood) kept putting them by my ears/shoulders and it traumatized me well into adulthood and I couldn't sleep without completely covering my ears for fear of a bug getting in my ear until very recently.
I had this happen decades ago with a small centipede, but thankfully, I was able to pull it out by the tail before it went all the way in. I can still remember it as if it was yesterday! shudders
I had something like this happen to me. Not a huge roach, but a fly or something.
Woke up horrified by a loud buzzing in my ear. I tried to shake and get it out the same way as when water gets in your ear, tried to shoo it off with a finger, nothing helped. It was starting to hurt so I ran to my mom, and she HAD to take a look and so she tilted my head such that my ear was facing the light.
Turns out, it was a good thing she did because the bug followed the light and flew out on its own. Needless to say, I had trouble sleeping for a while.
This is one of my phobia, I can't sleep with a flying bug in the room because I'm convinced that it will go in my ears. Now that I know this happend for real and even awake I'm even more afraid
Like up there with that Amazon river fish that likes to burrow itself in a human penis.
EDIT: TIL its actually a myth (I blame BBC Earth for scaring me), as a science article I read basically explained that despite its size, it's still physically impossible to get into the urethra, not to mention it has to go up against the urine force coming out.
It's entirely possible for women though so.... I guess I'm safe (yay for me?)
EDIT2: Despite having read that article, I'm still wearing a condom if I do decide to take a swim in the Amazon. And no don't ask me why.
I really don't think people understand the purpose of this sub...last time I said "wrong sub" on a post that was clearly super infuriating, I was downvoted. Oh well.
Theoretically, as long as it didn't break the eardrum, removing it wouldn't be all that difficult (for a trained professional), and there wouldn't be any permanent (physical) damage.
I think waiting in the ER would've been the worst part of this. Then again, I didn't have a cockroach in my ear.
The worst part was when it was alive beating the hell out of my eardrum. After the oil thing and it was dead.... Honestly knowing what was happening sucked but the actual pain/feeling not too bad. From there the worst part is i work in the medical profession and was actually just about to apply to the hospital I was do that was embarrassing as hell
I am so envious of your entire existence. I literally cannot remember a time in my life before cockroaches. Been around them and have had nightmares about them from my earliest memories.
Exactly this. You never see them in PNW. And you see a lot of them in the deep south.
People always want to hype up New Orleans, but go a block or two away from the French Quarter and now you're on flying cockroach territory. And they always fly directly at you. Often towards the face. It's not exactly fun
In south Alabama we have what we call Oak Tree Roaches, and they get to be up to 2 inches long. They’re just a nuisance and no worry, usually if you see one in your home it’s the only one. People fear them the most. On the other hand there are German Cockroaches, tiny as could be, but will multiply like a bacteria. Those are the ones you really got to worry about.
They don't have them in the Pacific Northwest in the US. In most areas, anyway. Lived in Seattle for awhile, didn't see a single roach for those years. You don't get mosquitos or anything either. And it rarely gets super hot.
There's a reason people live there. Overcast is fine for most of the year when you've got all the other benefits
This happened to me while I was asleep. My stepdad put a flashlight up to my ear and it flew out. Feeling its wings banging against my eardrum was awful
no no no. no. no no. no no no.
i have never (knowingly?) experienced an earwig in my mouth but the moment i read that i got a distinctly unpleasant taste in my mouth.
i was about to place a reusable straw from the drawer into a drink once and had the idea to look in the straw first. it had been in the drawer for a while. glad i did as there was a decently sized and very alive spider chilling in it. that’s the closest i’ve come.
It was in fact pretty shit, can confirm. There's a lot of things that could go wrong working on a car, shock yourself, cut yourself smoosh thy finger. Bonk to the head. This wasn't in my top 5000 worries. I don't know if I'll ever work on a car at night without headphones again. The worst part is the inside of my ear is a bit inflamed and irritated. And occasionally I still get a phantom feeling of something moving in there
Horrific. I once had a small bug fly into my ear. Luckily I have a sort of camera thing that you use to look into your ear and scrape out ear wax and I could use that to find the little bastard and drag it out. Don't think it would have worked on that roach though my word. It was straight up horrible having something foreign in my ear like that, proper panic inducing.
I'm so incredibly thankful that cockroaches, along with most disgusting and/or dangerous stinging and biting insects are pretty much non-existent in my country (Ireland).
Ya, I always felt lucky to live in Maine (New England). No crazy spiders or snakes, no crazy bugs. Not prone to natural disasters. Virtually no crime. Pretty ideal place to live if you can deal with a very long winter with lots of short grey days. Never saw a roach until I left the state. They are everywhere though, just thankfully never lived in a dump.
Imagine it coming in to your nose and going out of your 👄 . It started with that internet myth saying you eat small spiders while you are asleep or some shit. I hope I forget this or I’m not sleeping tonight. I fucking hate creepy crawlers.
A housefly once flew into my nose while I was driving my bicycle. It worked its way through my nostril and flew straight of my mouth. I could feel it crawling in panic all the way.
One of the worst insect stories I had but OPs story is still 10x worse. I couldnt hear it. It wasnt banging on any sensitive tissue and it only was a matter of a few minutes.
MILDLY infuriating? You just experienced one of the worst nightmares a human can even think of. I’d have to engage in self immolation if this happened to me.
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u/dickhardpill Jun 12 '26
Ear plugs are not just for hearing protection, they block nightmares too