Live Spider Shed Its Skin in Woman's Ear — She Heard 'Clicking and Rustling' Sounds

An urban legend came true for one woman, 64, who “had awoken to the feeling of a creature moving inside her left ear”

It sounds like a creepy Halloween tale.

A small spider took up residence in the ear of a 64-year-old woman in Taiwan — and when doctors examined her, they discovered not only was the spider alive, but it had shed its exoskeleton in her ear canal.

“She had awoken to the feeling of a creature moving inside her left ear,” according to a case study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Spiders shed their skins when they grow, according to Cornell University — meaning, the spider grew larger after crawling in her ear.

Over the next four days, she heard “incessant beating, clicking, and rustling sounds” the study said, but she didn’t seek medical treatment until the constant noise led to insomnia.

When doctors examined the woman, they discovered a live spider crawling around the external auditory canal — the canal that connects the outside of the ear to the tympanic membrane (aka, the eardrum).

Her eardrum hadn’t been punctured by the spider climbing around, the study notes.

The spider and its exoskeleton were removed with a suction cannula, and the study notes, “the patient’s symptoms immediately abated." She stopped hearing the spider.

Related: Woman Finds Enormous Pregnant Spider in Her Office: 'Jumped Out' and 'Ran Down My Forearm'

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This isn’t the first time doctors have discovered a bug in someone’s ear; In 2019, a Kansas City, Miss., woman found a brown recluse — a notoriously venomous spider — in her ear, and just this past May, an Arkansas family discovered ticks had crawled into their toddler’s ear. 

But it's not necessary to start sleeping with earplugs.

Dr. Stacey Ishman, otolaryngology instructor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, told NBC News that patients who come to her with bugs in their ears have often been camping.

"Most of the time the ear is completely fine," Ishman, who estimates she’s seen about eight people in her 23-year career with bugs in their ears, told NBC News. "If there’s some injury to the ear canal, quite honestly it’s more often from people trying to get it out than it is from the bug itself.”

And as for bugs crawling inside your mouth, Scientific American reported that spiders aren’t really interested in humans.

Related: Girl, 9, Thinks Shirt Tag Pinched Her. Then Mom Discovers Brown Recluse Spider Bite That Quickly Spread

“Spiders regard us much like they’d regard a big rock,” Bill Shear, a biology professor at Hampden–Sydney College in Virginia and former president of the American Arachnological Society, told Scientific American. “We’re so large that we’re really just part of the landscape.”

Simply put, spiders don’t want to bug you.

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