I’ll start. Apt next door is having a cockroach infected. 4 days ago, I was playing sims on my laptop, wearing my eyeglasses. Right lens got blurry, took off, huge cockroach was crawling across inside of lens. While I was wearing them. Freak out ensued.
I was laying in bed and trying to get to sleep. I kept hearing this tapping, or scuttling, noise coming from somewhere in my room, but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Decided it was just old house noises and tried to ignore it. Then something fell from the ceiling and landed on my face. Shouted, slapped at my face, and heard something fall on the floor. Flipped on the light and saw the roach trying to scurry away. Hit it with a book until it was dead. Maybe not the most horrifying, but it was one of the worst experience I’ve had with a roach, so far at least.
I’m sorry, I’m going to one up you. Look away now if squeamish.
I woke up with one climbing into my ear. I ran to the bathroom, bashing into furniture and walls because feeling it wriggle around in my ear threw my sense of balance off so badly. And also, you know, panic. I jumped into the bathtub fully clothed, dropped to hands and knees to put my head under the faucet, and turned the water on full force to flush it out.
This was during college years, during a gap between semesters and I didn’t have an apartment. I was couch surfing at a friends. After that night, I left and lived in my car for a couple of days instead. There was no way I would be able to fall asleep again in that place.
First time in Singapore I saw a cockroach sitting on the floor, I went to kill it and then discovered there are flying roaches. Hilariousness of course ensued as a fled out of the apartment, screaming like a terrified little boy.
One of my closest friends, whom I often shared a roof with, loves insects. One day she found a cockroach and decided to make friends with it and give it its own area. Convincing her to get rid of it required jumping through tedious mental hoops on the basis that “a cockroach never killed anyone” and “he has as much a right to stay in the house if he follows the rules”. His stay in the house ended just short of her successfully teaching him to do tricks. Thank god.
Spending a night by myself in one of mexico’s shitiest hotel. Wake up in the middle of the night because weird noise. Hundreds of cockroach on the wall, inches from the bed. Leave lights on. Cant sleep for the rest of the night so start to write a story about me meeting and becoming friend with a french cockroach that got lost in Mexico.
Story two. Our neighbours were disgusting. House full of trash, garden like a jungle and just complete neglect of their property. The landlord kicks them out and has to do a complete refurb of the house top to bottom. It turns out that the thousands of cockroaches that lived in that house suddenly had to up sticks and find a new house. That house was my house. After a few months we had cockroaches everywhere. In the toilet, bathroom, kitchen. Just everywhere. Daily occurrences: switch on the kitchen light and be greeted by hundreds of cockroaches running off. Open a cupboard and cockroaches would drop out of it onto my feet. Shoes with cockroaches in them.
We called up an exterminator and after describing the shape, size and color of these things he told us they were an invasive species and there was very little we could do. He said if we could find the place where they were breeding we could have a chance of getting rid if them. My dad and I knew the kitchen was there base so we started to pull cabinets up and see what was going on behind them. We pulled up a large cabinet and saw a few signs that there had been cockroaches on the back of the cabinet. But once we turned the cabinet upside down we saw near rows of thousands of cockroach eggs. And I mean thousands. All ready to hatch and send even more cockroaches into our house. It was something out of an alien movie. I can still those eggs to this day (this all happened in the 90’s)
Two horror stories - I’ll write them as two separate posts
Story one: we had a mouse in our house once. My mum is petrified of mice so we were told to buy an old fashioned mouse trap with a spring trap. We put it in an area where the mouse was seen and went to sleep. We heard the trap go in the middle of the night so thought our troubles were over. Next morning we checked the trap and under the spring was a HUGE cockroach. Not the size of a mouse but bloody close. So my brother takes the trap, pull open the spring to throw the cockroach away and the damn thing is still alive. It dropped out of the trap and just scurried away under a cabinet. I’m not sure if it survived or not but that thing had no right to be alive after getting caught full force by a mouse trap.
I’m an emt/firefighter. I’ve gone in places during the day. With the lights on. Where the roaches were so bad that you could still see a hundred of them. Including the ones that fall from the ceiling onto you.
Worked at Office Depot back in ~2012-2014. Was the lead tech, and was the primary hardware fix guy. Had a guy bring in this old dell clamshell case PC with an xp sticker. It and him already smelled…off. After discussing some issues (no power) and finishing the paperwork, I cracked it open. They came spilling out. Dead, alive, and various sized. All the droppings too. It was one of the first machines I refused to work on. The guy had no choice but to leave with it. Didn’t really say much after that.
The only other PC that came close to that were those of chain smokers. Where the tar buildup was actually sticky to the touch, coating everything, outside and in.
Crazy how these loungs look like. Its so disgusting, and its not even like peanut butter, that tar is actually carcinogenic
Yup. After my first tar PC, I refused them going forward.
Also, the cheap incenses (the ones that light instantly) can cause a similar scenario. I guess the moral here, clean your computers!
I would add “be happy we dont need open fire to heat anymore and stop smoking your damn house”
How do you call a group of cockroaches? ChatGPT insists it is “intrusion”. So imagine a sound a dense intrusion of cockroaches makes when it separates from a wall and falls to the floor. I heard it once in my life when I moved a piece of furniture from the wall in a student dormitory, long time ago. I am still disgusted.
When I discovered my old apartment had cockroaches I was very high and just saw a small blurr out of the corner of my eye. Not exactly a horror but it was camouflaged against my hardwood floor and I spent the rest of the night ripping away furniture from my walls trying to find it.
Probably not that bad compared to others, but I opened my drawer to get ready for work one day and the little fucker was staring at me. After a brief moment where we were both shocked staring at each other, he scurried into the back of the dresser, behind the drawer. I was running a little late for work and had a very important meeting with our hardware vendors, so I closed the drawer and left. I ended up wearing something that was in the dryer as it was the only thing not covered in cockroach germs.
I got home that evening and couldn’t find the little fucker anywhere. I washed all my clothes again, because it freaked me out having a cockroach touch all my clothes. I wiped down the inside of all of the drawer with a Clorox wipe. I just couldn’t find him.
Days later, my wife comes running out of the bathroom and says the little pervert tried to attack her while she was on the toilet. The cockroach was actually in the light fixture. I sprayed it with some bug spray, probably a little too liberally. But he was super dead after that.
Crisis solved!
My wife and I were offered to live in her father’s rental house for free as long as she was in college. We were very excited to move in and pulled up to the house a week after our wedding. We opened the door and it was a disaster zone. It looked like someone had left all their belongings but trashed the place before leaving. Overturned couches, clothing everywhere, and ROACHES… oh god, SO MANY ROACHES! I walked into the living room and picked up a discarded baby sock in the middle of the room and at least three roaches fell as I picked it up and scattered. Every single item in the house was the same.
After throwing everything in the house away, we had to bug bomb the house a dozen times to finally have some semblance of a home without roaches everywhere. We would still see them at night after turning on a light in a dark room for at least 4 months. Had to keep all food locked away until we stopped randomly seeing them.
Honeymoon in New York City. My wife and I get back to our hotel after seeing Wicked on Broadway with the original cast. Our suitcase is full of cockroaches. They heard my wife screaming twelve floors down.
Aaaaaaaaaah, I hate it.
New neighbour moved in earlier this year and brought them with them, and they’re just little German cockroaches, but seeing them at all freaks me out. I’d probably die in your case.
Landlord’s done a full “move all the furniture” spray treatment, and bi-weekly gel treatment, and they just keep coming. Mostly babies, but no matter how clean the kitchen counter top is I still find them scurrying about on it.
Probably means they’re in the walls and the place needs full on fumigation.
Considering where they’re coming from, I think that’s spot on, and I feel like it’s going to get to that sooner than later.
Try the oil can thing
Long time ago I’m pretty sure one managed to get into our closed dishwasher in our apartment. Luckily we don’t have an infestation or I’d die of fright.