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.

  • @[email protected]
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    82 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

      Crazy how these loungs look like. Its so disgusting, and its not even like peanut butter, that tar is actually carcinogenic

      • @[email protected]
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        42 years ago

        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!

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          I would add “be happy we dont need open fire to heat anymore and stop smoking your damn house”

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    Was gifted a lightly used Keurig machine. Partner started noticing little roaches everywhere in the kitchen. She was halfway through a cup of coffee when she opened the water reservoir and spotted a few floating in the water. I opened the machine and the machine was full of them.

    Roaches can lay up to 32 eggs/week, and I think a roach mom had at least one good week in the Keurig.

    Friend had said he didn’t want it because it was attracting roaches. He claims to not have known it was carrying them.

  • @[email protected]
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    112 years ago

    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.

  • Computerchairgeneral
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    162 years ago

    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.

    • Shambling Shapes
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      82 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        42 years ago

        Oof. Advice, coming from experience actually…

        If you get a roach crawl into your ear, you can kill it almost instantly by pouring rubbing alcohol into your ear. Now getting it out is a different story, but at least the little demon is dead and gives you time to go see a doctor without it trying to chew through your eardrum.

        From my understanding, roaches cannot crawl backwards, so when trapped in such a way they’ll try chewing their way forward…

        Don’t ask how I know this, but yeah rubbing alcohol apparently kills them instantly.

        • Shambling Shapes
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          42 years ago

          The only thing that kept me from trying to claw it out of my head was the fear of the roach tunneling harder as it died. Oof, not sure I would be able to pour alcohol in, worrying death would be any less than instantaneous. And I hope I never have to figure it out.

          • @[email protected]
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            52 years ago

            Allz I can really say, without getting into a rather disturbing story, is that indeed rubbing alcohol will kill roaches practically instantly, when drowned in it anyways.

            Only warning I’d tack onto that is that if you happen to already have a hole in your eardrum, then rubbing alcohol probably isn’t going to feel too good. But then again, neither is a roach burrowing into your head, so choose your battles wisely.

            For real though, as long as your eardrum is still intact and doesn’t happen to have a hole for whatever reason, rubbing alcohol in the ear doesn’t hurt a bit and will kill a roach in a matter of like 3 seconds or less.

            Wise choice though, I wouldn’t want to sleep in a roach infested place either. Have you read through the rest of the comments for my Life Pro Tip on how to get rid of the demons cheaply and without poison?

  • Zerlyna
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    2 years ago

    I was 7’ish, living in Florida and spotted something shiny in my black bean bag. Reached down, grabbed it with my hand then screamed as it wiggled its way out. I am almost 50 and still traumatized by it. Mind you this is ginormous Florida cockroach /palmetto bug bigger than my child size hand.

  • @[email protected]
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    72 years ago

    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.

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    2 years ago

    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)

  • good_girl [she/her, they/them]
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    82 years ago

    Was playing FFXIV and my headset at the time had the mute button on the cable which usually rested on my chest. At some point a cockroach crawled up the cable and sat where the button normally is before i noticed the dark spot on my chest stopped being plastic and grew antennae. The worst part was that I was already paranoid about literally this exact thing happening.

    • davi [he/him]
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      2 years ago

      The worst part was that I was already paranoid about literally this exact thing happening.

      same here except i accidentally smeared roach guts on my bare chest while scratching the itch that disturbed my sleep.

  • MxM111
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    2 years ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
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    92 years ago

    I used to work for a computer repair place long, long ago and I was on the laptop repair line.

    I went to unscrew a laptop but for some reason my screwdriver wasn’t catching the screw… a coworker took the screwdriver and put more force into and there was sickening crunch that wasn’t hardware…

    He removed the screw along with an impaled dead baby cockroach…

    But this isn’t the end. Oh no.

    When that screw came out with its buddy they had friends.

    A lot of friends.

    Flooding out of that tiny screwhole like something from a god damn horror movie.

    We bagged that up and sent it back to the customer. It did not get repaired that day to say the least.

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    62 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Was that some sort of sick angry passive-aggressive favor your father-in-law gave you a house in that condition?!

      Maybe he considered it a win-win for himself & you both because you had a place to stay and he had people to un-condemn it for him. 😡

  • @[email protected]
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    82 years ago

    Ok. First off, the precipitous decline of insect populations scares me more than any other climate related catastrophe, but oh my God if I never again see a mating swarm of palmetto bugs, it will be too soon. That is something that hopelessly scarred me for life.

    • livus
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      32 years ago

      Yeah most of the cockroach species in my part of the world are harmless beings who just want to process dead wood for us and don’t actually live in the house.

      When American cockroaches turn up and fly around that scares me though.