Earwigs crawl into your ears

When I was little I was deathly afraid of earwigs. I always called them "Pincher bugs" and thought they would crawl into your ear and eat their way through your eardrum and into your brain, and eventually consume your entire brain.

Mmm... eardrum... tasty

I used to believe the earwig one as well (the one where they would crawl into your ears and lay eggs etc).
And Amy (below), no it isn't true.

Tim

I used to believe that earwigs go into your ears and irritate you and then lay eggs in the brain.
I was 17 and i used to work in a cafe and make sandwiches in the morning, we used to get new orders of salads each morning and one morning they mixed our order up for spinach, and inside the box there were earwigs everywhere!
I was panicky and started screaming when one was near me so I left my job :P

Erin

Once my neighbor and I were swinging on swings but we had to shake hem before we got on so the Earwigs would come out well on one occasion she decided to scare me and say that if they get in your ears they will eat your brains out. of course i was scared of them till i asked my mom if it was true.

Leah

I was told by an elderly relative that Earwigs would crawl inside your ear when you were asleep and eat its way into your brain. Living on a farm where there are heaps of these horrible things, I was terrified if I saw one. Even now at 67 I cannot stand them.

Mandy M.

when i was about 6yrs i use to believe that earwigs crawled in your ears as they like to eat your brain , well thats what my big brother convinced me!
i am now 40yrs and wiser i would like to think!

colin

i believed for awhile that earwigs would burrow into your ear canal and eat away at your brain.

Renae

My sister told me earwigs crawled into your ears and ate your brain.To this day I still get nervous when I feel a tickle in my ear canal.

Cat

I used to believe that earwigs would crawl into your ear and bite your brain. I finally figured out when I was 12 or 13 my Grandad told me that to keep me out of his garden!

Dee

When I was very young my parents told me that millipedes and centipedes where called earwigs, so I was terrified that one would crawl into my ears when I was in bed asleep.

Andy

I believed that the insects earwigs would crawl up inside your ears and into your brain when you were asleep in bed

Cathy

I used to believe when I was little that those little bugs with the pinchers on the end of their tail called earwigs would crawl up into your ear and live in there and kill you.

anglgrl0077

Earwigs crawl into your ears when your not looking and make nests in your brain.

Anon

I used to believe that earwigs-those bugs you see under rotting logs with two pinchers on their butts- could crawl into your ear while you were sleeping and attach themselves to your brain!

hotdogman

When I was a kid, we used to get earwigs in the house all the time. I thought that they were called earwigs because they'd crawl in your ear and eat your brain - this gave me NUMEROUS nightmares. One day when I was in my teens, Dad brought home a load of corn for canning. As I was husking the corn, I kept finding earwigs in ears of corn and all of a sudden, I realized that the bugs must be called earwigs because they were often found in ears of corn.

Still don't like them though and I don't EVEN want to tell you how many nightmares I had when Khan put the bugs in Checkov's ear in the movie The Wrath of Khan!

Pamela B.

I used to freak out when I saw an earwig in my house because I thought that in the night he would crawl up my bed and go into my ear, then lay it's eggs in my brian and I would die because the baby earwigs ate my brain. Weeeeird.

Bella