Eek! 'scratching' Sound In Woman's Ear Turns Out To Be Spider Weaving A Web

#1 She heard scratching noises 24/7.

A woman who sought medical attention for noises that only she could hear had to have a live spider removed from her left ear canal.

#2 She believed she was hearing evil voices inside her head.

Li Meng had put off calling the doctor at first because she was afraid that the "scratching noise" that she heard at night was possibly evil spirits, Central European News (CEN) reported.

Eventually, the pain became so great that medicine stopped helping, and she consulted doctors at the Xiamen Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the report said.

"I even went to a temple to pray but it didn't help," Meng told CEN.

#3 Finally a doctor discovers the culprit.

An ear nose and throat specialist discovered that a spider had been weaving a web in her ear canal. The spider was resting on her eardrum. Each attempt doctors made to remove the spider caused it to react violently, resulting in more pain for Meng.

#6 So gross that social media then national news reported on the condition.

The story became national news when it was tweeted over 2 million times on Twitter.

#5 It was difficult to remove do to it's location and size.

Eventually doctors subdued the spider with medicine and pulled it out with tweezers, CEN reported.

#6 Be careful when outdoors where creepy crawlers hang out.

Meng said she had been hiking with her boyfriend and it's likely the spider crawled into her ear while she was climbing a tree.

#7 It's not that rare.

Critters burrowing into human ears is (unfortunately) not an uncommon occurrence. In 2014, writer Annie Stoltie wrote, in excruciating detail, about the time a beetle got stuck in her ear while she was camping in the Adirondack Mountains with her family.

#8 A hiker had a beetle lodged in her ear for months.

After Stoltie's doctors finally got the beetle out days later, she received some advice from an otolaryngologist. He said that "if this were to happen again -- what are the chances? -- I fill my ear with oil (baby, mineral, vegetable, olive) to smother and kill the bug," Stoltie wrote. "No oil? Water or a 50/50 mixture of water and alcohol or water and peroxide would work. Sometimes you can grab the bug with tweezers, he said, but there's a danger you'll push it in farther; plus, if you don't get it all, you'll need medical attention anyway."

#9 Take precautions and try to stay covered up from bugs, ticks, mosquitoes, and other things that might find a warm place on your body.

It's not the first nightmarish story of an animal burrowing into someone's ear this year. Last April a man found living, crawling maggots and worms inside his ears. Doctors assume some sort of fly went in there and laid it's eggs.

In July, an Arkansas boy's mother pulled a 4-inch long centipede from her son's ear after the family returned from the beach.