A Chinese man who checked himself in the hospital because the pounding sound in his left ear wouldn’t go away, was shocked to discover that the noise was being caused by a spider spinning webs deep inside his ear canal.

Doctor Cui Shulin, deputy chief physician at the department of otolaryngology at the Dalian Central Hospital, in Dalian, China’s Liaoning province, recently told reporters that the unnamed patient, a man in his 60s, had come to the hospital to complain about a drum like sound and a tingling sensation in his left ear. After listening to the patient, doctors decided to investigate, but already suspected that a cricket or flying insect had somehow become stuck in the man’s ear. They didn’t expect to find a spider weaving cobwebs.

“I felt uncomfortable sensation in my ear when I went to sleep last night, but I didn’t pay too much attention to it.. When I woke up this morning, the sensation was still there, but now there was also a drumming like sound,” the patient told doctors at Dalian Central Hospital.

Using an endoscope to inspect the man’s inner ear canal, Doctor Cui Shulin was surprised to see that about 5 cm into the canal, there was a fog-like white barrier, and past it a moving creature that retreated deeper into the ear as the endoscope advanced.

“This seems to be a spider!” Dr. Cui said, and his words shocked both the patient and the medical staff in the room. After calming the man down, the doctor used a special syringe to flood the ear canal with water and flush out the spider. After examining the man’s ear canal again, doctors established that his hearing hadn’t been affected.

 

Doctor Cui Shulin said that he has seen countless cases of flying bugs and even cockroaches stuck in people’s ears, but this was the first time he saw a spider basically living in someone’s ear.