Just under her cheekbone, a 28-year-old woman noticed a strange swelling. It wasn’t painful—just... weird. At first, she assumed it was a pimple. Then she thought it might be an ingrown hair. But as days passed, it grew larger. Firmer. It even began to move.
And that’s when things got terrifying.
She rushed to the ER. Doctors examined her face and were instantly confused. There was no redness. No obvious infection. But right beneath the surface—something was shifting. Something alive.
And then… it started coming out.
One doctor shouted, “It’s MOVING!” Nurses backed away. The room fell silent. What they pulled from her face left the ENTIRE hospital in shock.
It wasn’t a cyst.
It wasn’t a parasite.
It was a fully grown botfly larva—ALIVE AND WRIGGLING.
Yes. A living insect had burrowed into her skin and grown inside her face. If your skin is crawling right now, you’re not alone.
Botflies are usually found in tropical parts of Central and South America. The insect lays its eggs on mosquitoes, which then transfer them to human hosts. The warmth of human skin activates the larva, which burrows under the surface and begins to grow—eating tissue along the way.
The woman had recently returned from a backpacking trip in Belize. She remembered swatting away a lot of mosquitoes, but never imagined one had dropped off a hitchhiker into her face.
Doctors were both horrified… and fascinated.
“It was like something out of a sci-fi movie,” said one ER physician. “You could actually see it squirming under her skin. None of us had ever seen anything like it in real life.”
The removal had to be done carefully. If the larva had ruptured inside the skin, it could have triggered a massive infection. But miraculously, it came out whole—and very much alive.
The footage of the extraction (yes, someone recorded it!) has now gone viral, viewed MILLIONS of times on social media. People are calling it “the craziest real-life horror story ever caught on camera.”
But here’s the twist: despite the creepy factor, the woman is totally fine—and even laughing about it.
“Honestly,” she said, “I’m just glad it didn’t come out while I was on a date or something. Can you IMAGINE?”