Hollywood Has Nothing on These Real Life Halloween Horror Shows

It all begins when a single spore falls out of the sky, a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

When the spore lands on an ant, it immediately begins dissolving the animal’s exoskeleton with enzymes. But it’s also building up an incredible amount of pressure—equal to that of a 747’s tire. When the shell is weak enough, the spore explodes into the ant’s body cavity and starts claiming territory. “At which point the ant is pretty much done for,” says Simon.

Over the next three weeks, the fungus will come to make up about half of the ant’s total weight. One would think the slow internal consumption must be excruciating, but whether the ant feels anything is unclear. It goes about its ant-life as normal.

Indeed, this is crucial to the fungus’s plot. If the ant’s nest-mates notice something is awry, they’ll carry the infected ant away before it can release its spores—a performance the parasite only gets one chance at.  

So, when the time is right—which, weirdly, is almost always high-noon on the 21st day of infection—the fungus will pilot its zombie ant out of the colony. Once outside, the ant will climb a piece of vegetation until it is 10 inches off of the ground, a height where temperature and moisture are conducive to fungal growth. The ant then clasps the twig or grass stalk with its mandibles and sighs its last excruciating breath.

“At that point the fungus dispatches it and erupts out of the back of the ant’s head as a stalk,” says Simon. “And this just so happens to be positioned exactly above the ant colony’s trails.”

Spores then spray down onto the worker ants below like the hardest of hard rains, and the whole magnificent process begins anew. It’s the “Circle of Life” as written by Tim Burton. 

Remember in Men In Black when that gigantic space mantis squirms inside the surprisingly spacious skin of Vincent D’Onofrio? Well, it’s actually pretty similar to something that happens every day here on Earth. And the result is—arguably—even more terrifying.

Say hello to the tongue-eating isopod (Cymothoa exigua). As its name so subtly suggests, this creature makes a living by invading the gills of red snapper, crawling its way up into the fish’s mouth, and then ruthlessly attacking with its five sets of jaws until the fish’s tongue actually shrivels up and dies.

Now for the best part. Once the meaty mouth organ is out of the picture, the isopod becomes the fish’s tongue. When the snapper wants to eat something, it’s forced to use the isopod to grind that food against the roof of its mouth.

But the isopod isn’t interested in participating in a buddy comedy. As soon as it can attract enough mates to its hideout, the isopod will make love in the fish’s mouth, cast off a ton of spawn, and either fall out of the fish dead or get sucked down into the stomach, having successfully completed its jaw-swapping life cycle.

“In any event, it doesn’t matter,” says Simon, “because the fish itself will perish on account of not having a tongue anymore.” 

Viewers of Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things will all remember the moment in the classroom when the mysterious Demogorgon opened its mouth and instantly leveled up from already-pretty-creepy humanoid into full-on movie monster. But you don’t have to take a journey to the Upside-Down to find creatures with unfurling faces. You just have to go diving off the coast of Baja, Mexico—home of the sarcastic fringehead.

The sarcastic fringehead is known for attacking first and asking questions later: Though it only grows up to a foot in length, it has been known to attack octopi and even bigger prey. These animals have a mouth full of needle-like teeth, which are accentuated by large, unfolding gill covers that they can “flex” at a moment’s notice. Some have even likened the fringehead’s mouth to that of the Predator. 

The go-go-gadget mouth is more for sexual display and defense than it is eating—two fringeheads will compete for territory by “mouth-wrestling”—which makes it sort of a combination between the peacock’s tail and the rattlesnake’s rattle. In either case, you should probably leave this saltwater demogorgon alone if you ever cross its path. They’ve been known to attack divers and even cause damage to wetsuits. 

Forget about bats. Bedbugs are the vampires you want to avoid.

There are around 100 different species of bedbugs in the world, but thankfully, most of these itty-bitty vampires feed on bats and birds. However, the common bedbug (Cimex lectularius) prefers a very special blood—ours. And molecular studies estimate that these tiny beasts have been haunting our homes and hovels for more than 200 million years.

“Some insects that eat blood lap it up like in a puddle,” says Brooke Borel, science writer and author of Infested: How the Bedbug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms And Took Over The World. But not bedbugs. Their mouths are built for sucking. “With needle-like mouthpieces, they go in and hit a vein,” says Borel. “They actually blow up like a balloon if you were to attach it to a hose.”

(Looks like Gary Larson was drawing the wrong species.)

Like vampires, the bedbug is usually most active at night, but Borel says this is really just because that’s when most of us sleep. Alas, bedbugs also attack those who work the nightshift. Which means unlike Bram Stoker’s classic creature of the night, these bloodsuckers can get you anytime.

On the plus side, bedbugs don’t generally kill you or turn you into a vampire. On the minus, you’re going to need a lot more than a few heads of garlic to get rid of them.  

The Mexican mole lizard looks like a creature out of an old Claymation flick. Imagine a pink earthworm with tiny T. rex arms and the head of a gila monster. Adorable!

Despite their name, the Mexican mole lizard is not actually a lizard (or a mole, of course, though it does bear a certain resemblance to the naked mole-rat), but belongs to a strange class of reptiles known as amphisbaenia. These bizarre burrowers swim-crawl through the dirt, using a combination of their little arms and undulating bodies.

Though the Mexican mole lizard is less than half an inch wide, to its victims, it must seem like a horrible and ancient subterranean chimera. Just imagine being a small worm or lizard burrowing in the sand and coming face to face with a creature such as this. They may not burst out of the ground with a flurry of tentacles like the alien worms in Tremors, but for me, the fact that this creature even exists is a win. I mean, just watch it wriggle!

The brilliant Dr. Jekyll turns into the villainous Mr. Hyde. The mild-mannered man turns into a ravenous werewolf. Bruce Banner’s anger transmogrifies him into the rage-fueled Hulk. In each of these metamorphoses, an innocent or good character is changed into a wilder, uncontrollable state. But innocence doesn’t pay the bills in nature. Which is why the dobsonfly is nasty as both a larvae and adult.

Dobsonfly larvae are also called hellgrammites, which is an apt name for a creature that looks like it crawled out of the Underworld. In truth, these black, scaly beasts lurk between the rocks in riverbeds and ambush prey with their huge pincers. 

Did I say “huge pincers”? I meant that relatively. After it pupates, the aquatic hellgrammite takes to the sky as a full-grown dobsonfly, some species of which have wingspans up to 8 inches. And the adults have pincers that put the hellgrammite’s array to shame. Interestingly, the males look like they’d be the saucier of the sexes, but their mouth tusks are so big that they actually can’t be used for biting. It’s the female dobsonflies, then, that you have to watch out for. 

The good news? Adult dobsonflies only live for about a week and are highly unlikely to spend their seven days seeking out squeamish humans to torment. Whew.

The brilliant Dr. Jekyll turns into the villainous Mr. Hyde. The mild-mannered man turns into a ravenous werewolf. Bruce Banner’s anger transmogrifies him into the rage-fueled Hulk. In each of these metamorphoses, an innocent or good character is changed into a wilder, uncontrollable state. But innocence doesn’t pay the bills in nature. Which is why the dobsonfly is nasty as both a larvae and adult.

Dobsonfly larvae are also called hellgrammites, which is an apt name for a creature that looks like it crawled out of the Underworld. In truth, these black, scaly beasts lurk between the rocks in riverbeds and ambush prey with their huge pincers. 

Did I say “huge pincers”? I meant that relatively. After it pupates, the aquatic hellgrammite takes to the sky as a full-grown dobsonfly, some species of which have wingspans up to 8 inches. And the adults have pincers that put the hellgrammite’s array to shame. Interestingly, the males look like they’d be the saucier of the sexes, but their mouth tusks are so big that they actually can’t be used for biting. It’s the female dobsonflies, then, that you have to watch out for. 

The good news? Adult dobsonflies only live for about a week and are highly unlikely to spend their seven days seeking out squeamish humans to torment. Whew.

The Internet realized back in 2014 that Megalopyge opercularis, also known as the asp caterpillar, bore a striking resemblance to a certain political figure with an iconic overcomb. Following in a long tradition of North Americans dressing up as presidential candidates, this insect seemed to have perfected its imitation of a new president whose rise has been alarming to many Americans. Its "fluffy, orange tufts ... look suspiciously similar to Donald Trump's hair," wrote Live Science.

But make no mistake: This updo isn’t just there for show. “Caterpillars are unfortunate in that they are essentially just tubes of flesh, and that is very appetizing for very many creatures in the rainforest,” says Simon. To combat this flabby reputation, the “Trump caterpillar” has evolved a thick mane of hairs that irritate the skin and mucous membranes of would-be predators. As if that isn’t enough, there’s a row of spines just below the hairline that are attached to venom glands. 

Luscious, irritating hair. Venomous barbs aplenty. A soft, fragile worm beneath. Yes, this caterpillar is a real life monster, indeed. 

Editor's Note: This story was updated to clarify that the "Trump caterpillar" is scary and spooky in its own right, not just because of its nickname.