Camper feels something wriggling in sleeping bag and wakes up to nightmare find

06 November 2023 , 12:27

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It was meant to be an idyllic camping trip to a remote nature park (Image: Facebook/Lake Clark National Park & Preserve)

It's perhaps a camper's worst nightmare - being woken in the middle of the night by the feeling of something wriggling inside your sleeping bag.

For one such person who was hoping to enjoy a stay in the remote Lake Clark National Park, it became an unwelcome reality. The huge reserve in Alaska, US is full of salmon-packed streams, bald eagles and brown bears.

While its craggy mountains, volcanoes and vast lakes are enough to satisfy any nature lover. However, a stomach-churning experience abruptly interrupted one camper's idyllic trip after they felt something crawling on them in their sleeping bag.

A few harvestmen can be seen on the outside of the tent - but it gets worse (Facebook/Lake Clark National Park & Preserve)

Hundreds of harvestmen, arachnids related to spiders, were found crawling over every inch of the outside of a tent, right above the head of the backpacker inside. A creepy Facebook post on November 1 by Lake Clark National Park read: "In the remote depths of Lake Clark’s vast, wild landscape, a weary backpacker settles in for a night at camp after a long day of exploring. Little do they know, creatures of the night lurk in the woods, waiting for the opportune moment to strike fear.

Eventually hundreds of the creepy invertebrates were seen crawling all over the tent (Facebook/Lake Clark National Park & Preserve)

"Snuggled into their warm sleeping bag, the tired explorer nods off to dreamland…suddenly they are jolted awake with the sense of being covered by creepy crawly creatures of the forest, only to discover their nightmare has become a reality. Hundreds of daddy longlegs have engulfed the tent!"

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It looked just like a mass of bugs on the tent initially but as a light was shone on the long-legged creatures, the shocking truth of the scene was revealed, reports the Daily Star. The park explained on Thursday that scientists didn't know for sure why the harvestmen gathered in such numbers on the tent, but there are some speculations about their unusual behaviour.

A Facebook post read: “Researchers speculate that aggregations form for mating, humidity control, or to deter predators. While other campers had their own ideas about the invertebrates.

At first it seemed like the arachnids were just little bugs (Facebook/Lake Clark National Park & Preserve)

The shocking discovery was enough to scare any camper (Facebook/Lake Clark National Park & Preserve)

One said: “They can have the tent, I'll just sleep outside,” and another labelled the incident as “my nightmare”. A third person commented: “I would run faster than Forest Gump and leave everything behind like ‘hey you can keep the tent and everything inside... my treat.’”

Harvestmen, sometimes referred to as daddy longlegs, aren’t actually spiders as they lack silk and venom glands and are considered a closer relation to scorpions. There is also an urban myth that they are venomous when in fact they have no such toxicity in them.

Steven White