Here at Infocult we often turn out uncanny gaze to the fictionless world, observing how it presents itself with many Gothic terrors.
Today's real-world Gothic moment comes from Oregon, where a poor woman discovered an infestation of worms. In her eyeball.
Reuters' account is fairly dry, offering only this tidbit: "The researchers said the woman noticed a small, translucent worm in her left eye after experiencing irritation".
In contrast, an NPR account embraces the horror. To begin with, the discovery:
Abby Beckley had been living on an inactive cattle ranch in southern Oregon. "There was just one cow," says the 28-year-old college student.
A few weeks later, she started to have the sensation that something was in her eye. "You know how it feels when you have an eyelash in your eye?" Beckley says. "That's exactly how it felt, but when I looked in the mirror, I couldn't see anything."
The sensation wouldn't go away. And her eye was getting more and more irritated. It was red, droopy and inflamed.
"I finally couldn't take it any[more]," she says. "I went to the mirror and decided I'm going to pull out whatever was in my eye, even if I have to rip part of my eye out."
She pulled down her eyelid and grabbed a clear, threadlike material from underneath her eyeball. Then she looked down at the thread:
"It was squiggling around on my finger," Beckley said. "I thought, 'This is nuts! A worm just came out of my eye.' "
Next, scientific confirmation and comedy:
She finally got an appointment with eye doctors at Oregon Health and Science University. At first, they didn't believe her.
"They couldn't find the worms," she says. "And they were saying things like, 'A lot of people, when they have this claim, it's usually just mucus, but wouldn't it be fascinating if there was a worm?' " Beckley says. "I told them, 'Just you wait.'"
Sure enough, an hour later, Beckley felt a worm move. "I said to the doctors, 'Look now! Look now!' "
Immediately the doctors started screaming, "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! It just crawled across your eye!" Beckley says. "Then the doctors scattered and started getting ready to take a sample."
then scientific exploration into how the critters made their way to the woman's ocular flesh:
So, basically, a fly spit the worms into Beckley's eye?
"Yes, that's right," [parasitologist Richard] Bradbury says. "The fly vomited the worms into her eye."
We can see that, looked at properly, the world is just laced with wriggling, intimate, Gothic horrors.
(thanks to Ed Webb and MetaFilter)
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