This Is The Stuff Of Night Terrors; Woman Wakes To Bat ‘Kiss’: Weird News & Oddities

If this doesn’t give you night terrors — or at least make you want to duct tape your mouth shut when you sleep — you may not be OK.

A Richmond, Virginia, doctor thought she was dreaming about a mouse trying to crawl into her mouth, unsettling enough on its own. Then she reached toward her face and felt something “slimy and a little hairy and cool.”

It was a — and feel free to insert any adjective or expletive you’d like here — bat.

“This bat was legitimately trying to burrow between my lips into my mouth,” Dr. Krista Edelman, a gastroenterologist with Richmond Gastroenterology Associates, said in a video she posted on Instagram. “How it didn’t get past my teeth, I have no idea.”

Edelman’s husband captured the bat, which initially tested negative for rabies. Still, the bat kiss was unnerving enough that Edelman started the rabies vaccine series.

There’s a “moral to the story” as bats begin looking for their winter roosts, Edelman said: “Get your exterminator to come out and check your attic and your chimneys, especially if you live in an old house in Richmond like I do.”

• Read more: Bat Gives Sleeping Woman A Kiss

So, It’s The Snake’s Fault?

Some social media jokes write themselves.

“Ssnarson,” someone wrote on a post about the 8-foot python that greeted firefighters who recently responded to a burning classroom in Bedford County, Virginia.

“Who had snake arson on their 2026 bingo?” someone else wondered.

Without so much as a Miranda warning and based entirely on circumstantial evidence, the local fire marshal said the python, named Nanner, had escaped her cage and knocked over a heat lamp, starting the fire. He added, however, that there was no evidence “there was any maliciousness involved on the snake’s side.”

Something goes wrong, and it’s always easy to blame the snake.

Life sciences teacher Brittany Jacobs has kept reptiles in her classroom for 18 years and never once had an escape, let alone a case of snake arson. She insists Nanner didn’t start the fire. She was trying to escape it.

“She pushed on the screen so hard to get out that she bent the metal locks,” Jacobs wrote on social media. “She left the room because it was so hot in there. So hot that it melted the tank next to hers.”

Security video shows Nanner leaving the classroom about 20 minutes after the fire became visible.

A tortoise named Bowser died in the fire. The other surviving animals have since been removed from the school and are staying with Jacobs, who is monitoring them for respiratory problems.

• Read more: Who Had Snake Arson On Their Bingo Card?

Who Lost Their Head?

Workers at a southeast Michigan Goodwill store intercepted a human skull before someone spied it and featured it in one of those thrifting videos that seem so popular on social media.

Here’s what we know:

A woman dropped off the skull Jan. 26 at a Goodwill store in Chelsea, along with other donations. The skull was wrapped in a shirt, which is not among the usual recommendations for donating gently used household goods.

At first, Goodwill officials thought it was a fake. Police later determined it was quite real and belonged to a woman who was somewhere between 20 and 49 when she died. The skull is well-preserved, shows no signs of trauma, and doesn’t appear to have been used as a medical or teaching specimen.

That leaves investigators with a couple of fairly important questions. Who was she? How did she die?

But just as important, investigators don’t know the identity of the woman who made the unusual Goodwill donation, or how she came to be in possession of the skull in the first place. They know only that she’s in her 40s or early 50s and has shoulder-length brown hair.

Police would very much like to have a word with her.

• Read more: Would You Thrift A Human Skull?

Let Them Eat Cake

If you’re going to get locked inside Macy’s overnight, apparently there are worse ways to pass the time than trying on clothes and finding the cake.

Police say Roy Pughsley, 53, spent the night inside the iconic Macy’s on State Street in downtown Chicago after the store closed earlier this summer. Security cameras caught him browsing through clothing and wandering into one of the store’s restaurant kitchens, where he emerged holding a slice of layer cake.

Because if you’re already allegedly committing burglary and felony retail theft, there is perhaps no reason to do it hungry.

Pughsley eventually left the store around 3:25 a.m., police said, taking unpaid merchandise with him.

Employees reported the overnight shopping excursion to investigators. More than a month later, on Aug. 3, Pughsley was spotted outside the same Macy’s.

This time, he didn’t make it inside for dessert.

He was arrested and charged with burglary and felony retail theft.

• Read more: Locked Macy’s Overnight, Alleged Thief Finds Cake And More

This Little Piggy Ran

Wilbur made a break for it, and for a while there, nobody in West Hollywood seemed quite fast enough to catch him.

The pint-sized pig was spotted hoofing it through the streets near Fairfax Boulevard, where e-bike rider Jamaal Harrison joined another man in a pursuit that briefly seemed to have Wilbur cornered between two cars.

Wilbur had other plans.

“That pig’s fast, man,” Harrison told the Los Angeles Times after eventually giving up the chase.

He did, however, get video. After a friend urged him to post it, the clip took off on TikTok, where Wilbur became a minor celebrity before animal control officers finally corralled him.

Now comes the less glamorous part of being internet-famous: waiting to see whether anybody claims you.

Wilbur, a name bestowed by an animal control officer, was taken to the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter and held there while officials gave his owner time to come forward. If nobody does, he could be offered for adoption through a silent auction.

Prospective owners will need more than affection for his viral getaway. They’ll also have to show they have a home suitable for keeping a farm animal.

In other words, Wilbur may have escaped the streets of West Hollywood, but his next move will require references.

• Read more: Wilbur Went Hog Wild And Now Needs A Home

Fear Wears A Mask

Clowns have enough image problems without this.

A Philadelphia man accused of terrorizing people near City Hall while wearing a Chucky-style mask has been arrested more than 2,000 miles away in Las Vegas, authorities said.

The episode taps into a very real fear. Clowns, dolls and masks all trade on the same unsettling trick — a face that is almost human, but not quite, and is impossible to read.

Zymire Hughes, 22, allegedly spent about an hour early Aug. 12 harassing roughly 15 people in Philly’s Center City, according to authorities.

His last alleged victim was a jogger whom police said Hughes chased through the streets while pretending he had a weapon and asking, “Are you ready to die?”

• Read more: ‘Chucky’ Caught In Las Vegas After Philly Terror

How Did This Happen?

There are Halloween costumes that miss the mark, and then there are Halloween costumes that make you wonder how many people had to look at them before somebody finally said, “Whoa.”

Target has apologized and pulled a children’s clown costume after critics said its dark hood and exaggerated wide smile evoked racist blackface and minstrel-era imagery. The Minneapolis-based retailer said the costume “should never have been part of our assortment.”

That much seems hard to argue.

“As a company, we know we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry,” the retailer said.

The apology left some people scratching their heads. This wasn’t somebody’s homemade Halloween disaster. A product had to be designed, selected, produced, photographed, marketed and offered for sale by one of the country’s largest retailers before the objection apparently became obvious.

Target says it is trying to figure out how that happened. Judging from the comments on social media, a fair number of people would like to know, too.

Parting Shot

Capt. Damon Sacco thought he had a shark on the line.

That would have been plenty.

Instead, about 100 miles off Cape Cod, Sacco and Plymouth retiree Walter Chapman found themselves battling an Atlantic blue marlin that would eventually weigh 1,260 pounds — roughly the weight of a grand piano, with a bill capable of punching holes in a boat.

Which, as it happens, it did.

The more than 11-foot fish left a couple of holes in the transom of Sacco’s charter boat, Castafari. Sacco considers them “war marks.”

Fair enough.

Sacco first saw a huge dorsal fin, then watched the marlin launch itself from the ocean about 50 feet behind the boat. It jumped three times before disappearing beneath the surface and ripping line away.

“Am I really seeing this?” Sacco recalled thinking.

For the next three hours, he and Chapman found out.

When they finally got the fish back to Falmouth, they learned just how extraordinary the catch was: It was only 142 pounds shy of the world record and believed to be the largest Atlantic blue marlin ever caught off the U.S. East Coast.

Researchers at the University of Maine Pelagic Fisheries Lab will study the fish’s head in hopes of determining its age. One scientist estimates the fish may have been 25 to 30 years old.

That’s a long time to spend avoiding fishermen only to go out by punching holes in the boat.

• Read more: This Is No Fish Story