A holidaymaker who suffered 200 bed bug bites is still scarred from her ordeal a month and fear the blemishes may “never go away”.
Sharon Haslam, 65, said the insects had left “big red” blotches on her face and arms at the Calypso Hotel where she was staying with pal Marian Pearson, 60.
They’d made a last minute booking at the hotel for two nights, costing £170, so they could join eight friends for a birthday bash in the resort town on September 8.
But when they got up the next morning, they found droplets of blood covering their bedding and a live bed bug crawling around next to them.
Sharon said they’d now received a full refund from Booking.com along with £100 in compensation, but still felt scarred from the experience.
Now she has warned others of the dangers of the pests. She said: “Some of the bites have turned into purple marks. I don’t know if they are going to go – I think going to be marked all down my arm. We are on four weeks already, and I’ve still got a big red mark on my face, under my eye. And in total honesty, it’s made me paranoid. If I get up to go to the toilet in the night, normally I would just go to the loo with the light off. Now I will turn the lights on and check the bed.
“They live under skirting boards, and they lay their eggs in the seem of the mattress. They don’t come out during the day, they come out in the dark… They see you as a meal, and they feed on you and scuttle off to wherever they go.”
Fears were first raised last week as it emerged Paris had been hit with a plague of the insects that feed on the blood of animals and humans.
Passengers on the London Underground and buses in Manchester have reported seeing the creepy-crawlies on public transport. And Luton Council this week issued a warning to residents it was receiving an ‘alarming’ number of bed bug jobs.
Sharon said: “When we woke up, my friend pulled her sheets back and noticed there was blood. We thought ‘Where has that come from?’ Then we found mine also had specs of blood all over the sheets as well. It took us ten minutes to work it out.
“We started to look around the floor and found droplets of blood, and then I found a live bed bug. I captured it in a little cup. I got to the reception and presented them with the bug in the cup.”
Marian said they had immediately left the hotel and doused themselves in bug spray, before finding alternative accommodation to stay in for their next night. But when they got home, she said the bite marks had kept reappearing.
Marian was prescribed strong antibiotics, antihistamine tablets and creams – after doctors feared the bites could lead to an infection. She added: “As soon as I arrived home, my partner took my luggage to the tip. We tied up the clothes in air-tight bags and then opened them in the washing machine and washed them.
A spokesperson for the Calypso Hotel previously admitted they had received previous complaints about “bug issues”. But they said an inspector from Blackpool council found no evidence of bed bugs just two days before Marian and Sharon’s stay.
They said: “We have had few complaints about the bug issues. We take any complaint regarding bed bugs very seriously and deal with it immediately. Most of the times customers complain just to get refund. A few weeks ago we had had two rooms complaining about the same and when we checked with a UV torch no evidence was found.
Culled from The Mirror
