Woman Finds a Bug Inside of Her Brand-New Candle, Ignites 'Jurassic Park' Comparison

When we buy nice things, we never expect to find gross dead bugs, but every so often, it does happen. It’s never happened to me, but in real-life horror movie fashion, TikToker Riana Joy (@ri_1379) found the corpse of a beast in her brand-new candle. Well, it wasn’t quite a beast — it was a crane fly.

Even still, it’s scary! No one wants to find a bug inside the wax of a brand-new beautiful candle. And as the story develops throughout Riana’s TikTok videos, it gets even freakier. How did the fly get in there? Let’s get into this real-life horror film.

In a TikTok video, Riana showed how after she brought her new candle home from the store (or got it delivered, it’s not totally clear), she found a bug inside of it. “There’s a bug in my new candle,” she wrote it in the video. “And I think it might be enormous.”

Despite the fear, Riana decides to light the candle and see what happens. Eventually, the wax melts, and using some metal tongs, she pulls the bug out of the candle. The bug accidentally lights on fire in a spooky twist reminiscent of some sort of witchcraft ritual.

To be honest, it’s not that scary though, because there’s no way that bug is alive under all of that wax! Think about how bugs get preserved in glass as decoration. Perhaps this candle is supposed to have a bug, and it’s part of the allure of the candle. (We know that’s not actually the case, but we wouldn’t be surprised if candles like that exist.)

Commenters quickly figured out that the bug in Riana’s candle was a crane fly. Crane flies resemble large mosquitoes but they’re actually completely harmless. They’re also known as mosquito hawks or “skeeter-eaters,” and they’ve even been called “daddy longlegs.” They are different from the daddy longlegs spider, however.

In fact, while daddy longlegs spiders are harmless, they do carry some venom. Crane flies, on the other hand, have no venom. They don’t sting, they don’t bite, and, in fact, they don’t even eat! Their lifespans are so short that they don’t even need to eat, so they don’t have digestive systems.

It’s very possible that the crane fly went into the wax and simply died. It would be nice if the bug had already died when it was frozen into the wax.

At the beginning of Jurassic Park, a mosquito that was trapped in amber from the Jurassic era allowed scientists to extract its blood and recreate dinosaurs. So many commenters were reminded of the film and wondered if the dinosaurs were going to awaken once again!

Others were just marveling at the crane fly’s ability to fossilize itself. If I were a bug, that’s how I’d want to go out! If I can’t live forever, at least let me make it into a viral TikTok video when I die by fossilizing myself in a high end candle. Maybe that crane fly didn’t have a stomach, but he might have had a brain.