The link on Assassin Bugs ends with this sentence: "Assassin bugs probably have the most painful bites caused by insects." I emphatically agree! One warm night in the summer of 1993 I was laying in bed reading while my baby slept in the next room and my husband was getting ready for bed. Suddenly I felt the most intense, lancinating pain I had ever experienced, on the soft inner flesh of my upper left arm just above the elbow. The pain grew and grew for what seemed like a full minute while I shrieked so loudly my husband came flying out of the bathroom and my son woke up screaming. I jumped out of bed, threw back the covers and laying there was this jet black beetle like insect with a pointy "nose" protruberance. It was at least an inch long. We trapped it with a cup and transferred it to a jar. My husband took it to work the next day because one of his coworker's husbands was an entomologist who immediately i.d.'ed it as an Assassin Bug. As for me, over the course of several days I developed a firm welt about the size of a tennis ball in diameter that was obviously raised up from the surrounding skin. It ached, itched and burned like hell. I went to the doctor who said it was "just" a hyper-reaction to this particular insect's sting, and he sent me home with cortisone cream. After about two weeks it cleared up but I will never, ever forget how intense the pain of that stinger was, second only to the pain of birthing my two babies...

FWIW, we never saw another of those bugs in our house for the remaining 12 years we lived there, nor had anyone I spoke to about it ever seen such a creature in these parts (NW Penna). We figured it had gotten in the house via a small hole in the window screen; at the time, a huge maple tree's limbs extended across the yard and passed directly over that window onto the roof...