Nest of Lies
Claim: A Swedish man died after having sex with hornet's nest.
FALSE
This is just about the weirdest fetish I've ever heard of. What was he THINKING of?
A man in Sweden has died after trying to have sex with a hornet's nest on his farm outside Ystad. The 35-year-old, known only as Hasse, had 146 sting marks on his body, including 54 to his genitals, News Sweden said. His body was found by a neighbour, who said Hasse was so swollen he initially mistook him for a whale carcass.
Hasse was unconscious when he was found but died an hour later from the injuries he sustained. Neighbour Bertil Ståhfrääs said he called over to his neighbour to ask what he was doing: "At first [I thought he was lying there by] of choice, so I called 'Hasse' to ask what the hell he was doing. "I walked up to the body and then I recognised his tattoo on his neck."I have never in my life seen such a swollen pelvic bone. It hid the whole package [and] the scrotum was enlarged. Right now it feels heavy and unreal. We did not talk very often, but he was still my neighbour."
An autopsy of Hasse's body showed semen on some of the dead wasps and a number of the victim's pubic hair was found at the entrance of the nest. His fingerprints were also found on the nest, leading the police to believe he had been trying to have sex with the hornet's nest when he was stung to death.
"To attempt to have intercourse with a hornet's nest is a very bad idea," Siv During Livh, a psychologist and expert on sex fantasies told the news website.
"I don't even think about the pain he must have suffered both within himself [from his fetish] and incurred by the wasp attack." Hornet stings are more painful than typical wasp stings because of their venom. They can also sting multiple times. The stings are not normally fatal to humans unless a person is allergic to their venom, in which case they can go into anaphylactic shock.
Origins: This article about a Swedish man's dying after having sex with hornet's nest hit English-language Internet sites in May 2013, when it was published as a straightforward news story by the UK's International Business Times (IBT).
New stories about people engaging in sex acts with a variety of unusual "partners" — everything from dead bodies to non-human animals to inanimate objects — are far from uncommon, so the notion that someone might attempt to satisfy his carnal urges with a hornet's nest (heedless of the dangers involved) isn't necessarily too far outside the range of human possibility to be completely unbelievable. Nonetheless, the story was indeed a hoax, one which originated with an article published on the Swedish satirical news site Nyheterna Sverige ("News Sweden") back in September 2012.
The IBT published a follow-up article a day later acknowledging it had been taken in by a tall tale:
Unfortunately it turned out the story was a fake from a satirical news website in Sweden called Nyheterna Sverige, which was kindly pointed out by a number of our readers.
The original story was spawned from animal rights campaigners who were worried about the wellbeing of hornets.
However, the joke got lost in translation — as well the names of those involved. The neighbour's name translates to erection and the fetish expert is called genital.
Thankfully this means a man named Hasse did not get stung to death by hornets after trying to have sex with their nest, and his semen was not found on dead wasps.
His body had not swollen so it resembled a whale and 'Bertil Ståhfrääs' did not "feel heavy and unreal" from finding the 'corpse'.
We are sorry if any readers fell for the story as we did.
Last updated: 16 May 2013
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2013 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson.
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Sources:
Osborne, Hannah. "Swedish Man 'Dies After Having Sex with Hornet's Nest'."
International Business Times. 15 May 2013.
Osborne, Hannah. "Stung by the Hornet's Nest: Hasse Sex-with-Insects Tale a Hoax."
International Business Times. 16 May 2013.
