Thousands of small, leech-like creatures flock to the house of a couple in a hamlet in Quang Binh Province early every morning for the past several days, causing worry among local residents.

The phenomenon has only been happening at the house of Nguyen Van Thoan, 35 and his wife, Nguyen Thi Luu, 33, in Moi hamlet, Van Trach Commune, Bo Trach District.

The strange creature is red and about 5-6 cm long, with a pointed head and a blunt tail, Thoan said.

The couple said they have been living in worry, since they and their neighbors have failed to identify the name of the leech-like creatures, which are crawling into the house from a garden of vegetables in front of the house.

A week ago, Luu found only one of the creatures on the wall of the kitchen. She used a small stick of wood to push it into the stove to burn it. On the next day, she found three more “leeches”. She asked her husband to come to look at them and he could not identify them.

In the following days, numerous creatures were seen almost everywhere in the house and Thoan took some of them to the oldest people in the hamlet, but no one could say what the creature was.

Surprisingly enough, the creature cannot be found anywhere except Thoan’s house, said Hoang Minh Duyen, head of the hamlet.

Dao said he cut some strange creatures into pieces with scissors but the pieces continued to live (Photo: VTC News)

Thinking it a species of leech, Thoan used pesticide to kill the creatures but they did not die. “I later covered them with lime but they remained alive. I then cut them into pieces with scissors but the pieces continued to live as if they were independent individuals.”

“I finally tried salt on them and surprisingly found that they died after contact with the substance.”

Thoan said he covered the yard in front of the house with lime to prevent strange creatures from entering the house. They could not continue crawling when touched by the lime, he explained.

Thoan said he has reported the incident to local authorities. He took some of the strange creatures to the district Preventive Health Center, where officers said the creature belongs to a family of leech but failed to suggest measures to prevent them.

Meanwhile, Hoang Tien Nhat, head of the commune Health Center, said the strange creature cannot be a species of leech, since leeches usually live in habitats containing water, while this creature lives on the ground.

While local authorities are trying to identify the strange creature, Thoan and his wife have each lost weight due to worry in the past week.

Local authorities have yet to identify strange creatures (Photo: Tien Phong)