Bedbugs, the flat-bodied creatures that feed off the blood of sleeping people, seem like something from the flophouse era, thriving in dirty sheets and musty old houses. But pest experts are coming out with some exceptionally creepy news: bedbugs are back in huge numbers. And sanitized luxury hotels and posh homes — where they may check in with international travelers, nannies, and others who unknowingly transport them in their luggage — are the blood-suckers’ first targets.

Although botanical pesticides successfully annihilate many of the bugs (known as Cimex lectularius), the ones that survive can carry diseases like leprosy and the frighteningly named " oriental sores, " according to Pest Control magazine. (However, scientists haven’t proven that the bugs actually transmit the diseases to humans.) Over at Environmental Health Services, Inc., a pest-management company in Dedham, John Stellberger makes his living asphyxiating the little buggers. We pestered him to find out whether we’re sleeping with the enemy.

Q: So is this rise for real?

A: I’ve been in the business for 23 years. I might have had two calls for bedbugs up until two years ago. But the past two years, it’s been about a service a month. I don’t want to say epidemic, but it’s pretty bad.

Q: Where are your jobs?

A: A lot of what I find are related to nannies, they’re mostly European. The homes are in affluent suburbs, and the nannies bring them in with them. These are homes that are two, three million.... We also bid on a youth hostel in Boston. The place has had a problem for years.

Q: So what do the bugs do?

A: They live around the perimeter around where people sleep. They hide in a bed frame, coils, box spring, or tucks in a mattress. One job, I could see the eggs on the mattress. They just draw blood. They leave a quarter- or half-dollar-size raised red splotch and bruise. It’s the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen. I itch when I leave a place.

Q: Can you feel them?

A: Oh, yeah. I think so, because someone couldn’t sleep. Sometimes you can see blood staining in the sheets.

Q: I wash my sheets every week. What’s the chance that I’m sleeping with vermin?

A: They don’t live in the sheets. They live in hard furniture. They crawl into cracks. They hang out in kind of low-traffic areas.

Q: So I’m okay as long as I’m not sleeping with a European?

A: I don’t want to say just Europeans. The first six jobs this year were people with live-in nannies; one was South American.

Issue Date: August 2 - 9, 2001