Bed bugs are already the pests of our worst nightmares, but usually when a customer buys a brand new mattress, that fear is allayed by the fact that well, the mattress is a new one, wrapped in plastic, and thus safe from bugs. But what if some freaky mattress inception had gone on and there’s an old mattress inside the new mattress?

According to 3 On Your Side in Arizona, a woman in Phoenix was in the market for twin bunk bed mattresses and headed to a local outlet. She bought them, with a three-month warranty included and brought them home.

“The mattresses were fully covered in padding like a brand new mattress,” she says. “They had plastic coverings all over them.”

So far so good, right? Sure, for another two and a half months… and cue the awful, creepy crawly bed bug music, if such music exists:

“It was about midnight,” she remembers. “I was up with the baby and I looked over and a bug crawled across my bed. I freaked out, jumped out of bed, called an exterminator about two in the morning, had them come over.”

A pest control expert came to check out the situation and took video of what he saw — an old mattress stuffed inside the new one. What in the what? And also, bed bugs. Ick.

“I was kind of expecting it a little bit, just because when we were trying to pull them off this bunk bed they weighed about 100 pounds,” he says. “Usually a mattress that size doesn’t weight that much.”

The mattress company issued a statement to 3 On Your Side denying that such a thing could be possible.

“We categorically state this store does not have bed bugs.” In a second email, the company stuck to its guns, adding, “We purchase and sell brand new mattresses only.”

When asked how that old mattress could possibly have come to exist inside the new one, the company merely cited the bedding manufacturers they deal with, ostensibly shifting the blame to those companies.

Though not admitting any blame, the company says it’ll give the customer a $200 refund for the mattress and an extra $200 to cover the professional cleaning as a “goodwill gesture.”

Mattress inception. Our newest fear.

3OYS: Consumer claims old mattress found inside new mattress [3 On Your Side]

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