Ms Melua decided to set the spider free in her garden when she got home

Halloween week is traditionally a time for creepy tales, but pop star Katie Melua has a real-life horror story to top the lot.

The 30-year-old had been bugged by a scratching noise – and when she went to the doctor’s to get it checked out, she discovered to her shock that it was caused by a spider living inside her ear.

Even more alarmingly, it had been there for a week.

Creature discomforts: Katie Melua, pictured during a concert, noticed a rustling noise after using earphones on a flight

Grisly proof: Ms Melua posted this image of her unwanted guest after it had been 'hoovered' out of her ear by a hearing specialist

Melua – who once released a single called Spider’s Web – believes the creature had previously been living in a pair of earbud headphones she recently used.

Once the doctor had removed the creature with a suction device, Ms Melua posted pictures of the unnerving find on Instagram.

She wrote alongside the picture: ‘Basically I used these old in-ear monitors to block out sound on a flight, a little spider must have been in them and crawled inside my ear and stayed there for the week.

‘Though the thing looked terrifying up-close on the doctor’s camera, once he took him out (using a micro-hoover) it was pretty small, and now it’s in this little test tube, alive and seemingly fine.’

And showing a surprising sang-froid, she added: ‘It was no hassle at all, apart from the occasional shuffling noises.’

A spokeswoman for the star, best known for hits such as Nine Million Bicycles and The Closest Thing To Crazy, said: ‘The ear specialist said he’d never in his career taken out a live bug before. Plenty of dead ones. When it was out it was pretty tiny.

‘Katie kept it in the test tube and released it in her garden when she got home. Apart from shuffling and random noises in her ear, the spider was no bother for the entire week it lived there. She was relieved it was what it was as she was worried she was losing her hearing.’

Miss Melua told her followers on Twitter and Instagram about the arachnid that was removed from her ear

The Spider's Web singer believes the creature crawled into her ear from the headphones she was using

The spider was identified as a member of the jumping spider family, which are found worldwide

The spider may look small, but it caused some discomfort for the Nine Million Bicycles singer

The news comes two weeks after The Mail on Sunday reported how a London family found a deadly Brazilian spider delivered with bananas in their Waitrose shopping order.

Ms Melua’s intruder was identified as a member of the salticidae – or jumping spider – family. They are common worldwide, but in Britain they rarely grow bigger than half an inch. Experts were, however, divided about how the spider might have survived for so long.

Dr Tim Cockerill, who presents the BBC series Spider House, said: ‘I have never heard of this before.

‘But lots of spiders don’t need to feed as frequently as you think. At this time of year spiders have been eating flies and are very well fed so they can survive weeks and weeks without food.

‘I don’t think there is anything in anybody’s ear that spiders would like to feed on.’

But Professor Brian Moore, a hearing expert at Cambridge University, said: ‘Spiders like nice warm and slightly moist places and the ear can provide that. We often have very small lice and bed mites which get into our ear which a spider could live on.’

But he had some relatively comforting news: ‘Eventually the spider would come out and lay its eggs in a suitable place – and I don’t think that would be the ear.’