It was a damp, moonless night when the screams echoed from behind the Howe Center. Students passing by swore they saw the flicker of wings—thousands of them—spiraling in the glow of a lone streetlamp. The next morning, the walkway was empty. Only a single shoe remained, coated in the papery husks of crushed lanternflies.
No one ever found out what happened to the student. Some said they transferred. Others whispered that they were taken — carried off by the same swarms that once ruled the Stevens campus.
At the beginning of this year, the air around the UCC Towers buzzed with the constant drone of spotted lanternflies. They clung to tree trunks, light posts, and backpacks, leaving behind sticky trails and spotted shadows. Students stomped them out of habit, a rhythmic crunch echoing across campus like a war drum. But this semester, they’ve vanished.
Not a single one.
At first, the disappearance felt like a relief. The invaders that had plagued New Jersey for years were finally gone. But the silence that replaced them feels … unnatural. The same spots outside Howe and Babbio where they once gathered now stand still, the air heavy, as if waiting.
So where did they go?
Despite the campus legends, Facilities haven’t sprayed or cleaned them away. The truth is more complicated — and stranger in its own right. Entomologists across the state have noticed a sudden drop in lanternfly numbers this year, a phenomenon spreading from Hoboken to Hackensack. The likely cause? Nature is fighting back.
After several years of infestation, new fungal pathogens and parasitic wasps—both native species—have begun to target the lanternfly population. These natural predators infect or consume the flies, leaving behind what researchers call “death poses”: wings spread open, frozen mid-flight. If you’ve seen a lanternfly clinging upside-down to a brick wall lately, perfectly still, that’s no accident — it’s already dead.
In other words, the invasion collapsed under its own weight. The lanternflies’ numbers grew too high, too fast, until nature corrected itself.
And yet, when night falls, the quiet feels uneasy. The trees along Wittpenn Walk still bear their scars—pitted bark and faint gray residue. Sometimes, when the wind rolls off the Hudson just right, a shadow flits past the lamplight and vanishes into the branches above.
Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe the lanternflies are gone for good.
Or maybe, just maybe, they’re waiting for spring… when the air warms again, and the lights of Stevens flicker like beacons calling them home.
