'Morgellons' Mystery

Aug. 9, 2006 — -- Brandi Koch of Clearwater Beach, Fla., says she feels as if she's living in a horror movie. She claims she has colored fibers coming out of her skin.

Brandi is married to Billy Koch, a former Major League baseball player who was one of a handful of pitchers who could throw a ball at more than 100 mph. Koch says her life was good, until one day in the shower she noticed something strange -- tiny fibers running through her skin.

"The fibers look like hair, and they're different colors," Koch says.

Koch says she knows that what she's experiencing "sounds crazy," but it's true. "If I had a family member call me up and say, 'I have this stuff,' I'd say, 'I'm sending a straitjacket over. You need some help.'"

Anne Dill describes a similar condition. Looking at Dill's life, it appears as if she's living an idyllic existence in a home on Florida's Lake Mary. Her three daughters excel in sports and are straight-A students.

But life in the Dill household is far from idyllic. Anne's 40-year-old husband, Tom, died in January and she believes his death was due to a contagious illness that has infected her entire family.

Dill describes her family's skin: "There's this fibrous material. It's in layers." Dill says the skin on their hands is particularly bad, very swollen and itchy. She says it feels as if bugs are crawling underneath the skin.

Dr. Greg Smith of Gainesville, Ga., has been a pediatrician for the past 28 years. He claims a fiber is coming out of his big toe, and he has video footage to prove it.

"It felt like somebody stuck a pin in my toe and wiggled it and it just continued to hurt," Smith says.

He says he never thought he had bugs. "I've certainly had those crawling sensations, and the fibers which come out of the skin are really bizarre, and really odd."