Tiny little flies are causing a big problem for residents in southern Chester County and there really is no way to keep them out.

Families in Kennett Square, and other towns nearby, are being overrun with phorid flies.

“They’re tiny. They get through screens. They get through everything,” Kennett Square resident Artem Shvartsbart. “They congregate all along the ceiling. They come down. They die. They fall on counters. I found them on toothbrushes. I found them on all areas of the bathroom.”

Kennett Square is the mushroom capitol of the world and these particular flies are born and bred in the compost of the local mushroom farms.

The flies are not good for the mushroom crops but once they leave those facilities, they ride on the breezes before becoming a problem for homeowners nearby.

“My daughter is scared to use the bathrooms upstairs,” resident Suzanne Heron said. “She starts crying and we have to take her downstairs because she is scared of the flies.”

The problem is at its worst on cool fall evenings when the flies are looking for warmth and humidity.

“It looks like the ceiling is moving, like when you look up, it’s just hundreds of thousands of flies,” Heron said.

It’s an issue that has made some neighbors say that they regret moving to the area and are worried about their property values if they tried to sell.

Kennett Square’s longtime mayor has been pleading for help from the state and now has worked with a company to get an emergency use trial of a netting and chemical solution applied at the mushroom farms.

“It is fixable but it’s not fast and for residents dealing with this for five, ten years it’s not fast enough by any stretch,” Mayor Matt Fetick said.

The mayor is hopeful for a solution for homes will also come soon.

But, in the meantime, families are trying to keep up the endless task of setting out and emptying traps full of dead flies.

Homeowners say they feel like they just can’t keep up anymore and they’re praying for this plague on their homes to end.

Penn State University now has a whole team working on this problem too.