I first encountered a house centipede the summer I was 12. I saw it on my way to bed one night, crouching on the wall above the stairs. I stood motionless, staring at it while I decided whether to wake my dad to ask him what that thing was, and to kill it for me. I’m notoriously phobic of creepy-crawlies, and was shaken enough to decide that waking my dad after midnight because of a bug that looked like this one was justifiable. He disagreed. Before going back to bed (leaving the centipede undisturbed), he told me that they crawl all over you and bite you while you sleep. The next morning, in a slightly repentant mood, he told me that this probably wasn’t true. Turns out, it’s not. Centipedes rarely bite people, and sometimes their jaws aren’t even strong enough to pierce human skin in self-defense. If they manage it, a centipede bite will usually resemble a minor bee sting in a human or large mammal like a cat or dog.
The only creatures that need to worry about house centipedes are their fellow pests, since centipedes kill and eat a variety of things you’d probably rather get rid of, like bedbugs, termites, silverfish, spiders, and even roaches. Technically, then, they’re desirable in the home, but people have been telling me that about spiders for years, and I don’t want to find one of them in the shower with me, either. So if you’re with me, read on, and I’ll help you get rid of centipedes.
House Centipede Control
Kill centipedes or capture them on sight—if you can. Their rigid bodies and freakishly long, numerous legs make them very fast. But centipedes don’t usually invade homes in enormous numbers, so if you don’t see them often and you eliminate the one you’re looking at, you may have just taken care of your centipede problem. If you don’t want to kill the centipede, but you want it out of your space, you can capture it in a jar and take it outside. Otherwise, spraying it with an aerosol insecticide that claims to kill centipedes—or simply squishing it—will do the trick.
Get rid of other small household pests. House centipedes subsist almost exclusively on small moving prey, so you should be vigilant about keeping your home as free as possible of ants, flies, termites, and other insects. If you kill them before anything else gets a chance to make a meal of them, the centipedes will eventually figure out that you are no longer providing a fruitful hunting ground and move on to a place where there’s more to eat, like the outdoors or your neighbors' house.
Keep your house dry. Centipedes dry out and die if they don’t stay in a moist environment. You can keep your home from being a moist environment by cleaning up damp closets and basements, using baking soda or a commercially prepared deodorizing powder when you vacuum carpets, and running dehumidifiers and air conditioners to draw moisture out of the indoor air. Before long, centipedes will find a more hospitable place to live.
Use sticky traps. These work by immobilizing insects, which then gradually die of starvation and exposure. If you're sensitive about things dying slow, painful deaths in your home, sticky traps may not be for you, but they really are effective. It's best to place them in entry points such as doorways and windowsills, as well as corners along the floorboards, where centipedes often hunt. The traps will capture not only centipedes, but house insects as well. This will help you determine which other pests you need to work on eliminating in order to deprive the centipedes of prey. 
Close off common entrance points. Keep centipedes from getting into your house in the first place by sealing cracks in the foundation and concrete walls, eliminating spaces around doors and windows, filling gaps where pipes and wires enter the house, and covering basement floor drains with window screen. Of course, doing this will also trap some centipedes in your house, but that just gives you a chance to try out your new arsenal of centipede-killing knowledge.Chemical Centipede Extermination
If you aren’t satisfied with just keeping these creepy-crawlies out of your space, and you want to know how to kill centipedes, keep reading. If your only beef is with centipedes inside your house, you can put a powdered residual insecticide such as Drione in the places where centipedes usually hide, like in wall cracks, dark corners of the basement, crawl spaces, and under furniture. Keep in mind that centipedes will have to walk across an insecticide accidentally; because they usually go after moving prey, they aren’t susceptible to baits. You can discourage centipedes from even going near your home by coating the bottom few feet of the side of your house, and soaking at least a five-foot band of soil around the house, with an outdoor residual spray insecticide such as Talstar or Demon WP. If you don’t even want to encounter centipedes in your yard, be sure to spray the whole lawn and any mulch you use for gardening or landscaping. Remember, though, that insecticides alone will only work temporarily. If your yard and house are still cluttered, damp, and full of tasty bugs, the centipedes will find you again.
