crawling horror n.
Ancient crufty hardware or software that is kept obstinately
alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers at a site. Like
dusty deck or gonkulator, but connotes that the thing
described is not just an irritation but an active menace to
health and sanity. "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but they pay
us to maintain one big FORTRAN II application from
nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling
horror...." Compare WOMBAT.