Insect and Spider Identification: Large Black Bug, 2 by wkdjk999

wkdjk999 wrote:
My friend, terrified, sent me photos of this weird insect near his study area crawling on the curtains. It had a big abdomen, short legs, and apparently (according to friend’s description) “yellow markings on its lower joints”. We mistook it for a spider at first but then looked closely on the insect; it had antennae so it couldn’t be one.

We tried identifying the thing via Google and Google image search but the results weren’t very close to what we’re looking for. Closest guess we had was that it was some sort of beetle.

Help! What is it exactly? My friend flushed it down the toilet immediately after smacking it with a slipper so he wasn’t able to take closer photos of it lol

Photos below may be a bit iffy to look at, sorry for the quality :((