Can an ear infection cause neck and shoulder pain?

I got so terrified when my neck and shoulder started aching with my earache, I started googling all sorts of scary nerve diseases! It really is just referred pain or swollen glands, but please see a doctor so you don't stress yourself out like I did.

My son had a severe middle ear infection last year and kept complaining about a stiff neck and shoulder. The doctor explained that the local inflammation was irritating the surrounding nerves, so we kept him warm and gave him the prescribed medicine.

Haan, it actually can! When you have a bad ear infection, the swollen lymph nodes in the neck can cause a lot of stiffness that spreads to the shoulder, na. Better to show it to a doctor before it gets more painful.

I didn't know this was possible and was getting really worried about my neck stiffness. Is it normal for the shoulder to also feel heavy, or should I be looking for some other medical reason?

I literally just recovered from this last week. The deep ear pain made me tense up my shoulders so much that both my neck and collarbone area were aching. Once the ENT cleared the ear fluid, the muscle pain totally went away.