THE CAMPING TRIP THAT ALMOST KILLED ME | 9 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 352

Victor Phillips (0:29)

When my buddy Henry and I, who I call Hank, were still in high school, we got so bored one spring break that we decided to go camping out in south Texas brush country. If you drive southwest of Corpus Christi away from all the palm trees, white sandy beaches, and turquoise blue ocean, the land suddenly flattens out into this endless stretch of scrub. We call it the brush, I suppose on account of it being so dry and bristly, but it should be called the thorns because those are what you really got to look out for. They'll prick you something awful if you're not careful on where you're doing it, and even if you are careful, one stray branch will catch your clothes and put a hole in your shirt. It's not even counting all the prickly pears, but at least they're kind of colorful. And then aside from those, you got your black brush, your mesquite, and we saw to trees. And one of the stars of our story here, the guajillo shrubs. Now, don't get excited, chilly fans. It's not related. It's hot, dry, and dusty. It's real drought country, but while most of the time it's all sandy and beige and sad looking, you get one good rain and bam, wild flowers start popping up all over the place, and it can look really pretty. And that's what it looked like when me and Hank went out to camp that day, since it had rained a few days previous, and thanks to the dry wash still being flooded, there was a gentle trickle of water into all the surrounding soil, meaning the brush was so green in places that the bushes were like thick walls that you could barely see through. And so there we were, walking on all that still, loamy soil after a full day's hike, and we're poking around looking for somewhere to set up camp. The sun was starting to dip, so the heat wasn't so bad anymore, and the air had that kind of fragrant green smell because of the rains. And then all of a sudden, as we're coming up to this big old guajillo bush, we start hearing this gentle buzzing sound floating through the air. It took me a second to figure out what it was, but as we got closer, I realized what it was long before I saw it. It was a beehive, but I couldn't figure out why it was so loud until I saw it.

And I swear to Almighty God when I say this, but that thing was the size of a goddamn washing machine. No, I'd seen quite a few beehives by that age, and a couple of hornet nests, too, but never one as gigantic as the one sitting in the crook of that guajillo. It was all gray and papery and loud, too. I mean, obviously, it's going to be louder if it's larger, but hearing that thing up close was freaky. Just that low hum from what must have been hundreds of bees crawling around in there, maybe thousands. We crept a little closer, not scared, just kind of awestruck by the sheer size of it. I mean, you know bees, right? They don't bother them, but sometimes they don't bother you. Wasps or hornets would have been a different story, and we would have been up and out of there faster than you can spit. But since it was just plain old honey bees, we stop and look for a second thinking, damn, would you look at that?

That would have saved us a whole lot of trouble if we had. And the first is that the Guajillo is one of the bees' best friends out here in the brush, because it puts out those little blonde fuzzy flowers in early spring that the bees go crazy for. It's like prime rib for them down in these parts, so having their hive in a Guajillo shrub is like having an apartment in a Bucky's and looking back on it, it kind of makes sense how that thing was so big. But then the second thing I didn't know, and this is the real kicker, is that these were no ordinary bees, no sir. But unfortunately for us, there was no way of knowing until it was way too late. And so we stood there looking at the beehive having gotten as close as we could stomach, and then as we were looking at it, one of the bees kind of flies out and buzzes near my buddy for a second before zooming back to the hive. Now we didn't see it for what it was, because we still thought that we were looking at regular bees. But by then, one by one, more and more of the little things came buzzing through the air towards us like they were checking us out. No, I said, don't move a muscle, Hank. They're more scared of you than you are of them. But those little bastards were not scared of us, and they were about to go prove it in a big and bad way.