I'm a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service, I have some stories to tell

I wasn't sure where else to post these stories, so I figured I'd share them here. I've been an SAR officer for a few years now, and along the way I've seen some things that I think you guys will be interested in. <br><br>*Before I begin, if you have any questions I'll do my best to answer them. I won't be able to answer questions about specific locations, as a lot of what I talk about will be on private land or in areas that are protected by the government. I also will not be sharing anything that is considered classified.*<br><br>*Also, I use a bit of SAR slang here. If you have any questions about what I mean by a particular phrase or anything, please let me know and I'll be happy to explain.*<br><br>*"IM Calder, an SAR officer in the Pacific Northwest, this is call sign 7852. Nothing to report, out."*<br><br>A few years ago, I was fairly new to being an SAR officer. I was in my early 20s and had only been an SAR officer for about two years. I was from a big city originally, so when I moved out to the small town I now call home, it was quite the change. <br><br>I loved the small town vibe, with everyone knowing everyone else. It was colder here than I was used to, but I was a big fan of the snow and I finally had the opportunity to learn to ski. <br><br>The department I work for is fairly small, and all the other SAR officers are experienced vets who have been doing the job for years. There's a few younger officers here, but most of them are still probationary or in training. <br><br>My first real call as an SAR officer came in February of my second year on the job. We got a report of a young woman who hadn't come home the night before. She was supposed to meet some friends at the local watering hole, but it turned out she never showed up to the bar. <br><br>Her parents tried calling her all night, but it wasn't until they got a call from the local cops that they found out she never made it out of her driveway. <br><br>A car had gone through the guardrail on the road leading up to her house, which was a few miles down a pretty lively dirt road. It was bad, and the driver didn't survive. They couldn't ID the driver, but the cops had a feeling they knew who it might be. <br><br>When they told the parents, they rushed to look at their daughter's car, and it was gone. <br><br>Enter me and a few other SAR officers. <br><br>This call was odd from the beginning. When I got to the house, I met the parents and the cops who were working the case. I was given a description of the missing girl and her car, as well as a picture. <br><br>We set out in our vehicles, and as soon as we turned off onto the dirt road that led up to the house, we all started smelling something. It was like someone had thrown a beehive into the road and started smashing it. <br><br>I've never seen so many bees just hanging out in the middle of the forest. We were about a quarter of a mile from the wreck, and we could see swarms of bees hovering above the wreckage. <br><br>As we got closer, I started to hear what sounded like humming. It sounded a lot like bees, but it didn't quite sound right. <br><br>When we got to the wreck and started to look it over, we realized that the driver wasn't the missing girl. We found her wallet, but it didn't have an ID. We did, however, find a driver's license from Montana. <br><br>I'm not sure how it happened, exactly, but it turned out that this guy had been missing for three months. The Montana cops were able to track down his family and figure out who he was. <br><br>This is where it gets weird. When we were looking through his car, we found a bunch of different things. He had a couple of large bags full of what looked like honeycombs. <br><br>We decided not to mess with any of it, and the police ended up taking everything back to their station. <br><br>We didn't end up finding the girl that day. We searched the surrounding woods, but it was getting dark and we figured she had probably gone to stay with friends. <br><br>The next day, we got another call from the parents, saying that they still hadn't heard anything from their daughter. We headed back out, and this time we were able to follow some tire tracks. <br><br>After about a mile of walking, we found her car. Or at least, we found part of it. It looked like it had exploded, but there was no sign of a body. <br><br>The vehicle was badly burned, but it looked like it had been stripped down to just the chassis before it was lit on fire. <br><br>We searched the surrounding area, and after a while, we found her. She was hanging by her feet from a tree, and there was a honeycomb-shaped smudge on her stomach. <br><br>I didn't see it myself, but one of the other officers said that she had the weirdest look on her face, almost like she was smiling. <br><br>That Case remained unsolved, but the cops ended up figuring out who the driver was. His name was Kevin, and he was from Billings. <br><br>The cops tracked down his friends and family, and after a lot of interviews they were finally able to piece together what had happened to Kevin. <br><br>Kevin was a beekeeper, and he had some friends who would go out into the woods to find bees to harvest their honey. <br><br>Kevin's friends had been doing this for a few months without any issues, but things took a turn for the worse when they started finding some weird hives in the woods. <br><br>Kevin's friends said that these hives were larger than usual, and that they seemed to smell a bit different. <br><br>Kevin's friends were the ones who ended up harvesting these bees, and they said it was really easy to get the honey from them. They talked about how it tasted differently than regular honey, and that it almost had a spicy note to it. <br><br>They also talked about strange dreams they had after they ate the honey. They said they had the most vivid, detailed dreams possible, but that they couldn't usually remember specifics. <br><br>One of Kevin's friends had stopped eating the honey, but the other two had continued. <br><br>Kevin's friends claimed that he had been acting strangely for a few weeks before his disappearance, and that he had almost started to sound like a zombie. <br><br>The cops in Montana tracked down Kevin's computer, and they found some very disturbing entries in his journals. <br><br>Kevin talked about how "he" was gonna come into his life soon, and that it would change him forever. <br><br>Kevin also talked about the bees. He mentioned how he was convinced that the bees had chosen him, and that he was gonna help them take over the world. <br><br>Kevin's friends said that they had no idea he was acting this way, and that they had been told he was doing fine. <br><br>Kevin's friends also mentioned that Kevin was acting very strangely on the last few times they had spoken to him, almost as if he wasn't speaking of his own free will. They mentioned that Kevin had started to not want to hang out as much, and that he would basically only hang out with them if they were gonna go harvest more bees. <br><br>They told the cops that Kevin had almost started to sound like a robot, and that he would often just sit in silence, staring blankly into space. <br><br>The cops tried to track down the friends who had been harvesting the bees, but they were never able to find them. It's likely that they had left the state or perhaps even the country. <br><br>Kevin's remains were cremated, and they were given back to his family. <br><br>I never forgot this case, as it was my first real call as an SAR officer. I've seen a lot of other odd cases since then, but this one was always particularly strange to me. <br><br>Can anyone here think of a logical explanation for what happened to Kevin and the missing girl? I've gone back to the area where Kevin crashed his car and looked for bees, but I've never been able to find any. <br><br>Thanks for reading!