In North Carolina, a 3-year-old girl had been complaining for months about hearing “monsters” from the walls of her bedroom, leaving her parents shocked by what they found inside the walls.
In September 2023, Saylor Class pointed to her closet and told her parents, Ashley and Chris Class, that there were “monsters” hiding inside.
Initially, the parents thought this idea stemmed from Saylor’s overactive imagination, as she had been watching her favorite movie, “Monsters, Inc.”
“My husband would joke around with her, pretending to battle the monsters in the closet and saying, ‘I caught him. Don’t worry,'” Mrs. Class told The Epoch Times.
Over the following months, the toddler grew more and more persistent.
During this time, Mrs. Class became pregnant with their third child and brushed off Saylor’s insistence as typical toddler behavior.
But as time went on, Saylor refused to sleep in her room and often crawled into her parents’ bed. Witnessing this, her parents decided to sleep in her bedroom, but they heard and saw nothing unusual.
As fall turned into winter, Saylor’s complaints about the “monsters” gradually subsided.
However, after her brother was born in mid-February, Saylor became worried about what was happening in her room and once again refused to sleep there.
“We even gave her so-called ‘monster spray,’ which was just a bottle of water to spray on the monsters,” Mrs. Class said. “It didn’t work.”
In early April, while cleaning outside the house, Mrs. Class noticed something strange.
“I noticed a few bees going in and out of the attic,” she said.
An exterminator suggested they contact a beekeeper to help them figure out what was going on.
However, finding a beekeeper during the busy season proved to be a challenge. The couple contacted eight different beekeepers before finally finding someone who could come inspect their home.
The beekeeper went up to the attic to check if the bees were coming from there. Upon entering, he immediately noticed bees emerging from the floor.
He asked the couple what was below, and they revealed it was Saylor’s bedroom.
When the beekeeper placed a thermal imaging camera on the ceiling, he didn’t detect any activity initially. But when he aimed the camera at the wall…
“I’m not joking with you; the thermal imaging camera lit up,” Mrs. Class said. “The scene was quite eerie.”
“I was a little dumbfounded. At first, I thought it was a person. I was like, what’s behind that wall?”
The beekeeper said it was the largest beehive he had ever seen.
Soon, everything became clear. The wall’s temperature was around 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius), so Saylor could feel the warmth and hear the buzzing of bees at night. The parents then realized that there was a “noise machine” in the room, or so it seemed, when they slept in there. In winter, though bees don’t enter a dormant state, they are much quieter.
When the beekeeper opened the wall, the bees flew towards the light.
“It was like a horror movie,” Mrs. Class said. When the beekeeper first arrived, she was relieved Saylor wasn’t there as it might have scared the toddler learning to walk.
Soon after, the parents had to pick Saylor up from school. They hesitated on how to explain to her that she was right.
Introduced to the beekeeper, Saylor insisted that he was a “monster hunter.”
The beekeeper joked, “From now on, I’ll call myself a monster hunter.”
Mrs. Class said Saylor now loves to tell her friends about her encounter with the monster hunter.
The family discovered over 50,000 bees living in the house with them.
The beekeeper carefully removed the hive, putting the bees in a box with mesh walls. To scoop them into the box, he used a specialized vacuum to gently suck them in without harming them.
While Saylor’s room was being repaired, she had to share a room with her sister.
The incident resulted in damages amounting to $20,000, as the couple’s insurance didn’t cover such losses. A hundred-pound comb had been removed from the wall, with honey dripping onto the wires inside and corroding them, necessitating new wiring.
Reflecting on the event, the Clases recalled that Saylor’s first birthday theme revolved around bees, with bee shirts, beehive cakes, and more.
Two years later, Mrs. Class said, “This girl has been dubbed the ‘bee girl’ online.”
Mrs. Class expressed gratitude that she and her husband listened and validated their daughter’s concerns. Since the incident, she has been advocating for parents to listen to their children’s cues.
“Follow your gut instincts as parents,” she said. “If your child is very insistent and worried about something, listen to their narrative.”
“If it’s just imagination, it will fade and dissipate over time, but if it grows stronger, then you should investigate what important matter needs attention.”