People Share The Times Their Eerie Gut Feelings Turned Out To Be Right

Chances are, at one point or another, you’ve had a gut feeling and it usually happens without warning. While some might think it’s just a bad case of indigestion or anxiety getting the best of them. Other times, it’s more than that.

There isn’t an explanation for why it happens, but one thing’s for sure, it saved more than a few lives. Here are some stories of gut feelings that saved people’s lives and why you should always listen to yours. It’s better safe than sorry.

NOT A NORMAL FAMILY

When I first met my wife, she seemed to have a normal modern family with two moms and two dads. Over the years, it became apparent that her stepdad was never around that much for holidays, birthdays, you name it. He’d pop in, say hi, grab a nap or whatever, then take off again. This was just normal to my wife’s family. But it all gave me a strange feeling.

It was just the way it had always been since they were teenagers. He claimed to have a job following FedEx trucks around the state as security. But to me, it was strange, and I started making jokes about him having another family. Well, that got my sister-in-law thinking because she was owed a favor from the PI at her firm.

Sure enough, he had not one but three other wives around the state with five other stepchildren between them. My sister-in-law told her mother who then immediately changed the locks and filed for divorce. They haven’t spoken since. The divorce was even uncontested. They also sent the report to let his other wives know. Reddit: barcodez1

TOO PERFECT

I was offered a dream job at almost double my salary in a different city. It was only two hours away, but something told me not to take the job. I had a number of people tell me I would never have another opportunity like this, and my fear of leaving my hometown was holding me back.

Two months after I turned it down, that division of the company was sold, and everyone in that department lost their job. I would have been stuck in a new city with no friends or family nearby, and no job prospects. Reddit: Charleroy26

ELEVATOR SCENE

I literally almost lost my life in the most soap opera way imaginable. I was waiting for an elevator at my hotel on the 12th floor. I was on my phone, playing freaking Angry Birds of all things.

I was hardly paying attention when the door opened, but then I got a weird feeling and looked up to see that the shaft was empty. Reddit: Permalink

THE DOOR

I lived in a basement suite out in the burbs of Vancouver with two friends. They both had plans to stay elsewhere for the night, so I was hanging out by myself. It was late into the night, and I was halfway through the movie Stir of Echoes when I kept getting this eerie feeling I was being watched through the window right by me.

I never lock my door, but something in me told me I better get up and deadbolt it. Not more than a minute later, I heard a terrifying sound. I looked over and saw the door handle turning super slowly. Thankfully, they did not get in. Reddit: Filosofemme

QUICK BRAKE

My weird instincts saved someone else’s life. I was driving through a Target parking lot when I got a gut feeling to stomp on my brakes, so I did. I already had my foot all the way down to the floor on the brake when I saw a small child suddenly dart right in front of my car.

If I hadn’t followed my gut, I would have hit the kid. I then pulled into a parking spot and had a panic attack as I watched the mom yell at her son for running in front of my car. Reddit: pyouverymuch

“CAN I USE YOUR PHONE?”

My buddy’s sister moved away from home. Within the first week of her living on her own, a man came up to her door and asked if he could “use her phone in her house because he was lost.” She didn’t buy it. She felt uncomfortable and said no.

A few hours later, she walked outside to multiple patrol cars, ambulances, and fire trucks. She asked what was going on—and the answer was absolutely chilling. It turned out the guy went next door and slaughtered her two neighbors after they let him inside. Reddit: Tazluh

CHEST PAINS

Once while I was on a school sports trip to a competition, I got horrible chest pains. I struggled to breathe, and I felt like I was going to throw up but couldn’t. Everyone tried passing my symptoms off as a panic attack, but I just knew something was wrong, and I started going nuts on them until I ended up in the hospital.

A tiny hole in my heart ripped open a small amount, but it was large enough to make blood pass through the hole into the wrong sides way more than normal. If I hadn’t gone to the hospital, my heart could’ve stopped beating. Reddit: kitten896

DAD’S CALL

My gut feeling saved my father’s life. When I was 12 years old, he called to say “goodbye” and said that he would “see my sister and me when we were much older.” I quickly ran over to the neighbor’s house, bawling and not understanding what was going on, but knowing my father needed help NOW.

Fortunately, my paramedic uncle and his partner managed to locate my ODing father, and they were able to pump his stomach on the way to the hospital.

I’ve never really doubted my gut since. That experience was traumatic enough that I now always trust my gut whenever it kicks up. God bless booze for allowing me to trudge through the darkest of memories and come out okay. Reddit: pyromps

BURNING FEELING

In the middle of the night, for no good reason, I left my boyfriend’s house and drove home 40 minutes away. He was perplexed but I had “a feeling.” As I reached my front door I heard a low crash down the block. No one else heard it or came out.

Long story short: I ended up pulling a man out of a burning car before he burned alive. I still have the scars from the burning seatbelt plastic. Some days I think of it as a coincidence, some days I think it was some kind of intervention. Reddit: louderharderfaster

LEXUS CAR

Someone once rolled up in a Lexus when I was 11 years old and asked me, “Are you (my name)?” I instantly got a bad feeling and was like, “Nah.” The dude then put his gun out the window for a second and said, “Aight, then.” Then he drove down the street—only to double back.

My brother and I booked it for our lives and hid behind a big truck. We actually ended up running past our house, and we watched the car do a burnout before flooring it out of the neighborhood. Reddit: Derick_Ruhl

EXPLOSION

My father had extreme back pain one day and skipped work. I had just showered and was about to sit in bed and do my nails when he told my mom that he was going to go get a shot in his back because the pain was unbearable.

I have to mention that after I shower, I DO NOT MOVE from the house, like ever. But that day, I had a feeling that I should go to the pharmacy with my dad. Five minutes after we left the house, on August 4, 2020, the Beirut explosion happened.

The only damage to our house was in my room, where huge shards of glass landed exactly where my head would have been. Four windows also landed right where my dad was parked. I still can’t believe that I was lucky enough to leave my room in time and not die. Reddit: BuckyBarnes__

SUSPICIOUS VAN

I was heading to my car in my building’s parking garage on my way to work. A van was parked next to my car, and I could see a man inside. He motioned for me to come around to his door and pointed to something in his car to try to get me to come to look.

I had a bad feeling, so I just shook my head and got in my car. I looked over, and he was getting out of the van. I quickly started to drive off and noticed a second man crouched behind a dumpster near the van. I’m not sure what I avoided, but I was sure as heck glad that I did. Reddit: Mariospario

ALMOST BITTEN

I was in the woods looking for critters, and I found this big piece of plywood that would’ve been perfect for reptiles and amphibians to hide underneath. I went to lift it up when I suddenly had this moment where I thought, “What if there’s something right where I’m gonna put my hands?”

So, I grabbed a stick to lift it instead…and I almost jumped out of my skin. There was a copperhead underneath. Yikes! It wasn’t right where I was gonna grab it, so I’m not sure if it would’ve been able to bite me, but it was definitely a good cautionary tale. Reddit: futterguy1

SPOT IN THE ATTIC

My dad was going to fix something on the ceiling of my room and had to go into the attic. He had me sit right below where he was going to work so that I could help him find the correct spot in the attic—but I had to go to the bathroom.

I quickly went and when I came back, I couldn’t believe my eyes. My dad had fallen through the ceiling and was sitting in a pile of drywall and insulation in the exact spot where I had been just moments ago.

He ended up being pretty much perfectly fine besides a couple of scratches and bruises, but if I was still sitting there, I probably would have been seriously hurt if not killed; I was only in elementary school at the time. Reddit: [deleted]

SOME FRESH AIR

I used to sleep in a basement apartment and one winter I woke up in the middle of the night smelling something odd. I opened the windows, hoped it would dissipate, and didn’t think much of it.

Come morning, I still felt really weird. Well, it turns out that snow had blocked the heater exhaust vent and carbon monoxide was feeding into the house. If I didn’t open my windows, I definitely would be dead. Reddit: Thetow

BEFORE PHONES

When my mom was pregnant with my older sister, she and her family decided to go hiking in the mountains. On the day of the hike, she suddenly felt weird and uncomfortable. She stayed behind while the rest of her family went for the hike.

Her family got lost, and this was long before cellphones. If it wasn’t for my mom staying behind, no one would’ve noticed they were gone and so no one would’ve gotten help. Reddit: ToldNoOne

STABBING PAIN

One day, I felt a sudden pain in my lungs when I inhaled. I’ve never been stabbed, so I don’t know what it’s like, but the pain should have been equal to it, if not worse. It had happened before, years ago. After some hot water in the shower, the pain was gone.

My wife insisted on going to ER. I insisted on hot water. “I feel like we should go and see a doctor,” she said. When I was examined, I was diagnosed with pulmonary embolism on both lungs. The doctor said “One or two more hours, and you would’ve been gone.” So yeah, I owe my wife one. Reddit: verpin_zal

DISASTER

My now-wife and I did the long-distance thing in college, and I planned on doing my normal routine to visit her, where I would leave Chicago in the morning and get to her in the early afternoon on Friday.

Well, I’m closing my store on Thursday night, and get a feeling I should just leave that night. So I said alright and left right away. A little after lunch on Friday, tornado sirens go off.

I don’t think anything of it until I head back home Sunday and drive through a town about a half-hour north of her. It got lit up by the tornado.  That’s when I realized. If I had left at my normal time, I would’ve been smack dab in the middle of the tornado. Reddit: jvac23

BACK SPASM

My husband had a random back spasm that was unlike anything he ever felt. He said it wasn’t too painful, but it was out of the ordinary, and it somehow felt “off.”

So, he went to a doctor to get it checked and discovered it was kidney cancer. He was a freaking healthy, buff 32-year-old with kidney cancer. We are so grateful he went in. Reddit: Kneehighonagrasshop

PEANUT ALLERGY

I have a severe peanut allergy. I went to a restaurant and asked if their food or sauce had peanuts. They said no, so we ordered some food for a gathering taking place the next day.

I ate some of it, and I immediately felt sick. I thought that maybe the heat was getting to me, so I stopped eating and told my dad I wasn’t feeling too well. I didn’t think anything was too bad until a couple of minutes later. A weird instinct just came out of nowhere, and I told my dad I needed a hospital.

One car ride later, I was breaking out into rashes and throwing up. I got the treatment I needed, and I’m still here, luckily. Ironically, I experienced this on the day of teaching younger kids about severe food-related allergies. Reddit: Lucky_Se7enX

THE SIDE OF THE CAR

I can’t say for sure that it saved my life, but it for sure saved an ex-girlfriend’s life. This was around 1998, and my relationship with my girlfriend had already ended. She called me to say her car had a flat tire and she needed help changing it. Being a nice guy, I met her parked on the shoulder of a Southern California freeway.

I was trying to get the spare tire out of the trunk when I noticed my ex standing on the left side of the car near the lane. I immediately told her to move to the other side of the car.

Not even 30 seconds later, I felt something brush my left arm, and then I heard scraping and crashing noises. A pickup truck had scraped the side of her car and kept going. If I hadn’t said anything, my ex would have been in the path of the truck. She likely would have lost her life. Reddit: Stuntedatpuberty

KNOCK ON THE DOOR

While I was in college, my boyfriend and I lived in an apartment. One day, when I was home alone, two guys knocked on my door. I opened it up, and they gave me some spiel about donating to a charity. I was dumb and said, “Okay, sure. Let me get my purse.” But when I turned around, my stomach dropped.

They had come inside the foyer and blocked the front door. I instantly got nervous and started fumbling with my checks, to which they said they didn’t take checks—just cash. Then, they asked if anyone else was there with me, and I answered, “Yes, my boyfriend is sleeping.”

I like to think I said that convincingly enough before I added, “Let me go see if he has cash.” I quickly went into my bedroom to see if I had a weapon just in case, but then I heard the door close, and they were gone. Reddit: HistrioHistrio

OUT TO GET ME

Back when I was a teenager in Ireland, I got this overwhelming feeling to stay home from school one day. I listened to my instincts, and it was a good thing I did.

That night, my friends called to tell me that a girl who had been picking on me brought her junkie friend to the school campus. Her friend had hidden in the bathroom for most of the day, waiting to beat me up.

My friends weirdly overhead the plan while they were using the toilets at morning break. This occurred before mobile phones were used, so they could only call me later that night. Reddit: imperialleather

LET’S GO TOGETHER

I was 15 and my mom dropped me off at McDonald’s to get breakfast while she went across the street to get Starbucks. It was a shopping mall in suburbia and we were on the way to pick up a new kitten a few hours away. Instead of walking the 100 yards to my mom, I sat outside waiting for her to pick me up. Teenagers, I guess.

As I’m standing there a guy in an old station wagon with two kids in the back starts talking to me. He asks me where I’m going and I say whatever town it was. He says he’s going there too with his kids and asks if I want to come. I tell him no, that my mom is across the street and he comes closer.

My gut is saying something is off so I see a random woman walk out of Starbucks and I point to her and say that’s my mom right there. He freaked out and left really quick. I still remember those two kids in the backseat. They looked so off. I wonder to this day if they are okay. Reddit: landronious

SLOWING DOWN

I was driving one evening and it started to snow. I noticed that I was going a bit fast and strongly sensed I should slow down. I did, and a couple of seconds later I came up around a bend with the road suddenly being covered in ice. I started to fishtail while sliding directly towards two people standing outside their car.

They had wrecked in the same manner that I was about to do and were standing outside their car, with me heading straight for them. I quickly thought of my options and ended up doing a hard right straight into the highway barrier.

I slid nearly 100+ feet dragging the front of my car to slow it down. Because I had decided to slow down, I was able to give the two guys enough time to get out of the way before I slammed into their cars. Even though I totaled my car, which was sad, I did not end up hitting two people that night. Reddit: astral-insanity

PARTY IN THE HOUSE

I had gone to this bar back home with a few friends, and afterward, everyone was supposed to go to this house party. I was game to go from the moment I was invited. Halfway through the night, I had this gut feeling to not go. I told my best friend that she shouldn’t go but she insisted that she wanted to go because there were a few cute guys there. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we shouldn’t go, but she talked me into it.

When we got in my car to head to the party, the gut feeling got even worse. I grew up around cars and drive a manual (my best friend is completely clueless when it comes to cars) so I deliberately grinded the gears and jerked the car and made it stall, acting like something was wrong.

I pretended to try to fix what wasn’t broken and after about 15-20 minutes of “fixing” my car, cops and fire trucks followed by EMS flew by us. I “fixed” my car but told my best friend that I just wasn’t feeling well and she agreed and said my car breaking down ruined her mood, so we went back to my place to watch movies.

About an hour after getting home we got a call from a friend of ours saying that the girl who owned the house and who was throwing the party was cheating on her husband who was deployed. He came back on leave to surprise her and caught her in bed with his buddy. Dude pulled out a piece and started unloading at this girl and his friend while everyone else fled the house. Reddit: [deleted]

NEARLY DINNER RUSH

It was any old day at work, the dinner rush was about to hit, and I was tired. As usual, I was going to go to the dollar store to get some Red Bull. I asked my manager if he wanted to split it because they were 2 for $5, and he said no but as soon as I reached the door, he said wait. I asked him what was wrong and he said I should go later.

He didn’t give me a reason and we were pretty relaxed, so I told him to screw off and as soon as I pushed the door outwards, I hear a sound I can’t even describe aside from just BREAKING. Whatever it was it was broken, that’s all I knew.

Turns out an SUV drove straight into that dollar store’s front door and their Red Bull fridge. My manager has annoyed me like that a million times, but I’ll never forget the time he saved my life. Reddit: Perijil

DAY OF MOVING

I was helping my company move equipment from our old office space to our new location. It required me to park my car in a very small alley in the downtown area of Chicago—the Loop, for those who know. The security officer told me that he would watch on the camera to see when I got there so that he could open up the big gate for the service entry.

The gate was about 30 feet wide and 20 feet tall, and it was one of those roll-up types. I parked, got out of my car, and looked up at camera. He must’ve been watching, because the gate started opening up right away. I was going to duck under it once it got to about 4 feet high, but had a momentary gut feeling to not do that.

As soon as I took a step backward instead of going forward, the axle broke on one end and the entire 60 feet squared of steel gate came crashing down. If I had gone under the gate, I would’ve been crushed.

In my panic, I scrambled backward to the alley wall opposite of the gate, and missed falling down a 4-foot window well by just a couple of inches. The security guard was amazed and incredibly relieved that I was alright. Reddit: PseudonymousWrecks

MUGSHOT

I was at a party for my boyfriend’s father but I had a headache that wasn’t going away. I had been drinking, but I wasn’t drunk. I was just feeling terrible, so I made my excuses and left to walk home alone, as I didn’t want to ruin his night with his dad. It was a ten-minute walk, if that, from the pub to our house and it wasn’t properly dark yet. I walked down the street and passed a man sitting on a wall drinking a beer.

A minute after I passed, I heard the bottle smash and then footsteps a little while back. Nothing unusual, it was a main road and there was another pub further along but my gut was screaming that something was wrong. I hurriedly walked back to the pub and stopped outside to ask the smokers for a light and a chat as I smoked.

That’s when I saw him pass me, and then stare at me from across the street for an uncomfortable amount of time. With my heart pounding, I asked a bouncer working the doors if he could order me a taxi. A few weeks later, while in the town center, I saw a mugshot of the same dude. He was wanted for assault. Reddit: McStaken

AUTOPILOT DRIVE

After a party many years ago, I was driving home at like four in the morning with my friend passed out in the passenger seat. I was driving fast down a steep hill that’s like a half-mile long, at least. I was on autopilot, as I drive down that street every day.

Suddenly, about a half a block from a major intersection, which I had a green light for, I heard a voice in my head. It said these exact words: “You may want to slow down, because if you don’t, you might lose your life.” It was weird, because that’s not really what my tone of voice of style of speaking is like.

Anyway, I slowed down, and as I was entering the intersection, a car blew the red light at about 50-60mph, right in front of me. It was so close that I nearly threw up. I started shaking and punching my friend, yelling how I just saved our lives, He just groaned and went back to sleep. Jerk. Reddit: [deleted]

TAKING THE LONG WAY HOME

I was 13. The bus would take me home from school in 15 minutes, but I liked taking the one-hour walk home. While walking on a main road, a van pulled over some 100 feet away from me. It wasn’t a family van, it was one of those utility, boxy-looking ones. The van door was open and a man was waving at me with both of his arms.

I was too far away to hear what he was saying. Usually, I love to help people, but something told me to keep walking. So I kept walking. I look back five minutes later and this guy is walking behind me. Relaxed pace. I’m not worried, but I walk a little faster. I look back maybe two or three minutes later and he’s still walking, but closer, and waving his arms again.

So I start jogging a little. Now he’s jogging. Then I start running as fast as a I can, not stopping to look back. At one point, I turned onto the next street and couldn’t see him anymore. I was so cold with fear, out of breath, waiting for the intersection light to change. The light changed and I went back to walking, but I was out of breath.

Five minutes later, I look back and I can’t believe my eyes. He’s still following me. So I ran the last two minutes to my building, even though I didn’t want him to see where I lived. I ran into the building lobby, looked through the glass doors. He wasn’t there. I pushed the elevator button, and went back to the glass door and saw him on the street far away, still walking.

I’ve always tried to make sense of what he was going to do. This was a busy suburban area. Was he going to just stab me and run away? What did he want with me in particular? Did he just leave his van behind to get towed? So many questions. So, so weird. Reddit: Leelougirl89

UNGRATEFUL

I was a lifeguard at a lake. There was a mom with a baby and a toddler, and the mom had a friend with her. She was sitting in the shallow water with her newborn, talking to her friend and facing away from the water toward the beach. I had an eye on her toddler because it was driving me nuts that she wasn’t paying attention to him. He dropped his ball and the small waves started taking it out.

Of course, he reached for it and fell over. He slowly started floating and struggling, face down, getting father and farther away. I jumped down, ran in and grabbed him, and probably terrified him as I patted his back over my knee while he vomited out water.

The poor kid kept trying to look at me. His mom noticed nothing until I was carrying him back over to her. She casually thanked me and I tried to warn her of the possibility of dry drowning. Her response made me so mad I wanted to scream. She snapped at me, yelling that she was a nurse and that her son would be fine. I saved her son’s life, and she repaid me by yelling in my face. Reddit: KeepUp0408

TRUST YOUR GUT

Every once in a while, you get that gut instinct telling you something is up. I was at a party and at one point, I got that tingling feeling.
I knew I was in danger. I finally just decided to leave with a few friends to chill at my place. A few hours later, I got a phone call from another friend asking me if I was OK. When I asked what happened, my blood ran cold.

Apparently, the house where the party was held belonged to a guy who was affiliated with some gangs. Some thugs tried to crash the party and when the host tried to kick them out, they started fighting people.

The whole thing devolved into a giant brawl and a few people ended up in the hospital. The authorities ended up shutting down the party. Meanwhile, I was at home playing video games with a couple of friends. Sometimes your gut’s right. Reddit: RatHead6661

LOCATION

A few years ago, when I was 19 and studying abroad in Europe, my friend and I decided to go to Turkey. It was our first time really traveling on our own without a group and we decided to walk around the square outside of the Blue Mosque.

We felt very safe during the day and decided to see the city at night with the lights. As we were in the square, we were hounded by typical store owners trying to sell us something. Finally, most went away and as we were going back to our hotel, a younger guy approached us.

He said he had a shop on the corner, which he pointed to with lots of souvenirs including carpets. I grew up with a lot of handmade, woven carpets from my parents’ travels to the middle east and Asia. I decided it would be a nice gift. So, we follow him, when we get to what we thought was his shop, we stopped. We started to walk in and he said not that one, the one around the corner.

We poke our head around and sure enough see a store, only selling carpets. I started to get a slightly strange feeling but nothing overwhelming, so we followed him as we could see the store. When we walked in, about 13-15 other men were in the shop. They were pointing out carpets and showing us around and I started to get really uncomfortable.

My friend seemed completely at ease, so we followed the group around the bend to the other part of the store. In Turkey, it is common to be offered tea, so that part is not particularly odd, but the men, who were now circling us, were insistent that we have tea with them in the basement.

I kept saying no but they were leading us towards steps, completely surrounding us. We got to the steps and my friend started walking down, my body began to sweat, my heart went crazy, and I never had such an overwhelming fear. I kept trying to think of how we could overpower these men. I grabbed my phone, stopped in my tracks, and gasped.

“Friend’s name, we need to go right now. My mom just texted me asking why we aren’t back at the hotel yet cause the map shows we’re at this store. We’re supposed to Facetime with them in 10 minutes.”

The men kind of look around and tell us we can have tea in less than that amount of time. I keep insisting that my parents are freaking out because they can tell were in the carpet store and not the hotel and that they will likely contact the embassy if we don’t get going.

They continued blocking the staircase. I told them that we would come for tea in the morning as I still really wanted a carpet and that we needed to get out of the store and back to Facetime. It took a little persuading but they eventually opened a path for us to go to the door. One of them followed us back to the square insisting that we return/come back and see them.

Of course, we didn’t. I have no idea if they were completely harmless or not but I had never had such an overwhelming feeling. They easily could’ve drugged us, placed us in carpets, and taken us out.

My parents didn’t actually have our location as my phone was on airplane mode. So, who actually knows, on the other hand, I might’ve been paranoid, but it wasn’t a situation I ever wanted to be in again. Once we were back at the hotel, she told me she was really scared too but that she thought I was fine so she went with it. Reddit: csr110977

MESSAGE DELIVERED

I was at the mall with my friends, all of us around 12 years old. It was 8 pm, and my mom was on her way to pick me up. We were all chilling together until each of our parents got here to get us.

As we’re standing by a store near one of the side entrances, a man comes up to us. He’s about 30-ish, wearing huge glasses, and carrying a clipboard.

The man says, “Hey guys, do you want to watch some movie trailers and answer surveys about them? I’ll pay you each five dollars per trailer.” Naturally, my friends are all for it. The thing is, my heart dropped as soon as I heard him speak. As they’re all saying yes, the man nods and then points to the side entrance.

It’s pitch black outside, and that entrance leads to the back parking lot of the mall, which is always deserted. Then, he says: “We can do it over there.” My friends start to follow the man as he walks toward the glass doors, and I’m trailing behind them.

Then, as we get close enough for me to kind of see what’s outside, I notice a van parked right outside the entrance. The headlights are on, the car is running. The back doors seem to be open. Every part of my being screams “NO! DON’T GO!” I stop in my tracks, and loudly say, “Guys, my mom is here to pick us all up, I don’t think we have time for it.”

The man freezes and keeps his eyes trained on the doors, and I can see his jaw clenching tightly. My friends look at me with confusion, and I try to give them the most terrified expression of warning that I can.

Thankfully they get the message, and say bye to the guy. The man refused to turn to look at us, and simply began to walk outside of the mall. As we’re walking away, I turn and look behind me one last time. The van, and the man, were gone. Reddit: Some_Explorer

A FEELING OF DOOM

I was pregnant at the time and had hyperemesis gravidarum (extreme “morning sickness”). I got put on home IV therapy because I was badly dehydrated. The home IV people fitted me with my IV and pump, gave me a handy backpack with my supplies, and then they sent me home. But the next day, I felt like something was terribly wrong, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I had this awful sense of impending doom.

When I went to change the fluid bag for the IV, I couldn’t get it to work properly, so my ex and I went back to the medical supply people for help because I thought there was something wrong with the IV placement. While I was there, they took my blood pressure and told me to go to the hospital immediately. They said they would call ahead to tell them I was on my way in.

It turned out that my blood pressure was dangerously high, and I was going into stroke range. I had developed preeclampsia, and I had no idea. I was in the ICU for two weeks fighting against multiple organ failure and trying to avoid a stroke.

I lost the pregnancy when it was clear that there was no other option but delivery (you can’t cure preeclampsia except by delivery of the placenta, and my babies were too young to survive). But I lived. Had I ignored that doomsday feeling, I would likely have gone to bed one night and not woken up the next day. Or stroked out one day. Or had a massive seizure. Reddit: AssociationHuman

IN THE AMAZON

I was in the Amazon at the end of a 3-month solo trip around Latin America. I wanted to enjoy one last walk through the jungle before leaving, so I left the lodge around 8 am to walk down to a small river nearby. I stop and close my eyes to listen to the sounds as the jungle is super loud with crickets, birds, insects, etc.

Almost immediately I got a weird feeling and felt really uncomfortable—which was weird because up until then I’d only felt peaceful and happy. When I opened my eyes, I realized everything had gone completely quiet which was definitely NOT normal and not something I had experienced in other rain forests I’d been to.

It was bizarre. I immediately felt that I had to leave and fast. After I dipped and got back to the jungle lodge, I told the tour guide what happened and he said it usually only gets quiet when there is a big predator close by—thanks, but no thanks! Reddit: UnconditionalMay

DANGEROUS AREA

I normally go to the club with my husband. He was out of town but I had friends that said they’d be out. My club has always been a very safe club, but the area it’s in has had its ups and downs, because drinking and a bunch of clubs in a small area comes with drunks and ne’er-do-wells of all kinds.

I parked on the street two blocks down from the bar. The block itself was dark but the next block up was very brightly lit thanks to a big-name hotel. Basically, it was a straight shot from my car to the club, with one section of darkness. The MOMENT I got into the building I knew something was wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

First, none of my friends showed up so I’m alone. Then, the vibe was seriously off. Some dude kept trying to buy me a drink that I kept turning down. He was so insistent, so eventually, I said I’d have a water because it comes in a sealed bottle. Dude comes back with the type of glass that mixed drinks usually come in.

The moment he gives it to me he leaves and I don’t see him again for the rest of the night. The “water” went straight down the bathroom sink. My alarm bells were going off so I decided to get out of there. I left the bar and THE MOMENT I crossed the street, this voice in my head says, “You messed up! Get your keys out and get ready!” I’m full-blown panicking at this point.

And when I got to my car door, I learned that my instincts were completely right. As soon as I get my door open another car pulls up and slides into the spot directly behind mine. I hit the door locks and start to back up. In my rearview mirror, I see the torso of some guy jump out and head toward my passenger door.

I’m already pulling out of the parking spot but I could see his tensed-up arm and closed fist just outside my passenger window. As I sped down the highway in the most deafening silence I’ve ever experienced, I tried to understand what just happened.

It took me a bit to put the pieces together but I THINK the drink dude was spiking drinks and the car dude was picking up. The more I think about it the more I get the feeling that it was a trafficking operation. If I had been two seconds slower for any reason, I can only imagine how that night would have ended. Reddit: SidheCreature

HIS PREY

One day in elementary school, I was walking home alone and this beat-up white pick-up truck drove by me real slowly. The driver was a middle aged man that was kind of eyeing me. He drove a little further before turning into a driveway and turning around to drive my way again.

At that point, I wasn’t convinced of anything other than that he needed to be watched. He drove past me again and was 100% sizing me up or something, just looking at me like I was prey. I could see in his eyes that he was making decisions, and not just looking at me like a neighborhood kid. I turned my head to watch him pull into another tiny side street behind me. That’s when I knew for sure.

I started running as fast as I could. I didn’t see him again, so I think my sprinting away must have deterred him as it was still daylight in a populated neighborhood. It always stuck with me, and luckily I’ll never know if my gut actually saved me or not. Reddit: sunlitstranger

ACCIDENT

I was taking my mom to a follow up appointment from back surgery the month before. The freeway was closed due to a car accident and life flight was called to transport the people injured in the accident. The highway patrol was funnelling everyone off of the freeway to the right side exit.

I had the strongest feeling we needed to move to the left farthest lane, so I did. No more than a minute after I moved over, a garbage truck came barreling down the freeway and crashed into the car that was in front of us in the other lane.

The truck was going so fast that it lifted the front end of the truck and landed on top of the car. We were in a tiny sports car that would have crumpled like a tin can under the weight of a garbage truck and definitely would’ve taken out my mom and me in a second. Reddit: skelenaton

BAD VIBES

I was walking home one September evening at around 9 PM. On my bus, a guy was whistling and smiling by himself. He looked cheery and ready for a night out, but for some reason, I got a weird vibe from him. He got off at my stop, so I made sure to watch where he was going. He walked straight down the road while I had to turn left. Good, it’s all fine and dandy.

I got to an underpass, and since it was a shady place with no one around, I held my phone in my hand with my husband’s number at the ready. When I reached exactly the middle of the underpass, I heard footsteps running down the stairs behind me. I immediately called my husband and loudly told him, “Hey! I’m walking down the underpass. I’ll be home soon.”

At that point, the footsteps slowed down, and the same whistling guy lightly jogged by me. I was pretty spooked at that point, and I stayed on the line with my husband. When I got out of the underpass, I saw the whistling guy was still power-walking way ahead of me. I started to feel like an idiot…like maybe this guy was just in a hurry and wasn’t familiar with the area. Oh, how wrong I was.

I kept walking, and it started to get dark. Ahead of me, there was an empty building with concrete pillars at the entrance, where one could easily hide. So just to be safe, I crossed the street, where there was only a plain wall and a few houses. Suddenly, I heard footsteps behind me once again. And what do you know? It was that guy again.

At that point, I was sure he was following me and that he was actually hiding behind those concrete pillars. I was almost home by now, but I still had to walk through another underpass, and I definitely didn’t want to be alone with that guy in an isolated place. So, I just abruptly stopped walking before I got too far away from the houses.

Once again, the whistling guy walked by me. Then, after a couple of meters, he stopped too and pretended to fumble with his phone. I was fed up at that point, and I loudly told my husband, “Hey, honey. Since I’m almost there, can you come to meet me and walk with me?” Those were the magic words! The whistling guy turned around and sprinted back in the direction he came from.

By the time my husband got there (which was only like 45 seconds later because he ran like heck), the whistling guy was long gone. But man, did it take me a long time to stop shaking! Reddit: Inquammalueris

SOMETHING OFF

This happened 14 years ago. I was on vacation with a friend and got the front desk receptionist to call us a cab. When the cab arrived, something seemed “off” about the driver. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I got a creepy vibe from him. I quickly told my friend I forgot something in the room, and I asked her to go with me to get it. She got angry because we were now going to miss our dinner reservation, but she obliged.

Three days later, we saw on the front page of the local newspaper that officers apprehended the driver for slaying one of his customers. The victim was another tourist he had picked up from another hotel roughly 20 minutes after we were supposed to drive with him. We didn’t take a cab for the rest of our vacation. Reddit: Celinder_pigen

SOLO TRAVELLER

I was traveling solo in the middle of the day somewhere in Ohio. I stopped at a rest stop and drove all the way to the last garbage can to let my dog play. A bit later, she ran off with another dog whose owner was on the other side of the rest stop. She came back wet, so I draped her leash over the door and shut it to dry her off.

I had my back to some parked truckers when I just started feeling weird…as if I was being watched. So, I finished drying my dog, put her in the car (dumb), and grabbed my wasp spray for self-defense.

Thinking I’d left my phone in the grass, I went to look for it, when I suddenly felt, and then saw, a guy making a beeline toward me. He was hightailing it with something in his hand. I immediately turned around and said, “Screw my phone,” and grabbed a stick instead.

I walked super fast, and as I got to the bumper of my car, he was just approaching the front passenger light. I sprayed the wasp spray next to him, threw the stick, and then jumped in my car. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw him hanging his head. He was literally kicking rocks as if he’d just missed out on snatching someone. Luckily my phone was on my seat the whole time as well. I was in awe leaving there. Reddit: boobaloo222

UNUSUAL WEATHER

It was Saturday night, and I was about 14 or so. I stayed the weekend at my best friend’s mom’s place, and the weather had been unusual for mid-spring. This was probably in April of 2014, and I had been working on the school musical. Well, the previous evening during rehearsal, there were heavy winds, and a tornado was reported nearby.

So, fast-forward to Saturday evening, and the winds have calmed, and we’re burning trash in a metal barrel. When the fire went out, we went in for dinner. During dinner, another heavier storm began to brew. It was almost dark when we finished eating, so we went into the front yard to check out the trees swaying in the heavy wind.

We were on a main road out in the country, with the house being about 18 meters (20 yards) from the road. This particular side of the road happened to have overhead power lines. Welp, as we were in the middle of the yard, I happened to see a burning piece of paper aloft on the wind coming from behind the house. I knew something was wrong.

Immediately we thought, “Oh, snap! The barrel tipped over!” So, we quickly ran back to the barrel—only to find it perfectly fine with nary a cinder burning. Huh. But then, as we went back inside the house and passed through the living room, a massively bright flash filled the room from the glass storm door leading to the front yard.

As it subsided, I saw a live power line dancing around where I had just been standing, not 30 seconds before. My mate would have made it, but not I. Three tornadoes touched down in our county at the same time about 15 minutes after the power line fell, the closest being only 2 kilometers (1.5 miles) out from our location.

The severed end of the power line still on the post lit some nearby trees on fire that got immediately fanned up by the wind. Thankfully it started to rain before it got out of hand. Reddit: MahlonMurder

NIGHTMARISH VEGAS

About ten years ago I went to Vegas for a conference. On the last day, I was waiting for my bus shuttle to bring me to the airport. As I was waiting, I noticed one of those Hummer limousines. It was absolutely cool and awesome, and I wondered what it would be like to ride in one. The driver saw me looking at it, so he came strolling over. He looked harmless enough.

He struck up a conversation with me and asked where I was from and how I liked Vegas. Then he offered to bring me to the airport for a mere $20 bucks. That price is unheard of, even for a taxi. I said, “No, thank you,” without realizing it. So, then he offered to drive me for $10 bucks. Again, I told him, “Nooo. Sorry, sir. But thank you.”

Then he said that for free, he would take me to the airport and drive me around the city for a bit so I could experience being in a Hummer limo.
Just for a second, I thought it would be fun. Instead, I again declined respectfully. By this time, I really started to worry-worry. He stared at me for the longest time, and then he offered to pay me to ride with him. He wanted to pay me!

There was just this coldness…this dead-eyed look he had while he smiled at me the whole time. I was terrified! I grabbed my suitcase and walked back into the lobby to wait for my shuttle. I believe I would never have made my plane had I gone with him. Oddly, the entire time he was trying to convince me to ride with him, interested customers were asking him for a ride, but he kept blowing them off.

I’m pretty sure that had I gone with him, I would have been taken to the desert, and I would have never come back. Walking away from him felt like those nightmares where you’re trying to run and you can’t. That whole experience turned me off going to conferences there for quite a while. Reddit: Nesjles66

SCARY RIDE

I’m afraid of rollercoasters (mostly heights but they go hand in hand). My friends and I went to a theme park, and went on a rollercoaster that was in darkness and went underground. I rode it once, sitting in the back, and really enjoyed it surprisingly. When we reached the start again, there was no line (as it was the end of the day) so they asked if we wanted a final go before they shut down.

Something in my gut told me not to go on, so despite my friends’ nagging, I didn’t and waited with the bags. When my friends got off the ride, they were white as a sheet. About 3/4 of the way through the ride, there’s a big drop then it goes fast and just before that, my friend in the back’s bar had risen up. Apparently, they had to grip onto her for the rest of the ride while trying to push the bar back down. Reddit: feijis

SOUND OF SHOES

About 10 years ago, I had a job that started at 6 am on the weekends. I didn’t drive and would take the light rail, which was a 15-minute walk from my house. One dark morning, I saw a person up ahead of me a few blocks away. I usually see homeless people on my walk to the light rail and most are harmless just trying to collect cans for the deposit or asking for change, but this guy just felt off.

I could tell from blocks away that there was something wrong about him, so I crossed the street and grabbed my phone from my backpack. I still had to go to work and this road was the only way to the light rail. Suddenly, I hear a “bubububump!” I look over my shoulder and it was him running toward me with his trousers down.  That sound was the sound of his shoes hitting the pavement as he ran toward me.

I took off running, screamed, “I’m calling 9-1-1,” and held my phone to my ear. He must have saw and took it seriously because he ran the opposite direction that I ran. I did call 9-1-1, but they wanted me to wait there for the cop and I was like “Heck no!” I said it was because I didn’t want to be late for work, but I was terrified of him finding me. I will never forget the sound of his shoes hitting the pavement. Reddit: Crocodile_susan

GREEN LIGHT

I had just left my apartment complex and was heading to a friend’s place. I pulled out of my driveway and up to the traffic light and stopped. I was in the left turn lane, the light was red. It was late out and there weren’t many people on the road. I watched as the light went yellow, and then red for through traffic. One guy ran the tail end of the yellow, like usual.

When the light goes green, I have an arrow blinking for me to turn left. I looked both ways and there was no one around, but I just didn’t go. I can’t explain what happened other than something inside me said “don’t go” so I sat there staring at the green light.

A couple of seconds later, a car came screaming through the red light, through the intersection, probably doing about 100km/hour in the lane I would have been turning in to. They were going so fast their vehicle had a bounce to it. If I had turned my car would have been destroyed, and me along with it.

I sat there through the whole next light cycle and then turned, pulled over and called my sister. It was a ghostly feeling. I am a light jumper, I look both ways but I am impatient, and I can’t explain what stopped me from going the second that light went green, but I’m glad it did.
BowlingForPennies

IN THE DARK

I get really bad vibes from the car park at my work—it’s a giant, poorly lit multi-story structure and I’ve seen enough horror films to know I shouldn’t be taking it lightly. Whenever I get in, I pay attention to the floors people call the lift to so I can keep an eye on where they’re going.

One time a guy got in the elevator in front of me and pressed six, while I was parked on eight. He didn’t get out at six and was still in the lift as I got to my floor. I leave, he doesn’t… so I guess he’s remembered he’s on another floor, but just before I get to the dark area with all the cars, I turned back.

This guy had waited about 30 seconds—therefore held the lift to wait—and silently followed me. I just stopped and stared him down. He had a deer-in-the-headlights look and turned straight back to the lift. I don’t know if it saved my life or what, but I’m glad I shook him off. Reddit: Suspicious_Rabbit

RAINY DAY

I was driving home from work, and it was pouring rain so bad and so heavy that I could barely see the back of the car in front of me. Regardless, people were still zipping through like it was nothing. All of a sudden, I felt a really strong urge to take the next exit even though in my mind I was like, “Home isn’t that far, just keep going.”

It was kind of like keeping straight became out of bounds, and my car just…took the exit. I drove until I found a familiar parking lot and waited out the rain for a bit until I gathered the courage to keep going. I then back-tracked a little bit and got on the freeway a couple of exits before the one I had previously gotten off on.

When I passed that area, a short way down, they were still cleaning up an accident that I probably would have been involved in if I decided to keep going. I definitely had a guardian angel with me that day. Reddit: kannakantplay

MAINTENANCE

It was only a one in a thousand chance that I could have kicked the bucket, but it certainly would have sucked. I was working maintenance at a new construction apartment building at the time. The construction company was truly beyond awful. I saw some of the dumbest, most unforgivable mistakes during my time working there.

Well, I uncovered one of those mistakes about an hour before someone was scheduled to move in. Someone screwed up a 240V wall heater; we’d missed it, and it needed to get replaced. We didn’t have any more in stock, so I sourced a vacant unit to pull one out of. I shut off the breaker to the heater and started to remove it.

But while I was untwisting one of the wire nuts, I started thinking about how unbelievably stupid some of the mistakes I’d seen were. On a hunch, I stopped, went over to the wall, and turned the dial for the heater. The stove kicked on. They’d labeled the breaker for the stove as the wall heater. Reddit: Butt_Putnam

FAMILY CONNECTION

We had all started to walk around the development, when my mother, after about 50-75 meters from the house said, “I am going to go back and check on dad.” I went with her, and I nearly witnessed my grandfather die. He was on the chair, conscious, but unable to move or talk… just looking at my mother with bulging eyes.

She called 9-1-1 once, then twice when she felt that they were running late. The ambulance came, got him on the stretcher, but it was too wide to fit out the door. We ended up tearing the door frame off to get him out. Because he was conscious, he actually remembers the ride to the hospital.

He told us later that he heard the driver or someone say, there is not a chance that this guy lives. That was when I was around six years old. He is still alive to this day, more than a decade later.

At my mother’s funeral, part of his speech was about how, without my mother’s actions, he would not have been able to spend time with her during her final years of life. And for that, he is eternally grateful. Reddit: bliddick22

STOPPING FOR GAS

About 10 years ago, I was working security at a site about 50 miles from home. I got off at midnight, and didn’t bother to change out of my uniform because I was only going to stop for gas. Two stations in the town I was working in were open after midnight, but it slipped my mind as I drove past the first one.

Pulled into the other (same brand, same gas price) and just didn’t like something about it. There was nobody else around but the clerk that I could see, but I decided to go back to the other one. I topped off and headed back out of town, and I get close to the station that had creeped me out again.

Three city cop cars, two deputies and a state trooper are outside blocking the road with guns drawn. Turns out a city cop walked in on a robbery. Dude put a bullet in his vest, and the store owner knocked the guy out cold with a bat before the cop could recover enough to get his piece out. That would have been me, in a uniform with a nice shiny badge, but no body armor. Reddit: kd5nrh

VAN SCARE

I was out walking with my son, daughter, and ex-husband. Me and the ex get along well and occasionally do things as a family still. On this night there was a little festival down the street from his place. So the kids and I had driven over to his house, parked there and walked up to the festival. The walk back was dark, and my son was running ahead a lot. I didn’t think much of it.

My ex and I were chatting about things, and I noticed a van drive past us twice. I figured he was just lost as the festival blocked off a road. But then he circled back two more times. By this time, I had called both my kids back and was holding their hands. The van parked up on the corner of the street we were about to head down.

I walked with the kids and my ex approached the van. As he walked up the van sped off. It kept me up nights later thinking if the van had been around earlier when my son was running ahead.

I’m not at all a fit lady. If whoever was in the van decides to jump out and grab my son, I wouldn’t have been able to get to him in time. Really freaked me out. I did get a plate and make and model, so I reported it to local law enforcement. Reddit: MrHobbes14

MENTALLY UNWELL

When I was a kid, my mom had a mental break down and was in full-in psychosis. Of course, I was too young to fully understand what was happening. I just had a gut feeling something was very very wrong with her. So I took my younger sister into the bathroom with me—the only room in our home with a lock—and locked the door.

We often played in the tub just by dumping towels and blankets in it (dry) and would pretend it was a boat. So I did that, but kept the door locked. My mom disappeared. Hours later my grandpa called on the phone. When no one answered, I snuck down stairs and answered it.

He said he was coming to pick us up because my mom had gone for a drive. From that point on, we lived with my grandparents while my mom was on an involuntary hold at the mental hospital. Apparently, she’d driven a few hours away and called him to tell him she’d hurt us and left us in the woods.

She had hallucinated all of this, but didn’t know the difference. He called local law enforcement and we got picked up. I didn’t find out the whole story until I was much older. I just knew deep in my stomach something wasn’t right with my mom and I had to protect my sister. Reddit: HFXmer

LOST FRIENDS

My mom told me this one from before I was born. She used to play coed softball back in the day with her then-boyfriend and some of her friends from work. They would travel to different local towns to play games, usually 30 minutes to a few hours away at most.

One day they were getting ready for a game about two hours away, and my mom randomly got a bad feeling about it and decided not to go. It was a good thing she stayed behind—my mom’s boyfriend and two of her friends got in a car accident and passed at the scene.

Eerily, when my mom visited the site of the accident to leave flowers with some of her other friends from softball, she found a picture of herself that had fallen out of her boyfriend’s wallet just a few yards away from the accident.
That one always spooked me right out. Reddit: peep_dentist

VAN IN THE BEACH

When I was 10, I went to the beach with my older sister, her friends, and their parents. They had a van that was open in the back (think white creepy van), no seats. The other friends of my sister’s friends took turns sitting on the father’s lap when he asked if they wanted to steer the van. He then asked me and my gut said, “No! This man is creepy as heck.”

The look in his eyes sent shivers down my spine. Once we got to the beach, I forgot all about the creepy dad and focused on fun. Fast forward several months later, and my sister’s friends asked if my sister wanted to sleepover. She refused and my mom and I were baffled as to why she didn’t want to go. We kept encouraging her to. Soon she broke down in tears and told us that one night their father had touched her.

The van incident and feelings came flying back to me. I wish I had not forgotten my gut feeling and shared it with my mother and sister before anything happened to my sister. Sometimes I still feel guilty over it. That was over 30 years ago. I don’t remember what happened to the guy. I just remember a state vehicle at my house a lot afterwards. No one ever talked about it again and I never asked. Reddit: GirlUndefined

DARK PLANS

I was with a co-worker. He had lied to me about inviting me to a family party of his. When I showed up, it was just him and I, and we went to a bar. I rolled my eyes and just thought I could clench my teeth through it. He knew the owner of the bar, and got me drinks (I was only 20 at the time, he was at least a decade older).

I started pouring out the drinks when the dude was shooting pool because I didn’t want to be tipsy/drunk while dealing with him. Looking back, this decision saved me from a horrific fate. I told him I wanted to go home, but he talked me into taking him home first. So, I followed the directions he gave me and I pulled into a hookah bar parking lot instead.

He started getting really aggressive and trying to kiss me. I kept pushing him off. I was still trying to be polite but firm and telling him to stop. That’s when I noticed the group of guys around my car, talking to my coworker in my car in another language.

He then opened my car door, got out, and proceeded to grab me by the hair to try to pull me out of my car, the other guys gathering around. I had the mind to lock my door when I noticed the other guys. I also had put my car in reverse.

So, when he grabbed my hair, I let off the brake and my car started rolling back so he let go of me. It was terrifying. I told our boss the next day and he quit when our boss asked him about it. Reddit: crescentcactus

CAUTION!

I live in rural Connecticut and my mom was driving me down a dark, twisty road to my friend’s house when we came across yellow caution tape strung across the middle of the road. Not “Police line, do not cross” tape, but just tape that said caution, blocking the whole road. It had been clearly ripped and tied back together in some places.

My mom just knew something was off. She looked at it for a minute and then gunned it in reverse and got out of there fast. That same night, some woman had gotten out to examine it and had gotten back in the car to call 9-1-1 because she found it suspicious, but not suspicious enough to leave before calling 9-1-1.

That’s the moment she was grabbed out of her car—but the people who grabbed her didn’t know that she was already on the line with 9-1-1. The officers rolled up as the car was driving away with her in the trunk. They chased them down and she lived, but it was scary. Trust your gut with roadblocks! Reddit: mayagreene52

ICE STORM

I work as a front line tech at a major telecom company. About 15 years ago we had a big ice storm overnight. A tree brought a pole down along with a main cable. Our construction team had put it back up, and me and a co-worker were re-splicing each end from our lift buckets. About an hour in, my co-worker said, “I don’t feel really safe right now for some reason.”

I had just about finished my side, so I said, “Sounds good…let’s finish it tomorrow,” and we left. The next day, I decided to go back on my own and finish up both sides. When I got there, his pole was completely gone and the cable had been ripped off the other pole again. The neighbor said another tree had come down less than 30 minutes after we left and destroyed the pole and cable. We probably both would have lost our lives. Reddit: Channing2nd

THE OTHER CAR IN THE LOT

I was dropping off something at the bank and on my way to my car I notice there’s an SUV with super dark windows next to it. On the surface, no biggie, it’s a tiny parking lot, but we’re the only two cars. They’re parked on my driver’s side so I’d have to squeeze in between the two cars to get into mine. It’s full daylight on a busy road so I’m cautious, but not upset or actively worried.

Then some guy comes around from the other side of the car and says “Hey, my friend says he knows you,” and motions for me to go around to the other side of the car. As in, the side facing an empty road with no way for anyone to see what might happen to me. And I’m noping the heck out, refusing to move, putting my keys between my fingers and forming a fist, ready to run or fight, whatever I have to do.

There’s a busy shopping center across the street and if I don’t get flattened by traffic I can make it there in about 30 seconds. Just as I’m about to run, I see one of my colleagues walk out from the other side of the car. He felt so bad about scaring me because, as a guy, he never would have had to be as suspicious as I was. I’ve worked with him 14 years and he still brings it up sometimes. Reddit: CorgiKnits

DON’T WALK IN DARK AREAS

In college, I went to a convenience store across the street from the dorms. There were two ways to go: One was basically half a block through this dark, crappy little alley, and the other was well lit, but because of fences and buildings, it was three blocks.

Keep in mind this was in college, so my lazy butt didn’t want to walk that far just to go on a Doritos and salsa run.
I used the shortcut and had no problems. I got my Doritos original flavors, Tostitos medium-strength salsa, and some Mountain Dew. It’s weird how I remember this after 25 years.

I browsed the 7-11 for a few minutes and chatted with the clerk…because why not? It was a Saturday night, and I wasn’t doing anything. I left the store and started to go towards the alley, but then I suddenly stopped. It was the weirdest thing. It was like my brain was the captain of a ship, and my body was the crew—and the crew mutinied.

I literally could not move forward. I tried again, thinking, “What the heck?” It was like my body just went into open revolt and would not take my orders. I didn’t see or hear anything unusual, and I was thinking about playing computer games while I ate and drank my junk food.

Eventually, I just told myself, “Oh, alright. We’ll go the long way!” So, with some internal disgust, I cruised away at a higher speed than usual, not running, but faster than I typically walked, even if I was eager to get junk food into me.
I made it safely back to the dorm and didn’t think much of it. But the next day, when I went to get lunch in the cafeteria, I noticed a discarded local newspaper and read it.

In the law enforcement blotter, I read about a mugging in the same alley that involved a knife wound, leaving the victim hospitalized. It happened maybe ten minutes after I would have gone through there. Take the long way home in the light, kids! Reddit: eddyathome

THE DREADFUL VISITOR

I got wasted years ago on a Friday night. I was wandering the halls of an arctic research station when I heard an odd sound behind a door that led to a food storage room on the exterior of the building. Figuring that it was the cook taking a smoke break, I thought that this would be a good chance to bum a smoke from him.

I reached down to turn the doorknob, and I immediately became filled with such an utter sense of dread. I had to jerk my hand back, almost as if I’d gotten electrocuted.

Confused and badly wanting a smoke, I tried to open the door a second time, but I had the same result. My brain kept telling me, “If you open that door, something terrible will happen.” As I stood there, mystified and looking at my hand, a station staff member passed by and asked me if I was okay. I said, “There’s something wrong in the storage room.”

The person responded, “You’re just inebriated. Go to bed.” Half an hour later, I was awakened by a commotion of profanity and yelling; a polar bear had broken into the storage room and—with the exception of a box of tofu—had eaten all the contents of one of the fridges. Reddit: TheNakedMars

SOMETHING NOT RIGHT

Last year, December 1. I had slept for almost a week trying to fight what I thought was the flu. I woke up and had a gut feeling telling me that something wasn’t right with me. I called my parents to tell them, and then cabbed myself to the emergency room. The staff took blood and ran tests on me for 8 hours, then discharged me and sent me home.

I got a call the next morning asking me to come back because they found something in my blood: Bacteremia and Endocarditis. I was put on penicillin immediately, for two months. But I kept feeling like there was something wrong. I went for a specialized test on December 21, and woke up to the doctors telling me I need surgery as soon as possible.

They’re trying to find a surgical team, earliest is the 24. I go in and while they’re operating, I have an ascending aortic aneurysm and it caused an aortic dissection. They’re able to fix it. I’ve got a synthetic valve in there now. But that’s not even the scariest part: I work in a restaurant kitchen, just before the start of the holiday season. Normally, cooks will tough it out and just work. Most think they’ll get better soon.

I’m told that if I had done that, I more than likely would have passed on before my birthday and they would have found out about the aneurysm during the autopsy. That still sends freaking chills down my spine. Reddit: g_tan

STROLLING AT NIGHT

When I was in college, I lived in a sketchy part of Chicago. I liked to take late-night strolls, even when I was living in that neighborhood as a 20-year-old woman. Yeah, I know. Pretty dumb of me. One night, I was feeling stressed out so I embarked on one of my late-night strolls. I was walking along a somewhat busy road. Cars were zooming past me. Pretty normal.

I wasn’t paying much attention because I was too wrapped up in whatever was stressing me out that night. Suddenly, a chill shot up my spine. Hypervigilance washed over me and I became more alert than I had ever been. Something was wrong. Someone was watching me.

I quickly spotted a car. It was driving in the opposite direction, a little slower than usual. It was too dark for me to see anyone inside the car, and the car was pretty unassuming. But I still knew something was off. They were watching me. I just knew. The car drove past me and then made a U-turn. Now it was right behind me, creeping along the curb.

Luckily, there was a convenience store a few blocks ahead. I started walking faster, and the car eventually sped past me and disappeared into a corner. I somehow knew I wasn’t safe yet, so I still sprinted to the store. I told the security guard what happened, and we both went outside. The car was parked up the street, about 50-100 feet away. The security guard was a big guy who looked intimidating.

He marched toward the car, and the car immediately backed up, made a U-turn, and then booked it out of there. The security guard called the cops, and they drove me home. I never took a late-night stroll again. My gut made me more alert, but it was really the security guard who saved my life. I’m positive that if he wasn’t there that night, something bad would’ve happened to me. I wish I could find that security guard to thank him.
Reddit: waltermittyslife

THE RIGHT DOSAGE

One day, my baby was super sick and wheezing, so I took him to urgent care. They prescribed him steroids and a breathing treatment. It seemed pretty normal until I looked at the dosage, which seemed high. The doctor reassured me and said my son was just a big boy, so it was fine. I still felt very uncomfortable about it.

I filled the prescription and started the breathing treatment but only did a half dose for half the time. I didn’t give him any steroids. His hives from the previous antibiotics were not going away, so I took him again the next morning to his pediatrician. The pediatrician basically told me I saved my son’s life, because the dosage for both medications were for a 300-pound adult, not a 30-pound baby.

So he put in a complaint about the other doctor and pharmacist—apparently they should’ve caught it during my consult. I called in and complained as well. Apparently, almost killing a baby is pretty serious. My pediatrician said that the doctor and the lead pharmacist were promptly disciplined and fired. Reddit: strikeuhpose

I SHOULD HAVE LISTENED

When I was six, my dad and I parked at the library so he could return a book. He said he’d be quick so he left me in the car with the doors locked, etc. Just as soon as he got out of view, a guy came to the window and asked me to open the door. I rolled down the window a little and he told me that the car lights were on and to let him in to show me how to turn them off.

I don’t really know why I didn’t listen to him. I told him my dad would be back soon and he’d take care of it then and he kept insisting that I let him in to turn them off, but I wasn’t having it. I don’t know why. I didn’t even realize it was a weird situation until I told my dad like 10 minutes later when we were leaving the parking lot. His reaction was bone-chilling.

He swerved over to the side of the road and asked if I could still see the guy. I said no and we left. Then he got me ice cream because I didn’t let a weirdo into the car. At the time, it didn’t click. But now that I’m older, I’m so glad I didn’t let that guy in. Reddit: lithiumbaddery

TAXI

When I was in college, my friends and I went to the mall, and by the time we left, it was already late at night. My friends’ houses were just a few blocks away from the mall, but mine was pretty far away, so I told them I’d take a taxi. I was waiting on the sidewalk, and since it was late at night, there weren’t many people outside.

When a taxi came by, I put my hand out to signal that I needed a ride. When it stopped, my hand was reaching for the taxi door handle, but then all of a sudden, this strong gut feeling came over me. It kept repeating in my mind, “Do not go in.” It was so strong that I chose to trust it rather than ignore it, so I opened the door of the taxi and said, “Never mind, sir.”

When I opened the door, I got a good look at the man’s face. He insisted that I get in, but I just closed the door on him and walked away. There was another taxi coming, but I saw the first taxi driver open his door in the blink of an eye. He closed it again when the other taxi approached me, and he drove off. I got into the taxi that stopped in front of me.

The next day it was on the news that officers caught a murderer playing the role of a taxi driver after he went out late last night in an attempt to catch his next victim. When it showed the picture of the man, my heart dropped. It was the same taxi driver. From that day on, I’ve always trusted my gut. Reddit: Smartduggy

LAST LETTER

I bawled my eyes out when my mother died abruptly a year after her divorce. I always found it a little weird how she passed away mysteriously just 2 months after her divorce. She wasn’t really sick and she was just 57 years old. She had so many years left to live as far as I’m concerned.
For weeks after her passing, it felt like she was in my dreams. It was as if she wanted to send me a message or something.

Then one day, when we were about to clear out her old clothes, I saw her red blouse. For some reason I took it, reached into a pocket, and found a letter. My whole body shook while reading it. It blew my mind. The gist of the letter was that she wanted me to have everything, she had been unhappy with her current husband (she’s been married to him for just 4 years) and didn’t really want him to get any of her money.

Apparently, she already had a diagnosis about her medical condition and more or less knew that she didn’t have long left on this world. I could not stop crying when I read that. I wish she told me sooner but I just had to accept that she had her reasons. Maybe she didn’t trust her husband to know either. Reddit: [deleted]

BLENDED FAMILY

A friend of mine, whom I’ll call Jane, has two kids and an ex-husband, and she’s on really good terms with another ex-wife of the same guy. This ex-wife (let’s say, Sue) also has a daughter, and the three siblings are all pretty close, considering the two families live a thousand miles apart Anyway, Sue and her daughter came to visit Jane’s family for a week and planned for the daughter to stay an extra week and fly home solo so Sue could go home early for work.

The morning came when Sue needed to fly out. Because we’re in a rural area, the big airport is an hour and a half away, and I guess Sue’s daughter just wasn’t feeling the three hours in the car to say goodbye to mom. The mothers insisted that the kids tag along to give Sue a nice sendoff, but inexplicably, Sue’s daughter wasn’t budging.

So, Jane’s two kids said that if their little sister wasn’t going with them, they needed to stay home to watch her. Whatever. Everyone said their goodbyes, and Jane took Sue to the airport. En route to the airport, out in the farmland the interstate runs through, was a few miles of heavy construction—the kind with prolonged delays and a pilot car weaving through the work, the whole deal.

Jane was heading back and was stopped at the site when she got plowed into by a long haul trucker doing 105 km/h (65 mph), who apparently missed all the signage in the eight kilometers (five miles) leading up to the stop. It was absolutely horrible. Half the car was obliterated; the truck looked like it was taking a bite out of the trunk.

The impact dominoed through five or six cars before the chaos stopped. Emergency services arrived, but they didn’t immediately extricate Jane because they assumed she was dead. She looked dead. The other cars had obvious survivors. Someone finally checked for a pulse to officially call her time of death…and they found it.

They managed to get her out even though her breathing stopped each time she moved, and a year later, she’s starting to regain her memory function and is back to independent living. The scariest part for her, though, was that the kids should have been in the back seat of the car—she and Sue were insisting on it—and all three kids would have been crushed instantly in the collision. The frame around the front seats was the only part of the car to survive. Reddit: cerrita

STRAY KITTENS

We already had two cats when my mother brought home a stray kitten. She couldn’t bear to know it was going to go hungry. A few years later and we now have five dachshunds, and the kitten is a very cute and healthy cat. One day I go outside to feed the dogs. One of them was sitting by the little doghouse, two were just sniffing about idly, one was laying in the sun and the other was missing but probably just in the doghouse.

I fill their bowls, go back inside… and then immediately stop in my tracks the moment the door closed. Something didn’t feel right. I don’t know if it was because specifically the matriarch of these dachshunds was sitting by the doghouse, or if it was because she was sitting directly in front the doghouse entryway like they never do, or if maybe I just unconsciously noticed how attentive this normally scatterbrained dog was being, but I rush outside and make eye contact with her.

She moves over and sits facing the entrance and up-nods her head/nose which she’s been trained to do when she is pointing to something that needs our attention. The cat had kittens! It was surprising because she never had a span of noisy weeks when she was in heat.

We always assumed she was spayed, and she carried three kittens to term without anyone noticing despite her being fed and given the same amount of attention as the dogs got. And the mom of these four dogs knew if her children were allowed near them, they’d get eaten, so she was keeping guard. Reddit: koreiryuu

WRONG PLACE AND TIME

When I was about 23, I was walking down my street at a little after dusk. I saw a van approaching a little ahead, but without any lights on.
I didn’t think much of it, since it was still early in the evening. Then, the van slowed down and almost started creeping up on me as I approached a part of the sidewalk that was boxed in by a tall fence. That’s when I knew something was up.

For me to keep walking, I’d have to go between the wall and the van. In the little time it took me to walk a couple of steps, as the van was getting close, I noticed that the side door was slowly sliding open. The one thought in my mind was, why isn’t the light turning on inside the van? When you open the door of a vehicle, the light should come on inside it. Unless you deliberately switch that off.

So I just took off and ran to the median in between the lanes of traffic. Yes, I ran in front of the van and across the street. I’d rather be roadkill than let whoever was in the van get me. Immediately, the van took off like someone lit it on fire. From a slow crawl to full speed. As I looked after it to check the plates. I noticed it had no plates. And still no lights.

I called 9-1-1, of course. They sent cars out and didn’t find the van. I never had anything like this happen again and I’m just an ordinary person, so I don’t suspect it was targeted. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Reddit: winterbird

BEHIND ME

I was walking alone back to my car from dinner with my girlfriends. It was about 9 PM, but it’s a college town, so this was the beginning of the night for most. I was in my early 30s and knocked up at the time, but it was winter, so with a big coat on, I just looked old and fat to most college kids. I felt totally safe being alone at this hour.

I got to the door to the stairs to the parking garage, and just as I was about to open it, it opened from the other side, and an attractive guy came out. He was about 25 and smiley. He said hi and held the door for me. I think that’s nice and started down the stairs. That’s when things took a turn.

When I got to the bend, I heard footsteps behind me, and something about them scared the heck out of me. I sped up. The footsteps sped up. I didn’t look back because I didn’t want whoever it was to have the advantage of knowing for sure that I knew they were following me. So, I sped up again, and so did the footsteps.

Soon I was running and so was whoever was behind me. I got to my level, opened the door as quietly as possible, and then flat out sprinted, ducked behind a cement barricade, jumped into my car, and locked the doors. Then shaking, I looked back to see it was the guy who held the door for me. He was obviously looking for me. I waited until he turned in the wrong direction, then I left.

After I got a block away, I pulled over to freak out. That’s when I realized what scared me about the footsteps. It was the door into the stairwell—I didn’t hear it reopen after I went through. I’d felt safe, and I knew no one was behind me when I went into the stairwell except the guy who was leaving them and holding the door.

If he was trying to tell me I’d dropped something, he would have said “excuse me” or “hey, lady.” I am 100% certain he intended to harm me, which was why he silently chased me down the stairs. He was running after me and never said a word. That’s super creepy behavior. Reddit: aradilla

LAST TEST

I went to the hospital with shortness of breath and my heart racing. They did a chest x-ray, a blood test for clots, an ECG, and a few other tests but everything came back normal. After observing me overnight everything still looked good, oxygen saturation was perfect, my heart rate was still a bit elevated but nothing too crazy, and it seemed that it was likely leftover symptoms from a bad virus that I’d had a week or so earlier.

The ER doctor asks me how I would feel if they sent me home and I just had a bad feeling about it all. I told him as such and that I had no real basis for it except that I just felt off about it. He said fair enough, let’s try one more test and if that comes back negative then we’ll send you up to General Medicine and see if they can track something down. That test was a VQ scan. When I saw the results, I felt a chill run down my spine.

Despite all other tests showing no results for blood clots, I actually had a whole bunch of them in both lungs. I ended up with a diagnosis of unprovoked bilateral pulmonary embolisms and am now on blood thinners for life. Super grateful both for the bad feeling and the ER doctor who was willing to listen to it! Reddit: instinctivechopstick

FEELING HIS BAD INTENTIONS

I was on a popular trail that goes along the river through several small towns. I was on a fairly barren part of the trail about halfway between two towns—tall grass on one side and river on the other. I see a man running solo in front of me. I am a bit faster, so in time, I pass him. I notice that he’s suddenly keeping pace with me—he’s not falling behind as fast as he should.

Instead, he’s flanking me, just diagonal to me on the riverside. I get a feeling that with one good push, he could have me in the tall grass and there are no witnesses to see what happened. I give another 10 seconds before I start panicking…yeah, this doesn’t feel right. I whip out my phone and dial 9-1-1. I don’t push send, but cup the phone in my hand with the screen facing toward him.

I otherwise kept running at the same pace, pushing myself to the next town. I notice within 30 seconds that I don’t hear him as close anymore. I give it another 30 seconds (counting in my head), then chance a look. He’s gone! I full-on stop to turn around. He’s gone-gone. The trail is flat and straight in both directions as far as the eye can see. Where did he go in the span of a minute? Either the grass or the river…

I can only guess that his reaction validates my feeling that he had bad intentions. This is why I don’t run with headphones when I’m running alone and why I don’t trust anyone when I’m out on the trails. Reddit: Micmac1007

GIGANTIC ANIMAL

I was staying at a friend’s house out in the country. He was asleep in another room, I was dozing off with his gigantic pit bull Izzy Bell, a sweet girl.
In the middle of the night, I was awoken by sounds outside, like scrambling. Izzy leaps up too, looks at me, then the back door, then growls. My friend at the time had a young daughter, about four or five, so I immediately began to worry about her.

I grab the nearest weapon, a fire poker, and go to open the door as Izzy is beside me seemingly ready for a fight. But it didn’t feel right. I instead bar the door the best I could and creep to look out of a window.

As I look, I feel myself nearly scream. Right outside is a gigantic bear. So big it could easily rip my head off, and it has a few cubs in tow. I watch as it ambles off. I am pretty sure that if I had charged out of that door as I originally intended, me and Izzy would not be here today. Reddit: Fake_fakington

SHY WITH STRANGERS

I don’t remember this, but it’s a story my father told me. I was an extremely social kid up until age five or six. I loved people, and no one was a stranger. My favorite thing to do was go to the mall to say “hi” to literally everyone. But when I was around four years old, my family lived next door to a retired couple.

Their 30-something-year-old son came to live with them, and they wanted to introduce him to us. I was in the driveway with my parents when they took the opportunity to come to do the introduction. According to my dad, I yelped at the sight of their son and hid behind my dad. Since this was so unusual, he let me hide and just said I was shy with strangers. They didn’t come back over, and my parents stopped talking to them.

A few months later, officers brought the neighbor’s son into custody for possessing terabytes of “graphic content” featuring children. It turned out he had just gotten out of prison after being convicted of child molestation. There’s no telling what could have happened had my parents continued their friendship with our neighbors. Reddit: Cherokeejon

ANIMALS ON THE ROAD

I used to just around country roads when I would feel stressed out or sad, just to get away and listen to music. One evening I was driving with my best friend in the car, and we were on a gravel road that has a huge hill. We were driving towards the sunset, but it was winter and the light was fading fast. As the car started down the hill, I had this moment where I thought to myself, “My brights should be on” so I flicked them on.

At the bottom of this super steep hill stood six deer on the road. I slammed on the brakes and the car turned sideways and skidded to a stop like 4 feet from the deer. Those stupid deer didn’t even move, they just stared into the passenger side of my car and my best friend pointed at them and said, “Hey, deer.” The car was fine, we were fine, and Bambi was all good. I don’t drive around like that anymore. Reddit: unhiddenninja

DATING

I was on a date—he didn’t know where I lived or anything. I was always paranoid about that. But things had gone well, and my car was cold. So he offered for us both to sit in his while mine heated up, as he had a remote starter. I said sure. Besides, he had the cutest dog too. No one with a cute dog could be that bad, right?

Well, I sat down in his car and we close the doors. That’s when alarm bells went off in my head. The door was locked. I went to open the door because I was freaking out—it didn’t open. It also had a manual switch that could have been used, but it was broken. He told me that I would need a screwdriver to get it unlocked.

We were talking about things like religion, and when I told him I prayed, he told his dog it was a sign from God. He says they were gonna have to keep me. Then, he looks in the back seat. I look in the rear view mirror and see rope back there. He jokingly talks about kidnapping me a few times and goes to put the car into reverse.

I laugh right along with him, while praying silently. Something tells me to go along with this. So I tell him he doesn’t have to kidnap me to keep me. He also continues to make jokes about tying me up and keeping me locked up in his basement. That nobody would ever know and then I would never be able to leave him.

I go on a gut instinct. I tell this guy that I know I shouldn’t be saying this, and it’s only a first date—but something just feels really right with him. He puts the car back into park. Looks at me. “Really?” I go on this tangent about how I know it’s way too soon to know if there’s a connection, and didn’t want to tell him, for risk of freaking him out.

I told him I was really bummed I was going out of town for the weekend because that meant there would be no chance of seeing him when I got back. I keep going and say I had to be getting home, as my friend was expecting me over tonight so we could leave super early in the morning.
I’m having so much fun I don’t want to leave. But I would like a real hug before I got in my car. You know the kind—one that requires standing and not being in a vehicle.

So he makes me promise that I’ll hear from him when I get back. Absolutely. He wanted a kiss if it wasn’t too soon, and me to be his girlfriend. Yep dude—whatever you want. My internal alarms are going off and I’m kind of terrified right now. The car door unlocks! We get our hug, I kiss him, and try to appear pleasant.

Of course I had to tell his dog goodbye, so he rolls down the window for me to give the good boy pets. Guess what I see. Trash bags and an axe on the floor. I get in my car, wave goodbye, and get the heck out of there. Reddit: [deleted]

DON’T GET OUT!

I was driving a friend home late at night when I was around 21. She lived in a pretty rural area outside of St. Louis, MO and about a quarter mile from her house was an old abandoned farm and farm house. I always thought of this place as non-threatening as she told me she and her two sisters would go there as kids and they found an attic full of cool things, including a trunk of vintage woman’s clothing and old love letters. It was like something out of a movie.

Anyway, I’m driving her home and it’s a hot, humid Missouri summer so we have the windows open. We are also singing at the top of our lungs.
We pass the abandoned farm and I drop her off at her house. I wait long enough to see she makes it inside and I head back out the way I came. I’m driving along and I get to where the farm is. I see two things in the middle of the road, but I can’t tell what they are.

My danger meter goes off. I had just driven this road and there was nothing there. That’s when I put the windows up and made sure the doors were locked. I got closer and realized the items are two car batteries, spaced out in the road in such a way that I would have to get out and move them to drive on the road. I immediately knew I wasn’t getting out of the car. I picked the side of the road that had the more shallow ditch and I gunned it.

I was driving a little SUV and remember feeling the car run over branches and things in the ditch, but I just gunned it and got out of there. All the way home, I felt creeped out and kept checking my rear view mirror. I called my friend the next morning and told her what had happened and we both agreed it was weird.

Shortly after that, I moved to another state and didn’t think much of it after that. Fast forward to a couple of years later when I was back visiting my hometown. I randomly ran into my old friend and she ran up to me with wide eyes and grabbed my arms. She asked me if I remembered what I told her that night. I said yes and she proceeded to tell me a story that made my blood run cold.

Not too long after the night with the car batteries in the road had happened, her family was awakened in the middle of the night to someone pounding on their sliding glass door. Her dad went to check and saw two naked, injured women. He let them in and immediately called 9-1-1. They had been abducted from St. Louis City, about 40 minutes away, by two men and brought to the old abandoned farmhouse where the men had attacked them.

The women somehow managed to get free and ran like heck to the only light they could see—the light over my friend’s garage. They both survived, but the men who grabbed them were never caught. There was evidence the men had been going there for a while. My friend was convinced they had put the batteries in the road to get me to stop. I’m just really glad my gut told me not to get out of my car. Reddit: elzamay

RUN FAST

I was maybe six years old and playing with a friend at the playground. An older man came and asked us if we would like to play at his private playground. I remembered my mum telling me to not interact with strangers, so I declined. I was sure as a kid that he had a private playground and was actually kind of mad at myself for not saying yes.

Years later, I was 25 and walked home alone from a club, being tipsy. That’s when it struck me. Suddenly, I remember this man from my childhood and it occurred to me what that really was. I see in the corner of my eye two guys behind me, one leaning on the wall, the other one just nodding and walking out of my perspective. Got chills like crazy.

All of the sudden, this dude locks me in his arms, trying to touch me. I said no, he didn’t stop. No one was around. So I said let’s just walk, because I was convinced that the other guy was just waiting as well. We walked, he held me super close to him. I asked him for his jacket because I thought I could run if he has to mess with his zipper.

He just grinned at me, held me even tighter and didn’t say a word. So I felt that I was running out of time, and there was still no other pedestrian in sight. So I relaxed my body on purpose while walking. He sensed it, stopped holding me so tight. I focused for 30 seconds and right at the moment when he looked back, I punched him as hard as I could on the side of his jaw. He fell to the ground and I ran. Reddit: l1a2

SHADY-LOOKING

I used to date a girl who I would go see every night after I got off work, when I worked until midnight. After meeting, I would stay at her house until about one or two AM. Sometimes as I left her house, she would follow me in her car and stop at a nearby all-night grocery store. I always begged her not to go alone, but she always said she’d be fine.

Sometimes I would wait in the parking lot until she came back out and then we’d go our separate ways. Sometimes I wouldn’t. One time I felt ill so as we left she said, “Just go straight home, I’ll be fine, I always am.”

For some reason, I felt like that was the night I needed to be there, so I stayed, but I didn’t tell her. She thought I went straight home. I was in the parking lot as she pulled in but she didn’t see me. As she walked in, a shady looking dude was walking out. She ignored him but he looked back at her about three or four times.

Then he gets to his truck and another guy is in there and they talk through the window for a minute looking back at the store a couple times. The second guy gets out of the truck, gets something out of the back of it then they both head back into the store. I couldn’t be sure they were going to do anything but I was not about to take a chance, so I go into the store too.

I see them going past every aisle and then motion to each other like “there she is.” So, I walk a bit faster to catch up. I turn into the aisle just as they are approaching her. They are looking at each other. From behind I yell “Hey!” They both turn, and so does my girlfriend.

I brush by them and give them a look and say “Hey guys.” They nod awkwardly as my girlfriend says to me “What are you doing here?” I kiss her and make up some story about wanting to buy aspirin. The two guys leave. I never told my girlfriend that story, I don’t know why. I don’t know what they were up to, but it wasn’t good. Reddit: Paulvs88

THE AISLE GUY

After school in NYC, I would wait at a Barnes & Noble for my brother so we could go home together. I was about 13 at the time, and I would sit around reading random books. One day, to catch up on Harry Potter, I found a cozy corner behind the escalators where no one could really see me. As I was reading, I had this gut feeling to look up.

I did, and about six aisles down, I saw a man. I didn’t really think anything of it, but I thought that I felt someone’s eyes on me. Two minutes later, I got the same feeling. I looked up again, and the same man was now just one aisle away, looking at books. I honestly didn’t really think much of the man, and I thought he seemed quite normal.

I wasn’t scared (yet), but my heart began beating so fast. Something told me to be hyper-aware. I started to pretend-read my book while remaining focused on this man’s movement. Indeed, he continued to come closer while looking at random books. I was sitting on a little empty counter, and he got as close as my feet…that was when every fiber in my being started to scream RUN.

As I jumped off the shelf, the man attempted to grab me. I pushed him and RAN. I ran to find other people to surround myself with just in case this man started to chase me. The story doesn’t end here, though. As I was frantically looking for the safest place to stand, this other HUGE man grabbed me by the arm.

At this point, I was surrounded by many people and employees, but I was horrified. He looked down at me and asked, “Did that man touch you? I’m an undercover cop.” Because my gut feeling had unconsciously activated my fight or flight response, I was in complete shock when my little brain began processing what I thought had happened, happened.

I immediately started to cry. The HUGE guy was indeed a cop, and my gut feeling had been right. The aisle guy was a registered offender. Reddit: LetsGetMad

CHRISTMAS EVE

It was Christmas eve in my childhood house and my mom had gotten a large TV for my dad and hid it in my closet along with some other presents. At one point in the night, she had come back into my room to retrieve one of the smaller items and ended up moving the TV right in front of my wall heater, and didn’t put it back. I didn’t notice and went to sleep a little later.

I don’t know if it was the smell or a gut instinct but thank god I woke up, because early the next morning I woke up to find my room filling with smoke and an orange glow coming from the back of the TV box. Luckily no large flames had formed yet and I was able to stop it simply by moving the box out of the way, and of course, turned off the heater and evacuated the room. If I hadn’t, we would have woken up on Christmas morning to our house on fire. Reddit: Kelztron

MOWNED DOWN

A few years ago, I was at a bar with a couple of friends. All was good, we were drinking and having fun. All of sudden, we heard this discussion taking place just a couple of tables away from us. Two guys decided to have a shouting/threat match. I stopped everything to pay attention to them. My friends were making fun of me, saying I was gossipy.

One of the guys in the discussion got up and left. Immediately after he left, I told my friends we had to go. Right away. I was adamant. They didn’t get why I was being weird, but we’d been friends forever, so they reluctantly agreed. We went to a different bar in a different neighborhood, but I couldn’t take my mind off of those two guys.

The next day, I turned on the news and I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a report about a bar fight. Apparently, the guy who got up went home, grabbed a piece and came back for a drive by. He mowed down four people in the process. My grandpa taught me to never ignore my gut, and I couldn’t be happier to have listened. Reddit: beardedalien013

TINDER DATE

I went on an awful date with someone from Tinder. He kept talking about himself the whole time, and it was nothing but the worst-of-the-worst stories: Him being abusive to his multiple exes but blaming them, telling me how his daughter hated him, and other horrible stuff that I can’t even bring myself to say.

While he was talking, I was pretty much having a panic attack, and the voice in my head was telling me to calmly GET. OUT! So, I told him I had to leave to go to a family dinner, and he began making every excuse to keep me there while trying to convince me to go home with him. We were at a Starbucks outside, and eventually, I just got in my car and left…but he followed me!

So, I called my mom, who told me to head over while she called for law enforcement. Luckily she lives in a gated community with a guard at the booth, so he couldn’t follow me in. Instead, he turned around and sped off. When the officers got there, I gave them all the information I had on this guy—he’d told me many details about his life—and I told the officers everything. That’s when I learned the horrifying truth about him.

It turned out this guy had kidnapped a girl, and he was on the run. He was stupid enough to tell me his real name when we met in person. It was a long summer of multiple court dates just to end with him getting a bull sentence. Reddit: Tarot_6

T-BONED

A couple of months after my 10th birthday we went on a family vacation to visit my dad’s side of the family. They lived a state away. At the time, my mom was about 6 months pregnant with my baby brother. We got to our hotel at about 2:00 pm and by 3:00 pm we decided we wanted to make the most of the day and go to the aquarium. I got fully dressed and ready to go, and suddenly I was hit with this crippling feeling of dread.

At that age, I’d never experienced anything like it. Pure anxiety. But I knew, I just freaking knew if we waited 5 minutes, I would be fine. I tried telling my mom this and she was having none of it. I even tried to just stall her by begging. Nope.

Got dragged (not literally) out of the hotel and into the car. We pull out of the parking lot and get T-boned so hard we do a 180 into oncoming traffic. As soon as we all realized we were okay I was like, ah, yep, there it is. I’ve never let either of them forget it either. Reddit: N8n8r

THE LEAK

I was like eight when my parents took me and my younger brother to stay the night at my paternal grandparents’ house because they were in the middle of divorcing. They lived in a farmhouse that was connected to a barn with machinery, gasoline tanks, and hay on the ground floor and furnished rooms on the floor above that. The room we were supposed to stay in was in that barn.

As soon as we went into the guest room, I was overwhelmed by panic and felt really dizzy. I turned around and just said that we will not sleep in that room, and we spent the night on the couch in the living room instead.

Later that night, a gas leak in the barn ignited. The entire barn exploded, including the guest rooms on its top floor. Maybe I had that weird feeling because the gas had leaked into the room already, but no one else felt anything. I’m sure I would be dead if I hadn’t noticed it. Reddit: CichaelMlifford

PRETENDING NORMALCY

I met a guy at a bar. He was totally mild-mannered and not creepy at all. He asked me how to sign up for karaoke and pick a song. Sat beside me and talked casually. Didn’t touch me once. But then he pointed to something behind my head to distract me. I looked away and looked back at him, and he said he must have made a mistake. It was strange, but I had no idea how dark the night was going to get.

Then, I saw him screwing one of those little canisters back shut on his keychain. I asked him what he kept in there to call him out. He was cold and expressionless as he began to slowly twist it back open and said there was nothing in there. I stopped drinking my drink and he performed his song. When he was on stage, I immediately left. I just knew he’d tried to slip something into my drink.

What always freaked me out was how normal he seemed (before he became suddenly cold and robotic when I called him out on that canister thing). But it made me realize, of course a creep like him would seem normal – that’s how they get close enough to attack you. Reddit: -toe-beans-

BURGER PLACE

When I was in middle school, I got into a local college’s summer program where kids study advanced subjects. The day was over before my mom’s work day, so I would take the light rail to the library or sometimes the local community center.

Anyway, it was my first time ever really being on my own in a city or in public in general. My parents got me my first cell phone because of all this. They didn’t make me scared but I was prepared about how to stay safe. I sort of did the same thing everyday; get off my stop, go get a burger, and then go to one place or the other, making sure not to talk to strangers and all that.

A couple of times, I noticed a man walking behind me. He’d also go the same burger place that I went to. He never tried to talk to me or do anything like that, but after the fourth time I noticed, I called my mom and she told me people are just going about their day, on a schedule like I am, so it could just be a coincidence.

Well, one day I decided to eat inside the burger place instead of take it to go, and I saw him walking outside and straight toward the way I would normally go. Before he got out of the parking lot, he started looking around, like he was looking for someone or something. I went to the restroom, called my mom, and told her to get me. I didn’t go that way ever again after that, took a new route.

About a week or so later, a chilling story came on the news about a girl who had gone missing. The video footage was from the same strip center as the burger place. The suspect was the man who had been following me. Reddit: Mongoosedog12

THE BACK ROADS

When I was 18, I was on a back road with some friends. A girl I didn’t know was driving really fast. Now, I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie, and I have always enjoyed a calculated risk in the name of a good time, but I just had a terrible feeling this time.

I told her to either slow the heck down or let me out. I literally had to start screaming at her before she listened and slowed down. A week later, a friend told me a story that made my blood run cold. She had crashed on that same stretch of road at 90mph, killing herself and the three passengers of her car. Reddit: Canadian_Neckbeard

PERFECT ON PAPER

I was a teen, maybe around 15ish. My mom was a single mom and would go on dates often. However, she would never bring her dates around unless she was serious and had been dating for a while. I’m the oldest girl and have three younger siblings that I was stuck babysitting. My mom was dating this guy who was perfect on paper and loved children.

We live in Texas in a border city with Mexico, and he was a professional Mexican wrestler (lucha libre). When we met him for the first time, my mom brought him to our house and introduced us to him. I immediately disliked him. I remember having this overwhelming urge to grab my siblings and run away from him. My mom wasn’t a good mom to me, but she was better with my siblings.

She thought I was just jealous because this man really liked my siblings—especially my baby brother and sister. My brother is 10 years younger than me, and my sister is seven years younger. I cringed to my gut and made it impossible for this man to bond with them. It was a hill I had chosen to die on. I was relentless when it came to him being alone with them.

I didn’t care if I got beaten; I made sure to make it as miserable for him as I could. He left my mom a few months later. She hated me for it. Then like six months after that, we saw his mugshot in the news. Like, in the special reports section. He was apprehended for child-related “graphic content” and trafficking.

I remember my mom taking credit for his departure from us, saying she didn’t stay with him because of some gut feeling, even though she’d blamed me for months for ruining her relationship with him. Reddit: zeronopes

PILLAR OF FLAMES

I was sitting on one of those metal cylindrical electricity boxes outside my house when there was a blackout. The electricity was slightly flickering in my house, but no other houses had a blackout. I don’t know why, but I looked down at what I was sitting on, and I was like, “Uh…maybe this is the source of the problem?” So, I stood up and stepped away from it.

About two seconds later, it freaking BLEW UP. Like, a pillar of flames shot out and above it for almost a full minute. It was basically a gigantic bunsen burner, and I was a few seconds short of physically getting fried. Reddit: StudentOfAwesomeness

WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT

My mom knew something was wrong with me when I was younger, but when she called the doctor and told them how she felt, they didn’t want to see me for another two weeks. My mom went into a blind rage over the phone telling them that she was taking me to get checked whether they liked it or not.

We got to the GP, he puts a stethoscope on my back and smells my breath. Then he immediately says “We need to get him to hospital, NOW.” It turned out that I had type 1 diabetes, and according to him, if we’d waited another day, I would not have made it. Apparently, my breath smelled like apples, which is a sign of a build-up of ketones in the blood. I was in the severe stages of diabetic ketoacidosis. Reddit: FracturedPixel

URGE TO MOVE

One time I was waiting to cross the street at a busy intersection. I was standing pretty close to the edge of the sidewalk since the light was going to turn soon. The cars were passing by really fast, and there was a guy waiting to make a right turn, which is where I was standing. I don’t know why, but I got this really weird feeling that I needed to move.

I moved back, and the guy made his turn. Just as he was turning, he opened up too wide and was kind of on both lanes for a moment. Out of nowhere, someone in the other lane who was obviously speeding ended up crashing into him, and his car went straight into the sidewalk where I was standing. Both drivers were fine, and I had the biggest adrenaline rush ever, knowing that if I hadn’t moved, something terrible could’ve happened to me. Reddit: LorenaR93

LAST MINUTE

A friend of mine did this hospice care in a nearby town, and that same town was having a town-wide yard sale in a few days. The town was an hour away, and she invited me to tag along and do some thrift shopping once her two-hour job client appointment was done. I had been looking forward to it, but the night before the trip, I impulsively called and said that I was gonna sleep in and that I’d just meet her there.

The next morning she called me at 7:30 AM to say that she had rolled her car, and she asked if I could please come to pick her up. I rushed out to the site and saw her getting treated in an ambulance, and her car was five meters (15 feet) down the bank in a wheat field. It had landed right side up, and I could see the extent of the damage.

Her side wasn’t too bad. It was super banged up, but it was still car-shaped, and she was only being treated for very minor scrapes and whiplash. The passenger side, on the other hand, was crumpled down to the dashboard. I’m certain I would have lost my life. Reddit: cerrita

THINGS KIDS SAY

My mom told me this story the other day and it freaked me out. When my oldest sister was little, like 3 years old, she asked my then-pregnant aunt to pick her up to hold her. My mom said she was like “She can’t pick you up, honey, she has a baby in her tummy.” And then my little sister was like “That baby is dead!”

My mom freaked out, but my aunt and grandma were fine and were telling my mom it was all good, she was just a toddler and didn’t know what she was saying. Well, lo and behold my aunt goes to the doctor the next day for a routine pregnancy checkup, and the baby was dead. Give me the willies just thinking about it. Reddit: Stanleythemanly44

OPERATION

I started having painful period-like cramps, so I made an appointment with my OB-gyn the next day. They immediately gave me an ultrasound and discovered a grapefruit-sized tumor where my ovaries should’ve been. Certain it was cancer, I was in surgery days later. Thankfully all the cancer was encapsulated in the tumor, so no chemo was necessary. I did have to go on an estrogen patch though.

A year later, I was sitting in my bathtub and reached out for a towel. Felt a weird pain in my left breast. All of a sudden, I knew. It was cancer again.
I immediately pulled off the estrogen patch and then went in for a mammogram first thing the next morning.

A few days later, I was having a bi-lateral mastectomy and reconstruction, which I had insisted on because it was my second cancer diagnosis. My doc wanted me to have a lumpectomy and radiation, but I insisted that I never again wanted to have to tell my daughters that I had cancer.

After my surgery, my tumor was tested and it was determined to be highly recurrent and aggressive. Even though the cancer had not spread into my lymph nodes, I went through 20 rounds of harsh chemo in the hopes it will never, ever come back. In April, I will celebrate being cancer free for five years! Reddit: ktmdb

UNBORN CHILD

My husband forced me to take a bath. When I lay down in the bathtub, I noticed a strange smell filling the room and the water turned black. I tried to reach out for the towel but I blacked out. I woke up in the hospital surrounded by dozen surgeons working on my abdomen.

When I asked what was happening, a doctor rotated a screen toward me and said “It’s okay, we have already called the police on him” A nurse beside me squeezed my hand and that’s when my world crumbled. My husband filled the tub with poisoned water to get rid of our unborn child after I declined to get an abortion. Reddit: [deleted]