Human intuition is amazing. For no reason at all, people can sometimes just know when things aren’t right. Sometimes, those strange instincts even save lives. So, if your spidey sense starts tingling, be sure to listen, because as these Redditors demonstrate, it’s always better to trust your gut.
1. Into The Woods
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.
2. The Bad Man In The 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.
3. Knock On Wood
I’m an arborist. I was looking at this tree on one job site, and I just got a weird feeling. It was unusual, though; there were no signs of rot, SGRs, weakness, root zone flooding, included bark, etc. But I just got this feeling like, “This seems like a better job for the bucket truck.” So, to the dismay of everyone, I took the time to bring around the bucket and set up the outriggers, etc.
Well, I got up there, flopped the top, and suddenly the entire tree basically disintegrated. Two eight-foot sections broke away at the bottom of my cut seconds after the top swung down. It was like the tree just decided, “If I’m going to go down, I’m going down in a blaze of glory.” Luckily there were no targets nearby.
Had I not decided to use the bucket, I would have had a nice 60-foot fall along with the large sections that likely would have turned me into a paste. Even after looking at the logs, I couldn’t really tell why they gave away. My best guess is there were cracks due to the extreme cold the week before.
4. A National Tragedy
I lived in Orlando for a few years. Christina Grimmie had just been shot the night before, and my girlfriend wanted to see a show downtown. We went to the show, but I got a horrible feeling afterward. She wanted to go to Pulse because it was on the way home, but her car had broken down that day. So, I had my father take us directly home because I didn’t feel comfortable staying out that night.
The next morning we got texts asking if we were at Pulse because the club had been shot up. We were there the week before the mass shooting, and we missed it by mere hours on our way home that night.
5. Lucky Break
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.
6. Out Of The Line Of Fire
I was working and had a terrible urge to go home. I am not one to ever call off work or leave in the middle of a shift, but I ended up saying I had a headache, and my manager let me leave early. Just a few short hours later, I found out that my manager’s ex-husband came into the store and shot her.
7. No Introduction Necessary
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.
8. A Guiding Light
I once followed a weird instinct by not immediately driving off as the light turned green. Sure enough, a second later, two cars smashed into each other, probably right where I would have been if I’d taken off when the light turned green. It’s scary seeing a head-on collision happen literally less than 10 feet in front of you.
9. Generous To A Fault
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.
10. Off On The Wrong Foot
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.
11. Scraping By
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.
12. A Gut Reaction
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 the day of teaching younger kids about severe food-related allergies.
13. A Lucky Brake
I’m not sure if it saved my life, but I was driving once and had a gut feeling this guy pulling out of his driveway up ahead of me was going to move out without looking to see if anyone was coming. I immediately put my foot over my brake pedal and my hand on my handbrake just in case. I’m glad I did because, sure enough, he pulled out right in front of me. I was in a compact too, and this guy was in a truck.
I would have been completely wrecked.
14. Watch Your Back
I went to pick up my younger sister after school and felt something strange behind my back. It was as if something was telling me to turn around. So, I did and what I found next made my blood run cold. Behind us was a random guy swinging a thick piece of wood toward my sister and me. I grabbed her by the hand and carried her away while he followed us, laughing like crazy.
We began running around the place, and as he chased us, I decided to guide him to some officers, who thankfully apprehended him. It turned out he was a homeless guy who went crazy after he lost his sister before. He would roam around town, sometimes naked and scaring kids. It also turned out it wasn’t his first time doing this; he actually did this to someone else too and somehow got away with it.
15. When Skipping The Gym Works Out
I don’t know if this was a gut feeling or if I just got plain lucky. I used to live in a really sketchy part of town. I decided not to go to the gym this one evening because I was super tired that day. That same evening, around the same time that I would normally walk to the gym, there was a shooting in an intersection that was a part of my usual route.
Two people lost their lives. I think to myself, had I decided to go to the gym that day, three people might have passed instead of two. So, I got really lucky ironically by skipping the gym.
16. Feeling Off
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.
17. Wise Kid
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.
18. Taxi Driver
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.
19. Out Of Harm’s Way
I was walking out of a grocery store when I saw this kid about to cross the road. Something came over me, and I yanked him back onto the sidewalk. Not even a second later, a truck came flying past. He was probably around seven or eightish.
20. Cut And Run
I was walking to the barbershop, and for some reason, everything just felt off. I ignored the feeling, but every step I took just made me feel like something wasn’t right. So, I decided to go grab some food instead and then come back later. While I was eating, I saw cop cars and ambulances driving around to where I was before, and it turned out there was a murder.
Now I always listen to my gut feelings.
21. Close Call
My aunt told me a story about my dad. He greatly dislikes his sister and is an all-around jerk 98% of the time, but one night he called her out of the blue while she was in college. She answered, and he said he didn’t know why but he had this urge to call her and make sure she was okay. She told him she was fine and thanked him for calling to check on her.
She never told anyone else except me, and hopefully a therapist or two, but right when he called her, she was holding a bottle of pills that she planned on using to commit suicide. Twenty-some years later, she’s very happy with her decision to live.
22. Behind Closed Doors
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.
23. Running To The Rescue
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.
24. Mother’s Instinct
My mother’s gut instinct saved us back in 2004, on Boxing Day. We were planning a family vacation alongside all our cousins and extended family on my dad’s side to visit the coastal South of Sri Lanka. We were about 20 people in all. It was a well-planned trip, but at the last moment, for no reason at all, my mother decided she didn’t want to go.
None of us could get her to explain why, but she absolutely refused to go. So instead, we went inland on a different trip to visit some other relatives. Then, around midday, our entire extended family from both sides sat shocked in front of the television as we watched the very same hotel we’d booked for our originally-planned trip get washed away live by a tsunami.
To date, she still can’t explain what she felt.
25. Street Smart
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!
26. The Big Bang
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.
27. Advanced Warning
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.
28. He Almost Got The Shaft
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.
29. A Hot Button Issue
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.
30. Divine Intervention
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.
31. Disturbia
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.
32. Technically, He Did Drive Her Away
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.
33. Run Like The Wind
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.
34. Hit The Brakes
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.
35. Bug Off
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.
36. The Tourist Trap
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.
37. Smart And Slick As A Whistle
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!
38. Run, Don’t Walk
Someone once rolled up in a white 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.
39. The Roll Call
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.
40. A Move In The Right Direction
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.
41. Under Pressure
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.
42. An Ill Feeling
Okay, so my dad and I were supposed to go to the mall around Christmas. We planned to go on a certain day, but I started not feeling good because I felt like something bad would happen to us if we went (plus, I have really bad anxiety in public). Anxiety aside, my instincts turned out to be right because on the day we were supposed to go, there was a shooting at the mall.
43. Steer Clear
I rode to college on a motorbike. There was this moped rider who would leave just before me a couple of days a week. One day, I saw her leaving on my way to the motorbike parking. On my way home, I got to this roundabout where I could go either way to get home. On this day, I intended to turn right, but I inexplicably changed my mind at the last moment.
A couple of days later, I found out that had I gone right, I’d have caught up to this moped rider around the same time she got hit by a car. She didn't survive.
44. Follow Your Heart
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.
45. Fight Or Flight
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 sex offender.
46. He Really Must Have Stepped On The Gas
My mom and her entire family were saved from dying from carbon monoxide by her dad. He’d left for work when he suddenly got a weird feeling and then drove back home. By the time he came back, everyone in the house was unconscious, and he had to drag or carry them all outside one by one. They all survived.
47. Shock And Awe
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.
48. Stranger Danger
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.
49. Dating Disaster
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.
50. Wrestling With Bad Feelings
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,” abuse, 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.
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