Everyone has that little voice inside that guides us—or tries to warn us of impending doom. The question is whether or not you listen. Keep reading to hear real-life stories from people whose gut feelings were spot on. Some of them listened, and some of them didn't. Which one do you want to be?
1. A Perfect Moment In Time
My parents rented a beach house for their 33rd anniversary. Since I lived close by, I met them there for a mini family vacation. On the last night of the trip, we were all hanging out in the living room watching TV after eating dinner. Suddenly, I got the overwhelming sense that this would be the last time my life would ever be truly perfect.
I was in my favorite place, staying at my favorite beach house that my parents had been renting since I was four. Both of my parents were healthy and well, sitting on the couch beside me, and both of my dogs were snuggled up to my side. The feeling was so strong that I even took out my phone and took a video panning the room because I had a feeling that it would be a moment I would never want to forget. It's like a part of me knew what was about to happen.
The next day, after packing the car, I hugged my parents goodbye, told them how much I loved them, and that I would see them when I would be home for the holidays. Less than two months later, my mom passed instantly from what they believed was a brain aneurysm. She was completely healthy with no prior conditions and had no symptoms before it happened to alert her that anything was wrong.
I had gone to bed early the night prior to her passing, and when I woke up, I had two text messages—a goodnight text from my mom sent after I had fallen asleep at 10:04 PM telling me how much she loved me, and another from my dad at 7 AM saying, “Call me now, it’s very important.” Half of me vanished that day with her.
2. Summer Of Sadness
My mom was a crazy hippie. I moved out when I was 16 and was eventually able to establish a close but cautious relationship with her. At that point, she was living on a boat in the Florida Keys. I loved her dearly, but she suffered from addictions and was in a relationship that was not healthy. I started having nightmares about her boyfriend calling me.
In the dreams, he would tell me she fell off the boat, and they couldn't find her. My gut told me I couldn't be the one to save her. She was a grown woman making her own choices. I decided to cut contact with her again, but I kept putting off the conversation. I figured I would do it after her birthday. Two days before her birthday, I got the call. She fell into the ocean while intoxicated, and her body wasn't found until the next morning.
3. Something Seemed Fishy
When I was about 14, I met this guy online who had just turned 15 and lived in my area. It was so cool. After a couple of months of talking to him and him displaying a million red flags that I was too naive to see, I finally gave in to him begging me to meet up. He was cute and kept extremely active/fit, and I really had to talk myself into it.
On my walk to meet him, every cell in my body was screaming at me not to go, but I pushed past all of it. He was actually more like 30 years old, at least 350 lbs, and super unwashed and stinky. I had no idea it was even him, I just walked right past him, and then he called my name. I was instantly scared. We talked for a few minutes, and he kept telling me I had to kiss him because I made him wait months "for this."
He kept looking at a car that was driving by repeatedly and said it was his mom checking in on him. It was wintertime, and he joked about how stupid I was that I walked there because he could just follow my footprints back to my house. He laughed and called me weird names. The whole interaction lasted about 20 minutes before I finally got the courage to tell him I was leaving.
I didn't kiss him, but I did let him hug me, which of course, was also a mistake. He dove his face deep into my neck, smelling me and rubbing his hands all over my body. When he let me push him off, I just said, "Ok, bye," and left. I made sure I walked in the opposite direction of my house and away from him. I walked around for nearly three hours before going home, which was a five-minute walk from where we met. He still managed to stalk me for a few years, and I was too scared to tell anyone because I thought it was my fault.
4. I Knew It Was More Than Indigestion
My husband had a lot of health problems. Insomnia was a regular occurrence. One night, he couldn't sleep. He couldn't get comfortable because of his nausea and pain, which weren't uncommon symptoms for him, but it seemed a little worse than usual. I knew that heart attack symptoms can be subtle and are often mistaken for heartburn or stomach upset.
I told him that and suggested we go to the hospital to play it safe. He said no. He had some testing done months later, and we learned that he had a "silent" heart attack. They couldn't give us a date, but the time frame matched up with the night he couldn't sleep. I should have put my foot down and made him go to the hospital.
5. I Had A Burning Feeling
When I was a kid, my mom and I were going to a friend’s house for a play date. I did not want to leave the house. I wanted to bring my favorite things because I knew they weren’t safe at home. She wouldn’t let me. We went to the play date. Then, when we came home, the entire house was on fire. We lost 99% of our stuff.
6. The Feeling Just Hit Me
I was visiting family in California. I was walking home from a newly opened thrift store near my grandparents' house. I was with my older sister, who had my second nephew a week or two prior. I started to get the feeling that, at some point, we were going to get hit by something. I wasn’t exactly sure what, but I had that feeling. I kept pushing it off.
Around that area, especially at that time, about five cars were going down both ways of the street. We were just about to round a corner to get back onto the street by my grandparents’ when I got such a bad feeling that I felt like I needed to puke. I ended up pushing my sister and my nephews away towards the wall of the house on the corner. I almost immediately got clipped by a car that had gotten T-boned while speeding. Luckily my nephews and my sister were alright, but I needed surgery on my leg and a portion of my hip.
7. There Was No Room For This Mistake
When I was an undergrad, my sister and I lived in a house that my parents bought, and we had roommates. My sister had a new guy that was moving in after the summer holidays. I met him the day he moved in. I shook his hand, went down to the basement suite, called my mom, and told her there was no way I would have let that guy move in.
She asked me why and I just said I had a bad feeling about him. He was in the house for two months before we evicted him. The authorities had to get involved—it was messy. A few months later, we returned from the Christmas holidays and found the house had been completely trashed. We told the authorities right away we thought it was him.
They said, "They knew him well." The insurance claim for the damage was $160,000. We lived in a hotel for three months while they rebuilt our house. The authorities genuinely thought he would try to kill us. He ended up confessing when he was in treatment but got off due to temporary insanity caused by drugs.
8. I Saw It Coming
Late one night, I was coming home with groceries. I was riding my bike on the sidewalk when I saw this dude up ahead standing between the street and the sidewalk. I felt sketched out. I thought about going into the street instead of past him, but there was no driveway or anything, so I just kept going forward. I'll regret it for the rest of my life.
That guy and two of his friends mugged me, and I had to have emergency eye surgery that night. I'm still scarred by it today.
9. A Teacher With Some Bad History
The first time I met the teacher my autistic daughter was going to have in elementary school, I had a bad vibe. We were chatting about my daughter, and she went over and sat in a rocking chair that was in the classroom. The teacher's reaction was nuts. She actually yelled at her, full volume, "No, no, no! That is Mrs. R's chair, little missy!"
I was gobsmacked, but then I second-guessed myself and told myself that I was just being overprotective, etc. I should've listened to my gut. Mrs. R was caught pulling a neurotypical student down the hallway by his leg while he was lying on his stomach and then dropped his backpack on top of him. She was taken into custody for that but was still able to return to work with the addition of cameras in her classroom.
While out on bond a few months later, she was caught harming one of the other autistic kids in her class multiple times, allegedly smacking him on at least one occasion with her flip flop. After the second incident, our local newspaper shared an article they had written about this teacher many years earlier. Apparently, when she was 12 she'd stabbed a 14-year-old classmate in the heart. The kid didn't survive.
10. Nana Knew Best
My nan always had this weird sixth sense about things. She always knew when someone was pregnant, and she knew when her kids skipped school, when they’d snuck a treat, the best day to go to bingo, etc. She went through having cancer twice in five years, and she had just finished her final round of chemo when she knew something was wrong.
For three weeks, she kept going back to the doctor, telling them that something was wrong, but they couldn’t find anything. They told her it was just her body reacting to the chemo and her age and that she would be okay in a week or two. She was always the happiest person I knew, but she changed a bit the month before she lost her life.
She scared the bejesus out of my mom. Multiple nights, she would call her in tears, saying she knew she was going to die soon. I would call her every so often to catch up, but she started calling more regularly. The last time we spoke, she said how proud she was that someone in the family was finally starting to sew.
She used to be a seamstress and even made her wedding dress, but no one else had any interest until me. She also rarely would say, “I love you,” but she ended the call saying how proud she was of me, how much she loved me, my daughter, and my unborn baby, and how this would be the baby to stick after three losses. Despite a two-week-long fever that wouldn’t go away, her chest X-ray came up clear, so they sent her home.
A few days later, my mom was driving me home from an ultrasound appointment when my uncle called to say they did another X-ray, and it was pneumonia. The following morning, my nan was begging her nurses to call for my mom, as she needed her there. It couldn’t be anyone else, and it couldn’t wait. Nothing would settle her for hours, so they called, and my mom went.
By early afternoon, my nan was losing her ability to speak. A few hours later, she was gone. She was holding my mom and her sister's hand as my mom had “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” playing for her. When we cleaned out her house, she had four bunches of fake tulips and a note for each of her children, written just weeks before when she first started saying she would pass soon.
11. The Last Goodbye
When I was five years old, I was at my grandpa's house to see my uncle off as he was going on a road trip. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was running down my grandpa's hallway when a thought made me freeze with fear: "He's not coming back." I was little, so I didn't understand the concept of death. I just knew that if he left, I would never see him again.
When it came time to say goodbye, I cried and cried but said nothing more about it. My uncle promised that when he came home, he would take my brothers and me to McDonald's in an attempt to cheer me up. Then, I watched him drive away in his blue van. I never did see him again after that.
12. I Believe In Yesterday
I was driving from Southern California out to Utah to go to Zion National Park. It was about 3 AM when I was in the middle of the desert, and a song came on by a rapper called Atmosphere. The song was called “Yesterday,” and it was about how his dad passed. When I heard it play, part of me had this weird feeling, wondering if my dad was okay. He had been in bad health for years, but I just had an odd feeling when I heard the song.
I got to Zion around 7 AM, and my sister called me, saying our dad had passed in his sleep the previous night. I was eight hours away from home, and by the time I would get there, I knew that they would have taken his body away and everything. So, I stayed that night in Utah with my now fiancé and her sister, completed a few hikes, and got some rest before making that long drive home.
13. The Scream
I was awoken from a deep sleep by a single, clear, echoey bark/scream. It didn't seem to be part of a larger dream, just a standalone eerie moment. It was unnerving enough that I walked around to my wife's side of the bed to check on her, then checked my 3-year-old son and the rest of the house. I am not the paranoid type who gets spooked easily.
Later that day, my wife and I got a call from her sister that our son had fallen off a 10-foot high footbridge into a wintery cold creek. We rushed to where they were, and, as we approached her car, where she was trying to warm him up, I heard a dog barking from inside another car. At that moment, I processed it as my son crying. It sounded pretty similar to the noise that woke me up. Luckily he was okay.
14. Paranoia Won’t Destroya
I was sleeping over at a friend’s house. In the morning, I was somewhat conscious but hadn’t yet opened my eyes. I didn’t hear anything, so I figured everyone else was asleep. I started to feel uneasy, and I wasn't sure why. I tried to go back to sleep, but I was extremely paranoid. I knew something was wrong, but I was still in this half-asleep state, so I wasn't processing anything very well.
Finally, I couldn't take the anxiety anymore, and I quickly sat up. I saw one of my friends taking pictures of me while I was sleeping. I caught her red-handed. She was shocked that she had been discovered despite not doing anything to alert me.
15. I Sensed Oncoming Danger
As I was going to cross the street, I felt a need to watch the oncoming traffic. The light was red for them, and I was totally engrossed in my music. Someone ended up blowing right through the red light, and if I hadn't stopped, I would've been right in the way. Years later, I ended up getting plastered by a car while on a bicycle, so I know exactly the kind of pain that feeling helped me to avoid.
16. Ego Trip
I was about 11 or 12, and my family went on a day trip to Amish country. It was a fun day, but I had this overwhelming feeling when we were driving there and back. The roads were very curvy and hilly over, with very sharp turns and blind drives. My dad was a bit of a hot-headed, egotistical personality at that time in his life.
He was driving, and I felt like with every turn, we were going to misjudge it and crash. That was exactly what happened. The side I was on and the passenger side, where my mom was sitting, was where we were hit. We landed in a ditch, and the rims on one side were at 90-degree angles, and my door was punched in. My dad was in shock. My mom climbed through the sunroof and got us out. No one was physically injured, just a bit banged up.
Later, I remember telling my mom that I knew we were going to crash, and she asked why I didn't say anything. I told her that I knew dad would have driven faster because of his ego and to try to show that he knew what he was doing. If I had asked him to slow down, he would've done the opposite, and the crash would've been worse.
I cried because I felt like I should've said something, but I weighed the cost of him reacting poorly, which I just knew he would do. My dad was really regretful and calmed down a lot after that day. Unfortunately, that was when I started getting more and more anxious and paranoid. I'm grateful, though, that things didn't end up worse.
17. He Was On My Radar
The moment I met my boyfriend’s best friend, I knew he was bad. My narcissistic ex-husband would gaslight me, and since then, I have had a very sensitive radar for people like that. That radar went off when I met my boyfriend’s friend. I kept it to myself for the longest time because I didn’t want to be annoying. Eventually, I slipped and told my boyfriend what I thought. He had confronted me because his friend said he thought I didn’t like him.
I was, of course, labeled as problematic and that I was the problem and not the friend. I was forced to go hang out with the friend again even after explaining that he made me uncomfortable because he reminded me of my reviling ex. One night when my boyfriend was hanging out with his friend and his girlfriend, my boyfriend overheard him. He was repeatedly saying extremely terrible and gaslighting things to his girlfriend. FINALLY, he saw what I had seen all along and apologized for not believing me.
18. Creepy Counselor
I had a school counselor who was so helpful; he would move heaven and earth for students. He was really popular, and everyone loved him. He helped me out a great deal, but the man gave me the creeps. He shared his office, so I didn’t usually have to be alone with him, but on the occasions I did, the hairs on my neck would stand up, and I would leave as quickly as possible.
I felt really bad for feeling that way, and for years, I honestly thought I just had issues with men. He hadn’t done anything, there were no rumors about him around school, and no one had a bad word to say. Twenty years later, he was on the local news. He had been a headteacher in a different school and was found guilty of arranging to meet underage children online.
19. I Couldn’t Stomach This Bad Feeling
My mom started experiencing excruciating indigestion and heartburn. It got to the point that almost everything she ate disagreed with her. She reassured us that everything was OK. We took her word for it because she had always been proactive with health issues in the past. One night, after a particularly bad episode, I broke down to my fiancé, expressing that I was terrified my mom had cancer. She got tested a month later and was diagnosed with stomach cancer. I had lived with a constant fear that it would rear its ugly head again, and it did.
20. My Concerns Weren’t Diddly Squat
I was a realtor and went to see a property for some out-of-state clients. I was just going to take pictures and videos. I had a bit of a weird feeling upstairs, but when I walked around to the backyard and saw a door underneath the stairs, I felt this darkness that almost made me start crying. It looked like a workshop/crawl space, but my gut was saying do not enter. I should have listened.
I went in and the place was trashed, but I couldn't shake this feeling of sadness and "I need to get out." I even checked the doorknob locks to make sure they were turned the right way in case I needed to get out. It turned out the seller's boyfriend had harmed their daughter there two or three years prior. He had fled the state when he was found out and took his own life. When the boyfriend's friends heard that he had passed, they began squatting there. The seller hadn't been able to get them out or had been too afraid to do so.
21. My Ex’s Instinct Left Him In A Pickle
I knew in my gut that my dog was in imminent danger. I had been searching for him but couldn’t see him and was talking myself out of trusting my gut. I asked the person I was with at the time, “Do you see Pickles?” He looked in the truck mirror, sputtered, “Coyote,” and we both bailed from the vehicle we were parked in.
I had never run so fast in my life, trying to chase that coyote to get my boy back. However, it was to no avail. When I called my ex to tell him our dog was gone, he told me he had a terrible feeling the day before that something was wrong with Pickles and me. However, he felt weird calling to tell me this, as we had already been separated for almost two years.
22. Meeting Her Didn’t Sit Well With Me
There was a woman who worked in my husband’s office building who fixed up furniture. I had an antique chair in the garage that my husband had offered her that we weren't doing anything with. At the time, she was just picking something up from our home. While we stood in the driveway, I just had a vibe that was completely off. I never predicted how right I was.
Later, I found out he literally gave her a job in his own office so he could control her time and have all her attention. I found out about that a year later when I went into the office, and no one would look me in the eye. She was hiding from me in the ladies' room. She was the woman my husband left my kids and me for.
23. On The Run
One morning when I was in middle school, my dog was barking a storm while in our backyard, around our storage room. My parents told me to go check it out, but I had a feeling something was up, and I didn't want to be late walking to school. Shortly after I got there, the school went into immediate lockdown with everyone sheltering in place.
Apparently, there was a body with a bullet wound found in a car at a nearby park, and the suspect was still at large. Eventually, the shelter in place was lifted, and the school day went on like normal. While walking back home, as I turned the last corner with a block to go to my house, I saw a whole squad of cruisers pulled up around my house.
I frantically sprinted down the block and found my backyard swarming with officers, rummaging through all our boxes and junk from our storage room. The suspect was hiding out in our storage room and was caught after someone reported seeing him jump our fence. Officers were at our house the whole day searching for the firearm. If I had gone over and checked out what the dog was barking at, who knows what would have happened.
24. The Party Was Over
There was this friendly, funny, handsome guy I was mutual friends with in high school. For some reason, I was always uncomfortable around him. It always felt like he gave off Ted Bundy vibes as if he was constantly trying to hide some dark part of him. One of my best friends started flirting with him, and I chose not to say anything about it because I didn’t want to come across as jealous. They never started dating, but a month into them talking, he threw her down a flight of stairs at a party.
25. Almost Gone
I lived in a small town where kids of all ages would walk to school, my son included. One morning, as I watched my son walk to school out the window, I had the feeling that I should take him. I brushed it off as being paranoid. Not long after, I got a call from the authorities that someone had tried to get my son into their van as he was walking. He ran and told one of the teachers at school. When I found out, I broke down and wasn't OK for the longest time. I still hate myself for not listening to my gut.
26. Starbucks Saved Me
It started snowing pretty heavily, and I was still a relatively new driver in the snow. Cars were zooming past me on the highway, and I felt as if I should get off the road, get a Starbucks, and come back in 45 mins when the weather would be better. As soon as I pulled off the road, I felt better. When I came back an hour later, the highway was a wreck. Semi-trucks were turned over in the snow, cars had spun out onto the side, and there were crashes everywhere.
27. I Wasn’t Trippin’
A couple of coworkers/friends started dating and moved in together. They decided to move out of town together. I was with a friend, and we happened to swing by and say hello and goodbye to them when they were packing. In the few minutes I was over, I got extremely bad vibes without having a clear or specific reason why.
I told myself that the danger I sensed was just in my tripping mind at the time. After all, I had known them both together as a couple for over a year, and they seemed very happy. If only I had said something, I maybe could have stopped him. Two years later, they split up, and she made it clear to her friends that he had become emotionally and physically harmful.
28. Phone Home!
When my ex’s dad was younger and away with the Merchant Navy, he and a few of the lads were out at a pub when he suddenly got an overwhelming urge to call home. This was in the days before mobile phones, and there were no public phones readily available. He tried to brush it off, but he just felt the urge getting stronger and stronger.
Eventually, he ended up walking about a mile or so to the nearest phone to call his mom. When she picked up, she said she was so relieved he had called, as his best friend Gary had passed suddenly in the last few days and his funeral was to be held in the coming days. If he hadn’t got that feeling that night, he wouldn’t have been able to make it home in time.
29. A Bad Feeling Was Bubbling Up In Me
I worked at a youth treatment center. A girl who had bipolar disorder asked to take a bath. My team lead said yes, but I had a terrible feeling based on her presentation when she asked. This girl was absolutely off the charts. After 20 minutes of her being in the bath, I was sick with unease that she was hurting herself in the tub. So much so that I had been pacing around the unit.
I talked to the team lead, who was female, to go and check on her, as I’m a male. First, she asked me to knock and check, which I did, but she was so quiet and faint I could barely hear a sound. She came down to check on her, and I prepared myself to run to the phone to call for help. It turned out that she had cut herself and had bled out ALL over the bathroom. It was terrible.
30. The Universe Was Trying To Alert Us
My grandpa was hospitalized after having a tumor removed. There was an incident where he managed to call my grandma in complete distress, asking to go home. It was dismissed as some sort of delirium due to some meds he was on or something like that. He didn't have access to his phone after that. One night, my mom’s cell phone just wouldn't stop ringing.
It was not a call kind of ringing, but rather it kept giving loud alerts of the battery running low, even though it was plugged in and charging, and the battery wasn't low. It woke up my mom multiple times that night. She just had a terrible feeling that something was wrong and the phone acting weird definitely wasn't helping. In the morning, we learned that my grandfather had passed that night.
31. It Was The End Of The Road
The night before my fiancé was going to leave on a road trip with her dad to go see family back east, she asked me if I was mad at her for going. I'd had a bad feeling about the whole thing but couldn't really say why. It was just a feeling. She would be gone for about three weeks. I told her it was okay, that I just didn't want to miss her. I should have listened to my gut.
About two thousand miles into their trip, at an intersection in Illinois, an intoxicated driver in a truck plowed through her car and three others, killing her and crippling her dad. She was 29 years old. They were about 250 miles from their destination. My world shattered. I had a bad feeling that I couldn't put my finger on. If I had asked her to stay, she would have. We were going to finally get married and start our family when she got back. It haunts me every minute of every day. It's been almost five years.
32. Things Took A Bad Turn
I had just bought a brand new CAT tourniquet for emergency use and kept it on the molle of the big medical bag I keep in my truck. The next morning, when I got to work at the pipeline, I thought to myself, I should really carry this because you never know. However, I decided I would buy another to carry at work and leave the other one in my truck.
Right after lunch break, we went back to where we were working next to a busy street. A flashing sign got knocked over, so my laborer climbed over the barrier to pick it up. As he was bending down, a car ran a stop sign and ripped his entire left leg off. The belt I was wearing couldn't stop the bleeding, and he bled out within a couple of minutes. The CAT tourniquet I carry around now has his initials on it.
33. A Day At The Races
My friends and I were playing a lottery game called Daily Derby, where you pick three horses and a race time. If you get the first, second, and third horses as well as the race time, you win the jackpot. I had stopped playing our ticket months before, but as I was driving home, I got this overwhelming urge to pull over and play the ticket. It was out of nowhere.
So, I pulled into a CVS parking lot, got out of my car with the ticket slip, but stopped myself. I said out loud, "Why are you wasting $42?!?" I then put the ticket back into my car and locked it. I stopped again and knew I needed to play it, so I got it out again. I also had a powerful feeling that I needed to play it twice, but I didn't. The three horses came up that night, but I missed the race time. It honestly didn't feel real.
I won $1,000. I wonder what would have happened if I had played that slip twice.
34. I Was Not Being A Hypochondriac
I was a dynamic leader in my profession for over 20 years. Throughout one summer, I knew something with me wasn’t right. I didn’t have any pain or anything I could put my finger on, but I started doubting myself more than usual. I kept seeking quiet spaces and getting a little more emotional than usual when thanking staff for their hard work.
I said to my wife that something didn’t feel right. I bought a blood oxygen monitor, and we started carrying aspirin everywhere. I even told trusted staff at work that I was a bit concerned but with no physical symptoms. I even laughed at myself for acting like a hypochondriac. I had not taken any sick leave in 30 years. That fall, I had a brain hemorrhage that led to a stroke.
It was caused by high blood pressure. The scans showed a golf ball-sized “dead zone” in my head where the blood from the bleed hadn’t cleared seven months later. The worst thing was that I had gone to the doctor the day before to tell them things didn’t feel right. According to my stats, by right, I should no longer be alive.
35. I Had A Sixth Sense
I met a dude named Six and instantly knew he would play a role in my life; I just wasn't sure how. Our chance meeting turned into a friendship. He moved in and slept on my couch. On the surface, things were great—we had so much fun together, and he was incredibly helpful to my healing as I had been widowed a year before. However, there would be times that I would suddenly feel scared of him, as if I was in the devil's presence or something.
There was seemingly no reason at all for me to feel that way as he wasn't doing or saying anything wrong. I always talked myself out of believing my gut and ignored the warnings. They could have prevented the nightmare of my life. Six months into our relationship, he broke my leg and held me captive for two days until I escaped. A neighbor came and blasted him in the chest, hip and leg. He survived but ended up getting sentenced to 12 years in prison.
36. The Signs Were All There
When I was in my early twenties, my best friend and I hung out for the day. He lived far away, so it was a treat to see him again. We drove around in his new car and saw some other friends, yet, I noticed something was off about him. His driving scared me when it never had before. He wasn't the kind of guy to talk about his feelings, but he opened up briefly that night about his divorce.
I was too blind to see warning signs. All I could only think about was my upcoming trip. Before my return flight, I got a call from his mom. He was drinking and driving. He crashed into the bottom of a bridge, sat unconscious in a fire until he was "rescued," and was unconscious in the hospital with major burns on more than 80% of his body. I was in pre-med biology, so I knew enough to be certain this wasn't something he would recover from.
I flew back and got to be in the room with him. I was angry at myself because I knew something was wrong, and I didn't care enough to help. I only cared about my trip and felt I wasn't around when he needed someone. He was buried with full Navy honors, some coins for his missions, and the heaviest coffin they could have had us carry.
37. February Feeling
When I was pregnant with my son, my now ex-husband used to go out of town for work. We were worried about me going into labor while he was away and not making it for the birth. So, we talked to my doctor about inducing me so that we could plan his birth. While we were waiting for her to grab her calendar, I told my husband that there was something about the 16th that I hadn’t been able to get out of my head.
So, we scheduled the induction for February 16th at 5 AM. I woke up around 1:30 that morning with the most awful pain. At 3 AM, I still couldn’t time the pain, but I knew I had to go and go now! I was in labor and didn't have to be induced after all. My doctor couldn’t believe it. My son came into this world all on his own on February 16th. I just knew there was something about that day.
38. Curious Cat
My cat was a homebody who would go into our fenced yard to do his business when he was not feeling the litter box and was always inside by nightfall. One day, I noticed him inside around noon and began to get worried around 6 PM. I literally felt it in my gut, like a cramp that wouldn't let go. I walked around the neighborhood and walked the forest line next to our house, but no cat.
By nighttime, I was on the verge of panic, and my family thought I was just being dramatic. I sat on the couch, trying not to cry, but I felt like something terrible had happened to him. Around 8 PM, I heard the cat door in my bedroom flop. I went to check, and he was sprawled on my bed, bloodied from several scratches, and his tail was broken in two places.
He was in awful shape and lethargic. He also had urinary crystals that had completely blocked him. I had to call and beg all the local vets to get someone to see him. He wouldn’t have made it without immediate treatment.
39. We Were Almost Met With An Early Withdrawl
My husband and I were leaving a Christmas party and had to stop at the bank machine to pick up cash for the babysitter. When we pulled in, the parking lot was empty. The dark lot behind the bank had a single car in it with two people in the car with the lights out. I didn’t see the car because I was in the passenger seat, but my stomach sank as we pulled in. My husband said he would only be a second, and he would leave the truck running.
He got out, and as soon as he entered the building, the car behind the bank came flying into the front lot and backed in so that their driver side door was inches away from my husband's door, with not enough space for him to get in the truck. My heart started pounding. I popped my head up, pulled out my phone, and started calling my husband. The guy had his door open and was reaching for the truck door when he saw me.
I think he thought the truck was empty. He saw my husband walking fast towards their car—my husband was a big guy, and they were scrawny little guys—so he jumped back in their car and pulled between my husband and our truck. The passenger had a .22 on his lap, and the window was down. As my husband started running towards their car, they sped off. He later said he knew he should never have pulled in there. A week later, a guy was carjacked in the exact same spot.
40. I Was Sensing A Glitch
I received an alert from our storage system that “admin” had a failed login attempt. As I was the only one who would log in to it, it wigged me out. So, I started investigating. I asked my boss, who was the only other person who had the password, and he said he didn’t do it. However, he also said not to worry about it, as someone in the company probably just made a mistake.
So, I moved on. That was a huge mistake. Three days later, we got hit with the most significant, most sophisticated ransomware strike I had ever seen or heard of. It took our whole company down for a week, made all of the IT’s lives a nightmare for a LONG time, and cost the company several million dollars overall. Had I done more checking and gone in and changed the passwords, chances are much of it would have been avoided, or at least would have been easier to recover from.
41. Frozen With Fear
I had a long-term substitute teacher in 8th grade. This sub was a white-haired, longish-bearded, very kind, and funny guy. The whole school loved him and affectionately called him Santa Claus. I used to get very bad bloody noses, often causing me to leave class. One of those times, he found me sitting on one of the tables in the communal study area with a wad of Kleenex, waiting for my nose to stop bleeding.
He chatted me up and told me that often bloody noses are from a specific blood vessel on the forehead and if you press it hard for a while, it stops the bleeding. Instead of letting me do it, he reached out and pressed my forehead with his thumb. I instantly got a gross feeling in my stomach. Still, I brushed it off and assumed this was a friendly teacher just trying to help me.
I was too young to understand that he was testing my boundaries to see if he could touch me. He eventually got me into a one-on-one tutoring situation where he continued to get closer and closer to me. I vividly remember him "showing me how to do an equation" by leaning over me. The way he was leaning over me, I was trapped.
I remember him brushing the hair off my shoulder and saying, "Makes you feel a little uncomfortable like I am making you feel right now." I froze. I didn't understand what was happening. All I knew was that something was weird, and I didn't know how to act. He then abruptly ended the tutoring session and, the next day, told me he thought I had progressed enough in my studies and I didn't need the tutoring anymore. I genuinely believe that my freezing up scared him a bit. I trust that gut feeling now.
42. Take A Hike
As a teen, I sprained my ankle quite a few times. When I was an adult, my newlywed husband wanted me to go on a hike. I felt like it was a bad idea because I was prone to spraining my ankle, but my husband really wanted me to go, so we did. Sure enough, at the farthest point of the trail, I took a fall and hurt my ankle. I had no choice but to walk all the way back on it.
The pain was so severe that after a few days, we thought it was broken. However, a freak blizzard prevented us from getting to the ER. When I finally got it X-rayed, there was no break, just a very, very bad sprain. It actually would have been better recovery-wise if I had broken my ankle. It took almost two years to be pain-free from that injury. I don't go on hikes anymore.
43. Instant Impression
One of my friends started dating this guy, and the instant I met him, I had this really weird, bad feeling about him. I have no idea why. He seemed pretty normal, and we hadn't even really talked yet, just introduced ourselves. I'm a guy, and the feeling was based on nothing. I didn't know how to tell her I didn't like her new boyfriend, so I ignored it, hoping it was just a random feeling and not real.
A month or two later, they broke up because apparently, he started becoming reviling. Luckily she got out of there as soon as it started and is now happily married to a guy I didn't get bad vibes from. I've never really had such an instant feeling like that before or since, especially one that turned out to be true.
44. A Mother’s Intuition
I told my mom I was going to a football game and then camping with some friends. She begged me not to go and even had my sisters ask me not to go. I went. I told her she was worrying for nothing and I would be home before I had to go to work the next morning. My dad wouldn’t have let me go, so I just told her to lie and tell him I was sleeping at my sister's house.
My dad woke up in the morning and told my mom, “Your son didn’t come home to sleep.” She told him I was at my sister’s but said she felt terrible lying, so she ended up telling him the truth about where I was. They went to work. The authorities showed up at their job to tell them I had been airlifted to a hospital two hours away. I got into a wreck that morning as they were headed to work.
45. Kitty Concerns
We found an injured cat in the middle of a bridge in the city and took her to a vet. She had extensive injuries, probably from having been under the hood of a car as it was started. She needed to have all the skin around her tail and back legs removed. The vet offered to take her off our hands, but we were worried she would be euthanized, so we paid for the surgery.
She seemed to be recovering well for a couple of weeks. She was such a sweet cat and very quickly took to following us around the house. But I started to notice that she wasn't pooping or eating, so I took her to the vet again. I had been worried that her wound was healing her rear shut. However, I didn't want to try to tell the vet how to do her job, and she didn't come to that conclusion on her own.
She gave us pain meds, and we left. The next day the cat started suffering quite a lot, and we rushed her to the ER. She had, in fact, not been able to pass stools. She was also severely hydrated, but the vet tech hadn’t triaged her correctly. By the time they saw us, the surgeon on hand had gone. We weren't given any choice but to euthanize her. I will never hesitate to "tell somebody how to do their job" again. She could still be with us. She deserved to still be with us.
46. I Couldn’t Capture What Was Wrong
When I first started dating my ex-boyfriend, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was sending racy photos to someone else. I brushed it off as just being insecure. Two years later, I got a call from his ex-girlfriend. She explained to me that since the start of our relationship, they had been exchanging pics. She also sent me screenshots of him sending racy photos—while we were still together—to a bunch of other girls, even guys.
I wasn’t mad at her or any of the other people that he sent them to. I wasn’t even angry that some of them sent stuff back. Of course, when I confronted him about this, he lied through his teeth, trying to get me to stay. He eventually caved and told me everything, and I will never ignore a gut feeling again.
Piqsels
47. Swamp Thing
I went to visit family in Florida. As soon as I got there, my dad introduced me to a twenty-something-year-old girl he had been hanging out with and her two babies. They were supposedly just friends. I immediately felt physically unwell the second I laid eyes on her. My dad had a history of attracting bad friends and partners.
I didn’t want to cause any drama by telling him how strongly I felt, so I packed up my stuff and found a different place to stay for my vacation. They were friends for a couple of years, but he ended up meeting and marrying someone, and their friendship fizzled out. A couple of years later, she was taken into custody, went to trial, and received a life sentence. When I heard why, my blood ran cold.
She had offed her fiancé, rolled him up in a comforter, and dumped him in the swamp. She then lived in his house and collected his retirement until she was caught. I had always assumed she was after my dad’s retirement when she was hanging out with him.
48. Speed Demon
When I was a teenager, I was riding in the car with some friends. The driver was speeding a little and acting like an idiot in general. We stopped so he could switch out a CD. I had a bad feeling he was going to wreck the car eventually, and someone would lose their life or get hurt badly. I almost got out of the car, but I didn’t. It nearly cost me my life.
We ended up getting into a wreck fewer than 20 minutes later. I came close to severing an artery in my neck when we crashed. Everyone else's injuries were fairly minor, including the driver’s. His reckless actions caused the accident. I wish I would have trusted my gut instinct.
49. Snowed In
My neighbor, who didn't leave to go out much, always parked his car in the same spot. It was right in view of my bedroom window. A snowstorm was going on all week, and on the fourth day of the storm, I was sitting in bed watching TV. I looked out the window and saw his car had not moved all week. The snow had piled up, and the drifts were pristine.
I got that icky feeling that something was wrong, but I figured I was being paranoid. I woke up in the middle of the night to his body being carried out by EMTs. His kidneys had failed, and he was incapable of seeking help in his last few days, so he was stuck in his house alone. It still makes me sick thinking about it.
50. I Had A Weird Feeling Calling Out To Me
When I was around 15, my dad was working in a different state with a friend of his for some extra income. I remember one night, I woke up out of a deep sleep, and everything in my body was telling me, “Call your dad now.” So, I did, even though it was around 2 AM. He didn’t answer. I put my phone down, and when I was slowly starting to wake up, I tried to convince myself he was probably asleep, and I was just being weird.
However, the feeling wouldn’t go away. Something that I couldn’t explain was begging me to keep trying, so I did. By the fifth time, my stomach was so tied up in knots I thought I was going to puke, but then he picked up, and the first words out of his mouth were, “Christ honey, can you hear me?” I said, “Yes,” and told him I was worried about him, and asked if he was okay.
He said, “No, not really, but I need to call you back.” He hung up before I could say another word. That’s when the real panic started. I went and woke my mom up. I told her, “I think something happened to dad.” My dad finally called back and told us how he and his friend gravely misjudged how sharp a turn was. They had both just climbed back up a small ravine.
They were walking all over the place, trying to get a signal to call for help, when my call came through. Both were pretty banged up, but, luckily, nothing life-threatening. They spent a couple of days in the hospital before my dad decided he’d had enough and took a bus back home. My dad still talks about how when he heard the tires leave the road and saw the tops of the trees rushing up towards the windshield—he thought they were goners.
Getting to hear my voice on the phone was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard in his life. My mom still doesn’t understand how I knew to call him, and neither do I. Fortunately, I’ve never had another experience like that again, and, to be honest, I don’t really want to. I told my mom that whatever it was that woke me up—I hope it picks someone else next time.
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