Trust the gut reaction. Sometimes this is easier said than done. But, sometimes, it can be a matter of life or death, and it's best to do what is hardest, go against the grain, and trust the intuition rumbling around your insides. Just to be safe. Need some inspiration? Well, here are stories from the internet about people who followed their gut—and thanked their lucky stars that they did.
1. Don't Ignore Other People's Guts
I'll throw out an opposite one. This was in the late 1990s. Boarding a flight from Dallas to Denver (TWA) on a MD-80. It's evening. The women behind me are clearly worried about flying and it's annoying me, so I grab a book and read to distract myself—no electronics on take off then, remember? Anyway, we take off and pretty quickly after we take off the plane slows down and the flight attendant gets up from the back and scurries to the front.
The ladies behind me are again panicking "That's not normal!!!" and I'm just rolling my eyes, you always slow down a bit after take off! My gut says we're cool. THEN, after about two minutes, the plane executes a really sharp turn and the pilot comes on the announcer. Ok, this isn't normal now. "Ladies & Gentlemen, we're returning to the airport, please ensure your seatbelts are fastened."
Quiet for a bit and then he comes on again to tell us what happened "We lost an engine, this happens all the time, oh, and you may notice a few emergency vehicles on the runway, but that's just normal procedure." As we land I see what looks like every single fire truck at DFW lined up beside the runway. We land without major issue, people clap, and then the pilot breaks us the real news: "Uh, so I've trained for that many times in a simulator, but it's a once in a career experience for a commercial airline pilot."
So my gut was wrong, I was sure there was nothing wrong and there was.
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2. Watching The Ones Who Do Not Smile
I was at a party when I was in college when two older dudes showed up. The place was packed and most people were drunk. I noticed something was a bit off about them. They never smiled and weren’t really talking to anyone. Finally, someone accused them of feeling around in their back pocket and it turned out they were lifting wallets from drunk college kids.
Once confronted, one of the guys stabbed the kid in the stomach with a smallish knife. They left slowly and were never caught. It was pretty surreal. The kid who got stabbed turned out fine.
3. Bouldering Is Dangerous
Went for a weekend away with a group from my local Scouting area, back in the ‘80s. I didn't know them all, went to make up the numbers and get some climbing/canoeing/caving done. We stayed in a rented house in the Peak District (UK). One evening, a few guys went out to try "bouldering"—climbing boulders 10 to 15 meters high.
I got there, took one look and said no, we have no climbing gear, that's high enough to die if you fall. I got the mickey taken, called "chicken," etc., so I left them to it and walked back. An hour later one guy fell 10 meters and split his skull open on the rocks below, killed instantly.
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4. Stranger Danger!
This happened almost 30 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was probably 8 or 9 at the time and had been at the store buying candy for the weekend with the girl from next door, she was one year younger than me. A car stopped and the man inside opened the passenger door and asked me and my friend to get in the car. He was picking us up for our parents, he told us.
I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong and remember thinking "this is what my parents were talking about!" I grabbed my friend’s hand, said that we lived in that house "right over there" and pulled my friend with me. Went to their door, rang the bell, went straight in and told the people living there what had happened.
Turned out I was right, we were about to be kidnapped.
5. Crazy Cocker Spaniel Got Yo Back
This was about 15 years ago. My parents went out for a nice dinner for their anniversary and decided that I was old enough and responsible enough to be left alone for a few hours on a weeknight. I was almost 9 and we owned a fairly protective dog at the time so it all seemed fine. They leave, tell me to lock up and to call if anything happens.
I do so and proceed to party around the house like a rockstar, cause dude I had the WHOLE dang house myself and I could do whatever I wanted, HECK to the YEAH! Halfway through a Sailor Moon marathon, I get a knock on the door. I'm confused as all get out cause it's only been about two hours and they said they probably wouldn't be back till around 10 anyway.
I guess mama has left something she needed AGAIN and swung by to grab it. My front door is a system of two doors, a super old, thick wooden door (the house was originally built in the 30's and this door is still the original piece) and then outside of that (at the time) a screen door. My dog is raising heck at the front door, but I just pull her back to calm down, cause she had a tendency to be reactive to most noises.
Well, it's not my mom at the door, some middle-aged man I've never met before in my life. Puppo is now basically feral so I keep the screen door firmly closed and a hand on her collar as I ask the many what he wants. He starts in on this weird convoluted story about how he has two young twin daughters and how they got into a fight and that one of them ran away.
Now, this man then claims that he believes his daughter is hiding in my house and would like to come look for her. I tell him no such girl is here and why does he think she would be here in the first place. He goes on into a long story about how this was the house they first lived in and how it's the one she was born in, and how it was like a safe place for her and would be the most likely place she would run away to as it was really the only other place she knows.
So I felt kinda weird since I opened the door and this dude's story hasn't been helping his cause, but now I KNOW something awful is going down. I, in no uncertain terms, inform the guy that he must have the wrong house because THIS house was built and has been lived in by my family since its construction. My dad was born in that house and after my mom and dad told his parents that they were pregnant with my older sister they gave it to them as a present to begin their family. He must be mistaken cause I know all this to be fact.
Heck, there were pictures less than 10 feet away from me on the wall of my dad and uncle playing in the front yard in the late ‘70s. By now my dog is growling like crazy and dude is getting kinda agitated. He insists that I don't know what I'm talking about and that if I would just give him a few minutes to search for his daughter he could be on his way.
The latch on the screen door was broken and I was putting all my strength at the time in holding my dog from the door. He opens the screen door with one hand and with the other reaches for my closest arm. My crazy cocker goes ballistic! Uses all her strength to lunge at him, gets a hold of his hand, and bites down. Now man is yelling and confused.
He pushes back against the screen door and slams it shut to get my dog off of him. Sadie gets pushed back indoors but is still raging. I quickly slam the front door, lock it, and chain it shut. Run around the house and make sure all other doors and windows are locked and then hunker down in the bathroom hyperventilating and wait about 15 minutes until Sadie's growling has calmed some. Check outside, no man or his car. Both long gone.
I call my parents and tell them they need to come home RIGHT NOW PLEASE. When they get home I recount the whole story. Dad goes the check the front door and sure enough on the screen door jam and siding of the house is a large smear of blood. Sadie was treated like a queen and got a whole steak for her to eat on that weekend.
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."—Mark Twain.
6. Seriously, Don’t Drink and Drive
Not so much something very wrong here but a bunch of my friends wanted to go to this party when I was like 20. I was just sort of like "I don’t know, I really don't want to go to this place with these people." Turns out two of my friends got into an argument with people who lived there, got kicked out, were super hammered, and drove home angry.
Their car flipped three or four times and wrecked about another four cars. My one friend leaves with a small concussion the other leaves with like eight broken bones and walking therapy for about two years. The best part is, the emergency responders said if anyone was in the back seat they would be dead. That's where I would have been sitting.
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7. Granny Senses
Not mine but my grandma's. We went camping at this one spot in the woods by a small creek every summer. One summer she gets this bad feeling and makes us pack up and we leave. Couple days later they end up finding a dead body right near our then-campsite.
8. Mom Knows When Something Is Wrong
My mom had one. I was there with my brother but we didn't believe her at the time. Three years ago, my brother, my sister and I were supposed to meet at mom's place for dinner at 7. My mom and sister are very close; her being the firstborn, the only girl and us being a Lebanese family. Anyway, they talk throughout the day quite a bit, daily.
Around 6:30 pm, my sister is not answering phone calls or texts. My brother and I think she's asleep or just doing whatever and it's nothing to worry about. By 7:15, still nothing from my sister and my Mom at this point is pretty much saying "Something is wrong here, I can just feel it." We still don't believe her but it's not her style to worry and she is really now worrying.
I call up her now ex-husband who was at a conference saying we haven't heard from my sister. It turns out neither has he. I asked if he knew her iTunes credentials so I could track her phone. Turns out she was at home. We called a friend, sent someone knocking at her door, and no answer. My mom started driving there and made the decision that we need to break into the house.
She texted her friends to kick the door down. They did and found my sister unconscious. She had a major stroke and a concussion. The aftermath was very, very difficult. I won't write a novel and be brief. Major stroke, concussion and required open heart surgery. Was told she may never talk and would likely be a vegetable and if we actually wanted to proceed with the surgeries.
We did. She's alive, she talks, she can walk with a cane and will at some point, walk without a cane. She lost everything on the left side of her body. The only part of her that may never come back is her left arm.
9. There Are Some Sick, Sick People Out There
Not me but my mom. When I was about ten years old I got invited to spend the night at my really good friend’s home. My mom said no. I begged her to let me go but she was adamant that I couldn't. She said she just didn't feel right about it and that no amount of pleading was going to change her mind. A few weeks later my friend’s dad was arrested for inappropriate child imagery.
After he went to trial it was found that he had also molested several young girls. He would have his daughter invite them over for a slumber party and then touch them when they went to sleep. If my mom hadn't trusted her gut feeling I could have been one of his victims.
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10. Sixth Sense
My sister once called me downstairs to talk to my dad on the phone. At that time that was pretty regular, maybe once a week, and it wasn't at all an unusual time for it or anything. But my stomach suddenly dropped, I wanted to be sick, and I really, really did not want to answer. Turns out my grandfather, who I liked very much, had passed away very unexpectedly.
I still don't understand what it was. I got nothing from the reactions of my family because he wanted to tell me first, and it started before I saw any of them. There had been no news, medical or otherwise, about my grandfather beforehand.
11. Trusting The Spidey Sense In The Rain
It was 1:30 am, raining, I was riding my motorcycle down a four-lane road with two lanes in each direction and a middle turn lane. I saw a car approach a stop sign, perpendicular to me, in the parking lot of a bar and though to myself "He's going to turn left in front of me." I was going 45mph, let off the throttle, and about 200 to 250 feet from him, he did exactly what I thought he was going to do.
Grabbed my front and rear brakes, back tire locked up and kicked out to the left. I had maybe 40 to 50 feet in which I would either high-side in front of the car and likely be run over, slam into the driver door or rear driver door or jump off to the right in a tuck and roll fashion. I jumped and my motorcycle slammed into the rear driver side of his car.
I had a couple scratches, bruises, and a sore tailbone. But I wasn't run over or hanging out in his back seat via glass window. Thank God for spidey senses.
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12. That's So Raven
Christmas day 2016. My family and I had packed the car with all the goods and were about to be on our way to my grandparent's house. The car wouldn't start. Let's back up: The whole day I felt I was in a trance or a dream. I kept feeling off and the night before I had a dream that we were driving on a bridge—our tire popped, we slid and a car slammed into my side of the vehicle.
I remembered it so vividly because I see the headlights coming at me in my head still. I get prophetic dreams a lot, but I really didn't think much of it because I also suffer from nightmares. Anyway, we call AAA. Meanwhile, I'm refusing to get in the car because everything feels OFF. The guy gets there, tells us it was our battery, so he charged it.
I still felt very off but seeing as he fixed the problem I get in, he turns around and says to my mom, "I just wanna check your tire pressure for some reason." Not kidding—he said one of the front tires was EXTREMELY high, was, and I quote from AAA dude, "About to pop if we were to drive, especially on a highway or turnpike." He fixed that too, free of charge.
The feeling of being uneasy and dream-like faded and I felt fine. Made it to grandparents house—awesome mashed potatoes. I know when to trust my gut.
13. Giving Pastors A Bad Name
I used to be a lifeguard in a very small gated community with a lot of wealthy people. I also used to sing at the local church services. I met the pastor in that context and something about him just seemed...off. It wasn't anything I'd be able to articulate. I just didn't like him. He just made my gut drop. Later, I noticed that the local pastor was spending a lot of time at the pool watching the little kids swim—one little boy in particular.
He would have a towel ready for him, he'd have the kid sit on his lap to dry off. As far as I knew, he wasn't babysitting him. He was just there, watching and touching. It made my hackles rise. I told his parents that the way the pastor was interacting with their son made me uncomfortable. They investigated and it turns out the pastor was going to their home when they weren't there and "spending time" with that little boy in his bedroom.
They didn't give me any more details than that but it was implied that something sexual had been going on. I don't know what happened to him after that but he was obviously removed as pastor from the church. It's so important to trust your gut on these things.
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14. Just Say No, Mmmkay
At a research institute, I walked into a mouse procedure/surgery room for a quick moment to grab something and leave. After walking out I felt, well to be honest, like I was a little high. There were three other people in that room, including 2 undergraduates so I got worried and went back inside to check things out. When I got back inside I asked if they were feeling ok, one of the undergrads turned to me and said she was fine, but was flushed and looked a little out of it.
So I went around to all the isoflurane chambers (odorless volatile liquid that KOs mammals at low doses and kills them at higher) looking for leaks. Sure enough, the gasket at the bottom of one of the chambers had failed and it was leaking out and immediately boiling into a gas, and filling the room. I told them their isoflurane was leaking, and the postdoc told me they were fine and that he uses that machine all the time.
He also pointed out that the isoflurane was in an air curtained biosafety cabinet and so even with the leak, they were protected. I called him an idiot because a biosafety cabinet recirculates air and doesn't evacuate it like a fume hood—which is what he should have been using. So I ignored him, propped open the door, and ordered the undergrads to get out of the room.
I then went to their lab manager and told her what I had found. Their lab manager came down like the wrath of God.
15. Crazy Step Mother
My father started publicly dating a woman shortly after my mother died—I later learned she's likely the woman he'd been having an affair with before she died. I liked her. One evening my father took me to one side and asked how I'd feel about him asking her to marry him. I got an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach and felt nauseated.
I told my father I didn't want him to and he asked why as he thought I liked her. I explained that I did like her but had a bad feeling and he said: "that's just a feeling, they don't mean anything." He already had the ring and proposed straight away. I got really excited about the engagement, the wedding, moving house, and my impending little sister.
After the wedding, she changed. And when my half-sister was born, she went crazy. She abused me, my sister (my mother's child), and later, my half-sister (her own child). He only left her when my doctor told him something was clearly going on with her that was affecting my health. She was putting a substance that I'm intolerant to in my food and my father wouldn't believe me and would force me to eat whatever she made.
However, I couldn't get a doctor alone without her to tell them. My maternal grandmother told him if he didn't leave her she'd go for custody that he finally left her. He accused me of lying for the entire time leading up to that and has never asked me about any of my attempts to get help since.
16. Saving Yourself From The Chicken Dance
The one I best remember was about ten years back. I was a groomsman at a friend's wedding. Partway through the reception, I was suddenly struck with a feeling of impending doom. THEY ARE GOING TO PLAY THE CHICKEN DANCE NEXT! Frantically I started searching for someone, crying, "Let's go smoke! Who wants to go smoke?" I don't even smoke, but it wasn't hard to get a group together.
When I came back, sure enough, The Chicken Dance had been danced, and I was the only member of the wedding party to escape its embarrassing talons.
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17. A Bad Gut Feeling Is A Rational Deduction From An Observation
Got off the subway at night, there was one other person about half a block behind me on my route home. This is a totally normal thing, has happened thousands of times. Totally normal-looking dude, not even following me closely. I had a bad feeling. Such a bad feeling that, when I turned the corner on my way home, I broke into a dead sprint and hid behind a dumpster in the shadows partway down the street.
By the time he came around the corner, I was well hidden and could see him from my hiding place. As soon as I saw his reaction to the fact that I wasn't there, I knew I had been right to hide. He started LOOKING FOR ME, muttering to himself, he went up and down the street, looked around corners, I hid and held my breath until he was gone. It was terrifying. I am so glad I had that sudden, inexplicable impulse to hide, and listened to it.
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18. Baby Sis Fall For The Wrong Dude
My sister was 18 years old and bought a horse from a guy who was married and 47. My parents liked the guy and became friends with him and his wife. I knew something was up because he and my sister would talk constantly on the phone. My mom actually asked his wife if that was cool and she said it was totally fine and he did this a lot with other kids who needed “horse advice.”
Yeah.
My parents wanted to send my sister to stay with this guy for a whole summer so she could ride and show horses. I told them the relationship was clearly inappropriate and not to do it. They were like, if the wife doesn’t mind, then who cares?!? Within two months he had left his wife. Within four months they were engaged.
Four months after that they got married, and one week after that, my sister was pregnant. This guy has had many parents accuse him of being a pedophile and coming on to their underage daughters. His own son has nothing to do with him. And he’s not even good looking or rich. Just a gross, hideous hillbilly with leather for skin and three teeth.
Good job, baby sis.
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19. It’s Not Your Fault
Two years ago, I was on my way back home on my bike. I had to go over a bridge and on one side of the bridge, there was a girl, crying. On the bridge, there were two 14-year-olds (one pretty tall, one pretty small), head to head, seemingly about to get into a fight. When I went by, they stood back. I thought something was off, but I told myself fighting among 14-year-olds over what I thought was a girlfriend, is normal and not dangerous, right? Turns out, the taller one of the boys jumped off the bridge to end it all only minutes after I passed, the smaller one couldn't physically hold him back.
Had I stopped and listened to my gut feeling, I might have been able to help and talk him out of it.
20. Hiding Something Under It All
On a recent date with my girlfriend. I couldn't place it, at all. She was herself, if not a little more playful. She looked like herself, in jeans and a hoodie. I just couldn't quite place it...until we got home and it turned out she was wearing a strap on harness all night...I have no idea how that was comfortable.
21. Just In Time
Not me, but my coworker. She got a call last week that her sister-in-law didn't show up for work and didn't call or anything. She's been working three jobs recently and was complaining she needed a good night's sleep. Coworker said she probably slept through the alarm clock, but her husband insisted that she go home and check on her because it wasn't like the SIL to just not show up for work. Coworker was annoyed but did it since her house was only 20 minutes away.
Coworker gets there and it turns out she had overdosed on some sort of opioid and then had a heart attack. Oxygen levels were extremely low, and paramedics said that if coworker hadn't gotten home when she did, SIL would have been dead within minutes. Thank god her husband had felt that something was wrong. Always go with your gut.
22. Uncle Comes Home
A guy came to the door one day, looking for my mom. I was probably 13 at the time. Immediately, I had most of my body behind the door, ready to shut it. I just had this awful feeling about him. He said he hadn't seen her in a long time, and that he was just coming from church and was in the neighborhood. Ok, so this guy is trying to communicate that he's a good person, and that and his weird smile just made me trust him less.
I told him my mom was napping. She wasn't. She was at work. So, he left a note for her with his name and number on it. I took it & closed & locked the door. Then I looked at the note & immediately recognized the name. It was my uncle. I hadn't seen him since I was five when he went to jail for murdering my aunt and cousin.
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23. Nick of Time
I was at a bar in October of 2013 or 2014, if I recall. Anywho, I lived in a particularly rough neighborhood at the time, and I was enjoying a few drinks. I had this horrible feeling of uneasiness looming in the back of my mind, so I told my buddies I'm turning in for the night. They called me the following morning and informed me that the bar had gotten shot up and like three people were injured. It was about two hours after I left if I recall.
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24. Mom, Something Is Up With The Dog
A couple years ago we had a young dog, about one and a half, who had epilepsy. Of course, we had to give him meds multiple times a day to help with it. One day he basically just stopped eating. After a day or two I told my parents that we should take him to a vet. Cue "No, he'll get over it." About a week later, he's still not eating and we take him into the vet for a periodic checkup.
Turns out he has liver failure that is almost guaranteed to progress into heart failure. We ended up having to put him down a couple of days later, simply because we didn't want him to suffer. I told you, mom.
25. No One Knows You Better Than You
Not so much a bad "feeling" but I think it feels appropriate. I was a freshmen in high school going out for football for the first time. I'm pretty average, probably on the scrawny side. About two weeks into practice I started having terrible back pain. I told my mom, who said "you’re just sore, suck it up," so I did for a while.
I kept going to practice for another week before I finally had to tell my mom she had to take me to the hospital or I’d go without her. So she sets up an appointment and...it turns out I had slightly broken a vertebrae. Tiny cracks on each side of the same vertebrae. Safe to say I don't take her advice much anymore.
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26. Epic Party Turns Into Epic Arrests
Pretty simple one. Went to a party that was just shoulder-to-shoulder packed from the moment I arrived. I could barely move through the house. People were spilling out onto the lawn and everybody was acting a fool. Way too many people there and I figured it was about to go downhill fast. So I grabbed my friend and we bounced.
As we were leaving about 10 to 12 police units passed us on the road headed towards the party. City, county, and state police—it was a small town so they probably asked for help. Found out later the party got shut down, obviously, and the police painstakingly ID-ed everybody there, arrested everybody involved with throwing the party because of underage drinking, arrested everybody that was underage, found a load of drugs and arrested people for that, and ended up towing a boatload of cars because nobody was sober enough to drive.
Even people that were fine to leave didn’t get to leave for hours. We just took our asses to a bar and drank like normal adults.
27. Knowing Your Own Appendix
A couple of years back, I got a stomach ache. I'm not normally prone to them, so it felt a little strange. When the pain moved to my side, I knew something was wrong, so I called the doctor, who called me in for an emergency appointment—I was worried it might be appendicitis, he agreed. I got there, got prodded and poked and told there was nothing wrong with me—“if it was really your appendix, you wouldn't be able to sit there and talk to me.” Fair enough, so I went home.
Later that night, I start throwing up, so I knew something was wrong, so off to the hospital. The complete idiot of a doctor prodded and poked around again and declared it was just a stomach bug, or maybe a urine infection. Told me to drink some flat Coke(!) and go to the doctor in the morning—bear in mind, I'm so pale as to be actually grey by this point and can barely hold down any more than a couple of sips of water.
Later in the morning, I'm still not feeling right so I get my SO to take me to the doctor again. More of the usual prodding and a “well it's probably an infection, but I'm going to refer you to the hospital, just in case.” So I get to the hospital—long story short, I have a whole bunch of tests, but they're still not convinced it was appendicitis. I was, by this point.
They eventually agree to do an appendectomy, using keyhole surgery. So I go down for the operation, which they reckon will take an hour or so “and don't be surprised if you still have an appendix when you wake up, we're going to have a look first.” I woke up about six hours later with a 4-inch incision on my side.
Rather than the three small holes I'd been told to expect, there was a tube sticking out of it. I asked the nurse what the heck happened, and got “oh yes, your appendix was really bad, apparently. I think it burst as they were removing it.” So yeah; not only did I have appendicitis like I thought, but I had it really bad. I ended up in the hospital for another week being treated for sepsis.
28. Unsung Hero
I got to the airport early, got something to eat at the restaurant, and boarded the plane. Everyone is on and I suddenly get a feeling of panic. Nothing else, just panic. I was used to traveling back and forth every week, so no problems flying, but in this case I had to get off that plane. I grabbed my stuff, ran past the flight attendant and said don't wait for me I will get another flight and sat down trying to calm down.
Announcement comes over the speaker that they are looking for me, my flight is leaving. It leaves. I watch the flight start to take off. This was in Detroit. Then it happened. The worst cramps I ever had, and I ran to the bathroom. Food poisoning from the restaurant. I would have been on a two-hour flight stinking up the plane while ejecting the contents of my stomach from both ends. I am sure the entire passenger compartment thanks me, though they do not know...
29. Expertise
Airline pilot here—warning, do not continue reading if flying makes you uneasy. One day we loaded up passengers and cargo and everything and we were ready to taxi. I noticed that the nose of the airplane seemed to be higher up than usual while we were sitting on the ground. I told my first officer about it and he agreed.
We double checked the weight and balance and everything seemed to be right. I decided to just taxi out towards the runway and see if the wheel struts would go back to their normal positions during taxi. Still felt weird to me. Something wasn't right. I told ground control we needed to go back to the gate. Called Ops and told them we're headed back because I think something isn't right with the weight and balance.
After we get back, I ask them to check how much ballast we have in the aircraft. It's verified on my sheet as 500lbs., but I have a feeling...Turns out, yep, they forgot to put it in the plane. So had we taken off, the center of gravity would have been out of whack—way past limits. It could have resulted in an airplane that was impossible to control.
Just like that 747 that took off and had the load slide to the back. That was a day that I was really pleased that I had so much experience flying to give me that feeling & that feeling could very well have saved my life along with others.
30. Not Walking on Sunshine
I came home to my mom supposedly being out for a walk and my little brother seeming worried that she hadn’t come back yet. I noticed that her keys were hanging up. I just had a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right. Why not take your keys? She hadn’t gone for a walk. She had put on her wedding dress, locked herself in a back room that you can only unlock from the inside, and had taken a whole heap of pills to kill herself. She survived.
This was over 15 years ago but still haunts us.
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31. Suspicious Minds
After my mother went to bed each night, my dad would go out to his car beside the driveway & talk on the phone for about 15 minutes. I never heard what he had been saying or who he was talking to, but I felt that something wasn’t right. I outed him. He had been having an affair for about ten years.
32. Off a Cliff
As I climbed out onto a cliff to get a picture of a cave in the middle of a waterfall, something felt weird. I then began sliding down the cliff. I barely caught myself on a fracture in the rock, and eventually got my feet back on solid ground. The next day, my sister had the news on and they found a dead guy under that same cliff. He'd been missing for a few days.
33. Rookie Initiation
We had this regular customer who was very weird indeed. I worked in an auto wrecking yard and he always came in and bought random, off the wall things. Anyway, me and a new guy load some stuff into the back of this guy’s van. He gets in to leave and the new guy is standing behind the van, next to the building. I say: "Hey, I wouldn't stand there if I were you." New guy looks at me puzzled, but moves anyway. Sure enough, weird customer puts it in reverse and punches the gas. Backs his van right through the wall of our office, right where the new guy had been standing…
34. Physical Reaction
In 2014, when that year's X-Men movie came out, I went to go see it with my best friend. Two thirds of the way through, I felt the most off I've ever felt. Sick, chills, feverish, gut drop, time warped, the works. I peeked at my phone & had dozens of texts, missed calls, & voicemails. My dad had passed away.
35. Father Knows Best
My dad was driving our whole family in the car, zipping along as he was prone to doing. Then, just before a blind corner, he started to slow down for no apparent reason. Like, slowed down a lot more than was really necessary. A second or two later, another car comes speeding around the corner on our side of the road. It would have been a head-on collision had dad not felt the uncanny urge to ease up.
36. Child Abuser
I’m a member of a local Facebook group to help moms find babysitters. One of the admins was a mid-20s man who babysat for tons of kids in the area, and specialized in caring for nonverbal and autistic children. His posts always gave me a weird vibe that I couldn’t explain, but he was loved by this group as a whole. He was just arrested for molesting two children. Bail is set at $2 million. It’s estimated that he sat for over 500 children in our area. Who knows how many he abused.
37. Second Opinion
I hadn't been feeling well for a few weeks. I was having shortness of breath despite being pretty athletic and could feel my heart pounding. I saw my doctor, who diagnosed it as anxiety, prescribed some meds, and sent me on my way. But I just...had this feeling. A few days later, I woke up and had trouble walking to the bathroom without losing my breath.
I don't know why it even came to mind but all I could think was, "Something is wrong. This isn't anxiety. I need to go to the ER right away." So I walked myself to the hospital and asked if it was possible I had a blood clot. I was reassured that if it was a clot in my lung, there was no way I could have walked to the hospital. I convinced them to test me anyway annnnnnd it was a pulmonary embolism. Listen to your instincts, friends!
38. Nightmare is an Understatement
Things have been rough lately, but last Wednesday I woke up extremely sick to my stomach and very anxious. I felt like crying the whole day. My best friend's brother called later in the afternoon to tell me that my friend had killed himself the night before. It has been a nightmare ever since.
39. Seeking an Explanation
I was with a large group of friends including my brother, and we were playing hide and seek outside at night. My brother and his friend decide to go into a snowmobile trailer to hide, and I told them I’d hide under the trailer. Little did I know, the trailer was balancing on two wheels. As I was hiding under the trailer, I suddenly got the worst feeling.
A feeling that I needed to get out of there right away. I can’t even describe the feeling but I got out quick. Seconds after I got up, they made the trailer unbalanced by getting inside and it crashed exactly where I just was. There’s no doubt it would’ve killed me in seconds. I stood there in complete shock. I couldn’t believe I was so close to death.
40. Til I’m Blue in the Face
My siblings and I were swimming at a neighbor’s house with their kid, while the adults were inside. Randomly, a thought came into my head of "Where’s my sister at?" She easily could’ve gone inside or have walked home across the street, but I felt like I needed to find her ASAP. I got all of us kids to search and we discovered she was at the bottom of the pool, completely blue. She made a complete recovery and is now one of the best parts of my life.
41. Dog Days
I was letting my dog back inside. She walked right past me with no tail wagging or happy smile, walked right through the kitchen without wanting a treat, and went straight to her doggy bed. I knew something wasn't right, and within ten minutes we were in the car to the emergency vet. She had a tumor rupture apparently, and it was clear what needed to be done. Still breaks my heart.
42. Bail On Out of There
I had a coworker who used to go to parties in high school. Several of the parties in her senior year were at some guy’s farm. She went to one and bailed right away saying it felt weird. The guy who owned the farm turned out to be serial killer Robert Pickton.
43. With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?
Came home very late one night. My parents and sister were already asleep. House felt funny. Dogs were barking in a strange way. I looked around and noticed that my stepmother's car was not in the driveway, but her purse was in the kitchen. My dad's wallet was not on its usual place. I then caught someone creeping around in the backyard, and the commotion woke everyone up.
The creeper was one of my sister's friends. Turns out, her friends decided to break in due to the fact that my parents never lock the doors and the dogs all knew them. They planned to steal my dad's cash and credit cards and take my stepmother's car for a joyride. We found the car in the next subdivision. Why was creeper-boy not with his other buddies?
He figured he could zip back over and spend some "quality time" with my sister, and my timing was just about perfect. He ended up ratting on his buddies and getting a reduced sentence. His parents were pissed at me more for injuring their little boy than they were at him for breaking into people's houses and stealing cars.
44. New Rule: Always Pick up the Phone
My mom called me in the middle of the day on a Sunday. I was going to ignore it and just call her back later like I tend to do, but something just didn’t feel right. So, I picked up. She was calling to tell me an emergency squad was working on my brother and I needed to get a hold of my dad right away.
45. You’ve Got a Friend in Me
I was walking back to my dorm from class and had a gut feeling that I needed to see my friend right away. I walked into his dorm room and found him on the floor seizing. He is fine now, but it was still weird that I just knew something was wrong before I had seen him at all that day.
46. Changing the Course of Family History
When I was little, my cousin who lived 30 minutes away was my best friend. Our parents used to meet up at my grandmother’s house every week just so that we could play together. Occasionally, I would go on sleepovers to her house. One weekend when I was staying over with them, it was coming up to bed time and I had a really weird feeling and just wanted to go home.
I was crying hysterically and my uncle eventually brought me home. This year, I found out that my dad had planned on leaving my mother that night, and me crying saying that I wanted "Mammy and Daddy" made him change his mind. My mother doesn't know this, nor do any of my siblings. My dad told me one night while we were out at a bar and he was drunk.
47. Right Place, Right Time
When I was in college, I had a really weird schedule that resulted in me usually taking my dog for her nightly walk around three in the morning. There was a giant parking structure for the college right by its baseball field and I would usually cut through there and let my dog run around on the field, before circling back to my apartment.
One night on the way over, I heard a faint humming in the parking garage, followed by some sort of weird alarm. Being the horror movie victim that I am, I started walking towards the sound—which meant walking down a floor below street level. When I got to the ramp, my dog started to get visibly stressed, whining and sort of bouncing around, looking at me repeatedly.
I started to worry at this point, but pressed on. When I got down the ramp, I looked around and saw a small golf cart behind it. This golf cart was on and running, which was producing the humming noise, but with no driver. I walked over to it, and behind it was a tipped over bucket with trash scattered around.
Before I could really wonder what was going on, I heard the alarm sound again—only this time I recognized it. I went a little further around to the elevators and found a man unconscious inside one, blocking the door, which was repeatedly try to close but couldn’t. The alarm was coming from the elevator. At this point, my dog was going nuts.
I quickly called 911 and an ambulance arrived shortly after. I had to hang around for awhile and explain what happened to the cops. The stressful part was not finding out if he was okay until several days later. I called the campus police station and they said they couldn’t share his specific medical situation, but told me he was okay and would likely return to work at some point. I’m guessing he had a heart attack but I’ll never know for sure. I never saw him again.
48. First and Last Day on the Job
I used to clean vacant houses for a living. One day, I was working at a house near the end of a dead end street. There were maybe six or seven houses on the one side of the street before an intersection with a stoplight, so it was a pretty heavy traffic area. I was cleaning out the property just fine when my Spidey-Sense suddenly went off the charts.
I was inside the house but I pretty much dropped everything, got in my car, and started to drive outta there. On the corner, I saw a weird looking guy and had a nasty feeling about him. When I got home, it was all over the news—that guy was wanted for being a cop killer, making the start of his career right on that street corner about 15 minutes after I hoofed it. I told my boss that I wasn't going to go back to that property. He understood.
49. Off the Road Again
I was driving home late one evening and I had the strongest feeling that something was wrong. At the time, this meant that I took the long way home because I thought my subconscious knew there'd be some speed traps on the turnpike. Next morning, it turns out a drunk driver had caused a huge multi-car accident in the exact stretch of road I would've been driving on. The driver and two others were killed, and another 5+ people were injured. I'm not a superstitious person by any stretch, but this is always something that's made me wonder.
50. A Horrible Event
I once went to an event with an ex and I was in a bit of a crappy mood all day for various reasons. The whole time, I felt like something really bad had happened to someone close or that a generally bad thing happened. The next day, I learnt that just a few hours before I went to the event, a classmate of mine washed up on the beach.
51. Friends in Low Places
My buddy used to stupidly sell various narcotics to just about anybody he met. I was getting a ride from him once and he asked if we could take a detour to make a quick sell. I said sure, so we went to meet some random guy in the middle of a casino parking lot. We sit there for an hour waiting for the guy to show up.
I was getting impatient and, at the same, time starting to get an uneasy feeling. Then the guy shows up and the feeling gets even worse. The guy was obviously an undercover cop, and I could tell right off the bat. Right when I was about to tell my friend we needed to get out of there, the guy drops the act and pulls out his gun.
A swat team surrounded us. I was 18 years old at the time and they were making jokes about “straight outta high school to the pen.” Luckily, I was released when they realized I was just along for the ride and was not a drug dealer myself. I never heard from my buddy again though. I’m assuming he did some time.
52. I’m Having a Reaction to This One
About ten years ago, my mom said she had a really tiring day. When she was going upstairs, she said “Goodbye” instead of “Goodnight” and it just really sat wrong with me. I checked on her a little later and she wasn’t waking up, so we called 911. Turned out she had taken a bottle of pills. I was terrified I was going to end up alone with my horrible stepdad. When paramedics arrived, they asked him if she had any allergies and he said no, and it still frustrates me that I had to be the one who told them about her allergies.
53. Farewell Grandma
I woke up one morning with a sinking, panicky feeling. I knew my grandmother was going to die, I just couldn’t get anyone to believe me. I was young, so I lost it in the school lobby, screaming at my mom that I couldn’t go to class because my nana was going to die. Everyone assured me that she was stable and that I should go to class anyway. She died that afternoon.
54. From Creep to Criminal
When I was about 12-14, I babysat for a couple with two kids and the dad always gave me the creeps. 15 years later, my mom called me and said he was going to prison for abusing the daughter repeatedly over a long period of time. I wonder if it had started yet when I was babysitting them. It is just so sad to think about what happened to that poor cute little girl I babysat.
55. One With Interest
My wife and I were renting for a few years when we decided to take the steps to buy our own house. We had enough for a deposit and had a mortgage quote arranged. We went to look at a number of houses and found one that we really liked. We decided to put our offer in. We were told that this was most likely going to be accepted, but they were going to wait a couple of days before deciding.
That evening, I sat in bed reading when I had a horrible feeling that something wasn’t right. The next day, I told my wife that I wasn’t sure about it and convinced her that we needed to retract our offer, so we did. The next two weeks were a nightmare. Within two days of pulling out of this offer, my wife was laid off suddenly and she hadn’t been working at the company long enough to get much of a payout.
A week later, our car broke down and was beyond repair. We really struggled for the next year or so and would never have been able to pay off a mortgage. We are in a much better place now—but if I hadn’t had that weird moment, who knows where we would be today.
56. A Pool Party to Never Forget
I was six years old and in the backyard of my best friend, swimming in a three foot play pool thing. She went inside to ask for something and right as she left, a guy on a motorcycle drove down the alley and stopped. The fence was a small chain link fence, so he definitely saw me and stopped. And I could see him clearly. 20 years later, it's still perfectly vivid. He pulled out some gloves and put them on.
That was the last thing I saw him doing as I got out, ran through the garage out the front, and barged inside my house next door, completely terrified. He drove around the front down the street slowly and about ten minutes later, shot two kids at the park at the end of my street.
57. Bad Blood
One night while I was home alone, I was feeling oddly anxious for a few hours. Every sound I heard seemed suspicious. Later, while trying to sleep, I look out my window and see someone just standing on the sidewalk in front of our house. It's likely that he was there for a while. Just after I notice him, he comes up to the door and starts knocking, which freaks out my dog and makes him start barking, which he normally doesn't do when people come to the door.
In a panic, I start heading out of the back of the house while calling my parents. At first, they don't really believe it's an issue, but I insist that it's not normal. They rush home and my dad confirms my suspicions that it was my sister's abusive ex-husband. My dad took care of things and sent him on his way.
58. How Did You Know?
I came home from university and the next day my mother says, “let's sit down, I have to tell you something.” For some reason, I just said “Do you have cancer?”
She did.
59. Cashing in on Air Mile Rewards
I’m already a nervous flyer. One time, I was taking a flight from Phoenix to Vegas. Suddenly, the engines started up and all the hairs on the back of my neck instantly stood up. I could swear that the engine on my side of the plane sounded funny. Just as we started to taxi, the engine blew up. Flames and thick black smoke started coming out of it. They shut down the engines and had us disembark. They offered us an alternate flight. I walked as fast as I could to the rental car counter.
60. Late Night Breaking News
I was home alone and my cousin called me at 11 pm. I was too tired to pick up and thought I’d call him back tomorrow. I went to lay in bed and after a couple of seconds, I had a weird feeling about the call I didn't answer and I called him back. He told me that my grandmother passed away.
61. Tea for One
I was boiling the kettle to make tea and suddenly thought, "What would I do if my kettle broke? I don't have a spare..." I was instantly freaked out because it felt like it wasn't my thought. That's the only way I can describe it. Several hours later, when I was making tea again, a blue spark suddenly flew out of the kettle and it died. I had to buy a new one the next day.
62. Plans Extinguished
I was heading to go eat at a restaurant with my toddler, but something just told me not to eat there. I decided to go home and make a meal instead. The restaurant was on the news later because it caught on fire that night.
63. Tragically Right to Be Worried
My mom called me when I was out with a friend. She told me my brother didn't come home last night. She was very worried, even though this is not the weirdest thing for a 21-year-old. I went straight home, and we both felt like something bad had happened. At home, his phone was on the couch in the living room so we couldn't contact him. We called the police and after a week of investigation, his body was found drowned in a nearby lake. I miss him every day.
64. Last Minute Cancelation
This happened in 2010. We have this annual water festival thing and our family and family friend bought tickets for a stand for the whole event. On the last day, the family friend suddenly had to cancel. We decided not to go altogether. The stand was bombed that day. So many died. We could've too.
65. Love Thy Neighbor
As a teenager, I used to help an elderly neighbor maintain her home. She was a sweet person and lived there with her cat, Tompkins. I'd go over to visit once in a while and hear stories from Miss Laney's past. Then I noticed that her customary nighttime lights weren't coming on in her living room or kitchen for several days in a row. So I went over to check, and found her dead on the kitchen floor, with Tompkins keeping watch and looking bewildered. My parents and I found a good home for Tompkins and helped with the funeral arrangements.
66. All in the Family
It was Christmas 2002. I was home from my freshman year of college. The vibe in the house had been really strange and tense since I got back. On Christmas morning, my mom gives my dad a really heartfelt, personalized present. My dad gives my mom an expensive but generic-looking bracelet with some diamonds in it. She starts openly weeping. Something was definitely not right. He told us he was leaving the next day and moved out immediately, into the house of the coworker he had been sleeping with. It was not a good time for my family.
67. Last Words
My brother and dad lived in a different state, and my brother was in the hospital recovering from an accident. My first weird feeling was when I was booking the flight to see him and I was considering cancellation insurance. "What if something happens to my dad and I have to fly out sooner?" I shrugged it off. My dad was doing fine.
Two weeks later, my brother tells me that my dad was visiting and went home early because he had evidently caught something and wasn't feeling well. I got a really bad feeling and called him. It went to voicemail. He did say he was going to bed early and it was about bedtime for him. I said I heard he wasn't feeling well and wanted to check in, and that I really really loved him.
I felt weird, but my dad would've been royally PISSED if I called 911 to his house because he was under the weather and decided to sleep it off. I decided to wait until the morning. Morning comes. Nothing. My brother sent his friend over. No answer. Friend goes inside the house. My dad had passed away. I wish I had called, it just didn't SEEM that serious and I have a penchant for overreacting.
The last thing he told my brother was, "I'll be fine, I'm just going to bed." The thing that got me was the voicemail. I looked through his messages. Mine was read. If nothing else, I know he listened to that voicemail. One of the last things he heard was me telling him I loved him.
68. But We Just Met!
At a family reunion, I met my uncle's new wife for the first time. When I first saw her face, a very cold feeling ran through me. A "don't get to know her, she won't be here long" thought ran through my head at the same time. This 12-year-old's reaction must've been weird, as she, her husband, and my father looked at me like "WTH dude." Guess my poker face was weak. Two months later, she died due to a traveling blood clot from her hip surgery. It was really unfortunate. My uncle was crushed, as you'd imagine.
69. Took One For the Team
Playing basketball and came down really bad on my leg. Couldn't walk and had to be carried off. "Mom, something’s wrong. Take me to the hospital." "No you're fine, it just needs time." Fast forward a week and finally taken to the hospital. Broken tibia. Jesus mom, c’mon.
70. Her Spidey Sense Was Tingling
I had this feeling of dread watching my twin sister walk down the driveway to get in the car and visit her boyfriend a couple towns over. I knew she shouldn't go. It stormed, my mother insisted she try to make it home, she tried, and she flew off the icy turnpike in the middle of the night. She was absolutely fine and believes me about my spidey sense now.
71. Rock a Bye Baby
Registered nurse here. They pretty much tell us straight off the bat in nursing school to trust our guts. We're allowed to call a rapid response team (people who come when something very bad is happening to a patient) if the patient "just doesn't look right" to us. I got my job right out of nursing school in a department that deals with mothers and babies right after delivery.
I was 22 years old, had no children of my own, and my only experience with newborns was my last six months on the job. I had this patient and her baby who both seemed to be doing well. The baby's weight, vital signs, and intake and output were all normal, but I felt like something wasn't right. For one thing, I had never heard this baby cry.
Anyone who has ever been anywhere around newborns know that they can pretty much cry at the drop of a hat, for anything, at any time. This baby didn't cry when I put her on the scale to weigh her (They usually cry like you're actively trying to kill them), or when I pricked her heel for a blood sugar test. I felt like a total idiot because I had almost no experience with newborns, but I decided to talk to someone anyway.
I brought the baby to the nursery nurse, who has had over 20 years experience in the department, and told her that I thought something was up. The baby looked fine. Her vitals, including her blood sugar, were perfectly normal. However, the baby was floppy (not a technical term, but used to describe a baby when its arms and legs aren't curled up tightly next to the body like they're supposed to be.
This baby's arms and legs were limp and stretched out). She had a poor grasp (she didn't tighten her fingers around our fingers like newborns are supposed to do) and when we could get her to cry (we barely could), her cry was weak. The nursery nurse agreed that something was wrong and called the neonatologist (newborn baby doctor) who was on call that night.
She spent about 20 minutes on the phone just trying to tell him that something wasn't right, even though everything was technically normal. Luckily, the neonatologist trusted her judgement and had us send the baby to the NICU. That baby ended up staying in NICU for about a month, being tube fed because she stopped eating well.
They did genetic testing on her and discovered that she had been born with a pretty rare (only 30,000 cases diagnosed annually in the US) genetic disorder that usually isn't diagnosed until the baby is unable to sit up on their own at about six months of age. The disorder has no cure, but doctors were able to start treatments on her in order to manage some of the symptoms almost immediately.
72. She Just Knew Something Was Up
When I left for my last vacation and had to leave my old cat behind. The way she looked at me and didn't want me to leave...
I had a feeling she wouldn't be alive when I got back and it turns out she died the day before we got back.
73. Unfamiliar Girlfriend
When I was in university I was walking home from the bars in the Byward Market in Ottawa with my roommate at the time. It was about 2:30 am and we were looking forward to getting home and ordering some pizza when we came across two guys and a very drunk girl. Initially, we didn't think anything about it because it was a pretty common sight on a Friday, but as we walked behind them for a few minutes we noticed how out of it she was.
One of the guys was essentially carrying her, and her clutch was loosely dangling from her limp wrist. Our street came up, but instead of turning down it we decided to see what was going on. The guys explained that she was one of their girlfriends and had too much to drink so they were taking her home. We asked them a few more questions: what bar they were at, where she lived, if she was an Ottawa U student, etc... They gave pretty convincing answers but all the same seemed really uncomfortable and wanted us to go away.
During the conversation, the guy holding his "girlfriend" shifted her position to get a better grip, which caused her arm to dangle down and drop her clutch. Before they could move, my roommate grabbed the clutch and took out her ID. My roommate then asked if they knew her first and last name along with her birthday. This is where things changed. One guy got really aggressive and confrontational while the other went silent. They didn't know her name OR birthday.
I then pulled out my phone and called the police. The guy dropped her and they took off running. We waited with her for about ten minutes until the police and EMS got there. We gave a statement but did not have much to go on other than their descriptions. Police told us they suspected she had been dosed, and that she was lucky we happened to be walking behind her. Pretty scary stuff.
74. Tree Huggers
My grandparents were driving up a steep mountain road behind a logging truck, when my grandmother started having a mild panic attack. She just kept saying “something’s not right, pull over. We need to pull over” so my grandpa did and settled her down. After a few minutes she was fine and they kept driving. A mile or two up the road, a load of trees had come loose and spilled off a truck. Had they continued driving, they might have gotten killed.
75. Duck and Cover
Got off the subway at night, there was one other person about half a block behind me on my route home. This is a totally normal thing, has happened thousands of times. Totally normal-looking dude, not even following me closely. I had a bad feeling. Such a bad feeling that, when I turned the corner on my way home, I broke into a dead sprint and hid behind a dumpster in the shadows partway down the street.
By the time he came around the corner, I was well hidden, and could see him from my hiding place. As soon as I saw his reaction to the fact that I wasn't there, I knew I had been right to hide. He started LOOKING FOR ME, muttering to himself, going up and down the street, and looking around corners. I hid and held my breath until he was gone. It was terrifying. I am so glad I had that sudden, inexplicable impulse to hide, and listened to it.
76. You’ll Thank Me Later
I don't know if this qualifies but I pulled up to a stoplight and waited for the light. Car pulls up behind me. Down the street to my left comes a car speeding but not insane. Light turned green for me. Something about the car told me to stay put. Stayed put. Car behind me kept honking and honking and honking. Car to my left ran the red.
Then I pulled out and made a left. Got to the next stoplight and heard incessant honking. Turned around and saw the car that was behind me in the next lane motioning to roll down my window. He said, "That car wouldn't have hit you, it would have T-boned me. You saved my life." Listen to your inner self.
77. Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You
My friends and I went on a booze run one night back in college. We live in Flint, and were at a friend's house in a relatively bad neighborhood. We had our friend who was 21 go in while the rest of us waited (Yay underaged drinking!). As we're sitting in the parking lot we notice a dude standing by the trunk of his car a few rows of parking spots ahead of us. I had a bad feeling about him, so I was watching him the entire time while my friends were all chatting it up and laughing.
I noticed my other friend who was driving watching too. Sure enough, after watching us for a second, he pops the trunk, pulls out a pistol, and starts walking towards us. We noped the heck out and floored it around the parking lot right as our friend came outside, yelled for him to get in, and sped off. Turns out, there had been a ton of carjackings in that area over the last few months and there was probably about to have been another one.
78. Mother Knows Best
Not me but my mom. When I was about ten years old I got invited to spend the night at my really good friend’s home. My mom said no. I begged her to let me go but she was adamant that I couldn't. She said she just didn't feel right about it and that no amount of pleading was going to change her mind. A few weeks later my friend’s dad was arrested for child pornography. After he went to trial it was found that he had also molested several young girls. He would have his daughter invite them over for a slumber party and then touch them when they went to sleep. If my mom hadn't trusted her gut feeling I could have been one of his victims.
79. Good Timing is Something to Be Thankful For
Several years ago on Thanksgiving my mom was becoming extremely overwhelmed. The holidays have never been a great success in my family and my parents had issues communicating which led to a lot of stressful and tense dinners, and if it wasn't them it was someone else starting a fire. Well this year was bad. My mom had been cooking for hours to get ready to head over to my cousin's house.
My dad was yelling about how we spend too much money on the holidays. It got to a point where my mom told me and my brothers to leave for the party ahead of them. We didn't get far from the house until a really bad feeling started sinking in my stomach. I knew my brothers felt something too. I said "Can we go back?" and my older brother turned around immediately.
When we got there my father was gone, he had left out of anger and my mom yelled at him to leave. My mother was in her bed, laying still with an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her. She was still conscious when we came in but started shaking and was falling asleep. We called 911. I later learned that the pills she had taken would have only put her to sleep for a long time, not actually killed her, but clearly, death had been her intent. She has/had severe depression and after this she got some real help.
80. Prophecy Come True
We were at a party at a friend’s place. He had a new colleague he had befriended attending as well. Something about this new dude just screamed "insane" to me... and the more he conjured up crazy racist conspiracy theories and went on about "prophecies"... the more I was concerned. Next day I said to my friend "don't be near this dude, he's nuts." Couple of months later he slit his girlfriend's throat outside in broad daylight and then turned the knife on his own neck, when bystanders prevented his suicide. Last I heard he was in prison.
81. Liar Liar Pants On Fire
A little different perhaps but I used to work for a company making barns. We were installing a rail made from old oil lines. I was using a large chop saw to cut the threaded ends off the pipe. A chop saw is basically a large gas powered chainsaw with a 14" diameter fibre blade in this case. I had gotten to the last cut and as I stood up I had the weirdest feeling that something was wrong. Didn't know what but I knew something was off.
I looked around, checked my cut which was good, didn't mark the concrete below. Stood there for a solid five minutes with saw in my hands trying to figure out what was wrong. All looked good until I moved the saw enough to notice a large hole burning in the shin of my jeans. Turned out I had stood in the sparks. Luckily there was enough left for shorts. So I’m glad I had felt like something was wrong, or I wouldn’t have realized my pants were on fire.
82. Why Is It Always the Good Ones Who Are Secretly Criminals?
I don't know if I had a "something is very wrong feeling" for this. However, I felt something was off. I was at my mechanic getting routine work done on my car during the summer time. I noticed that he had a coat hanger and every single hanger had a well-worn coat on it. I thought it was odd and out of place, but figured it's a mechanic shop. They probably just left it there from the winter time, no biggie.
Not too long afterwards, maybe a few months, there was a drug bust at the shop. They were using those jackets to hold heroin. Our mechanic is in jail now, and honestly he was a good mechanic so I was disappointed. Ironically, my pediatric doctor got busted for bribery to prescribe certain medications and is likely going to jail too. Never had a vibe about him though. This sucks too since he was a great doctor.
83. Cat-ch Me If You Can
I heard a strange noise when I woke up. I looked outside my bedroom window to see if anything there made that noise and saw my oldest cat sitting on the windowsill outside of the other bedroom. She was staring into the room as if there was something in there that she did not like at all but could not look away.
At that moment I knew there was something, or someone, in the other room. Then I heard the noise again, it was like a soft squeaking, like someone shifting his weight from one foot to the other on a wooden floor (I don't have wooden floors...). I told myself there could not be an intruder in that room, it makes no sense that someone could get in there without waking me up.
So I gathered up all the courage I could and went in to check it out. When I got to the doorway I saw two of my other cats in the hallway staring into the other room, very agitated. I peeked around the corner and heard the squeaky noise again. It was one of my neighbor’s cats, very afraid and being trapped on my desk by my cats.
84. Fido Saves the Day
I grew up in a fairly quiet neighborhood and when I was twelve, we got our first dog. It was my job to take him for a walk every evening after dinner. This dog was the goofiest, sweetest golden retriever mix, with not a single mean bone in his body. He never met a stranger he didn't like, and when he would occasionally escape, we usually found him in a neighbor’s yard, playing with some kids. He was the farthest thing from a guard dog you can imagine.
So I’m walking him one night after dinner, by myself, and he suddenly stops dead in his tracks in the very middle of the sidewalk. Out of the trees lining the neighborhood, maybe ten feet away from me, this guy just comes strolling on out. I was pretty skittish at that age, and I didn’t like being alone with strange men, like, at all, so I was immediately unnerved. The guy walked up to me and asked if my dog was friendly. I responded out of sheer anxious panic and said that yeah, he was.
The second the guy reached out to pet him, though, my dog snarled and snapped at his hand which I had never seen him do before. I apologized, made some excuse I don’t remember, and hurried away under the pretense of getting my vicious dog away from him. Turns out this dude had assaulted three other neighborhood kids in those trees, and my dog was probably the only reason I wasn’t the fourth.
85. You Never Fooled Me!
Two guys I met in high school, senior year, seemed alright but for some reason I had the feeling I couldn't really trust them. End up going to same college and being in same circle of friends, still don't really trust them. Eventually, they end up burglarizing a friend's house right after a big party. They got caught fleeing the scene in their car by a flatmate. They gave all the stuff back after being confronted and everyone cut ties with those two.
86. Sounding the Alarm About That Sidewalk
I was walking with my daughter last week and we heard a siren as we approached a crowded intersection. Instead of stepping close to the edge of the street and waiting for the "walk" light like usual, my daughter stopped well back on the edge of the grass and touched my arm so I would do the same. A full thirty seconds later a police car (campus cops) came screeching up through the traffic and drove ONTO THE SIDEWALK to get around cars stopped at the light. If we had been in the customary "pedestrian waiting" spot I don't know that he would have seen us and I am sure he wouldn't have been able to stop. I asked my daughter why she'd stopped so far back and she said, "I don't know. I just knew we should." Smart kid!
87. Just Following Nurse’s Orders
My mum has been a psych nurse for over 30 years at a private hospital. One of the patients she was looking after was a very boisterous person in her 40s and she had been in the hospital for over a week. One night mum noticed that this lady was very lethargic, saying that she was just feeling tired and was going to have an early night and to get her meds early (this isn't going where you expect).
Mum thinks this is very odd for this lady, but everyone has off days and so she gives this lady her medication and she goes off to bed. About five min pass and mum still has a knot in her gut about this lady, and thinks she will just check her stats, so she goes to her room, where the lady is just about to lay down and checks her blood pressure, pulse and Oxygen saturation.
This is pretty rarely done in a psych hospital unless people have other health concerns needing monitoring. This lady's Oxygen saturation was down to around 80% I believe (doing the best to recall). To put that in perspective, if it falls below 92% your cells can't absorb oxygen and this can cause permanent damage. Mum, in her over 40 years of nursing (wasn't always a psych nurse), has never seen someone with such a low level.
She checks again and the same result. Mum calls an ambulance and gets this lady on oxygen. Later that night mum gets a call from the hospital the patient was sent to, from the doctor who lets my mum know that the lady is fine. She had a blood clot. If she had been left for another 15 minutes the doctor is certain she would have died. The lady made a full recovery and gave my mum a beautiful scarf the next time she saw her.
88. And the Crane Came a Tumbling Down
A storm was gathering as my dad was driving. I was eight, sitting in the back and looking out the window. I told him: "You better hurry, that construction crane looks like it might topple." Everybody laughs at the idiot kid. That evening the whole family was watching the local news. They opened with the story of that crane crashing down due to heavy wind. Although nobody had been hurt, I felt vindicated.
89. Busted
When I was five my late Grandma was staying with us. One night I woke up to some noise and find my parents and Grandma up. She told me to be quiet and I realized that there is someone trying to pick the lock on our flat's door. While this is happening my father was loading his shotgun and telling my mother to keep us away from the door.
Then he opened the door suddenly and hit the guy with the stock of the shotgun. He started to run and my father ran after him but he got away. Later that night I learned that my Grandma had been unable to sleep that night, feeling there was something wrong. It was after a while that she heard what was going on with the door and woke my parents up.
90. The Happy Wanderer
When I was in high school, my grandma had a stroke and lost the ability to speak. Because she was illiterate, it was hard for us to understand what she was trying to say. One day I went to school after preparing her breakfast as usual. When I arrived, there was this urge telling me to go back to home. I tried to pass it off as boredom but it got to a point I felt very agitated and told my friends I'm going back home and left.
When I was walking back home I found my Grandma wandering around without anyone. I asked her what she was doing and she pointed out as if to say she is out for a walk. But I knew that back then she couldn't find her way back home without anyone with her because of the stroke. So I walked with her for a while and we turned back to the house to find my very worried parents. This was before cell phones were around. I never believed in the supernatural. I'm not a religious person but I experienced this firsthand. I don't know what to call it. I hope she is in a good place with my parents.
91. Not With My Daughter You Don’t!
My oldest daughter (30-something) stopped by my work one day and introduced us to her new boyfriend. He seemed a little off to me, but I decided it was just "guy dating my daughter" and let it go. A bit later on, he met my wife and she told me afterward that he seemed off to her, too. She has pretty good instincts about people, so we decided to investigate him a bit.
Typing his whole name into Google, the first result was a mugshot from a couple of years ago. The third was an active warrant. More searching resulted in finding three warrants from different counties, an extensive record (check deception, theft, driving while suspended, driving after a lifetime suspension, and driving while a habitual traffic offender), and a brand-new marriage license for him and my daughter.
They were going to get married later that week. We, of course, told her about him, but she insisted that he'd already told her about all of that and had "taken care of it." We emailed links to her roommate, who showed her, but she didn't have any luck talking her out of the relationship. They were in love, and everything would work out OK in the end in her mind.
We sent in an anonymous tip, and he was arrested the next day at her apartment. My daughter then found out that he'd been lying to her about pretty much everything. He had entangled her in a business he was trying to start that mostly involved her financing things for him, because his credit was trash due to records for bounced checks and theft. She's still working to untangle herself from that. He is still in jail, and, according to her lawyer, will stay there for at least two years depending on what happens in two other counties.
92. This Teacher Got Schooled By the Cops
I had a math teacher in middle school who came off as creepy. He would try and get close to us guys and try and act like old friends. He seemed afraid of girls for some reason. I didn't like him. He gave me a very bad feeling. After about a year at our school, he wasn't there suddenly. We had a police officer come in and sit us down and interview everyone individually. It turns out that he was caught having a perverted sexual party with some of his former male students from his previous school. He was sent to prison.
93. What Are You, Chicken?
Went on a high school field trip for a couple of days and the first day we had a barbeque. There was chicken and I didn't trust the other kids to make sure it was done well, so I passed up on it. Next day fifteen people had salmonella ruining their entire trip. Might fall under logic instead of instinct though…
94. Flipped His Destiny
My friend asked me for a ride home. I told him I wasn't going his way and he was like "okay, I'll catch a ride with those people." I wasn't a huge fan of the people he was going to go home with, so I said screw it and gave him a ride. Turns out the kids who were going to take him home decided to speed down a windy, wooded road near his house at 80 MPH. They hit something and flipped the car multiple times. They all lived, but barely. The EMTs said that if they were bigger kids (they were all scrawny and under 5'10") they would've been crushed. My friend who almost went with them is 6'2". He absolutely would've died that day.
95. Bear-ly Avoided Catastrophe
When I was a little kid, I stepped outside to walk home from my neighbor’s place two doors over. I smelled what I knew was a bear, which are common where I live. If you've ever smelled a black bear, it's not that different from a skunk, which is what my friend's mom told me it probably was when I asked her to drive me home even though my house was literally right around the corner.
The thing is, a skunk's smell is strong, but doesn't, like, travel. A bear's smell is more... permeating? Begrudgingly, she drove me—only to see the bear sitting on my back steps outside the door I would've tried to enter my house with. Black bears aren't that vicious, but my friend’s mom apologized immediately about not believing me: could've walked straight into that thing at the age of 12.
96. Eureka!
I knew some people who were really into off-roading in modified Jeeps. Once they were invited by a group of people I did not know up to a mountain in Colorado. They chose not to go and everyone in the four Jeeps that went got caught in an avalanche and died.
97. How Did You Know?
When I was doing my PhD, I got offered the chance to go to the Central European University summer school programme to do a course that would have been extremely valuable. I even got offered a full scholarship to do the course, free accommodation, etc. A really amazing deal. Two weeks before I was supposed to leave, I said to my boyfriend at the time, something is telling me I shouldn't go.
And I was like, WTF brain, this is the opportunity of a lifetime. But the "don't go" feeling kept getting stronger. So I withdrew from the course, feeling stupid for doing it. The day after I was scheduled to leave, my perfectly healthy mom got sick. A week later she was in a coma, and a week later we had to turn off life support. Her funeral was a week after that. I would have been away in her last waking moments.
98. Life Saving Movies
My mum was supposed to take me and my sister to the Natural History Museum in 2005 since we lived just outside London and it was only a short tube ride. However, on the day, she had a horrible feeling so we stayed home and watched movies instead. That was the day of the 7/7 bombings.
99. Mind Over Matter
My severe back pain was misdiagnosed for about six months and I knew something was seriously wrong. I finally was able to get an MRI and they found a tumor about 1.5 to 2x the size of a softball on my spine.
100. Age is Just a Number
Several years ago, at the end of April, I get a call from my aunt telling me that they've moved my grandmother into the hospital wing of the assisted living complex she'd been in with my grandfather (he'd died a few years prior). A thought flashed through my head... "this is it, she's getting ready to die, but she'll wait until after her birthday."
About 4-5 weeks later, on May 19th, I'm on the phone with a car insurance company. My call waiting beeps and I see it's my aunt. I tell the customer service agent "I'm going to have to call you back, that's my aunt on the other line calling to tell me that my grandmother's dead." The reason I remember the date is because she waited until the day after her birthday to die so that she could unquestionably claim to be 92 when she died.
101. A Blast From the Past
It was near Halloween time when my friends and I were telling ghost stories. My friend said she was going to tell a story about her parents' first date. She said she didn't like telling the story, since it was actually true, but we prodded her on. To cut to the chase, the parents had spent a nice, if awkward, first date together and around the time that they would have said "good night," the male in the situation—my friend's dad—suggested that they go for a midnight hike up Provo Canyon.
He apparently knew the place, since he had done a fair amount of rock climbing in the area. So the two drove up to the mouth of the canyon, got out of their cars and started hiking under just the light of the stars, since it was a new moon. At some point, the male starts getting a "bad feeling," since the pathway ahead, which would pass under some trees, would be dark, and because it was getting to be quite late.
He ignores the feeling and presses on. In later rehearsings of the story, the female would say that she had felt the same feeling at what was probably the same time, though she didn't know the trail like he did. A minute later, the feeling came back to the male. He ignored it again, and started walking a bit of the way into the trees when his foot hit something "soft" in the middle of the path.
Under the trees, it was too dark to see just what this soft thing was, and the feeling came back stronger than ever. Instead of finding out what his foot had bumped into, he and the female both agreed to hightail it out of there...Years later, after being married for some time, they were watching an interview with the serial killer, Ted Bundy.
In response to a question asking him to describe the time that he felt the closest to being caught, he explained about the night that he lured a girl into Provo Canyon, and had just killed her when he heard some people coming up the trail. He explained how he hid in the trees just in time, only to watch some guy walk right into the body, and for some reason, just turn around and walk away.
102. Spotted in the Act
A few years ago, about 1 am on a Sunday morning, I had to take my dog out before bed. I live in a rough neighborhood and I am a female so I usually have my guard up regardless of the time. Before I left the apt building my gut told me something was up. The street was completely void of traffic and people except for a van parked out to the side of the road.
Outside of it were three people whom I quickly identified as male. Right away my reaction is to keep my head low, put my jacket hood up and not bring attention to myself. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see they were struggling; on closer inspection, I see two of the men are holding up the other man between them.
I make the assumption that they are headed home after a night of heavy partying and they are just helping their friend who is sick or something. I am telling myself this to ease my fears. Then they notice me and they stop everything and freeze. I thought that was odd and no good so I drag my dog straight back to my building (I don't even know if he got the chance to pee that night!).
I go to bed and thinking nothing more of it, until it's time to take the dog out again in the morning. There was a notice in the elevator asking for witnesses as to exactly what I saw that evening because a dead body had been found. So... this wasn't a friend of theirs after all, they were ditching a body. Still upsets me today and I will never ignore my intuition again.
103. Grandma's Intuition
We had a serial killer in South Carolina a couple years ago. No one knew what he looked like yet but he had already killed three people at this point. Well, my granny has lived alone since my paw-paw passed about 15 years ago. She lives at the end of a long dirt road with about 10 other families but the closest one was about a quarter mile up the road.
One afternoon some random guy comes knocking on the front door of her house. My granny is a practical woman, she has never been to school because she grew up on a farm and was expected to pull her weight, but she is a smart woman. She goes to the door but doesn't open it—it’s a glass door. The 40ish-year-old man is there asking if he can use the phone since his car broke down, but Granny doesn't like the look of this guy.
If he doesn't live here there is no reason for him to be on this road and if he was visiting someone their house or anyone else's house would have been closer since she lives on a dead end. Anyways, she tells him that no he can't use the phone and needs to leave. She backs up and picks up my paw-paw's 410 as she goes. Once he sees the shotgun he hightails it out of there. About a week later the cops finally catch the serial killer and lo and behold if it isn't the same man.
104. At Least They Were Already in a Hospital
I work at a psych hospital. I was in the cafe with an adult unit and the adolescent unit was also there. I had known one of the kids from when she was on the children’s and normally we had a good rapport. I went to say hi and told her I was proud she had been staying out of trouble, and a few of the other girls reacted weirdly to me saying it and the girl looked guilty.
I told the staff on the unit and said they should keep an extra eye on the girls because I had bad vibes about it. The staff kinda brushed me off. A half-hour later four girls (including the one I knew) were involved in a brawl where two staff were seriously injured. One ended up with brain trauma and the other was permanently blinded in one eye trying to break it up.
105. Some Devastatingly Flawed Logic
I worked at a daycare. One of the mothers gave me the heebie jeebies. She would show up randomly and be like "my baaaaaaby, I neeeed my baaaaby." Like, moms love their kids and miss them, but her obsession with her daughter really made me feel weird. She ended up killing her daughter so that she could be an angel. It really messed me up when I found out.
106. Lifesaver
I work as an ER nurse and had a patient with a little dizziness, a little nausea and a swollen abdomen. She was fairly bright, able to talk, and nothing seemed too horrific. But she was turning a grim gray color and breathing quickly. Our average wait time today was two hours. I could have put her back in the queue and moved on.
But I had a little dark feeling that there was something sinister happening here. So I called our most senior doctor out of a consultation and asked him to see her. Right now. Ever heard of your abdominal aorta? Enormous blood vessel that can pouch out, suddenly rupture, and make you bleed internally to death in minutes?
It’s called a burst AAA (abdominal aortic aneurysm). You’ve heard of it now. That’s what she had. I’ve never seen one before. But now I have. Within five minutes, she was barely responding. Within ten, her blood pressure had dropped to a barely sustainable level. Within twenty minutes, I was pouring blood into her and eight people were around the bed.
Within an hour, she was on an operating table clinging to life. But because I raised the alarm, and because my team worked their butts off, that woman is still, somehow, alive. Feels good, man.
107. Threat On The Docks
A former co-worker, Jason, told me this story. Jason was working at a dock in China and unloaded shipping containers from huge international cargo ships. A typhoon had just passed, and many of the inbound ships had been delayed for days due to the extreme weather. Once the weather cleared, there was a backlog of ships waiting to be docked and unloaded.
To make matters worse, a tropical depression had just been upgraded to a tropical storm and was expected to make landfall within 48 hours. It was organized chaos as the dock workers frantically tried to unload three times the volume of shipping containers in half the time. Jason was a Senior Cargo Agent, and his job was to verify that the information on the offloaded shipping containers matched the information on the manifest, and to visually inspect shipping containers for damage.
A cargo agent had to sign off on all cargo before an unloaded ship could disembark. As there were a limited number of spaces for ships to dock, it was crucial that the cargo agents verify the unloaded shipments as quickly as possible so that another ship could dock immediately. Everyone at the dock had walkie-talkies (hand-held portable two-way radios), and Jason heard Dock Manager 1 going absolutely crazy because an unloaded ship had been waiting in the dock for nearly two hours, and no cargo agent had verified their delivery.
Jason radioed Cargo Agent 1 assigned to that area, but there was no answer. He then radioed Cargo Agent 2, and still received no response. He then radioed the next closest Senior Cargo Agent 1 and asked him to drop everything and verify the cargo immediately. After thirty minutes, Dock Manager 2 radioed that the ship was STILL docked.
Jason then radioed Senior Cargo Agent 1 who he had sent over there and did not receive a response. He then radioed Dock Manager 1 who had been screaming into the radio and again received no response. Jason was now the only Senior Cargo Agent in the area, and it now fell to him to verify the unloaded shipment and get the delayed ship out of port ASAP.
As he got into his truck to drive over, a nagging feeling of dread kept telling him not to go. He ignored the feeling and drove there anyway, all the while trying and failing to radio anyone else in the area. When he arrived at the unloading zone, he couldn't bring himself to get out of the truck, and later said that it felt as if he was being physically pushed back into his seat.
Jason then picked up his radio with a shaking hand and broadcast, "Unknown threat near unloading section four. All workers evacuate immediately. This is not a drill." And just like that, a multi-billion dollar port was shut down. A HazMat team was soon dispatched and found that a shipping container damaged in transit had been carrying a heavier-than-air type of inert gas.
The gas leaked and displaced the air, then became trapped between several rows of closely stacked shipping containers. Every person that approached immediately lost consciousness. Five people were found dead near the damaged container, and Jason was later fired because he did not actually have the authority to shut down the port.
Jason filed the Chinese equivalent of a wrongful termination lawsuit, but was strongly encouraged to settle, or else the Chinese government might find him partially responsible for the workers' deaths. As a white foreigner in China, this was a very real possibility, and he ended up settling for a modest amount. Jason still blames himself for the death of Senior Cargo Agent 1 and gave the settlement amount to the man's widow.
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