We all have moments in our lives where our sixth sense starts tingling. Most of the time, we probably ignore it, and nothing much happens anyway. But sometimes, our gut feeling really is saying something worth listening to. These Redditors know that experience better than anyone. Here are the eerie times their intuition came true.
1. Final Farewell
Last year, I was staying up late watching TV. My mom had been battling stage four metastatic breast cancer for a while. That night, she walked downstairs and just sat there with me until I decided to go to bed. I looked at her and in my heart, I knew she was close to leaving. So I said goodnight. And she said goodbye, which confused me. I learned the truth soon after.
The next morning, my dad woke me up and told me she had passed overnight. It still makes me wonder how we both knew.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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. I regretted it instantly. 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 so 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".
Then I left as fast as I could. 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.
5. 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.
6. Life-Saving Panic Attack
There are a bunch of bars right next to my university here where I live. At the start and the end of the semester everybody, thousands of students, start gathering around the street where most bars are located and just parties all night. On one of these occasions, in 2019, it was the end of the semester. I had just got there a bit late because I was working on the lab at the uni and the moment I got there something just didn't feel right.
It was either the people there, how they were acting, how they were moving or how they were talking. I just know that something felt different in the air. We were crossing through the giant group of people since we were looking for my girlfriend at the time and the people who we were expecting to meet there. Suddenly I froze in place.
I can't really explain why to this day, but I just felt something really bad was about to happen and my friend noticed how I was too attentive and kind of in panic. He snapped me out of it and I told him that we needed to find everyone and leave that place. To my surprise he just agreed. I think he noticed something was wrong with me and probably just went for it so I could calm down.
My girlfriend and our friends didn't take long to find and they were confused because I was acting so erratic and I was kind of having a panic attack. But they eventually followed me out of the crowd. That's when it happened. As soon as we were out of the "bar area" we heard a bunch of gunshots and people started screaming.
Shortly after that officers were rushing into the area. Apparently, some gang members decided to use the party to settle some score, probably hoping the crowd would help them get out unnoticed. Five people lost their lives and three were injured that day. The authorities apparently caught them but I'm not sure about that part.
After that those periodical parties at this street were never the same. There are way fewer people and now they don't even close the streets anymore because it's not that big of a crowd. Who would have thought. To this day my friends like telling this story about how I "saved their lives" and, on rare occasions, someone asks me if I knew about the gang fight that was going to happen or something like that.
I honestly don't know what triggered me that day. But myself and the people with me are really glad it did. I think I might have caught view of a weapon while crossing the crowd and didn't consciously notice it but it kicked some sense of danger on me.
7. The Calm And The Restless
I was working as an interpreter for a researcher in one of the most active volcanoes in the world. At around four in the afternoon, I had a really really bad feeling. I felt so restless. At that time, I was a few kilometers from the peak, and I stayed in the last village before the mountain. Everyone in that village was already evacuated.
There were only journalists, photographers, and a camera person for TV stations and some locals. They all told me to chill. I remember when I decided to leave the area, they were still lighting up and drinking coffee and some were eating instant ramen. It was so quiet and calm, but I felt so restless. I left the village at around 4:15 PM.
Just a few minutes after 5:00 PM, the mountain erupted, sending lava and pyroclastic flow sweeping the whole village. All of the guys were crushed instantly. It still gives me chills until now.
8. Candy To The Rescue
When I was a young woman my husband and I lived on an army base. At the time, the base was wide open and many local people used it as a shortcut from one town to another. The base also had free base newspapers available at many places on base. One week the newspaper said that Facilities Engineers (base maintenance) were going to begin installing attic fans in our townhouses.
Sure enough, someone banged on my door later in the week and announced that he was there to install my attic fan. I was immediately suspicious—he was not part of the base. He looked dirty, had a scraggly beard, and paint-stained clothes. But mostly it was my dog's reaction. Candy was a husky-shepherd mix, so not a small dog.
Candy put herself between me and him as best she could, her hackles were up, and she was growling, that deep bass-in-the-chest growl that you feel more than hear. I asked to see a work order and ID. He said, "I don't need no stupid work order" and yanked open the screen door. It was latched, but those kinds of latches are meant to keep toddlers and dogs in, not grown men out. That's when Candy flew into action.
Candy roared and went for his throat. The guy jumped back and slammed the screen shut. I grabbed Candy, dragged her back and slammed and locked the door. I then ran to the back and slammed and locked that door. Next I called the MPs. They came out, verified that my street was not due to get attic fans for a couple of weeks.
They took down all the information I could give them, which wasn't much. I never heard anything back, so they probably never identified him. Two or three weeks later, the real installers came from Facilities Engineers, in uniform. They promptly produced work orders and ID. Candy looked at them and went back to playing with the baby.
I'm absolutely certain that she saved me.
9. 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.
10. The Feeling Found Her
Few years ago my best friend's brother texted me and asked if I had seen my friend or heard from her. She hadn't come home the day before. She had been depressed and suicidal before so everyone was worried. Her parents checked her bank account to see if it was used and she’d bought some booze the day before. She rarely drinks so this was very out of character.
They searched all night and decided to go to the local authorities and file her for missing. Around that time her brother texted me. Right away I had a feeling I knew where she was. I grabbed my dogs and headed to the woods. There is this clearing with an old trailer where we used to let our dogs play and I saw her bike when I came around the corner.
I knew she was in there but I was too scared to look so I called her brother to come. He was there within five minutes. I don’t think he ever ran that hard and we found her together still breathing with a ton of booze bottles and pills laying around her. We called for an ambulance first then I called her parents. They just left the station and they took a ride with some officers to where we were.
She was in a coma for a few days with hypothermia. It was a very hard few weeks after that but she survived with no brain damage. If she was laying there a few more hours she would have been dead or her brain would have been damaged. I still don't know why I knew she was there, we hadn’t been there in years and she never talked about that place.
11. Big Regrets
It was one of my last weekends studying abroad in Costa Rica. My classmate wanted to go out drinking and dancing with a group of students. But we all said that we were too tired. My friend convinced me to go as it was one of the last times we would get to. I didn’t feel right the entire time I was getting ready. Just a terrible gut feeling.
As I was walking to the bus stop to meet him, a huge wave of fear rushed over me and I thought “I’m going to be robbed tonight”. I wanted to turn around, but my friend saw me at the moment and we just continued on. We got kidnapped and robbed that night, and it was terrifying. I will never ever not listen and react to my gut feelings again.
12. 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 knew I had to act. 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.
13. 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.
14. Could Have Heard A Pin Drop
About a decade ago, sometime in January or February, we were standing outside in downtown Chicago puffing a dart. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, my friend gets this worried look on her face and says, "I don't like this spot. Come over here". Instantly, my premonition came true. It wasn't three seconds after we took a few steps that this giant ice block fell off the building and shattered exactly where we had been standing.
It would very likely have crushed us had we not moved. It was so shocking that everyone on the bustling street just stopped and stared at us mouths agape. You could have heard a pin drop after that. It was insane. I never looked at her the same either. She says she doesn't know how, but she had some sixth sense thing going on without a doubt.
15. Parking Lot Panic
I stopped at Home Depot to pick up only one item so I knew it was going to be a quick trip. I’m in the store and notice I’m pretty much the only girl in there besides employees. I couldn’t find what I was looking for and had to ask multiple employees before I found it. Eventually I found what I needed and I headed to the checkout.
As I’m heading out to my car, I notice a shady dude standing against a tree on one side of my car. On the other side of my car is another shady guy sticking his arm outside of his car window. When I walked out they both turned and stared at me. My heart dropped, I started to feel queasy, and my mind instantly knew to turn around and go inside.
I stood there shaking at the front of the store until I could get the courage to ask an employee to walk me to my car. As soon as they saw me walking out with an employee, the guy standing by the tree walked around my car and into the driver's side of the car parked next to me. To this day I swear I was a short walk away from being kidnapped.
16. Not So Happy Thanksgiving
I dated a guy for three and a half years. He joined the Army and a few months later a girl at his base made a Thanksgiving post about being thankful. She tagged my boyfriend and a ton of other people in it. I pestered him about her a few times but he was very adamant about her just being a friend. Five months later, he made the most upsetting confession.
The guy admits that not only was he seeing this girl, she was also pregnant. To make matters worse he let me know this devastating news with a meme. It turns out he’d been cheating on me for nine months by the time he got her pregnant. He admitted to that. So my gut instinct was absolutely right. In her Facebook post, she had mentioned a boyfriend and my (ex)bf had never mentioned her before.
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17. Pregnancy Scare
When I was pregnant for the first time, something just felt off. I knew from the very beginning it wasn't going to end well. A few weeks later, I started cramping and spotting, which can be normal in early pregnancy. I ended up going to the ER. They couldn't find any evidence of a pregnancy in my uterus and decided it was a missed miscarriage, and wanted to send me home.
But, that gut feeling that something was very wrong was still there, and I listened to it. I demanded that I be seen by my OB who was head of obstetrics at that hospital and wouldn't leave until he saw me. He had me in emergency surgery 4 hours after he came to examine me to remove my ruptured fallopian tube and stop the internal bleeding. Had I not listened to my gut, I'd be dead.
18. 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.
19. A Little Too Pushy
I was talking to this guy I met on a dating site. We hadn’t met in person yet. He kept asking to meet up and he was rather pushy. Something told me not to. I stopped talking to him. Two months later, he was incarcerated for kidnapping a woman. They found her in his home state. He was originally from down south now living up north.
20. Dog Gone Lucky
It was my first year in college and within a year of getting my first dog that was my own—like not a family dog. I would constantly use my dog as an excuse to avoid things I didn’t want to do. “Oh sorry I have to break my dog”. “Oh she has to go to the vet today”. It was a great way to put off doing homework and stuff.
I was in class and it was right before an important test. Normally I wouldn’t want to stay but I knew I had to to get ready for the exam. But something was telling me I had to go home. I stayed until the very second the class let out and ran to my car. I drove like a maniac to my house. When I got there I was totally shocked at what I saw.
My house had been broken into. My valuables were stolen and the kennel which my dog was in was flipped and thrown across the room. I should have gone home earlier but the officers who later found those responsible said they were very dangerous and lucky my dog wasn’t further harmed.
21. Listen To The Voice In Your Head
I was driving down the road on a normal day and I suddenly heard a voice in my head. It was my own voice and it said as clear as a bell: “They can’t see you and will hit you”. Literally 30 seconds later a girl pulled out when my car was hidden behind a big mall sign. When I saw her pull out I was like “omg this is it!” but was able to hit the brakes in time.
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22. 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.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. No Road To Recovery
When I was three, my mom and her friends were getting ready to go out to the bar in the next city over. My mom was super young when she had me, so she was often out on the weekends with friends. So this wasn't unusual at all. However, on this night, I, a usually super well-mannered kid, threw the biggest tantrum of my life.
I was screaming at the top of my lungs, throwing myself around, and throwing things because she was leaving. She was super mad because she couldn’t leave me with the babysitter like this, especially since she felt something was wrong because this was VERY unlike me as a child. Her friends left and she stayed home with me, still pretty angry at me.
The next morning, she and I walked to my Grandma's house to use the phone. She called her friend’s house to hear about the night and her friend's mom answered. They had been trying to get a hold of my mom all night. There was some unspeakable news. There had been a horrific car accident. All of my mom’s friends, except for the driver, had passed.
Had she gone, there is no way she would have survived in the car. It still haunts me to think about this day. My mom never really recovered from it.
26. 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.
27. Told To Kick Rocks
When I was a teenager, my grandmother was sick. She had been getting worse, but there was no cause for immediate alarm or anything. I was driving to my after-school job when my dad called me and said she called and said she missed me and how I should go see her soon. Something in my body just flipped, like I somehow knew internally I needed to go right at that moment.
I blew by work and started driving straight to her house. I called my boss on the way and explained the situation and how something just felt wrong. He told me to come in or get fired. I told him to kick rocks and went to see my grandma. I was proven right tenfold. I was the only person with her when she passed that night, and she was able to tell me so many things that she had to say before going.
It was 100% worth being fired over. Screw you, Dave, you were a horrible business owner and I laughed when your awful business inevitably went under a year later.
28. 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.
29. Frozen Smile
I had been living and working in Korea, and one day I was coming up out of a subway station and saw a man talking to another foreign woman. She had that polite, frozen smile on her face—the why-is-this-guy-talking-to-me smile. I walked up to her, linked my arm with hers, and said "Hey, Sarah! There you are! Are you ready to go?" And just started walking.
The guy followed us, but I sped up, and made an abrupt turn into a coffee shop. We hid, and I saw him walk past, still looking for her. We ended up getting coffee and chatting for a bit, and I found out that he had followed her off the train, and had been getting increasingly aggressive for the last ten minutes. I don't know what might have happened, but I'm really glad I interfered!!
30. 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 made a discovery that startled me. 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.
31. 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.
32. 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. Well, the worst happened. We got into a huge accident. 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.
33. A Bad Feeling In The ER
I was a medical student at the time—I’m now a resident. I was working at the ER and I noticed a patient who had a pretty bad injury to her face. She was with a sketchy looking guy who was not related to her. I had a really bad feeling about the situation. She wasn't my patient, but I brought my gut feeling up to her doctor.
The doctor made up some excuse to talk to the patient alone. It turns out the guy was a human trafficker. You see, the city my school was in is a hub for human trafficking. I never talked to the woman myself, but I couldn't shake the vibe I got from looking at her and the man she was with. The doctor got the woman away from the guy and to a safe place.
34. Show And Tell
My wife and I were in a hardware store when a fellow who worked there called us over to show us different kitchen tiles. We told him we weren’t there for that, but he insisted on showing us how durable some of the tiles were by smashing them with a hammer. I mean, he was pounding on them to the point we both stepped back a bit.
I thought he was just a new hire who wanted to do right, but I was unnerved by the zeal evident on his face as he hammered the table and the energy in his eyes. Much later, I found out the whole sordid story. As it turns out, he was the dude who had kidnapped and buried the two missing women in our area in his yard.
We put together the picture and his workplace as stated in the news a few months later after the FBI caught him.
35. 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.
36. Creep Vibe Was Right
I had a work friend who used to come over to play Xbox once in a while. I liked the guy even though I knew he was a bit odd. He was really good at Call of Duty though, but unfortunately he used to tell some tall tales that everyone knew were not true. Well, my wife, who was only my girlfriend back then, always got a creep vibe from him. And boy, did she end up being right.
She said he looked at her with so much anger and malice but never indicated any specific action that made her uncomfortable. After a while I stopped hanging out with the friend since he wasn’t coming to town as much for work. Fast forward a few years and another mutual friend calls me to say the Xbox friend was taken down by law enforcement, unfortunately only after he had already shot his neighbor and his wife. Crazy.
37. Missing Roommate
I advertised a room on our national buy and sell page. A guy replies and we meet a few times. Really nice French guy, great English, stable job and into the outdoors. He moves in on the Saturday. We talk over the next few days for no more than five minutes in passing around the house during the day. By the next weekend, I had not seen or heard from him.
His door was always shut so I thought he was working nights and we just didn't sync up. I joked with my partner that he was a drug addict and was dead, but we both laughed it off. I mean, what are the chances? On Sunday evening I followed through with my gut that something wasn't right and knocked on his door. Worst case he's asleep and I wake him. Best case, he's not there.
It turns out he’d taken his own life six days after moving in. The authorities estimate he had been cold for three days. He had been suffering from serious depression and planned it all out. I felt so guilty for not seeing it but I barely knew him. Total of maybe 10 minutes talking total.
38. A Stroke Of Luck
Back when I was about 10 or 11 I asked my mother if we could take my grandmother out to lunch. My mother was kind of against it for some unknown reason, but I kept insisting that I really wanted to see my grandmother and that she would want to go to lunch that day. Eventually my mother agreed and we took grandmother to the mall.
While we were out at the mall after getting lunch with my grandmother, something strange started to happen. She started slurring her speech and became extremely confused. My mom noticed what was going on and got her to the hospital within 20 or 30 minutes. She was having a stroke. Doctors said they were able to stop the stroke and she came out of it basically the same as she was before.
Couple days after the fact, my mom told me I had basically saved my grandmother's life by making sure we went out to lunch with her that day.
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39. 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.
40. Red Flag Boyfriend
It started out as a gut feeling when I felt that something was off about my Mom's boyfriend. Once I felt this way, I started to notice the red flags. The first one was the way my dog reacted to him. Even to this day he's the only person my dog flat out didn't like. I think he might have even kicked him at one point when we weren't around.
The second major red flag I noticed was when his two daughters came over. They were six and eight years old at the time. I thought it was weird that they rarely wanted to spend time with their own father. They seemed to prefer hanging out with my Mom instead. It almost felt like—to me anyway—they were trying to avoid him.
I ended up bringing my concerns to my Mom. That was when she started to notice things too. She eventually broke it off with him. A few months later she gets contacted by an investigator, and what he tells her is absolutely shocking: Apparently, the boyfriend had been caught trying to sleep with his current girlfriend's daughter so they wanted to get a statement from Mom.
I'm just glad he got caught and it sounds like he'll be locked away for quite some time. I guess nothing bad happened when he was with my mom because she’s the only woman in the house. I don't think the dude was trying to come after my brother or I—he must have prefered girls. Plus, we're both bigger than the man too.
41. Saved By A Battery
Well it was a gut feeling I ignored. I was getting ready to go meet a friend at a local bar, some band was playing there. I had this feeling that I should stay home, but all my buddies were already there. I go to start my truck and it won’t turn over. Battery problem! I used my jumper box, but turns out the battery wasn't charged. So I ended up staying home.
The next day I found out the place had been the victim of a drive by shooting! A couple of people were actually injured. Anyways that morning I still had to fix my truck. So I jump in the stupid thing and it starts right up! Like nothing had happened I always think about that night and how something made me stay home.
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42. Gut Trusting Saves Lives
I hadn't spoken to a certain friend for a couple weeks but got a gut feeling to contact and talk to her at a certain moment. I immediately messaged her (That's how we always talk). We talked for a couple hours and into the night. A month later, out of the blue she just messages me "Thank you". I asked her why she's thanking me. He answer made me burst into tears.
She said she was contemplating taking her own life on the day I got my gut feeling and had contacted her. Because she got to talk to someone on that specific day, she dropped the idea and hasn't attempted it again ever since.
43. 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.
44. 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.
45. The Evil Feeling
In 2004, my mum had booked a flight for herself and nine-year-old me to visit India for Christmas. We got to the airport and she started having a panic attack. She's claustrophobic, so I assumed she just didn't want to get on the plane, but she was yelling and decided to leave. I kind of dismissed it because I was nine and more focused on Nintendogs.
But, I asked her about it a few years later and she said she just had this “evil feeling” about going. It turns out we would have been caught in the Tsunami.
46. A Feeling You Never Forget
I was camping with friends at a lake. We went to a party across the lake. The lake was populated, sparsely, with cabins and campsites. Most of us got intoxicated, and we lost track of time. By the time we left, it was dark and we had absolutely no light to navigate our boat back across the lake. Knowing what we were doing was dangerous and stupid, I was already on edge.
Luckily, this story isn’t about a boating accident, just a profoundly eerie experience. We got lost. We spent approximately eight hours on that lake trying to find our campsite. Multiple times, we believed we’d found it, getting off the boat, before realizing we were on someone else’s property, or just wandering into the woods. It began to reach a terrifying climax.
The eerie chilling feeling got worse and worse. I felt like I was disassociating. I felt like maybe we’d all passed and were now spirits haunting this lake. We all felt something like this and psyched ourselves out talking about it. By now, we were out of fuel and using our oars. We were straining our eyes, staring into the darkness. Finally, we found our tents.
The night had been so alienating that I was genuinely terrified I was going to open up my tent and a copy of myself would be in there already. Or, more like the real me would be in there. I felt like I was the copy. I’ve never felt such a chilling “wrongness”. But, we worked up the courage eventually, and of course, our tents were empty. I’ll never forget that feeling though.
47. 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.
48. Brother Watches Big Brother
I was 18 years old living with my 20 year old brother. One evening I get home with my girlfriend and he's not at home. Instead of assuming he's at the grocery store or out for a walk—or literally anywhere else—I get really worried and immediately go around looking for him in the apartment. I remember even checking the closets for him for some reason.
My girlfriend tells me I'm acting really weird and tries to calm me down but I can't get rid of the feeling that something is really wrong. I wish I hadn't been right. That’s when our cousin calls me saying that he found my brother on the street having been thrown out from a bar screaming and crying that he doesn't deserve to live and that he was going to end his life.
Appaently he wanted to do it by jumping into the river. That was the day we found out about my brother’s deep depression and suicidal thoughts. I really have no clue how I knew something was wrong. Maybe there was a small detail in the way he left the apartment that my brain reacted to or maybe I subconsciously had noticed him acting differently lately.
He was always the one worrying for me since he's the big brother and I was always pretty laid-back and carefree so I was really overwhelmed by how confidently my gut feeling was telling me that something was wrong. Today 10 years later he recently became a father of a beautiful girl and is the happiest he has ever been, even despite him losing his job to covid this past year. I am so proud of him.
49. An Itch She Couldn’t Scratch
I spent two years with an itch that seemed to have no reason. My inner hypochondriac gut told me that it was cancer. I did some further research and confirmed it. I told several doctors for two years that I had lymphoma. But no one would listen to me. It turns out I was right, but they didn’t figure it out until I was stage four advanced.
Luckily, I’m in remission now. But the moral of the story is don’t give up. If you know something is wrong, push for answers. All the forums told me to just push for chest scans. And if I had, I wouldn’t have had to go through so much chemo. The doctors started to try to convince me I was crazy. That it was all in my head and I started to believe them. So don’t let that happen!
50. Precious Picture
When I was a kid, I was doing my first ever deep clean of my bedroom. You know, getting rid of old clothes and toys and such. While cleaning out my closet, I found an old picture cut out from the local newspaper of Lyndon Johnson visiting my parent's home town. The picture was taken outside with some locals in the background.
I was going to throw the picture away, but suddenly got the strongest feeling not to do it, so I set it aside. Later I showed it to my mom and asked her about it. She then freaked out and showed my grandma, who also freaked out. Then she pointed out one chilling detail. It turns out that one of the locals in the background of the picture was my grandpa.
He’d passed when my mom was 12. That picture was one of only a handful we had of him. I had never seen a picture of him before this. I was so glad I didn't throw that clipping away
51. 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.
52. 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.
53. He Didn’t Deliver
I had a gut feeling twice and it was while I was delivering pizza to shady neighborhoods. For some reason, things didn't feel right. In both cases I trusted my instincts and booked it. I wasn’t about to risk my life for a couple of pizzas worth 20 bucks. I didn’t deliver the pizzas and thought I would be in big trouble. Both times, no one ever called back to ask about their food never arriving. That's all the proof I need.
54. The Party Was Over
There was this friendly, funny, handsome guy I was mutual friends with in high school. But I had a strange reaction to him. 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.
55. Bus Accident Prevented
I was going down a hill on some two-lane highway when at the bottom of the hill I noticed there was a bus stopped for some reason. The bus wasn't pulled over to the side to pick people up, so he was blocking the entire right lane. I have to hit the brakes, partly due to speed, and mostly because I can't go around him because traffic is flying by on the left.
As I'm waiting ten feet behind him for a break in the cars in the left to go, something in the back of my mind says "I bet someone else doesn't see that bus". So I look in my rearview and sure enough, there's a white Toyota Tundra barreling toward me way too fast. There was no time for thinking, I just hit the go button and swung my car to the right.
I try to move onto the shoulder, reasoning that it'll mitigate the impact a little. I was right. The lady hit me, bounced me around and sent my phone flying, but when we got out and inspected our vehicles, neither were damaged. She apologized ("I just was thrown off by that bus!"), I reassured her it was fine. We bumped elbows and continued.
56. 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 that made my blood run cold. It was from the local authorities.
Apparently, 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.
57. 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.
58. Alarm Bells About Stepmom
This is about the woman who became my former best friend's stepmother. When I met her there were instant alarm bells going off in my head. What they were telling me made me want to scream.They very clearly said "keep away from her ''. I ignored them because c'mon, I knew my friend's dad wasn't an idiot and he dated her for a year.
It turns out my gut was more than right. For one, that woman made Cinderella's stepmother look tame. She would throw things at my friend's dad, she would scream at my friend. She blamed everything on my friend, even when there was no way she could prove it. She even verbally attacked her own biological, autistic, son. But that was far from all.
She once screamed at me, and when my mom confronted her she screamed at my mom. My friend was always the scapegoat. She called her lazy for being tired after working two jobs and going to college full time. She tried to get the wifi shut off so my friend "would stop wasting her time playing on her computer all day" when my friend was actually doing homework.
She is a monster. I'm pretty sure she's the reason my friend cut ties with me and all our mutual friends. She had to get away from anything and everything that reminded her of that monster.
59. 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.
60. Doctor Was Clueless
During my pregnancy, I woke up one morning feeling off. I was in my eighth month. I had no symptoms, no contractions, nothing. I got started with my morning chores anyway. Eventually, I decided not to ignore the feeling. I went to the hospital to get checked out. The doctor wanted to release me after checking my vitals but I refused to go.
Luckily one of the nurses took me seriously and decided to check the baby. That's when it took a sickening turn. She noticed something wrong and 45 minutes later my daughter was born by emergency c-section. She’d lost most of her blood and wasn’t breathing for the first two and a half minutes. After four rounds of platelets, four blood transfusions, and a month in the NICU, she came home.
She’s now a healthy, wonderful nine-year-old. We would have lost her if I’d waited even a half hour. My gut feeling and my nurse's gut feeling saved my baby.
61. 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.
62. Manager’s Intuition
Around 2018, I was managing an auto parts store. We had a delivery driver (74 years old, but in decent health) who was putting restock away. I was doing my normal management duties and I heard a stepladder click into place. I remembered that earlier that morning, the same delivery driver had complained about feeling dizzy. I think he had blood sugar issues.
Our top shelves were 12ft (3.5ish meters for non-Americans), and I knew he was the only one putting the restock away. I got up from my desk and walked to the back where I heard him climbing the stepladder. Sure enough, my worst fears came true. As I rounded the corner, he was trying to put a radiator on the top shelf, lost his grip on it, and fell off the top shelf.
I managed to catch him and break his fall. Right in his fall path where his head would’ve hit, was a solid steel oil collection tank, with sharp corners. He still had a sore back and shoulders the next day, but he was alive.
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63. Rational Panic
There was one day I had an irrational panic before taking the bus to my university. I’m not sure what the reason was. I just panicked. My mother said I was crazy and insisted I get on the bus anyway. But panic was correct. The bus I normally took crashed into another car, right before the station. I hit my head on the bus' windshield but went to my Statistics Course anyway.
I apparently had blood everywhere in my hair—and some poorly cleaned glass shards—but no one told me. Eventually, the Statistics teacher herself called the University's medical team for me. I was sitting in the first row because I don't see well from far away.
64. Ghosts Or Something Worse?
I was pregnant and had two kids and we were staying at our home in an apartment building in Quai Chopin, Romans-sur-Isère in the south of France. I swear I could feel the floor and the walls shaking and I could hear crackling around my place. When I checked with my neighbors, most of them told me they couldn't hear or feel anything.
I was still sure it wasn't all in my head so I called my sister who then called the firefighters because she thought I was having a panic attack. When the firefighters arrived, I explained everything but they too couldn't tell anything was wrong so they dismissed me and told me to call the landlord the next day to complain. I knew what I had to do.
I insisted that I didn't feel safe and asked them to evacuate my children and me. The firefighters listened to me and helped us leave the building. About a minute after we left—the building collapsed. Some of my neighbors were also out at the time but most weren't. An elderly couple perished and my other neighbors got out in time with the firefighters.
65. 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.
66. Dead Silent
About a year ago I went out on a camping trip on some backpacking trails. I went alone but I do this often so setting up the tent etc was easy. I took a couple hours to fish and came back in time to light a fire—about an hour before sunset—and start dinner. No sooner than the sun went behind the trees the woods went dead silent. Even the creek sounded like it was being muffled.
I had this feeling of dread and anxiousness wash over me and it got to the point I just grabbed my light, my keys, and my knife and walked back to the truck. I left all my stuff behind for the night and drove off. I came back the next morning to find officers and an EMT set up in the parking lot and them telling me to park somewhere else as they needed the lot for medevac. I couldn't believe what happened.
The campsite a few lots down from me looked like a scene from a hack and slash movie. The tent was ripped apart and stuff flung everywhere. The ground was torn up from the campers getting into a drunken fight with a big black bear and some cubs rummaging around their camp the night before.
67. 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.
68. Needed To Bee Rehomed
I was in my backyard when I heard the oddest noise. It made every single hair on my body rise and every ounce of my being said, “Go inside”. I booked it inside and less than 30 seconds later, a MASSIVE swarm of bees descended upon my house. Apparently, a hive at one of my neighbor’s houses decided to rehome themselves.
They were hitting the walls/roof/windows, you name it, as they eventually made their way over my home and continued on their way. And that's not the only part. I am ungodly allergic to bees. I get stung and I get an Epi-Pen and a ride to the hospital to ensure I don’t die. If I hadn't booked it inside and was outside when that swarm descended, I would have been stung and a goner, no question about it.
69. 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.
70. 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, my world suddenly shattered. 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. 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.
71. 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.
72. All The Signs Were There
I was out walking my dog when I got a funny feeling about my dad. He had heart problems and is prone to heart attacks. I called him a few times and he didn't respond, so I started to run back. He was slumped in front of the sofa, showing all the early signs of a heart attack. I phoned an ambulance and gave him basic treatment.
The paramedics arrived, and they told me the most heart-wrenching truth. They said if I had been any later he would have passed right there.
73. 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.
74. 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.
75. 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.
76. 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.
77. Felt It In The Bones
On a New Year's eve many years ago, my girlfriend and I went to spend the night at our former roommates' new place. They were a gay couple back before it was as accepted as it is today. An hour before midnight, I felt a crazy urge to go home and started a fight about it with my girlfriend, because she wanted to stay as we had planned.
I won the argument and got my way, and we left in such a hurry that we forgot our blankets and pillows. A couple of hours later, a real-life nightmare occurred. In the middle of the night, someone came by and set their house on fire and both friends passed. I'm still torn up about it today because I know that someone came by that night wanting to buy some kind of pills from one of my friends and was quite rudely turned away.
I wasn't paying attention enough to see their face, so I don’t know who it was, but I know in my bones that's the guy that did it.
78. 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.
79. 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. As soon as he entered the building, it all went awry. 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.
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.
80. It’s Too Late To Move
As a young kid, maybe five or six years old, my mom and I were at the local KFC. We placed our order and she told me to go find us a table. We were the only ones there, and I picked a corner booth. My mom was walking over with the food and I got up and said, “Mom, we can’t sit here". She thought I was being a little kid and just wanted to run around the restaurant.
She said something like, “No, you picked this one. We are staying here". I was persistent and somehow convinced her to another table. Mid-meal, a car on the highway lost control on the highway and crashed through the walls of KFC into the restaurant. They entered through the corner booth. Had we been eating there, we would have been quashed or injured terribly.
81. 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 at the time.
I assumed this was a friendly teacher just trying to help me. I was too young to understand what was really happening. 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 sessio.
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.
82. 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.
83. 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.
84. Came Out Unscathed
When I was little, I always used to sleep over at my cousin's house who had an awesome wooden bunk bed that I would sleep on the bottom bunk. When I was seven, I went over for another sleepover. We ate Chinese food with my aunt and uncle, then my cousin and I stayed up late playing video games before going to bed. When I was little, I used to fall asleep right away and sleep deeply.
My family still jokes that not even a car going through the house could wake me up. Anyways, sometime after I've fallen asleep, I wake because I have this ridiculous feeling that I HAVE to roll over. I didn't want to, because I was comfortable and sleeping how I normally do in the middle of the bed with my foot hanging off. I kept arguing with what felt like myself rolling over until finally, I did.
But apparently, it wasn't enough, because then I had the urge to literally cuddle as tight as I could against the wall. Since I had already rolled over, I figured why not. As I'm trying to press myself as hard as possible against the wall, the bunk bed collapses and a broken metal bar goes straight through the bed where I had been sleeping. I was stuck, somehow unharmed, in that little space against the wall until my uncle could cut me out.
My cousin had fallen from the top bunk when it collapsed but was also unharmed.
85. 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.
Because of this, I ignored it, hoping it was just a random feeling and not real. A month or two later, they broke up. The reasons were disgusting. Apparently, he started becoming reviling and shows signs of wanting to harm her. 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.
86. Friends Until The End
This was in the late 80s. I was coming home at about two in the morning and was walking home. Across the street, walking in the opposite direction, was a fabulously dressed-up drag queen obviously heading home from doing a show. Following her were six intoxicated chads. The energy was just “off". So I crossed the street, walked up beside her, and said, “Hi, my name is _____, and I’ll be escorting you home”.
We linked arms and strutted back to her place, with the chads making rude comments and threats the whole way. Sadly, the next day, there were reports of several bashings in the “gay village". The person I walked home with was my friend for 25 years until their passing. My dad, a tough Italian type, absolutely loved Bibi and would often give her rides home after work.
In fact, when my dad got sick, she came and helped my mom look after him. It was also my dad who INSISTED that Bibi came to his funeral in full drag. We giggled the whole time because nobody could figure out how this tall Irish drag queen knew my dad. My dad had a really twisted sense of humor. They both did.
87. 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.
88. 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 heartbreaking signs. 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.
89. Knew What Was Coming
I had a very bad feeling on the day my good friend passed. I had this horrible sense of dread and an overwhelming need to get to him. I was absolutely panicked. I swear I could hear a clock ticking in my head. I had been texting with him just hours before and we were supposed to go cut down a Christmas tree together to get in the spirit.
I had to threaten the girl whose house he was at to go back to the house and check on him, or I was going to call for help. She had left him there to go decorate a tree at her mom's. I didn't have a vehicle and had never been to her house, so I couldn't even get to him myself. I was on the phone with her when she found him. I was absolutely gutted.
90. 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. That call revealed horrible information to me. 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
91. A Shaky Feeling
I was boarding my plane flight after vacation. It was early in the morning and the second I stepped foot on the plane, I froze and the absolute worst feeling overcame me. I was with my boyfriend and we both had to get back for work, so I made myself stay on the plane. A half-hour later the plane suddenly dipped. Then the pilot got on the intercom.
His voice was shaking, telling us that there was a national emergency and we would have to land at the closest airport immediately. That was 9/11. It took me four days of hitchhiking and bus travel to get home. I did not fully understand what was happening until I got to work right off the Greyhound and the TV was on. I thought the entire country was under attack.
92. A Very Bad Day
In my early 20s, I woke up one day with a feeling of absolute dread I could not explain. I called my mom to come over and then called my boyfriend to come drive back home. He was on his way to work. I lost my ability to speak during that second phone call, and the whole right side of my face started tingling. I thought I was having a stroke in my early 20s and that I was going to die.
It turns out that was to be my first ever migraine with an aura with aphasia. When the headache started an hour later, I wanted to die.
93. 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.
94. Someone’s Looking Out
I was mowing my backyard with a ride-on mower, and I began to get an overwhelming feeling of being watched. I started looking around and thought I saw a figure in the upstairs window. I tried to ignore this as no one was home, and continued with mowing when I started to feel an unbearable sense of dread. This made me immediately stop.
As I did so, the ground in front of me gave way, forming a massive sinkhole. If I hadn't stopped immediately, I likely would have been crushed by the tractor.
95. 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.
96. 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.
97. 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.
98. Massive Overwhelming Dread
I used to work in the ER and once I had a man come in with ripping chest pain that started not but 30 minutes prior after he moved something heavy at his office. For some bizarre reason I felt he was going to die just by looking at him. Massive overwhelming dread just seemed to engulf me. I did his EKG and I hoped something would be wrong with it so we could get him a bed.
Unfortunately his EKG was perfect. Not five minutes later he went into cardiac arrest on our waiting room floor. After running the code for 45 minutes, he didn't make it. He had a massive aortic dissection. There wasn't much hope. This was almost 3 years ago and I've seen worse things since then, but the memory is still burned in my mind, and it hurts knowing I was the last person to speak to him.
99. A Divine Intervention
Country lanes in the UK are pretty narrow and have lots of blind bends. I was driving down a lane and there was a cyclist in front of me, in the middle of the road, not wearing a helmet, and heading toward a completely blind bend. I suddenly thought, if a car swings around that bend they are going to smash into the cyclist and pin him to my car. It was like a “final destination” vision.
I couldn’t hear or see another car, but I saw this accident so vividly in my mind. I immediately slammed on my breaks, honked my horn, and pulled over. The poor cyclist guy shat himself and stumbled to the hedges. Mere seconds later, some idiotic teenager comes speeding out of the blind corner and missed us by inches.
If we were still on the road, this guy would have plowed straight through the cyclist and into my car. I completely freaked out, to the point where the cyclist came over to calm me down. I don’t remember much but I know I was saying, “You were gone,” over and over again. I’m not a religious person at all, but that’s the closest I’ve come to believing in some kind of divine intervention.
100. A Funny Story After The Fact
I do real estate photography. One day, I was alone taking photos in an empty house, which is quite normal. I had this really uncomfortable feeling that I wasn’t alone. I had already checked the whole house before I started taking photos, but I kept getting the feeling that someone else was there. The feeling was so strong that I had goosebumps and felt nauseous.
I’m not a small guy, but I felt like a little kid scared of the dark. I decided to re-check all the rooms to ease my mind, but didn’t find anything. I checked closets, bathrooms, and the bedrooms, but I was definitely the only one there. As I finished photographing the last room in the house, this feeling that someone was with me was so overwhelming that I pretty much sprinted out of the house after I took the last shot.
I felt better when I got outside, but I still had an uneasy feeling. The realtor ended up pulling in the driveway as I was finishing photos of the front of the house and asked if the house cleaner did a good job. I said it looked fine to me, and she went into the house with her husband to prepare it for a showing. When I was photographing the backyard, I noticed them both out of the corner of my eye through a back window—and that's when I almost dropped my camera.
There was a third person with them. I was confused because they came alone without anyone else. As it turns out, the house cleaner wasn’t finished before I pulled up and came in. She saw a large guy with tattoos come into the house and panic, so she jumped into the kitchen pantry and hid. By the time she realized I was the photographer, it was too late for her to come out without it being awkward, so she stayed in the pantry the whole time.
I’m not sure if maybe I saw her out of the corner of my eye when walking past, or if maybe I smelled her perfume, heard her breathing, and didn’t realize it, but my subconscious was screaming at me that someone was there. It was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been inside a house like that before and made for a funny story after.
101. Shared Individual Horrors
When my kids went to bed, I used to go out to the barn where I had a bottle stashed. I'd have a drink and ponder the day, think about my late wife, and attempt to decompress. I suffered heavily from PTSD. Add to that, the recent loss of my wife, the stress of raising two children that didn't really know me, and intense pain from severe burns I had received before leaving the Marine Corps…it's safe to admit that I was extremely suicidal.
One particular night, I wrote out a long letter to my family, letters to my children, and placed them along with my will, financial documents, etc., on the kitchen table. I went out to the barn with a .40 caliber pistol and had every intention of getting intoxicated and eating a round. I was as low as I've ever been in my life.
All of a sudden, my dad walked into the barn. He lived two hours away, and we hadn't spoken in a couple of weeks. He picked up the handgun, cleared it, and dropped the magazine without a word. I asked him what he was doing there at 10:30 at night, and his response shocked me to the core. He said, "I had a bad feeling. Let's talk".
That's the one and only time I've ever seen my dad cry. That's the only time we've ever spoken in detail about our individual horrors of combat. My dad saved my life that night, and I've made sure to live my life in such a way, as to make him proud of everything I do.
102. A Wife’s Intuition
I woke up at midnight one night while visiting my mom from out of state. I had this sudden panicked urge to check my house cameras. My phone’s battery was at 0% right as I clicked on the app. I charged my phone and the second it turned on, I went to the app. I caught my husband in our home with another woman. My heart was beating out of my chest from the second I woke up to hours after I saw what I saw and heard what I heard.
It was the weirdest and most horrifying moment of my life.
103. Kids Know More Than They Let on
My mom told me this story the other day and it freaked me out. When my oldest sister was little, like 3 years old, she asked my then-pregnant aunt to pick her up to hold her. My mom said she was like "She can't pick you up, honey, she has a baby in her tummy". And then my little sister was like "That baby is dead!" My mom freaked out.
Still, my aunt and grandma were fine and were telling my mom it was all good, she was just a toddler and didn't know what she was saying. Well, lo and behold my aunt goes to the doctor the next day for a routine pregnancy checkup, and the baby was dead. Give me the willies just thinking about it.
104. 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 authorities and after a week of investigation, his body was found drowned in a nearby lake. I miss him every day.
105. 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.
106. Party Crasher
Every once in a while, you get that gut instinct telling you something is up. I was at a party and at one point, I got that tingling feeling. I knew I was in danger. I finally just decided to leave with a few friends to chill at my place. A few hours later, I got a phone call from another friend asking me if I was OK. When I asked what happened, my blood ran cold.
Apparently, the house where the party was held belonged to a guy who was affiliated with some gangs. Some thugs tried to crash the party and when the host tried to kick them out, they started fighting people. The whole thing devolved into a giant brawl and a few people ended up in the hospital. The authorities ended up shutting down the party.
Meanwhile, I was at home playing video games with a couple of friends. Sometimes your gut's right.
107. He Made You An Offer You Can Refuse
It was the mid-1990s. I had traveled to northern New Jersey with a friend from college. It was his hometown. We had plans to visit New York City and see a former roommate who had graduated the year before. I’ll call that person Friend 2. Well, apparently Friend 2 had been quietly dabbling in the business of low-level organized mobsters since his last years in college.
We had some knowledge of this but were not involved. He invited us to an associate’s house with plans to go out afterward. We declined. Not our scene. In fact, both of us had applied to law school. I planned to pursue a career in federal law enforcement thereafter. We both wanted to distance ourselves from that nonsense and steer clear of any association with it.
We tried the following day to reach Friend 2 for a low-key lunch before heading back out of town. No answer. Well, local authorities found his body two days later, along with two other bodies, at the very house to which he had invited us. Everything went down at the meeting/social gathering that he had invited us to. So it could have been us too if we had accepted the invitation.
I knew those guys were bad news.
108. Front Float
I was a lifeguard at a lake. There was a mom with a baby and a toddler, and the mom had a friend with her. She was sitting in the shallow water with her newborn, talking to her friend and facing away from the water toward the beach. I had an eye on her toddler because it was driving me nuts that she wasn’t paying attention to him.
He dropped his ball and the small waves started taking it out. Of course, he reached for it and fell over. He slowly started floating and struggling, face down, getting father and farther away. I jumped down, ran in and grabbed him, and probably terrified him as I patted his back over my knee while he vomited out water.
The poor kid kept trying to look at me. His mom noticed nothing until I was carrying him back over to her. She casually thanked me and I tried to warn her of the possibility of dry drowning. Her response made me so mad I wanted to scream. She snapped at me, yelling that she was a nurse and that her son would be fine. I saved her son’s life, and she repaid me by yelling in my face.
109. 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.
