“Gut feeling is all about the experiences that you have had in your life. It is about being in difficult scenarios, knowing what worked, what did not work, and then taking a decision.”—Mahendra Sigh Dhoni.
“Everything I do is just really my intuition, and every time I go against my intuition, it's a mistake. Even though I may sit down and analyze and intellectualize something on paper, if I go against my gut feeling, it's wrong.”—Tamara Mellon.
Trust the gut reaction. Sometimes this is easier said than done. But, sometimes, it is the matter of life or death and it is best to do what is hardest, go against the grain, and trust the intuition rumbling around the insides just to be safe. Need some inspiration? Well, Here are 42 different people who went to Reddit to tell their gut reaction stories and the fallout. Whether good or bad.
42. Don’t Laugh At Your Kid's Gut
A storm was gathering as my dad was driving. I was 8, sitting in the back and looking out the window. I told him: "You better hurry, that construction crane looks like it might topple." Everybody laughs at the idiot kid.
That evening the whole family was watching the local news. They opened with that crane crashing down due to heavy wind. Although nobody had been hurt, I felt vindicated.
41. Don't Ignore Other People's Guts
I'll throw out an opposite one. This was in the late 1990s. Boarding a flight from Dallas to Denver (TWA) on a MD-80. It's evening. The women behind me are clearly worried about flying and it's annoying me, so I grab a book and read to distract myself—no electronics on take off then, remember?
Anyway, we take off and pretty quickly after we take off the plane slows down and the flight attendant gets up from the back and scurries to the front. The ladies behind me are again panicking "That's not normal!!!" and I'm just rolling my eyes, you always slow down a bit after take off! My gut says we're cool. THEN, after about two minutes, the plane executes a really sharp turn and the pilot comes on the announcer. Ok, this isn't normal now.
"Ladies & Gentlemen, we're returning to the airport, please ensure your seatbelts are fastened."
Quiet for a bit and then he comes on again to tell us what happened "We lost an engine, this happens all the time, oh, and you may notice a few emergency vehicles on the runway, but that's just normal procedure."
As we land I see what looks like every single fire truck at DFW lined up beside the runway. We land without major issue, people clap, and then the pilot breaks us the real news: "Uh, so I've trained for that many times in a simulator, but it's a once in a career experience for a commercial airline pilot."
So my gut was wrong, I was sure there was nothing wrong and there was.
40. Watching The Ones Who Do Not Smile
I was at a party when I was in college when two older dudes showed up. The place was packed and most people were drunk. I noticed something was a bit off about them. They never smiled and weren’t really talking to anyone.
Finally, someone accused them of feeling around in their back pocket and it turned out they were lifting wallets from drunk college kids. Once confronted, one of the guys stabbed the kid in the stomach with a smallish knife. They left slowly and were never caught. It was pretty surreal. The kid who got stabbed turned out fine.
39. Bouldering Is Dangerous
Went for a weekend away with a group from my local Scouting area, back in the ‘80s. I didn't know them all, went to make up the numbers and get some climbing/canoeing/caving done.
We stayed in a rented house in the Peak District (UK). One evening, a few guys went out to try "bouldering"—climbing boulders 10 to 15 meters high. I got there, took one look and said no, we have no climbing gear, that's high enough to die if you fall.
I got the mickey taken, called "chicken," etc., so I left them to it and walked back. An hour later one guy fell 10 meters and split his skull open on the rocks below, killed instantly.
38. Precious Last Moments
When I was doing my PhD, I got offered the chance to go to the Central European University summer school programme to do a course that would have been extremely valuable. I even got offered a full scholarship to do the course, and free accommodation, etc. A really amazing deal.
Two weeks before I was supposed to leave, I said to my boyfriend at the time, something is telling me I shouldn't go. And I was like, WTF brain, this is the opportunity of a lifetime. But the "don't go" feeling kept getting stronger. So I withdrew from the course, feeling stupid for doing it.
The day after I was scheduled to leave, my perfectly healthy mom got sick. A week later she was in a coma, a week later we had to turn off life support. Her funeral was a week after that. I would have been away in her last waking moments.
37. Once You Smell Bear Stank, You Know Bear Stank
When I was a little kid, I stepped outside to walk home from my neighbor’s, two doors over. I smelled what I knew was a bear, which are common where I live. If you've ever smelled a black bear, it's not that different from a skunk, which is what my friend's mom told me it probably was when I asked her to drive me home even though my house was literally right around the corner.
The thing is, a skunk's smell is strong, but doesn't, like, travel. A bear's smell is more...permeating? Begrudgingly, she drove me, only to see the bear sitting on my back steps outside the door I would've tried to enter my house with. Black bears aren't that vicious, but my friend’s mom apologized immediately about not believe me: could've walked straight into that thing at the age of 12.
36. Stranger Danger!
This happened almost 30 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was probably 8 or 9 at the time and had been at the store buying candy for the weekend with the girl from next door, she was one year younger than me. A car stopped and the man inside opened the passenger door and asked me and my friend to get in the car. He was picking us up for our parents, he told us.
I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong and remember thinking "this is what my parents were talking about!" I grabbed my friend’s hand, said that we lived in that house "right over there" and pulled my friend with me. Went to their door, rang the bell, went straight in and told the people living there what had happened.
Turned out I was right, we were about to be kidnapped.
35. Crazy Cocker Spaniel Got Yo Back
This was about 15 years ago. My parents went out for a nice dinner for their anniversary and decided that I was old enough and responsible enough to be left alone for a few hours on a weeknight. I was almost 9 and we owned a fairly protective dog at the time so it all seemed fine.
They leave, tell me to lock up and to call if anything happens. I do so and proceed to party around the house like a rockstar, cause dude I had the WHOLE dang house myself and I could do whatever I wanted, HECK to the YEAH!
Halfway through a Sailor Moon marathon, I get a knock on the door. I'm confused as all get out cause it's only been about two hours and they said they probably wouldn't be back till around 10 anyway. I guess mama has left something she needed AGAIN and swung by to grab it.
My front door is a system of two doors, a super old, thick wooden door (the house was originally built in the 30's and this door is still the original piece) and then outside of that (at the time) a screen door. My dog is raising heck at the front door, but I just pull her back to calm down, cause she had a tendency to be reactive to most noises.
Well, it's not my mom at the door, some middle-aged man I've never met before in my life. Puppo is now basically feral so I keep the screen door firmly closed and a hand on her collar as I ask the many what he wants. He starts in on this weird convoluted story about how he has two young twin daughters and how they got into a fight and that one of them ran away.
Now, this man then claims that he believes his daughter is hiding in my house and would like to come look for her. I tell him no such girl is here and why does he think she would be here in the first place. He goes on into a long story about how this was the house they first lived in and how it's the one she was born in, and how it was like a safe place for her and would be the most likely place she would run away to as it was really the only other place she knows.
So I felt kinda weird since I opened the door and this dude's story hasn't been helping his cause, but now I KNOW something awful is going down. I, in no uncertain terms, inform the guy that he must have the wrong house because THIS house was built and has been lived in by my family since its construction. My dad was born in that house and after my mom and dad told his parents that they were pregnant with my older sister they gave it to them as a present to begin their family. He must be mistaken cause I know all this to be fact. Heck, there were pictures less than 10 feet away from me on the wall of my dad and uncle playing in the front yard in the late ‘70s.
By now my dog is growling like crazy and dude is getting kinda agitated. He insists that I don't know what I'm talking about and that if I would just give him a few minutes to search for his daughter he could be on his way.
The latch on the screen door was broken and I was putting all my strength at the time in holding my dog from the door. He opens the screen door with one hand and with the other reaches for my closest arm.
My crazy cocker goes ballistic! Uses all her strength to lunge at him, gets a hold of his hand, and bites down. Now man is yelling and confused. He pushes back against the screen door and slams it shut to get my dog off of him. Sadie gets pushed back indoors but is still raging. I quickly slam the front door, lock it, and chain it shut. Run around the house and make sure all other doors and windows are locked and then hunker down in the bathroom hyperventilating and wait about 15 minutes until Sadie's growling has calmed some. Check outside, no man or his car. Both long gone.
I call my parents and tell them they need to come home RIGHT NOW PLEASE. When they get home I recount the whole story. Dad goes the check the front door and sure enough on the screen door jam and siding of the house is a large smear of blood.
Sadie was treated like a queen and got a whole steak for her to eat on that weekend.
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."—Mark Twain.
34. Seriously, Don’t Drink and Drive
Not so much something very wrong here but a bunch of my friends wanted to go to this party when I was like 20. I was just sort of like "I don’t know, I really don't want to go to this place with these people." Turns out 2 of my friends got into an argument with people who lived there, got kicked out, were super hammered, and drove home angry. Their car flipped three or four times and wrecked about another four cars. My one friend leaves with a small concussion the other leaves with like eight broken bones and walking therapy for about two years. The best part is, the emergency responders said if anyone was in the back seat they would be dead. That's where I would have been sitting.
33. Granny Senses
Not mine but my grandma's.
We went camping at this one spot in the woods by a small creek every summer. One summer she gets this bad feeling and makes us pack up and we leave. Couple days later they end up finding a dead body right near our then-campsite.
32. Mom Knows When Something Is Wrong
My mom had one. I was there with my brother but we didn't believe her at the time.
Three years ago, my brother, my sister and I were supposed to meet at mom's place for dinner at 7. My mom and sister are very close; her being the first born, the only girl and us being a Lebanese family. Anyway, they talk throughout the day quite a bit, daily.
Around 6:30 pm, my sister is not answering phone calls or texts. My brother and I think she's asleep or just doing whatever and it's nothing to worry about. By 7:15, still nothing from my sister and my Mom at this point is pretty much saying "Something is wrong here, I can just feel it." We still don't believe her but it's not her style to worry and she is really now worrying. I call up her now ex-husband who was at a conference saying we haven't heard from my sister. It turns out neither has he. I asked if he knew her iTunes credentials so I could track her phone. Turns out she was at home. We called a friend, sent someone knocking at her door, and no answer.
My mom started driving there and made the decision that we need to break into the house. She texted her friends to kick the door down. They did and found my sister unconscious. She had a major stroke and a concussion.
The aftermath was very, very difficult. I won't write a novel and be brief. Major stroke, concussion and required open heart surgery. Was told she may never talk and would likely be a vegetable and if we actually wanted to proceed with the surgeries. We did. She's alive, she talks, she can walk with a cane and will at some point, walk without a cane. She lost everything on the left side of her body. The only part of her that may never come back is her left arm.
31. Sparing The Other Passengers
I got to the airport early and got something to eat at the restaurant, boarded the plane, everyone is on, and I suddenly get a feeling of panic. Nothing else, just panic. I was used to traveling most of the month, back and forth every week, so no problems flying, but in this case, I had to get off that plane. I grabbed my stuff, ran past the flight attendant and said don't wait for me I will get another flight and sat down trying to calm down.
The announcement comes over the speaker that they are looking for me, my flight is leaving. It leaves. I watch the flight start to take off. This was in Detroit btw. Then it happened. The worst cramps I ever had, ran to the bathroom.
Food poisoning from the restaurant. I would have been on a two hour flight stinking up the plane while ejecting the contents of my stomach from both ends. I am sure the entire passenger compartment thanks me, though they do not know.
30. There Are Some Sick, Sick People Out There
Not me but my mom. When I was about 10 years old I got invited to spend the night at my really good friend’s home. My mom said no. I begged her to let me go but she was adamant that I couldn't. She said she just didn't feel right about it and that no amount of pleading was going to change her mind.
A few weeks later my friend’s dad was arrested for inappropriate child imagery. After he went to trial it was found that he had also molested several young girls. He would have his daughter invite them over for a slumber party and then touch them when they went to sleep. If my mom hadn't trusted her gut feeling I could have been one of his victims.
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29. Trusting The Panic Attack
My grandparents were driving up a steep mountain road behind a logging truck when my grandmother started having a mild panic attack.
She just kept saying “something's not right, pull over. We need to pull over,” so my grandpa did and settled her down.
After a few minutes, she was fine and they kept driving.
A mile or two up the road, a load of trees had come loose and spilled off the truck.
28. Trusting The Spidey Sense In The Rain
It was 1:30 am, raining, I was riding my motorcycle down a four lane road with two lanes in each direction and a middle turn lane. I saw a car approach a stop sign, perpendicular to me, in the parking lot of a bar and though to myself "He's going to turn left in front of me." I was going 45mph, let off the throttle, and about 200 to 250 feet from him, he did exactly what I thought he was going to do. Grabbed my front and rear brakes, back tire locked up and kicked out to the left. I had maybe 40 to 50 feet in which I would either high-side in front of the car and likely be ran over, slam into the driver door or rear driver door or jump off to the right in a tuck and roll fashion. I jumped and my motorcycle slammed into the rear driver side of his car. I had a couple scratches, bruises, and a sore tailbone. But I wasn't ran over or hanging out in his back seat via glass window.
Thank God for spidey senses.
27. That's So Raven
Christmas day 2016.
My family and I had packed the car with all the goods and were about to be on our way to my grandparent's house.
The car wouldn't start.
Let's back up: The whole day I felt I was in a trance or a dream. I kept feeling off and the night before I had a dream that we were driving on a bridge—our tire popped, we slid and a car slammed into my side of the vehicle. I remembered it so vividly because I see the headlights coming at me in my head still. I get prophetic dreams a lot, but I really didn't think much of it because I also suffer from nightmares.
Anyway, we call AAA. Meanwhile, I'm refusing to get in the car because everything feels OFF. The guy gets there, tells us it was our battery, so he charged it. I still felt very off but seeing as he fixed the problem I get in, he turns around and says to my mom, "I just wanna check your tire pressure for some reason." Not kidding—he said one of the front tires was EXTREMELY high, was, and I quote from AAA dude, "About to pop if we were to drive, especially on a highway or turnpike."
He fixed that too, free of charge. The feeling of being uneasy and dream-like faded and I felt fine.
Made it to grandparents house—awesome mashed potatoes.
I know when to trust my gut.
26. Giving Pastors A Bad Name
I used to be a lifeguard in a very small gated community with a lot of wealthy people. I also used to sing at the local church services. I met the pastor in that context and something about him just seemed...off. It wasn't anything I'd be able to articulate. I just didn't like him. He just made my gut drop.
Later, I noticed that the local pastor was spending a lot of time at the pool watching the little kids swim—one little boy in particular. He would have a towel ready for him, he'd have the kid sit on his lap to dry off. As far as I knew, he wasn't babysitting him. He was just there, watching and touching. It made my hackles rise.
I told his parents that the way the pastor was interacting with their son made me uncomfortable. They investigated and it turns out the pastor was going to their home when they weren't there and "spending time" with that little boy in his bedroom. They didn't give me any more details than that but it was implied that something sexual had been going on.
I don't know what happened to him after that but he was obviously removed as pastor from the church. It's so important to trust your gut on these things.
25. Just Say No, Mmmkay
At a research institute, I walked into a mouse procedure/surgery room for a quick moment to grab something and leave. After walking out I felt, well to be honest, like I was a little high. There were 3 other people in that room, including 2 undergraduates so I got worried and went back inside to check things out.
When I got back inside I asked if they were feeling ok, one of the undergrads turned to me and said she was fine, but was flushed and looked a little out of it. So I went around to all the isoflurane chambers (odorless volatile liquid that KOs mammals at low doses and kills them at higher) looking for leaks. Sure enough, the gasket at the bottom of one of the chambers had failed and it was leaking out and immediately boiling into a gas, and filling the room.
I told them their isoflurane was leaking, and the post doc told me they were fine and that he uses that machine all the time. He also pointed out that the isoflurane was in an air curtained biosafety cabinet and so even with the leak, they were protected. I called him an idiot because a biosafety cabinet recirculates air and doesn't evacuate it like a fume hood—which is what he should have been using.
So I ignored him, propped open the door, and ordered the undergrads to get out of the room. I then went to their lab manager and told her what I had found. Their lab manager came down like the wrath of God.
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24. Crazy Step Mother
My father started publicly dating a woman shortly after my mother died—I later learned she's likely the woman he'd been having an affair with before she died. I liked her. One evening my father took me to one side and asked how I'd feel about him asking her to marry him. I got an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach and felt nauseated. I told my father I didn't want him to and he asked why as he thought I liked her.
I explained that I did like her but had a bad feeling and he said: "that's just a feeling, they don't mean anything." He already had the ring and proposed straight away. I got really excited about the engagement, the wedding, moving house, and my impending little sister.
After the wedding, she changed. And when my half-sister was born, she went crazy. She abused me, my sister (my mother's child), and later, my half-sister (her own child). He only left her when my doctor told him something was clearly going on with her that was affecting my health. She was putting a substance that I'm intolerant to in my food and my father wouldn't believe me and would force me to eat whatever she made, however, I couldn't get a doctor alone without her to tell them. My maternal grandmother told him if he didn't leave her she'd go for custody that he finally left her. He accused me of lying for the entire time leading up to that and has never asked me about any of my attempts to get help since.
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23. Saving Yourself From The Chicken Dance
The one I best remember was about 10 years back. I was a groomsman at a friend's wedding. Partway through the reception, I was suddenly struck with a feeling of impending doom.
THEY ARE GOING TO PLAY THE CHICKEN DANCE NEXT!
Frantically I started searching for someone, crying, "Let's go smoke! Who wants to go smoke?" I don't even smoke, but it wasn't hard to get a group together.
When I came back, sure enough, The Chicken Dance had been danced, and I was the only member of the wedding party to escape its embarrassing talons.
22. A Bad Gut Feeling Is A Rational Deduction From An Observation
Got off the subway at night, there was one other person about half a block behind me on my route home. This is a totally normal thing, has happened thousands of times. Totally normal-looking dude, not even following me closely. I had a bad feeling.
Such a bad feeling that, when I turned the corner on my way home, I broke into a dead sprint and hid behind a dumpster in the shadows partway down the street. By the time he came around the corner, I was well hidden and could see him from my hiding place. As soon as I saw his reaction to the fact that I wasn't there, I knew I had been right to hide.
He started LOOKING FOR ME, muttering to himself, he went up and down the street, looked around corners, I hid and held my breath until he was gone. It was terrifying. I am so glad I had that sudden, inexplicable impulse to hide, and listened to it.
21. Baby Sis Fall For The Wrong Dude
My sister was 18 years old and bought a horse from a guy who was married and 47. My parents liked the guy and became friends with him and his wife. I knew something was up because he and my sister would talk constantly on the phone. My mom actually asked his wife if that was cool and she said it was totally fine and he did this a lot with other kids who needed “horse advice.”
Yeah.
My parents wanted to send my sister to stay with this guy for a whole summer so she could ride and show horses. I told them the relationship was clearly inappropriate and not to do it. They were like, if the wife doesn’t mind, then who cares?!?
Within two months he had left his wife. Within four months they were engaged. Four months after that they got married, and one week after that, my sister was pregnant.
This guy has had many parents accuse him of being a pedophile and coming on to their underage daughters. His own son has nothing to do with him. And he’s not even good looking or rich. Just a gross, hideous hillbilly with leather for skin and three teeth.
Good job, baby sis.
20. It’s Not Your Fault
Two years ago, I was on my way back home on my bike. I had to go over a bridge and on one side of the bridge, there was a girl, crying. On the bridge, there were two 14-year-olds (one pretty tall, one pretty small), head to head, seemingly about to get into a fight.
When I went by, they stood back. I thought something was off, but I told myself fighting among 14-year-olds over what I thought was a girlfriend, is normal and not dangerous, right?
Turns out, the taller one of the boys jumped off the bridge to commit suicide only minutes after I passed, the smaller one couldn't physically hold him back.
Had I stopped and listened to my gut feeling, I might have been able to help and talk him out of it.
19. Hiding Something Under It All
On a recent date with my girlfriend.
I couldn't place it, at all.
She was herself, if not a little more playful.
She looked like herself, in jeans and a hoodie.
I just couldn't quite place it...
Until we got home and it turned out she was wearing a strap on harness all night ... I have no idea how that was comfortable.
18. Just In Time
Not me, but my coworker. She got a call last week that her sister-in-law didn't show up for work and didn't call or anything. She's been working three jobs recently and was complaining she needed a good night's sleep. Coworker said she probably slept through the alarm clock, but her husband insisted that she go home and check on her because it wasn't like the SIL to just not show up for work. Coworker was annoyed but did it since her house was only 20 minutes away.
Coworker gets there and it turns out she had overdosed on some sort of opioid and then had a heart attack. Oxygen levels were extremely low, and paramedics said that if coworker hadn't gotten home when she did, SIL would have been dead within minutes. Thank god her husband had felt that something was wrong. Always go with your gut.
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17. Darn Good Nurse
Not me, but my mum—and I am doing my best to recall the story she mentioned to me a few months ago.
My mum has been a Psych nurse for over 30 years at a private hospital. One of the patients she was looking after was a very boisterous person in her 40s and she had been in the hospital for over a week. One night mum noticed this lady was very lethargic, saying that she was just feeling tired and was going to have an early night and to get her meds early—this isn't going where you expect.
Mum thinks this is very odd for this lady, but everyone has off days and so she gives this lady her medication and she goes off to bed. About five minutes pass and mum still has a knot in her gut about this lady and thinks she will just check her stats, so she goes to her room, where the lady is just about to lay down and checks her blood pressure, pulse and oxygen saturation. This is pretty rarely done in a psych hospital unless people have other health concerns needing monitoring.
This lady's oxygen saturation was down to around 80% I believe (doing the best to recall). To put it in perspective, if it falls below 92% your cells can't absorb oxygen and this can cause permanent damage. Mum, in her over 40 years of nursing, has never seen someone with such a low level. She checks again and the same result. Mum calls an ambulance and gets this lady on oxygen. Later that night mum gets a call from the hospital the patient was sent to, from the doctor who let's mum know that the lady is fine. She had a blood clot. If she had been left for another 15 minutes the doctor is certain she would have died. The lady made a full recovery and gave mum a beautiful scarf the next time she saw her.
16. Uncle Comes Home
A guy came to the door one day, looking for my mom. I was probably 13 at the time. Immediately, I had most of my body behind the door, ready to shut it. I just had this awful feeling about him. He said he hadn't seen her in a long time, and that he was just coming from church and was in the neighborhood. Ok, so this guy is trying to communicate that he's a good person, and that and his weird smile just made me trust him less. I told him my mom was napping. She wasn't. She was at work. So, he left a note for her with his name and number on it. I took it & closed & locked the door. Then I looked at the note & immediately recognized the name. It was my uncle. I hadn't seen him since I was 5 when he went to jail for murdering my aunt and cousin.
15. Bad Feeling About Mom
Several years ago on Thanksgiving, my mom was becoming extremely overwhelmed. The holidays have never been a great success in my family and my parents had issues communicating which led to a lot of stressful and tense dinners, and if it wasn't them it was someone else starting a fire.
Well, this year was bad. My mom had been cooking for hours to get ready to head over to my cousin's house. My dad was yelling about how we spend too much money on the holidays. It got to a point where my mom told me and my brothers to leave for the party ahead of them. We didn't get far from the house until a really bad feeling started sinking in my stomach. I knew my brothers felt something too. I said, "Can we go back?" And my older brother turned around immediately.
When we got there my father was gone, he had left out of anger and my mom yelled at him to leave. My mother was in her bed, lying still with an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her. She was still conscious when we came in but started shaking and was falling asleep. We called 911. I later learned that the pills she had taken would have only put her to sleep for a long time, not actually kill her but clearly, it was her intent. She has/had severe depression and after this, she got some real help.
14. Nick of Time
I was at a bar in October of 2013 or 2014, if I recall. Anywho, I lived in a particularly rough neighborhood at the time, and I was enjoying a few drinks.
I had this horrible feeling of uneasiness looming in the back of my mind, so I told my buddies I'm turning in for the night. They called me the following morning and informed me that the bar had gotten shot up and like three people were injured.
It was about two hours after I left if I recall.
13. Not Trusting Those Other Kids
My friend asked me for a ride home. I told him I wasn't going his way and he was like "okay, I'll catch a ride with those people." I wasn't a huge fan of the people he was going to go home with, so I said screw it and gave him a ride.
Turns out the kids who were going to take him home decided to speed down a windy, wooded road near his house at 80mph. They hit something and flipped the car multiple times. They all lived, but barely. The EMTs said that if they were bigger kids (they were all scrawny and under 5'10") they would've been crushed.
My friend who almost went with them is 6'2". He absolutely would've died that day.
12. Using Your Gut, With A Little Bit of Logic
Went on a high school field trip for a couple of days and the first day we had a barbeque. There was chicken and I didn't trust the other kids to make sure it was done well, so I passed up on it. Next day 15 people had salmonella, ruining their entire trip. Might fall under logic instead of instinct, though.
11. Mom, Something Is Up With The Dog
A couple years ago we had a young dog, about one and a half, who had epilepsy. Of course, we had to give him meds multiple times a day to help with it. One day he basically just stopped eating. After a day or two I told my parents that we should take him to a vet. Cue "No, he'll get over it."
About a week later, he's still not eating and we take him into the vet for a periodic checkup. Turns out he has liver failure that is almost guaranteed to progress into heart failure. We ended up having to put him down a couple of days later, simply because we didn't want him to suffer.
I told you, mom.
10. No One Knows You Better Than You
Not so much a bad "feeling" but I think it feels appropriate. I was a freshmen in high school going out for football for the first time. I'm pretty average, probably on the scrawny side. About two weeks into practice I started having terrible back pain. I told my mom, who said "you’re just sore, suck it up," so I did for a while. I kept going to practice for another week before I finally had to tell my mom she had to take me to the hospital or I’d go without her. So she sets up an appointment and...it turns out I had slightly broken a vertebrae. Tiny cracks on each side of the same vertebrae. Safe to say I don't take her advice much anymore.
9. Epic Party Turns Into Epic Arrests
Pretty simple one. Went to a party that was just shoulder-to-shoulder packed from the moment I arrived. I could barely move through the house. People were spilling out onto the lawn and everybody was acting a fool. Way too many people there and I figured it was about to go downhill fast. So I grabbed my friend and we bounced.
As we were leaving about 10 to 12 police units passed us on the road headed towards the party. City, county, and state police—it was a small town so they probably asked for help.
Found out later the party got shut down, obviously, and the police painstakingly ID-ed everybody there, arrested everybody involved with throwing the party because of underage drinking, arrested everybody that was underage, found a load of drugs and arrested people for that, and ended up towing a boatload of cars because nobody was sober enough to drive. Even people that were fine to leave didn’t get to leave for hours.
We just took our asses to a bar and drank like normal adults.
8. Right Place, Right Time
When I was in university I was walking home from the bars in the Byward Market in Ottawa, with my roommate at the time. It was about 2:30 am and we were looking forward to getting home and ordering some pizza when we came across two guys and a girl who looked like she was out of it.
Initially, we didn't think anything about it because it was a pretty common sight on a Friday, but as we walked behind them for a few minutes we noticed how badly out of it she was.
One of the guys was essentially carrying her, and her clutch was loosely dangling from her limp wrist. Our street came up, but instead of turning down it, we decided to see what was going on.
The guys explained that she was one of their girlfriends and had too much to drink so they were taking her home. We asked them a few more questions: what bar they were at, where she lived, if she was an Ottawa University student, etc. They gave pretty convincing answers, but all the same, they seemed really uncomfortable and wanted us to go away.
During the conversation, the guy holding his “girlfriend” shifted her position to get a better grip, which caused her arm to dangle down and drop her clutch. Before they could move, my roommate grabbed the clutch and took out her ID. My roommate then asked if they knew her first and last name along with her birthday.
This is where things changed.
The other guy got really aggressive and confrontational while the other went silent. They didn't know her name or birthday. I then pulled out my phone and called the police. The guy dropped her and they took off running.
We waited with her for about 10 minutes until the police and EMS got there. We gave a statement but did not have much to go on other than their descriptions.
Police told us they suspected she had been dosed, and that she was lucky we happened to be walking behind her. Pretty scary stuff.
7. Knowing What Is Best For Your Daughter
My oldest daughter (30-something) stopped by my work one day and introduced her new boyfriend. He seemed a little off to me, but I decided it was just "guy dating my daughter" and let it go. Later, he met my wife and I and she told me later that he seemed off to her, too. She has pretty good instincts about people, so we decided to investigate him a bit.
Typing his whole name into Google, the first result was a mugshot from a couple of years ago. The third was an active warrant. More searching resulted in finding three warrants from different counties, an extensive record (check deception, theft, driving while suspended, driving after a lifetime suspension, and driving while a habitual traffic offender), and a brand-new marriage license for him and my daughter. They were going to get married later that week.
We, of course, told her about him, but she insisted that he'd already told her about all of that and had "taken care of it." We emailed links to her roommate, who showed her, but she didn't have any luck talking her out of the relationship. They were in love, and everything would work out OK in the end.
We sent in an anonymous tip, and he was arrested the next day at her apartment. My daughter then found out that he'd been lying to her about pretty much everything. He had entangled her in a business he was trying to start that mostly involved her financing things for him, because his credit was trash due to records for bounced checks and theft. She's still working to untangle herself from that.
He is still in jail, and, according to her lawyer, will be for at least two years depending on what happens in two other counties.
6. Knowing Your Own Appendix
A couple of years back, I got a stomach ache. I'm not normally prone to them, so it felt a little strange. When the pain moved to my side, I knew something was wrong, so I called the doctor, who called me in for an emergency appointment—I was worried it might be appendicitis, he agreed.
I got there, got prodded and poked and told there was nothing wrong with me—“if it was really your appendix, you wouldn't be able to sit there and talk to me.” Fair enough, so I went home.
Later that night, I start throwing up, so I knew something was wrong, so off to the hospital. The complete idiot of a doctor prodded and poked around again and declared it was just a stomach bug, or maybe a urine infection. Told me to drink some flat Coke(!) and go to the doctor in the morning—bear in mind, I'm so pale as to be actually grey by this point and can barely hold down any more than a couple of sips of water.
Later in the morning, I'm still not feeling right so I get my SO to take me to the doctor again. More of the usual prodding and a “well it's probably an infection, but I'm going to refer you to the hospital, just in case.”
So I get to the hospital—long story short, I have a whole bunch of tests, but they're still not convinced it was appendicitis. I was, by this point. They eventually agree to do an appendectomy, using keyhole surgery.
So I go down for the operation, which they reckon will take an hour or so “and don't be surprised if you still have an appendix when you wake up, we're going to have a look first.” I woke up about six hours later with a 4-inch incision on my side with a tube sticking out of it rather than the three small holes I'd been told to expect. I asked the nurse what the heck happened, and got “oh yes, your appendix was really bad, apparently. I think it burst as they were removing it.”
So yeah; not only did I have appendicitis like I thought, but I had it really bad. I ended up in the hospital for another week being treated for sepsis.
5. Warning Signs
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, 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—literally almost killed the two staff, one got her head bashed in and suffered brain trauma and the other staff was blinded in one eye.
4. Granny Knows What's Up
We had a serial killer in South Carolina a couple years ago. No one knew what he looked like yet but he had already killed three people at this point. Well, my granny has lived alone since my paw-paw passed about 15 years ago. She lives at the end of a long dirt road with about 10 other families but the closest one was about a quarter mile up the road.
One afternoon some random guy comes knocking on the front door of her house. My granny is a practical woman, she has never been to school because she grew up on a farm and was expected to pull her weight, but she is a smart woman. She goes to the door but doesn't open it—it’s a glass door. The 40ish-year-old man is there asking if he can use the phone since his car broke down, but Granny doesn't like the look of this guy. If he doesn't live here there is no reason for him to be on this road and if he was visiting someone their house or anyone else's house would have been closer since she lives on a dead end.
Anyways, she tells him that no he can't use the phone and needs to leave. She backs up and picks up my paw-paw's 410 as she goes. Once he sees the shotgun he hightails it out of there. About a week later the cops finally catch the serial killer and lo and behold if it isn't the same man.
3. Threat On The Docks
A former co-worker, Jason, told me this story. Jason was working at a dock in China and unloaded shipping containers from huge international cargo ships. A typhoon had just passed, and many of the inbound ships had been delayed for days due to the extreme weather. Once the weather cleared, there was a backlog of ships waiting to be docked and unloaded. To make matters worse, a tropical depression had just been upgraded to a tropical storm and was expected to make landfall within 48 hours.
It was organized chaos as the dock workers frantically tried to unload three times the volume of shipping containers in half the time. Jason was a Senior Cargo Agent, and his job was to verify that the information on the offloaded shipping containers matched the information on the manifest, and to visually inspect shipping containers for damage. A cargo agent had to sign off on all cargo before an unloaded ship could disembark. As there were a limited number of spaces for ships to dock, it was crucial that the cargo agents verify the unloaded shipments as quickly as possible so that another ship could dock immediately.
Everyone at the dock had walkie-talkies (hand-held portable two-way radios), and Jason heard Dock Manager 1 going absolutely crazy because an unloaded ship had been waiting in the dock for nearly two hours, and no cargo agent had verified their delivery. Jason radioed Cargo Agent 1 assigned to that area, but there was no answer. He then radioed Cargo Agent 2, and still received no response. He then radioed the next closest Senior Cargo Agent 1 and asked him to drop everything and verify the cargo immediately.
After thirty minutes, Dock Manager 2 radioed that the ship was STILL docked. Jason then radioed Senior Cargo Agent 1 who he had sent over there and did not receive a response. He then radioed Dock Manager 1 who had been screaming into the radio and again received no response. Jason was now the only Senior Cargo Agent in the area, and it now fell to him to verify the unloaded shipment and get the delayed ship out of port ASAP.
As he got into his truck to drive over, a nagging feeling of dread kept telling him not to go. He ignored the feeling and drove there anyway, all the while trying and failing to radio anyone else in the area. When he arrived at the unloading zone, he couldn't bring himself to get out of the truck, and later said that it felt as if he was being physically pushed back into his seat.
Jason then picked up his radio with a shaking hand and broadcast, "Unknown threat near unloading section four. All workers evacuate immediately. This is not a drill." And just like that, a multi-billion dollar port was shut down.
A HazMat team was soon dispatched and found that a shipping container damaged in transit had been carrying a heavier-than-air type of inert gas. The gas leaked and displaced the air, then became trapped between several rows of closely stacked shipping containers. Every person that approached immediately lost consciousness. Five people were found dead near the damaged container, and Jason was later fired because he did not actually have the authority to shut down the port.
Jason filed the Chinese equivalent of a wrongful termination lawsuit, but was strongly encouraged to settle, or else the Chinese government might find him partially responsible for the workers' deaths. As a white foreigner in China, this was a very real possibility, and he ended up settling for a modest amount. Jason still blames himself for the death of Senior Cargo Agent 1 and gave the settlement amount to the man's widow.
2. Day Care Blues
I worked at a daycare. One of the mothers gave me the heebie-jeebies. She would show up randomly and be like “my baaaaaaby, i neeeed my baaaaby.” Like, moms love their kids and miss them, but her obsession with her daughter really made me feel weird.
She ended up killing her daughter so that she could be an angel. It really messed me up when I found out.
1. Expertise
Airline pilot here—warning, do not continue reading if flying makes you uneasy.
One day we loaded up passengers and cargo and everything and we were ready to taxi. I noticed that the nose of the airplane seemed to be higher up than usual while we were sitting on the ground.
I told my first officer about it and he agreed. We double checked the weight and balance and everything seemed to be right.
I decided to just taxi out towards the runway and see if the wheel struts would go back to their normal positions during taxi. Still felt weird to me. Something wasn't right.
I told ground control we needed to go back to the gate. Called Ops and told them we're headed back because I think something isn't right with the weight and balance.
After we get back, I ask them to check how much ballast we have in the aircraft. It's verified on my sheet as 500lbs., but I have a feeling...
Turns out, yep, they forgot to put it in the plane. So had we taken off, the center of gravity would have been out of whack—way past limits. It could have resulted in an airplane that was impossible to control. Just like that 747 that took off and had the load slide to the back.
That was a day that I was really pleased that I had so much experience flying to give me that feeling & that feeling could very well have saved my life along with others.
