Everybody at some time in their life has been someplace that they probably shouldn't have been. Some people have experiences that go a bit further though, being in places that they REALLY need to get out of ASAP. Fortunately though, people generally have pretty good intuition, and it can be pretty easy to tell when the vibes are off. Read on to hear the stories of people's "OH HECK NO" experiences, times when they realized they REALLY needed to get out of a situation.
Delivery Danger
“I work for a food delivery service and on one delivery I had to go about 2 miles down a one way road at about 10:30 pm. There were banks on both sides, so if I wanted to leave and another car came down the road I wouldn’t be able to get out. I would have to reverse backwards to a driveway. Houses around were pretty scattered and everyone’s driveways were at least 100 yards from the houses. I took notice of this driving in because I’m a woman and had my guard up. I get to the address which is an abandoned home with no lights and the driveway is blocked off with boards and immediately the hair on the back of my neck stood up. It was a dead end and the nearest house was about 700-800 yards away. I parked and locked my doors and called the customer and they said they were in the trailer across the street and they would come out to meet me. There was no trailer across the street at all, but this dude came off of a dirt trail and started walking up to my car. As they were coming towards me the guy asked if I could wait about 5 minutes for his friend to come back with a tip for me (the bill was already paid) and I politely declined saying that I had to go back to work, but actually because I was scared. He then got a phone call and his literal words were ‘yeah bro, can we make this happen? Are you on the road or what.’ I put the food on the ground said goodbye and booked it out of there so quick you could probably see dust behind me.
That incident taught me to always trust my gut and to never worry about the tip. I could have just been extremely paranoid but I feel like I got lucky that time.”
Lucky Girl
“I was traveling around Rajasthan with my family (parents, aunt+uncle, cousins, grandparents) when I was 11 years old. We were having lunch at our hotel and I got into a fight with my aunt and stormed out of the hotel.
The hotel had a small park/children’s play area by the entrance with swings and a slide and whatnot. I ran outside and went to play on the swings. It being a small hotel and lunchtime, the play area was totally empty, as most of the other kids at the hotel were with their families.
I sat on the swings and stewed for a little while, before a man (probably in his 30s) approached the play area and sat down on the swings beside me. Being a naive 11-year-old who was missing her friends back home and who had no one else to talk to about my fight, when this guy started asking me questions about my family, I opened up and answered them – in detail.
He asked if I was hungry, seeing as I had missed lunch. I told him I was and he said he had food in his private cottage (the cottages were behind the hotel and were quite fancy – much fancier than our standard-issue hotel rooms) and asked if I wanted to eat lunch with him in his cottage.
I was really curious to see what those cottages looked like from the inside and I was this close to saying ‘sure!’ when my mum came looking for me and the guy bolted. My back was to the entrance to the hotel, but my guess is he must’ve seen my mum approaching the play area and booked it before she got a glimpse of him.
My mum sat next to me (where he’d been sitting) and asked me who the man was. I told him he was my new friend (oh god, 11 year old me was so dumb) and that he’d invited me to lunch in his posh cottage. Mum gave me a lecture on stranger danger, led me back inside the hotel and filed a complaint at reception about the creepy man hanging around the kid’s play area.
I was heavily supervised for the rest of our trip and it wasn’t until a couple years later that I realized that the guy probably saw a kid sitting alone in the park and figured I’d be an easy target.”
A Dangerous Road
“My dad has lived in a little village near Bristol, UK, for pretty much all his life. I grew up there too. It’s not too far off a main road, and there’s a nice pub in the middle of it that’s practically a second home to all the locals.
One night during the late 80’s, Dad and his friends are all down the pub, which is having a lock-in. That main road had recently been closed for resurfacing and all the traffic had been diverted through the village, so there were plenty of new people who’d come in after seeing the pub on their way home.
It gets to about half past midnight, everyone’s a bit merry, and suddenly there’s a knock at the door. It’s one of the new guys who’d occasionally pop in from outside the village, who’s white as a sheet, out of breath and trembling. The landlord invites him in, sits him down, offers him a drink and asks what on earth happened.
‘I’ve just run over some poor girl.’
Everyone in the pub goes all quiet – it’s very close-knit round there, even today, and nobody wants to hear that one of theirs or their friend’s kids has just been hit by a car. People start asking him questions – Who did you hit? Is she badly hurt? Where is this?
‘It was on the main road, where they’ve just had all the roadworks. I don’t know who it was and I can’t find her, checked everywhere.’
‘She… I think she must still be under the car.’
Now everyone notices that this man hasn’t driven here, he’s apparently left his car on the main road and run to the pub. Panic does odd things to people I guess. Pretty quickly, everyone realizes someone’s going to need to go and check the accident site while the landlord calls the emergency services (no mobile phones back then). So about a half dozen people head out to where the roadworks were.
There’s the car, headlights on and driver’s side door still open, sat in the road at the end of some very long tire marks (no anti-lock brakes then either). The locals check the verges up and down the road, no girl lying there. No girl lying in the road.
They look under the car.
Nothing.
Someone points out that the car’s pristine too, doesn’t look like it’s hit anything at all. They take the car back to the pub, and let the driver know – he hasn’t run anyone over.
‘But I saw her – and heard her hit the car!’
Someone asked how fast he was going to cause that big skid mark, and he looked ashamed before saying:
‘Seventy, I think, maybe eighty.’
That’s double the speed limit. Eventually everyone chalks it up to him being tired, he gets to spend the night in the pub, and it all quiets down.
Two weeks later, it happens again to someone else – a driver insisting they hit a girl late at night on the main road, but no sign of an accident at all. A month later, it happens again. For the next year or so afterward, people came into that pub at night insisting they’d run someone over. The village got a ghost story!
Turns out, there was an explanation for all of this.
It only happened late at night, at exactly the place where the roadworks were, and usually if the driver was speeding. Any guesses who the girl was?
She was the ‘Please Drive Carefully Through Our Village’ sign, half covered in ivy.
You’d hit the resurfaced part of the road, the car would go bump, and the headlights would light ‘her’ up at the same time. If you weren’t paying attention, she looked like a teenage girl in a dark skirt.
They only figured this out after someone ran her over for real, and then moved her. The ghost sightings stopped after that, but it still feels like an ‘oh heck no’ from me!”
They’re Watching
“I did community service at the local hospital. One of my duties were to deliver the food menus early morning to EVERY patient so that meant starting my rounds around 5-6am. The first floor was ICU and it was still fairly dark around that time. I walked into a patients room and all the blinds were shut and the only light that lit the room came from the equipment she was hooked up to. I wasn’t sure if she was awake or not and so I announced myself and waited for a response. Sometimes patients were unable to make meal choices and so I would stick around to help them out. I stood there for a couple seconds and saw her eyes closed shut. Thinking she was still asleep, I made my way towards the door. Half way through, with my back towards her, I hear her say, ‘make sure they don’t follow you out.’ I stopped in my tracks and slowly turned around and saw that her eyes were still closed and quickly ran the heck out of there.
There was no one in that room except her.”
Attack Of The Lizards
“When I was in Mexico, I was staying on a decent-sized resort with a good amount of wildlife. When we first arrived, an employee warned us about the possibly aggressive wildlife (spider-monkeys, lizards, fish, etc) on the trails and in the waters. These trails had cenotes, gardens, historical pieces and a bunch of other cool stuff.
I wanted to see a ‘Prehispanic oven’ offered as a ‘historical piece,’ so I walk down a dirt road in the furthest corner of the resort (resort is about 6-7 square miles) to see this oven.
On my way out, at LEAST 30 of these freaking lizards were lined up making all sorts of sounds at me, with their necks all flared up and everything. Also, at the resort they told us to stay on the trails, because of other potentially dangerous wildlife. But I was cornered by THIRTY of these freaking things in nothing but wet shorts and sandals. How do you prepare someone for a situation like that?
I said to heck with the trails and I ran through those woods faster than I have ever ran before.
Not quite sure what those lil guys wanted from me.”
A Vulnerable Time
“I was around 11-12, in a public restroom that had a couple stalls. Just sat down to start my piddle when the woman in the next stall asked if I could pass her some toilet paper. Sure, no problem – we’ve all been there!
When I pass it under the divider, she ended up stroking my finger as she’s taking the paper, her index finger lingering on me. I didn’t think anything of it, it’s an awkward pass. I finish up, flush and step out of the stall to go wash my hands. As I’m starting scrubbing, she steps out of her stall. Normal looking 40-ish woman, just looks like someone’s mom.
She starts washing her hands and just locks eyes with me in the mirror. It was only about 3 seconds in total, but I remember how her smile subtly went from generic to something a little darker. It was hard to explain, but I felt like she wanted to eat me. Every possible spot of skin that could get goosebumped stood to attention. Instinct told me to get the heck out of that bathroom so I bolted.
Could have been nothing, could have been a childish dramatic projection, but I swear that woman was going to chew on me.”
Close Call
“I used to work the night shift all the time, and basically shifted my whole sleep schedule over to that (wake up 7pm every day). It was fine save for the fact that every now and then I’d have to do my grocery shopping at like 10pm; which wouldn’t be so bad if i also didn’t have Epilepsy which means I can’t legally drive. So I bike everywhere — usually listening to podcasts on the way.
One day I was on my way home from shopping and got to my driveway. It was one of those super long rural drive ways that so many Creepy Pasta people would go into a long 4 page long description of how ‘creepy’ it is. It wasn’t creepy, really, just secluded. Anyway — it’s a long drive through the woods and I’m used to all kinds of animals jumping out and running by as I’m going down the road. But this day something felt off — I saw an animal jump out into the middle of the drive and I just stopped waiting for it to scurry off. I honestly thought it was a deer — because they’re stupid and everywhere.
But then my lights caught the eye shine and I realized it was wayyyyy too low to be a deer. My next thought was, ‘oh great it’s one of the coyotes that we keep seeing in the backyard.’ I unplugged my headphones and turn my music up as loud as it’ll go (I had a Lumia 635, which had a loud as heck speaker). I started stomping my feet and trying to scare the dumb coyote out.
I was shining my lights out on it. It just stood there, staring at me… and then it got low to the ground. Low to the ground and sulked towards me. I realized immediately this was not a Deer or Coyote or even a neighborhood dog escaped. It was a freaking mountain lion that was now slowly approaching me. I backed my way out of the driveway, making sure not to lose eye contact with the animal, and then busted my butt down the hill to my job (only place open at that hour within immediate biking distance).
I wasn’t 100% certain it was a mountain lion at seeing it skulk, I just knew it was not any of the animals I’m used to seeing at that it was acting aggressive / defensive towards me being there. The only reason I KNOW it was a mountain lion was as I turned the corner on the top of the hill, I tilted my head (to make sure nothing was following me) to see another (maybe the same one?) sitting on a rock wall literally 4 feet away from me.
It normally takes me 30 minutes to get to work, it took me only 10 minutes that day.”
OH Heck No
“I just recently moved out of the north. Where I lived in particular happened to be a very tick infested place some seasons. Well one day I pulled a huge tick off my dog, grabbed an old shoe and flattened that bugger. When I lifted up the shoe I noticed a good amount of blood moving all strange like. Upon closer investigation it turned out to be little microscopic babies moving around. It gave me the most ‘oh heck no’ feeling I’ve probably had.
I ended up torching the concrete for like a minute straight. Took care of the situation quite well.”
Not Today
“Early one morning I was leaving a hotel and a man followed me to my car. I jumped in quickly and locked the doors as my butt was hitting the seat. He knocked on my window and I let it down only about two inches. He tried his best to convince me I dropped a key in the parking lot and should get out and get it. It was a ploy and I knew it. I finally looked him in the eye and said, ‘No! Not me!’ He knew I meant that he wasn’t getting me. I wasn’t scared, but instead furious. I left before he did and hurried to get onto the interstate. With heavy 5 lane traffic he came flying up behind me and then right before slamming into me he darted left between cars, almost causing an accident.
I couldn’t report him because I left so quickly I didn’t get his plate number. I never stayed at that hotel again while traveling that route.”
The Good Samaritan
“I was riding the train after a soccer game with my brother and his wife and was standing in a compartment. A very hammered woman was sitting on the floor by herself. She complimented my shoes (not expensive shoes) and was slurring every word. I told her they were from Nordstroms on sale, as a joke, and turned away from said wasted woman.
A man was standing nearby and lifted his shoe up and said, ‘What about mine?’ To which people chuckled. I thought he was just going for a joke but he kept watching her. Once we got to a stop and it was called over the intercom, she got up to leave. The man looked left, then right, and then got off train with her.
I practice social work and have worked in victims advocacy for some time. This was every bad vibe I needed. I said ‘[oh heck no]’ and got off at this stop (way ahead of my actual stop). My sister in law pushed my brother on to the platform and they both followed me, unsure as to why I left the train.
The man was twenty feet ahead with his arm around this woman as she stumbled along the platform. I walked up and said, ‘I just have to let you know, you are acting exactly like a predator and are giving off a lot of red flags.’ He went on to explain his innocence, that he has daughter her age, and that.. and I quote, ‘I wish someone would be this protective of my daughter.’
We separated the two. My sister in law was walking with the woman and supporting her from falling. My brother and I kindly led the man away. When we met back up, the woman had flagged down a driver in the parking lot that she said was her boyfriend. She got in the car and rode off.
I am pretty certain we prevented an assault that day.”
Saved By Auntie
“When I was 12, I took a flight by myself from Sacramento to Anchorage to see my aunt, with a three-hour layover at the Sea-Tac airport. I was going to be 13 in a few months, which was the minimum age to fly alone, so my parents just told me to lie if asked. Normally, my parents were extremely overbearing and overprotective, but I don’t know, I guess they just thought this would be fine.
At the Sea-Tac airport, I noticed a man watching me. Memory does strange things, so who knows what he actually looked like, but I remember him looking quite tall, about 40 years old, and of a vague ethnicity. At twelve years old, I was a dumb child. I mean really, really dumb. I thought I was a grown woman (of course I was, if I wasn’t, why would I be flying alone to Alaska?) so I interpreted the man watching me as just ‘thinking I was hot’ because I was wearing very stylish clothing. This didn’t bother me because I had convinced myself that ‘only older men have the good taste to be interested in me.’ I was bitter that boys my own age didn’t like me.
When I got on the plane, he was sitting a row behind and across from me. I kept checking to see if he was still looking at me, and it seemed to me that he was. I felt a mild sense of accomplishment at being so interesting, but I mostly put it out of my mind and just listened to music on my CD-walkman.
When we landed in Anchorage, I kind of forgot about the guy as I was looking for my aunt. I couldn’t find her. I didn’t have a cell phone, and she didn’t have a cell phone at that time, so I wasn’t sure what to do. I wandered around and bought a snack and sat on benches, waiting. Eventually, I looked up her phone number that I’d written down and used a Payphone to call her house. I left a message on the machine. When I hung up, the man was standing next to me. I had been waiting for my aunt for about an hour at that point.
He asked me if everything was ok, and if I was lost. His accent was one I didn’t recognize, I still have no idea. I told him that I couldn’t find my aunt and had been waiting a long time. He told me that she might be waiting outside in her car for me, since she may have had to pull up to the pick-up/drop-off lanes. He offered an arm and said he’d walk me outside to make sure I found her safely.
I started to walk with him, but when we got to the main lobby I saw my aunt. I turned to tell the guy it was all ok, and thank you, but he had freaking vanished. Just booked it out of there. I thought I saw him walking swiftly up the escalator but I wasn’t even sure.
Maybe this was nothing. Maybe this really was a good samaritan trying to help a scared kid, and I would really like to think that. I feel guilty that the memory freaks me out sometimes, because the fact that the guy’s accent and ethnicity were unknown to me makes me worry that I’m just being racist. But honestly, when he disappeared as soon as my aunt showed up, my stomach dropped. I have no idea what would have happened to me if I’d gone outside with him. Probably nothing good.”