Trusting your intuition is important. Sometimes you may have that uneasy feeling in your gut that something terrible is about to happen. Don't ignore it. Listen closely and act on it. In this article, people share their bad gut reaction to someone that turned out to be 100% correct.
[Content has been edited for clarity.]
An Extremely Lucky And Surreal Sight
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“I was the designated driver. I was at a stop light when it turned green. My gut said ‘Nope, we are cool right here.’ I have three wasted guys sitting in the back, and one up front, all screaming that I should have let them drive, what the green light means, how to operate the long vertical pedal, etc. – all very helpful. Just as I shrugged and shook it off, a black Camaro with its lights off zoomed through the red light, lost control and crashed into a telephone pole. It would have T-boned me 100%.
The guys are all in awe of my psychic power. The Camaro, flames shooting out from under the crushed hood, backed up and drove off.”
Can’t Even Trust Family
“Neighbors have 2 kids… they were 6 yr old girl and 4 yr old boy at the time. The wife’s brother took care of the kids while both parents worked. The brother gave off a creepy vibe, and I wouldn’t let my daughter (she was 8 or 9 at the time) go inside their house when the wife’s brother was there alone with the kids.
The husband comes home one day to find him doing something to the little girl. Husband beats him up and is arrested. He’s still in jail a few years later, but I still won’t let my kid into their house.”
The Kindergarten Teacher
“This guy was a kindergarten teacher at my school. Everyone loved him! He was great with the kids, and his whole room was covered in SpongeBob stuff; everyone wanted their kid in his class. He was close with a lot of parents (and therefore their kids) outside of the classroom. Despite all this, this guy made me sick just looking at him. I would get really anxious around him, and when my friends said, ‘Let’s go talk to Mr. X’ I would make some excuse to stay away from him. I never could really figure out why I felt like this. Anyway, eventually, he moved away with his wife, much to everyone’s dismay. Probably ten years later, it came out he had been arrested for possession of child smut and had also been in some of said pictures. It was really horrible for my whole community. I’m glad I felt off about him though and stayed away.”
Saving Their Brother’s Life
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“One night, I was heading to my room when I noticed my younger brother, who I will call ‘Shawn’ in this story, was wearing his pajamas. It was barely 9 p.m. Shawn NEVER went to bed that early.
I asked him why he’d changed. Shawn told me that he felt sick, and dad had told him to go to bed and see if he felt better in the morning.
Shawn didn’t look that sick and something just felt off. I asked if mom knew Shawn didn’t feel good. He said no, he’d just talked to dad. It felt like to me that mom HAD to know Shawn was sick, so I started to flip out and snapped at Shawn that he should NEVER trust dad’s medical advice. Dad just tells people to sleep earlier and exercise more. Shawn needed to tell mom, NOW.
Shawn very clearly thought I was over-reacting (heck, I thought I might be overreacting), but he went downstairs and told mom he didn’t feel good. First thing mom did (as per usual) was check him for rashes. He had a red streak running from his thumb up to his armpit.
Shawn had severe blood poisoning. We found out later from the hospital he was four hours away from death.
If I hadn’t had such a strong feeling that Shawn HAD to tell mom he didn’t feel good, he wouldn’t be alive today.”
Picking Up Non-Verbal Cues
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“There was a knock on the shared front door; the house was broken into three flats. I was on the ground floor. I recognized the guy at the door as the boyfriend of the pretty woman who lived a couple of floors above us, and he smiled at me and asked if he could come in and wait for her in the hallway.
Nice looking guy, very upper middle class with a tweed jacket and posh accent. Good manners, winning smile.
My stomach did a flip, and I said no and shut the door in his face very abruptly. I had no idea why I reacted as badly as I did because I knew him to say hi to, and I knew he spent the night in the building a lot.
A couple of days later I see her with her face swollen and purple where he had beaten her to a pulp. Apparently, she had been in a hospital for a few days. She stopped me in the hallway and said if I ever saw the boyfriend again I was to call the police.
I’m guessing I subconsciously picked up on some non-verbal cue from when I saw them together.”
Off His Rocker
“So a couple years ago I used to work out a lot at this gym a couple miles from my house. There was this personal trainer who worked there, and we would occasionally shoot the breeze about fitness, working out etc, whiling away time in the sauna. Well, one day I finish a workout and go into the locker room and open the door to the sauna. And there’s the personal trainer guy, acting out this horrifically violent shadow boxing routine. It’s steamy in the sauna so it takes him a tad longer than instantaneously to realize I just walked in. He stops abruptly as if to avoid embarrassment. I thought he was just goofing off or something, but then I saw this insane look in his eye like he had actually just got done fighting in a war with Spartans – seriously his face was crazy. I always thought he was a little off his rocker after that.
Anyway couple months later the guy gets arrested for taking home a tinder date, chopping her body up and burying the corpse in the woods. So yeah, I guess off the rocker he was indeed.”
Can’t Point Out What Gave Him The Creeps
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“There was a girl I grew up with who was loosely a part of my greater social circle who always creeped me out. I brought this up with some closer (male) friends, and they seemed to agree.
If you asked me to say why I couldn’t tell you. She was a bit ditzy but very friendly and just overall nice, never said a bad thing about anyone or found herself in any drama but it was just like she was almost missing some human component.
Anyways, we lost touch after high school, but a few years after that she had a kid and a few years after that she got sent to prison for years. She was poisoning her kid, and the doctors caught on I guess. Luckily the kid lived and is with the father who by all measures is a decent guy.
I’ve told this story before, and it’s frustrating because I really can’t articulate anything specific about her that gave me the creeps, but there it is.”
She Knew They Were Up To No Good
“I was at a party once at an apartment complex that’s known for its sketchy tenants. I only knew a few people there so I just stuck with one of my friends. Halfway thru the party a girl (I’ll call her Sally) I met a few months back at a job showed up with two guys who just seemed really shady (pushing people to smoke with them, feeding this girl TONS of drinks). By 11 pm, Sally was seriously messed up. My friend and I leave to go get some more drinks and come back an hour later. Sally is on the floor in the back room convulsing and foaming at the mouth. Her ‘friends’ she showed up with refuse to allow me to take her to the bathroom and make her throw up. Chaos ensues-I leave. While walking back to my friend’s apartment, I called 911 cause I KNEW something was seriously wrong with her. The EMTs show up and take her to the hospital. Two days later she messages me on FB to tell me the doctors found multiple substances in her system that she didn’t choose to take. She suspects her friends but isn’t sure. I’m positive it was them.
Six months later a news article is posted. One of the sketchy guys was arrested for running a child trafficking business from a nearby hotel.
So basically the second I saw these dudes show up with my acquaintance Sally I KNEW something was fishy. And I was right. Those guys were awful people.”
The Creepy, Untrusted Boyfriend Of Their Sister
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“My sister had a boyfriend ten years older than her. I didn’t have a problem with the age gap, even though the fact that he had his first child when my sister was 13 kind of weirded me out. Age doesn’t matter as much when you’re adults, right?
She intentionally got pregnant six months into the relationship. I was excited to meet him during a family trip, seeing as he’s the father of my niece. Upon meeting him, I got a strange vibe from him and found myself anxious at the idea of being alone with him. He didn’t do or say anything strange though and seemed like a nice guy. Still, when it was just him and me, I felt incredibly tense like he would try to harm me at any moment.
I stayed at my sister’s place for a few days, then went home in the next province over.
He added me on Facebook, and then I got a message saying he thought I was super cute and he wanted to get together. He tried to cheat on my sister with me. He tried to cheat on my sister who was six months pregnant! I didn’t reply, I just screen capped the message and sent it to my sister and my mom, asking my mom to look out for my sister since her boyfriend is a puddle of grease.
After some issues, my sister is now a single mother.”
Escaped Death That Night
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“One night I was out walking my dog on the same route we walked every night. I lived in a pretty much all residential neighborhood, narrow streets, 25mph speed limit, stop signs on practically every intersection of a major city. It was dusk and weirdly foggy, which muffled the normal city noise and made everything feel a little eerie. We reached an intersection that was a four-way stop, I looked both ways, and nothing was coming, so I went to step into the crosswalk. Immediately I got a chill down my spine and pulled my dog back onto the sidewalk with me. I quickly looked again, and for the block or two I could see in the fog and darkness there was still nothing visible and no noise of oncoming traffic.
I hesitated one more second, feeling silly and paranoid, when a car zoomed out of the fog, going incredibly fast, no headlights, and completely blew through the stop sign. It was quickly out of sight again in the fog, but seconds later I heard a loud crash. The car had t-boned an SUV three blocks away when it ran another stop sign. The car was destroyed. I called 911, and police and ambulances were quickly on the scene. Luckily it was a huge SUV, so the people in that car were mostly ok. The driver of the car was taken in an ambulance. I later heard that the driver did live but that he was under the influence and they estimated going over 60 mph in a 25 mph zone. If he had hit my dog and me, which he almost certainly would have if I had kept crossing, we’d likely both be dead.
I pay much more attention to my gut feeling now.”
Always Listen to That Gut Feeling
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“A couple of months ago, my girlfriend said she was stopping by at her brother’s house to grab something and was then going to see her best friend. She said I love you, kissed me and was on her way. As she left, I just had this uneasy feeling.
A little rewind, about a month before this her brother’s best friend Scott, whom I didn’t know at all, got her a job, had been driving her to work here and there and also picking her up to go to her brother’s to hang out. It was a little more than I liked, I said something and was assured he was a good guy trying to help out. Ok cool, I would do the same for a friend.
Back to her leaving. So she was gone, and I was sitting there thinking ‘something is off.’ I did something I thought I’d never do, I grabbed her iPad and checked her messages to find out I was right. She had the best friend set up to lie to me should I ask where she was and even added a ‘ha-ha’ after her message. She was going to Scott’s place to hang out. I had already told her that he was going out of his way too much and that I didn’t think he had ‘let’s just be friends’ intentions, she maintained they were friends. So I messaged her and told her to get her butt home, and she again lied that she was at her besties, so now I told her I knew what was up and to get home. We talked and sorted it out and were going to work on it. Things were going well for a while after that. We started to get on track again, but (there’s always a but) I once again got an uneasy feeling, and again I read the messages, she was having an emotional affair with this scoundrel who was trying to convince her that I was putting up walls and all sorts of stuff. I sat her down again, we talked, she didn’t know what to do and said she had feelings for two people, so I left her.
I helped her through depression and anxiety, she didn’t work for over a year and I did everything and took care of her and never expected anything other than for her to get better. I put myself into debt for her to find happiness. And this was how I got treated. Ridiculous! I feel bad for looking at her messages but at the same time, I’m glad I did so that I didn’t get taken advantage of for longer. Lesson learned, always follow that gut instinct.”
The Kid’s Gut Feeling Saved Their Lives
“Ages ago, I was maybe 9 years old, we were on our way home from the local pool when a massive summer storm started. I’m talking full on garbage bins flying through the air and feeling how the wind was moving our car a bit to the left. So we entered this tunnel, and I suddenly screamed ‘STOP’ at the top of my lungs. My mother slowed down and asked me, confused about what was going on. I – now crying – begged her to stop the car and wait for the storm to stop. She told me that she couldn’t just stop the car in the middle of the street in a tunnel and promised me to drive slow and carefully. Just as we were able to see the end of the tunnel a small tree fell onto the street… followed by a gigantic 300kg rock.
That stone would have hit and squished us. It even left a bump in the road.
I have no idea what gave me the feeling, but I am thrilled that it was there.”
The Moment She Looked Into Her Eyes
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“I gave birth in November to a baby girl who had a rare neurological disorder. She hardly moved at all in utero, but when I told my doctors, they all said that every pregnancy/baby is different, etc, so I tried to put my worries to bed. We had a healthy pregnancy before, totally standard tests – no indication of trouble.
Then she was born. The second she opened her eyes for the first time, I got a horrible, sinking feeling in my gut. There was no one ‘there’ behind her eyes. We were still in the delivery room. There were pictures taken, and in every one, I look wary and scared.
There were immediate problems. She didn’t latch, she had no reflexes, etc. I shoved all my worries down. She was born a few weeks early. Everyone kept saying, ‘Bottle feed her and she’ll perk up once she gets closer to her due date.’ Every nurse, every doctor, every lactation consultant. We were released from the hospital with a ‘healthy baby.’ Nope, nope, nope. A week later, we were back in the NICU because she was still lethargic and she wasn’t eating. It turns out she was brain-dead the entire time.
The diagnosis was Ohtahara Syndrome, which is fatal. She died after sixteen days. The doctors who saw her initially were, of course, shocked and saddened. It’s such a rare syndrome that nobody suspected that she could be suffering from a catastrophic seizure disorder. It didn’t look like she was having seizures at all, actually, she just looked asleep. The biggest problem was that she didn’t feed, but doctors are trained to consider that normal for babies who are born a little early. I don’t begrudge anyone who gave us advice in the early days after she was born…but I knew that something about her was different right away.
I didn’t want to know, but I knew, I knew the moment I looked into her eyes.”
Saving A Neighbor’s Life
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“My mother (around 9-10 years old at the time) was eating dinner with her family, and someone knocked on the front door. Her dad (my grandfather) got up to answer, and it was a salesman. My grandfather politely declined whatever product he was selling and whatever spiel he was going to go on, as they were having family dinner. The salesman was very aggressive in trying to continue speaking and even tried to invite himself into their home. At that point, my usually level-headed grandfather got upset and said something along the lines of ‘you need to leave now.’ Finally, the salesman gave up and proceeded to the next house, but not before my grandfather called the neighbors to warn them. The young female neighbor answered the phone and said she was home alone, so my grandfather told her not to answer the door whatsoever. Fast forward a few months and the ‘salesman’ turned out to be a serial killer, targeting young women home by themselves and posing as a salesman. To sum it all up, my grandfather may have very well saved his neighbor’s life. Always reminds me to trust my gut when I get a bad feeling.”
It All May Seem Okay On The Surface … But The Truth Is Something Else
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“When I was 16, I was dating this guy, and we were very close with his brother and girlfriend. The brother lived with the mum and stepdad whereas we lived in our place. So one day I noticed he looked super skinny and made a joke to him about eating more and he just laughed….no one thought anything of it. So my boyfriend got a call one day from his mum saying she’s booked a random holiday for a week. He told me, and for some unknown reason, I yelled: ‘No, they can’t leave (brother) alone because he’s going to hurt himself!’ I don’t know why I said it… I just got this sick feeling in my stomach and felt like I had to say it.
Obviously, my boyfriend laughed and told me I was stupid, but I just felt like it wasn’t stupid, my gut was saying I had to help him.
After a few days of bringing it up with my boyfriend, he asked his brother if he was ok and he said yes, and I started to think maybe I was just crazy for feeling this way.
Still, I decided that my boyfriend and I would be staying at his parents’ house with his brother for that week. The first night the brother was super quiet and sat writing in this big notepad. When we asked what he was writing about, he just made a joke. Something in me didn’t feel right.
So the next night my boyfriend asked me to stay home so he could spend some time just with his brother. I didn’t feel good about this but said ok.
I got up and went to work the next day, and all morning I just felt sick… I felt like something wasn’t ok, I just couldn’t shake it. By the time I spoke to my boyfriend after work, he said: ‘I can’t find him anywhere. His phone is on the table, but I can’t find him.’
I started to panic, but he insisted I go home, and he was sure his brother is ok and just forgot his phone. I knew it wasn’t ok, but I went home.
Next day at work I was so stressed I couldn’t concentrate. My boyfriend turned up on my lunch break and as we were walking he said, ‘You won’t need to go back to work today. My stepdad has spoken to your boss already.’ I was thinking, ‘What is he going on about?’ So we walked to his parents’ house, which was about five minutes from where I worked, and his parents’ car was there… how weird I thought.
We sat down out the front, and he said he has to tell me something. I knew straight away what he was about to tell me.
His brother had committed suicide.
The note he was writing on the first night I stayed over was a goodbye note.”
Keep The Doors Locked
“I was 18 and had just moved into my own apartment. The complex was managed by the owner’s son and right from the get-go he seemed off to me. Nothing that I could articulate, but I felt uncomfortable around him. Since he was frequently at the complex for one reason or another, I kept my door locked and chained whenever I was home and I would literally run away if I saw him outside to avoid talking to him. Well, one day I grab the local paper and on the front page is this guy’s face. He had ‘fallen in love’ with a previous tenant and had harassed her and her boyfriend, and continued to stalk her after she moved away. She was a grade school teacher and he waited outside the school for her, shot and killed her in front of the school kids and then killed himself.”