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We’ve all experienced the dilemma of being caught between listening to our gut and dismissing it as a typical case of overthinking. So, to unblur these lines, experts determined four criteria for when you should trust your instincts: when it pertains to your health, when you feel like something’s off in a relationship, when you doubt yourself, and, as this list shows, when it concerns your safety.
People on Reddit shared their experiences about how heeding their inner voice saved them from danger. They’ve been spared from potentially fatal attacks, freak accidents, or “wrong place at the wrong time” moments.
If you’ve been in similar situations, feel free to share your story in the comments below.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Does that 'I need to go home now' feeling count? It wasn't me, though—it was my mom.
I was about 12, and my mom left to run an errand, leaving me home alone. Not long after she left, the doorbell rang. This was strange because we lived on a hill with only two neighbors, and we were all pretty reclusive. We just didn’t get random visitors. Thanks to some conveniently placed picture frames, I was able to look out without being seen. I saw a young man I didn’t recognize, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, and something about him just felt... off. So I decided to ignore him and hoped he’d leave.
But he didn’t. He hung around and started smoking. Again, we were on an isolated hill, I was alone, and I started to feel really scared. I went and hid, planning to wait for my mom to return. But she’d only just left, had a few errands to run, and I couldn’t reach the phone without him seeing me.
As I was trying to figure out what to do, my mom came home. She rushed inside and asked if I was okay. Apparently, she’d gotten an overwhelming 'go home NOW' feeling, so she hadn’t even made it to her first errand. She turned around right away, found the guy in our yard, and asked what he wanted. He muttered something about looking for someone, and my mom told him to leave. He was acting strangely, which made her nervous.
To this day, I have no idea what he wanted or how my mom knew to come home. But I’m extremely grateful that she did.
RELATED:
#2
I had pulled up to a three way stop in Indiana. It was early August, and the corn was high, making it hard to see cars at the other two stop signs. I started inching my car out, and clear as day, I heard my Granny say”stop!”
I hit my brake, and a car flew through the intersection without stopping. I would’ve been hit had I not listened to her voice.
She had died two years before this happened.
#3
Not me,but my parents. My parents were in Thailand on their honeymoon on December 25 2004. They were by the beach. My parents say they had a feeling they should advance the tickets a day ahead. 8:00 am on the morning on 2004,they took off and saw the waves come in and destroy the resort they were in.
#4
I lived in the States (Australian) for 7 years. One morning I woke up in a panic with the thought, 'I have to go home NOW' and booked flights.
Managed to get back to Australia 2 weeks later.
1 week later, COVID hit and the riots ensued near my old residence in the U.S.
#5
I can think of many times at parties/clubs/events/ etc where I’ve felt the stare of a guy/group or guys and felt uncomfortable and that gut feeling of being uneasy and scared
Where I’ve been like “we need to leave now”
Not something uncommon when you are a girl.
Magenta Blu 3 weeks ago
Being a woman means to be scared everytime I'm outside my house, so this is not really new.
#6
I didn't need to leave, but he sure as s**t did. I was doing yard work in my front yard with my young daughter (4-6). She was inside the picket fence. I was just around the side of the house where I could still see her but wasn't visible from the street. Some creepy old white dude in a rusty panel van (by the gods, it was so stereotypical) drove by and slowed way down and was staring hard at her. I got this pit in my stomach when I saw him do all this. I came charging out from the side, like, I'm going to jail for murder, but worth it. When he saw me come around the corner, he laid about ¼ inch of tire in the road as he sped off. She was oblivious to the whole thing, thankfully. I called the cops and gave them the lowdown and a description. I never saw that rig again, but by Grabthar's Hammer, if I did, I'd shoot first and ask questions later. F**k that guy.
#7
Not my story but my brother's. When he 20 he was with a friend of his and had just met a girl at a bar. He and the guy followed her into her flat where about 10 minutes later they heard the girl speaking in Spanish. All of my family can speak Spanish so when he heard her say "I got two for you" he quickly grabbed his friend and left. Don't know what she had planned for them but I don't like it.
#8
I was walking home from school alone back in the early 80’s, and noticed a man in a truck was following me. I got a gut feeling to run as fast as I could, which I did. He sped up as well, but I managed to duck behind a big group of bushes.
I watched from the bushes as he slowed down in his truck scanning the bushes to see if, I was in there.
He drove off after about 5 minutes, and later that night my parents had the t.v on and the police were looking for that same man for an attempted kidnapping a few streets away.
#9
Was in a bar on the rooftop deck. Some dudes started getting rowdy near the entrance to the deck. I could see the escalation happening and I told the gal I had been talking to to follow me and we went down the back stairs through the kitchen.
Two things happened that night. First, one of the guys got stabbed... In the head... Like through the top of his skull. Super glad I got out of there when I did. Second, I got laid that night. She thought it was super cool to "escape through the kitchen".
#10
Me and a girlfriend were making out in my car somewhere in downtown. Some empty parking lot at night. I happened to look out the window and see a guy walking up to us in the dark from a distance. I decided not to wait around. As soon as I started the car, he started running towards us. I took off as fast as I could.
LizzieBoredom 3 weeks ago
"Wait! Wait!! Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as you Savior?".
#11
Riding with brother in law to help him buy a couch he found on Craigslist.
Pull into a very shady looking apartment complex and notice a few people up front watching us pull in and suddenly calling someone with their cell. Bad body language all around.
Lizard brain says it's an ambush.
Tell BIL and we turn around and leave.
That night on the news there was a shootout because dudes were setting people up to be robbed at the back of the complex.
#12
Was in Oaxaca, Mexico during the protests/violence that occurred. One day my dad and I were in the central plaza. It's mid-afternoon and about to rain and he's on the phone with my mom. I look around and realize we're alone. Nobody is in the plaza. We're a couple of Americans and also the only people there.
I tell my dad to get off the phone we meed to go. He waves me off. I tell him to turn around and look. He realizes were alone, hangs up and we need to go.
20 minutes later the local resistance takeover of tv and radio stations in the city started.
SpiderWoman13 3 weeks ago (edited)
Many parts of Mexico are safe and lovely with excellent standards of living. Still, there are certain regions there - and other parts of the world - that I would not go to. There's an annual advisory from CIA and Homeland Security that every visitor should consult before traveling. No doubt America is now on some advisories for European and other tourists as well. IRONIC.
#13
At a big college party. Talking to a guy. He leaned in and whispered, “things are about to get r**e-y.” I laughed to defuse the situation. Then I politely excused myself, found my friend and we immediately left.
sfgothgirl 3 weeks ago
Imagine being that loser, thinking other thought similar to you, and deciding to actually say those words out loud to somebody!
#14
I woke up to the smell of burnt rubber and it turned out to be that my garage was on fire. I woke up everybody in the house (9 people including a baby) and we got the hell out of there. Luckily the fire didn't make it into the house and we had it covered by insurance but it was scary as hell.
#15
I was at a party and saw some girls rushing out of the house. I was drunk and got freaked out and left. While sitting in my car attempting to sober up, i hear screaming and gun shots from inside the house and book it down the street for a couple blocks until someone came and picked me up.
#16
A few instances from mountain climbing/backpacking:
On the summit of Mt. Adams, a 12,500 foot (dormant) volcano in Washington state. The wind suddenly picked up ***very*** strongly as we were packing up lunch and about to descend. We looked up and saw what I can only describe as two horizontal tornadoes sucking up loose snow from around us. We basically ran/fell down the 50-foot snow slope from the small summit to a larger plateau below as the vortices descended to where we were just a minute before. We booked it across the plateau to the main slope, and then did a glissade (controlled sitting descent using an ice axe for rudder/brake) down a 3,000 vertical foot snow field in 15 minutes (it took us four hours to climb up the same snow field).
On a 13,000+ foot ridge in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in Sequoia National Park. Light puffy clouds in the morning quickly built up to thunderstorms as we crossed the pass to get to the camp for that night. We could actually feel and smell the static electricity in the air as lightning began to strike. Again, descended as fast as humanly possible.
Rachel Pelz 3 weeks ago
I wonder if they had informed themselves about weather conditions and this was the residual risk.
#17
I went to college in downtown Chicago and took the El tracks home after an evening class, it wasn't too late, maybe like 8p? This one time there were only a few other people in the train car I was in and so everyone was spread out. At one of the stops this shady looking guy gets on and even though there were plenty of empty rows where he could sit alone he goes and sits next to a woman. Not 2sec later that woman gets up and immediately goes to another car.
This same guy then gets up from the seat turns around towards where I'm sitting, mind you like the woman, I was sitting near the window and had my backpack on the seat next to me. He sits down on my backpack without saying a word. Shocked I yank my bag from under him and thats when I see that he has this weird silver finger cover thing over his entire pointer finger. This ornament finger thing looked heavy and it had intricate carved dragons all over it except at the end where a nail would be there was like a long claw-like dagger. I look at this guy and he is just staring straight ahead, didn't even flinch with me pulling my back pack, plus he reeked of alcohol. I then noticed this other guy who was seated across from us and was staring right at me mouthing: "GET UP NOW". So thats what I did, I used my back pack to kind of buffer me from him and pushed myself out of the aisle as the train was approaching the last stop, I left that car and had so much adrenaline pulsing that I kept going through other train cars to get as much distance as I could, until the train came to a stop and I ran the f**k of of there and down the stairs where I alerted a cta employee about him. It was really scary and after that my boyfriend got me a taser and pepper spray that I would literally hold in my hands so that everyone could see when I rode the trains at that hour.
Julia Ford 3 weeks ago
That’s not even weird to see on the El. At any time. Drunk people sit next to you and pee (or poop). One guy was shooting up next to me and blood squirted out. That was quite a morning commute.
#18
Several years ago, 6 of my friends and I were out of state for a wedding. We rented an Air BnB for the group. Immediately after getting there we learned that the guy who rented out his house had a roommate who was almost never home, but happened to be there for the first time in weeks, and didn't realize the house was going to be occupied. The owner insisted that he spoke with him and he was planning to pack up and stay at his girlfriends so we could have the home to ourselves as planned. Sure enough, he was gone that afternoon.
We went out that night and came home intoxicated, as 20-something's do from time to time. One of our guy friends came up from the basement looking shocked. Apparently the roommate was back..and based on him being asleep..it was clear he planned to stay.
We quieted down and rearranged where we'd all planned to sleep. But this was only the beginning.
The next morning we were woken up by excruciatingly loud death metal blaring from the common living area/dining room upstairs. Two of the people who'd slept in the living room came down immediately and told us we needed to pack our s**t and get out FAST. We didn't ask many questions. Just sort of grabbed all our stuff, tries to clean up, and piled into an uber XL to head to the closest hotel.
Apparently before the music started earlier that morning they woke up to a bunch of clank/banging only to open their eyes and see this dude sitting at the table cleaning a shot gun and a hand gun.
Needless to say..i don't think he wanted us in his house.
#19
Driving a friend home after a group dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. We pull into friend’s apartment and I notice a car following us. They pull in the apartment and park beside us. We sit a coupe of minutes just talking when I realize the guy in the next car who is alone still hasn’t got out. I told my friend something didn’t feel right. We back out and the car follows us. I knew a bunch of back road and hit those quick enough to lose the guy. One he was gone I took my friend back home and watched her go in safely.
#20
Alabama.
My wife (we were engaged at the time) and I were considering moving there because her dad had his business there and was offering to provide us lodging and jobs to come work for him.
He's a great guy, but we stayed with his at-the-time business partner who turned out to be a virulent, vocal, unapologetic racist who was also quick to yell at his wife. He also looked like a d**n ogre, which didn't help. Between him, the food (still scarred by the memory of a Chinese buffet outside of the Muscle Shoals/Florence region...) and the general feel of the place, we both just looked at each other on the second night and agreed we couldn't do it. We packed our bags that night, and the next morning she feigned illness and we took off as fast as we could. It meant giving up the prospect of easy work and affordable housing, but it was worth it.
Binny Tutera 3 weeks ago
Lived in Birmingham AL for five years, and it was lovely. But, that doesn’t mean it’s “domesticated “ everywhere else!!!
#21
I was at the zoo with my husband and daughter, who was about 2 at the time. We were in front of the elephants, and one of the elephants was apparently really pissed off, and started throwing baseball/softball sized rocks toward the people standing there. I was like, "s**t, we gotta move!", and we moved far away from the area. Other people were like "haha, look at the elephant throwing rocks", and then someone's kid got hit with a rock. The dude was so pissed off, he started throwing rocks back at the elephants, until a trainer came and got the elephant. I really hate zoos now (for lots of reasons, not just this specific incident). They make me depressed.
Tabitha 3 weeks ago (edited)
Wild animals should be left in the wild, unless there are extenuating circumstances that prohibit it. That’s when a well-run, secure, well-staffed, and very spacious sanctuary should have them, where they can roam free but still be protected. No one should be able to have wild animals as pets, private “zoos” should be illegal, and “sport” hunting of endangered species should be a criminal offense with a mandatory billion dollar fine and life sentence in prison on hard time. We’d have so many idle rich a******s funding g good causes with their fines, and s******g themselves behind bars, it would be immensely satisfying.
#22
I was driving home from my shift as a bartender and needed to stop for gas. I'm filling up and I notice there's a sedan parked over at the diesel pumps. Lights off, but clearly two guys sitting in the car. When my car finished filling up I went into the store, hoping these guys would leave.
I asked the guy behind the counter how long they'd been there, and he hadn't even noticed them. I stayed until another guy pulled up to the pumps and walked in, but they were still there when I left.
I checked the news the next morning and there was a robbery at a gas station nearby around the time I was going home. I don't know if it was those same guys trying to take down another place, but they were giving me bad vibes.
Puppy Dancing! 3 weeks ago
I would also wait until there was someone at the pumps who could help me if they attacked me when I left the store.
#23
Some friends and I were on a road trip through California. It got late, so we decided to just pull over and sleep on the side of the road. Before we turned in, we thought we would sit on the ground and eat a little dinner. In the dark behind me I heard a noise and LEAPT into the car. Everybody laughed at me reacting the way I did. It took me a minute or two to even realize what the noise was I had reacted to. It was a rattlesnake rattle. I reacted automatically without any concious thought.
#24
Was in Paris November 2015 on Vacation. My girlfriend and I were in a small pub having a drink before heading back to the hotel. Most of the pub was watching the soccer game and we weren’t really paying attention.
All of a sudden we noticed the whole pub went quiet, and we saw the news on the TV about the terror attacks. The bartender could speak English and said to us “Are you tourists? You need to get back to your hotel NOW”. We thankfully were close enough to run back and we basically hid there with the blinds closed and lights off watching it happen on TV, terrified because we had no idea how far the attacks were going to spread.
The scariest part is that had briefly considered getting tickets to the EoDM concert that night, had we gone who knows what could have happened.
SkyyCaramba 3 weeks ago
good bartenders make sure their clientele don't get killed in terrorist attacks
#25
Once while my brother, myself and some friends were at a bar in a town that I'm not very familiar with I got really bad vibes from two guys that were drunk and getting loud with each other. I don't know why but I got that gut feeling that we needed to leave, so I got up, went and told these guys that we were leaving and so we did. Well the next day I hear from someone else that I know and he said that he showed up at the exact same bar awhile after we left and that the place was swarming with cops, emergency vehicles etc... And what he basically said was that when he asked someone what was going on they told him that two guys were fighting in the parking lot and that one pulled a knife out and stabbed the other one. That's all he said, but I have no doubt in my mind that it was the same two guys that I had noticed earlier. I often wonder what happened, if the one that got stabbed died and so on. But yeah anyway that was one time where I knew I had to GTFO!!!!!
#26
We lived out in the country in backwoods Missouri. We had very few neighbors and they weren’t within walking distance, nor was it walking distance from town. Our rental house was an old historic farmhouse.
I was home alone and was showering upstairs. The stairs led directly into the master suite and were old, hardwood, and creaky. The bathroom itself was directly over the front door and you could hear the front door open and close while in the shower.
So, I’m in there doing my shower thing and I hear the front door open. Husband is a cop and sometimes stops home for lunch while he’s out patrolling. I assume this is him coming home. I hear someone walking up the stairs and it sounds “off”. Husband is 6’ tall and weighs about 250 pounds. He has huge feet. He’s just a really big man. His arms are the size of my legs and he’s not fat. These footsteps do not sound like a huge man ambling up a set of stairs. Still, I write it off as maybe him trying to sneak in and surprise me.
I hear the footsteps stop at the top of the staircase. I wait for them to proceed into the bathroom where I will feign surprise that husband has come home from work early. I continue to wait for another thirty second or so. The footsteps continue but seem to walk opposite the bathroom door and farther into the bedroom. Then, the footsteps approach the bathroom door. There’s a pause and I hear someone say:
“Hello?”
AND IT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT MY HUSBANDS VOICE.
This is not the voice of an older, pack a day, grizzled, former marine, police officer that is built like a brick s**t-house. This is a younger voice. This is a STRANGER IN MY HOUSE.
I jumped out of my skin. I immediately put my hand on the shower controls to turn the water off and then think better of it. I leave the shower running, hoping that the person on the other side of the door might think I didn’t hear them over the noise of the running water. I very gently, as quietly as I can, open the shower door, and tiptoe to the bathroom door. I reached out and as quickly as I can and turn the lock on the doorknob. Seconds later, I see the doorknob give a few quick jerks. As I stand on my side of the bathroom door, barely breathing, afraid to move, I hear footsteps walking away from the door, they move down the stairs, and towards the back bedroom of the house. I ran out of the bathroom, slammed the bedroom door shut, grabbed my husbands revolver from the nightstand, snatched my cellphone off the dresser, and fled the house out of the second story balcony where I took the (thank god it was there) staircase to our backyard, ran across the driveway and into our detached garage where I locked myself in and called my husband to tell him that someone was in our house.
He arrived a few minutes later, cleared the house, and chewed my a*s for not locking the front door.
#27
I was working nights when I was younger and was deep asleep when my brother ran into my room yelling we gotta go now!
I panic wake up and just run out the door, get in the car with him and my dad still trying to get my senses about me. We’re driving and my dad turns on the radio and there’s a tornado hitting our town. We didn’t have a storm shelter so we were rushing to my moms work.
The meteorologist comes over the radio saying it’s going to hit these cross streets any minute. We’re literally sitting at a stop sign at those cross streets.
My brother and I start panicking for my dad to just floor it like we gotta go now!
We thankfully just missed it but between being woke up and finally realizing what was going on in that moment I was terrified.
Claire Collymore 3 weeks ago
BP is overly concerned with censoring, to the point where it sometimes makes it hard to understand the post, but is apparently not at all concerned about most of these posts not being related to having a gut-feeling about a situation. Why?
#28
At 10th grade our teacher had the subject coordinator or vice principal or principal to have a regular inspection of how she handles her classes.. so this usually means we and the teacher would have to do something out of the ordinary unlike simply in the classroom and have discussions on the lessons. This is Science so, we had to have a lesson with chemicals. To the lab we go. Yay...
Like the usual at first, safty and everything. Lesson starts.. yada yada. This is where I had the "We need to leave now!" moment: she brought some chemicals in.. sulfuric acid and a base which I forgot.
These were the things that bothered me
1. She put the sulfuric acid first in the beaker.. a lot of it. The only other beaker aside from the one holding sulfuric acid.
2. She had forgotten to wear her googles onto her eyes and left it on her head as there was an intoduction to the lesson at first
3. I remembered that some acid / base combinations react violently on some specifications
4. There was no water near around her
5. As she put in the base on the beaker it reacted slow at first but I notice it to start making smoke 5 minutes in.. note that she also put a bit more of it han she should.
While everyone was amazed at the sudden pop of colorful smoke or something, I was watching the beaker closely and gut instinct said that I had to leave the room no matter what. (note I was in front so I am really close) I cannot say that I have to go to the bathroom to leave and I cannot disturb her while she discuss infront as someone at the back (principal of the school) is observing. I ran out of the lab. 10 seconds in and then.. BOOM! Like a gun shoot.
They had to leave the lab and some of those in front had to wash off the sulfuric acid off with water in the rest rooms and at the back of the lab with clean running water. The teacher however suffered some damage to here eyes.. luckily enough none of the sulfuric acid went to here eyes, but some glass shards did.. she was sent to the hospital after she was washed.
I got famous tho.. the guy who run.
Edit: TL;DR
I ran out of an exploding chemical reaction from a lab presentation back at 10th grade. Teacher got her eyes hurt.
P1 No-Name 3 weeks ago
I had a similar experience, but not quite as dramatic, involving Girl Guides & a leader trying to make popcorn with hot oil in a saucepan without a lid - I tried to warn her, but she didn't listen. I ran, but all the kids at the front ended up with oil burns.
#29
Latinamerican here.
I was with a coworker who wanted to become a youtuber, in a park that is very famous due to the apparition of *"La Llorona"* in that park's lake, we were videorecording some s****y videos of him talking about the legends of La Llorona and stuff, notice that it was very late in the night, even for latinamerican standards, we arrived to the park near to 2 am, seeking something paranormal to occur.
And it did.
I swear that at **3:30** am every single dog from that park started running away from the lake, and I'm talking about 10-15 dogs.
It was poop town inside my pants.
We leave that park soon after that.
Firstname Lastname 3 weeks ago
"It was poop town inside my pants" is my new favorite way to say I was scared.
#30
Was in Chicago, got off a train station and a homeless guy came up to myself and my friend. He said he was really depressed, wanted to k**l himself and wanted a hug. Had no idea what to do, but then he put his arms around our necks and put us all into a hug.
I couldn’t get out of the hug. I tried to leave. His arm was wrapped around my neck tightly. Eventually he asked us to come with him to the shops, I asked him if he wanted us to buy him something. He said no, he had the money.
We walk with him towards the shop, so uncomfortable. He had a duffel bag and said he’d pay, but he just wanted us to go with him to the shop.
Once we were outside the shop, I told my friend let’s get out of here. He started going into his bag and that’s when we legged it. I had no idea what he was going to grab, he could have been harmless but the fact that we couldn’t leave his hug earlier remains with me.
I can still feel his arm around my neck.
Tom Hardeveld 3 weeks ago (edited)
it is scary but also sounds like depression and not knowing how to act because of booze or drúgs.
What do you think ?
Jac Carr 3 weeks ago
So many of these should have been reported to the police but clearly weren't
Tele Avision 2 weeks ago
I once saw a driver of a BMW using a turn signal before making a lane change, saving me from being sideswiped.
Load More Replies...
Nina 3 weeks ago
If you take into account the post(s) they've got this from on reddit have the title 'What's your "We need to leave NOW" moment', the entries make a lot more sense.
Ellen Samberg 3 weeks ago
I stopped reading because I wanted to write "this has nothing to do with a "gut instinct"" for half of them.
Load More Replies...
Jac Carr 3 weeks ago
So many of these should have been reported to the police but clearly weren't
Tele Avision 2 weeks ago
I once saw a driver of a BMW using a turn signal before making a lane change, saving me from being sideswiped.
Load More Replies... Nina 3 weeks ago
If you take into account the post(s) they've got this from on reddit have the title 'What's your "We need to leave NOW" moment', the entries make a lot more sense.
Ellen Samberg 3 weeks ago
I stopped reading because I wanted to write "this has nothing to do with a "gut instinct"" for half of them.
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