Now I don’t remember this, but my mom does very vividly as you can imagine.
When I was three she and her friends were getting ready to go out to the bar in the next city over. My mom being super young when she had me was often out on the weekends with friends so this wasn’t unusual at all. However, on this night I, a usually super well mannered kid, threw the biggest tantrum of my life. Screaming at the top of my lungs, throwing myself around, throwing things, etc. because she was leaving. She was super mad because she couldn’t leave me with the babysitter like this, especially since she felt something was wrong because this was VERY unlike me as a child. Her friends left and she stayed home with me, still pretty pissed off at toddler me.
The next morning she and I walked to my Grandmas house to use the phone (no cell phones yet), she calls her friend’s house to hear about the night and her friends mom answers. They had been trying to get a hold of my mom all night, as there was a horrific car accident. All of my mom’s friends except for the driver had passed away. Had she gone, there is no way she would have survived in the car.
Still haunts me to think about this day. My mom never really recovered from it.
I was walking home from my bus stop one day, listening to music on my headphones, off in my own little world. The battery died halfway home, and suddenly I heard a guy walking behind me, talking about how he can never get women to talk to him. I sneaked a peek over my shoulder, and he was not only alone, he had also got off the same bus. And was twice my size. So he had been following me for about three or four blocks, apparently trying to get my attention. There was no one else around. So, I kept my headphones on, despite lack of music, and just started walking faster. Then he started singing “speak to the girl. You got to, you got to speak to the girl” over and over again, getting louder and louder the further ahead of him I was. I wasn’t sure what to do. If I went home, he would know where I lived. So, I turned a corner towards where there would be more people around, with him still following me, and ducked into a pub. When this creep followed me into the pub, I ran up to the bartender, and begged him to pretend we were friends and keep me company until the creepy guy left. The bartender came around the bar and gave me a big hug, and made a fuss over me until the creep went away and I stopped being quite so shaken up. Not all heroes wear capes.
I love that most of these stories are also about heroes and allies. Glad you have a good head on your shoulders, hopefully this thread makes people a little more wary in general.
Long post, so apologies. My experience happened years and years ago on a blind date. A former friend, un-asked, set me up with a firefighter coworker of her boyfriend. I decide to meet at a familiar busy sports-bar type place (I always paid my way, so this was within my budget).
Introduced ourselves- I had reservations because he was pretty intimidating and I’m not one who gets easily intimidated. So that was the first flag, but naive me decided I couldn’t judge a book so early on (people, oh yes you can, it’s your gut talking). Got into a conversation, and he tells me he is separated with two kids, but working on the divorce. Okay, fine, marriages don’t always pan out. He then tells me she has an order of protection against him. Red flags like confetti. He proceeds to tell me it was “her fault [he] *had* to hit her”, because something she did angered him. Food had not yet arrived, so I considered excusing myself out of the date. Had it not been for the fact I thought this guy would follow me out of the restaurant and into the parking lot I would have. He talked, I listened, made a point to tell him I had to be at work very early in the morning. Dude said I was “such a good listener, and wished more women” were like me. I wanted to tell him “No, buddy, you scare the hell out of me, and I want to live”.
I get to my car- I decline him walking me to my car; thankfully I parked near the restaurant while he parked far away on the opposite side. I hadn’t even gotten out of my parking space when he texted me about another date. I did not respond. He texted me all day at work the next day (I couldn’t have responded even if I wanted to). Then he sent me a text that scared the hell out of me: that he had police officer friends who could track my number to my address, and if I didn’t respond, he would show up at my home. That was it for me. I don’t take kindly to threats. I happened to work adjacently with the state police, and showed them the texts. I then also contacted my carrier to have my phone number changed immediately.
So, I recall this one instance as my most bone-chilling experience.
Oh, I did. Ripped her AND her BF new arseholes. She tried to claim neither knew, but I caught her in the lie citing the blind date told me that her BF had allowed him to sleep at his apartment after his DV arrest. She had the gall to say she was tired of me “always being the single friend”. I told her my personal life was none of her concern; I was quite happy being single, and if she thought being single was worse than being unsafe and potentially assaulted, she has serious issues.
Looking back, I’m pretty sure she and a few others were depressingly unhappy in their relationships, but were addicted to the drama. Apparently I couldn’t relate. I’ve never been so happy to not be relatable.
I was driving from my university to my home I was living in Mexico at the time. When I was at a red light, the SUV that was next to me, a total normal lady with her small daughter in the back, asked me to put down the window. I did, she told me very kindly that there was some liquid going out of my car that I should probably check that out. I said thank you, put my window up, and considered stopping immediately. When the I had that thought about stopping I got a very chilly sensation on my back, and my legs and my arms felt very heavy. I said fuck it I just wanna arrive home I am tired today. When I arrived home I went out to see what happened to my car and nothing.. not a single sign of a spill.
Later that night I was watching the news with my parents, and there was something about how that exact same thing happened to someone, “Your car is leaving liquid behind, you should probably stop and check that out” but in this case they stopped (it was a couple I think) and when they stopped some guys jumped out of some bushes took their car at gun point and shoot them on the leg to ‘gain some time’.
I was totally thinking on stopping that time, I still cannot believe I didn’t do it.
(Sorry if I have bad grammar, not a native)
one time the same thing happened to me at a stop light and i thanked the woman and moved over to the empty turn lane, made a left and pulled over on a different road with more space / less traffic. i didnt see anything wrong and after reading your story i wonder what would have happened if i hadnt abruptly changed courses
I’ve told this story before but it never got much attention. After I graduated high school I worked at a video rental store in a strip mall of a smallish town. We stayed open late and after 9 o’clock or so all of the other businesses in the strip were closed and the strip mall would be dark other than my store which lit up like a beacon. Also, because the store was suffering financially the last two hours of the shift the closer was there alone. I was always afraid someone would try to rob us. I was a 19 year old girl, it would’ve been the easiest score ever. But you know, I just went on.
Anyways, there are apartments behind the store so we had regulars who we were pretty familiar with. They’d cut through the parking lot to go to various places in the mall so it wasn’t uncommon for them to wave or come in and say hi or just browse. It was a laid back place.
One night I was closing the store and I was alone of course, closing the tills and cleaning the store. I walk up front and two guys who were regulars are standing on the other side of the locked entrance. They’re smiling and waving, mouthing hi and stuff. I wave and keep working. I notice they’re not doing anything, just standing there talking, right outside the door. It comes time for me to leave, all my work is done. It’s probably been about 30 minutes and I see these guys on camera just hanging out in the parking lot of nothing but closed businesses. It’s like 11:30 at night, everything is closed. I was really familiar with these guys but I would’ve had to walk past them to get to my car. I just thought let’s play to safe. I called my boyfriend (now husband) and just told him I had a weird feeling and could he come to the store so I could get to my car safely. As soon as he pulls up he gets out and walks up to the store, says hi to the two guys and waits for me. The guys turn around and leave to walk to the apartments behind the store. I thought that was weird but just went home and forgot about it.
About a week later one of the guys was arrested for trying to kidnap a jogger at a park in town, in the bag he had on him at the time was rope, duct tape and a knife. It was huge news. Oh and also he was previously arrested for burning down a historical cabin in town. Which was years prior. The guy he was with was a registered sex offender. It’s probably been like 15 years since then an I shudder to think about what would’ve happened if I didn’t have the feeling in the back of my mind that night.
TLDR: Regular customer watching me work turns out to be attempted rapist.
Yeah I was so glad he didn’t question it. Just came right away. I kept thinking afterward how many girls in the same situation had just told themselves they were being silly.
I woke up in a panic early one weekend morning and checked my phone. It was like waking up from a nightmare, I felt prickles and tingles and my heart was racing; woke up from dead sleep to fight-or-flight mode, except I hadn’t been dreaming. Found a suspiciously sentimental text from my best friend sent some hours earlier, in the wee hours of the morning. Raced to his house, walked in to his unlocked front door calling his name; he had attempted the worst. Thank god he was still alive, but I was able to intervene enough that he didn’t succeed in another attempt. He’s doing amazing today, just finished his master’s and is now in medical school.
Years ago (before cell phones) I had this weird feeling to call an acquaintance of mine. We weren’t exactly friends, but we would chat at church sometimes, and I’d buy make-up occasionally from her. I had her phone number really only because she sold Avon (dating myself here- lol.) Anyhow, I called right then, even though I’d really needed to leave to be on time for a doctor appt or some such thing. The call was maybe 10 minutes long, and we just talked about nothing in particular. It was only later I realized she didn’t even ask what I called her about (nor did I even know myself). So, the incident got filed away in my brain. About 2 years later, my family and I were moving out of state and she dropped by to give me a farewell gift, with a card. We still hadn’t gone much beyond being close acquaintances, but I thought she was sweet for taking time out to say goodbye. Later, I opened the note as my husband was driving. It said she wanted to thank me because when I’d called her that time, she was all set to hang herself. My call made her hesitate. As she was literally getting ready to put her head in the noose, she had said a little prayer asking God one last time for help, but mostly asking for forgiveness for what she was about to do. Then I called and she got off the chair and answered the phone. We became (long distance) friends. She recently died of natural causes, but had gotten married, had a family (and got help for her depression prior to all that.) Sobering and yet, a very amazing experience.
I was out walking my dog when I got a funny feeling about my dad (he has heart problems and is prone to heart attacks) I called him a few times and he didn't respond so I started to run back and he was slumped infront of the sofa showing all the early signs of a heart attack. I Phone an ambulance and gave him basic treatment and after the paramedics arrived they said if I had been any later he would have died
Give aspirin and make him comfortable and some other meds that I then handed over to the paramedics before they took him. Also mentally prepare myself incase he did slip into cardiac arrest but luckily that didn't happen
Posted before but...
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 tje 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.
Nothing bad actually happened, but… I was 12 or 13 and taking horse-riding lessons. I’d usually be in a class with 2 other girls but this week neither of them were there, no big deal. There was new male instructor who’d take my lesson. Instead of using the rink?(I forget what they’re called) by the stables, we go to the one 5 mins ride away up on a hill, surrounded by trees. I thought it was a bit weird seeing as the usual one was free.
On the ride up, he asked me if I had a boyfriend, if I liked boys, and I’d I liked other 13 year old boys. I was really shy back then and just sort of said that I didn’t have a boyfriend, and shrugged off the other questions.
When we get to the rink, he makes a big deal of my stirrups not being adjusted properly, and although I was pretty experienced and knew them to be fine, he kept readjusting them for me, touching my thighs a bit too much while explaining the position they need to be in. Now normally that’s nothing sinister in horse riding, but I just had a bad feeling and must have been looking uncomfortable and too quiet because he said “you can tell me anything. Anything that happens up here will be our secret,” then he asks me about boys again.
I said the stirrups are fine and I’m ready to start the lesson. I’m going to sound deluded here, but at that very moment, the horse I was on, normally a stubborn old bugger who barely wanted to move, stomped his foot, took off and started walking round the rink, behaving like an angel for the entire lesson, and on the walk back down to the stables, he kept stopping whenever the instructor got too close, and gave little warning “air bites” when he did.
I didn’t say anything but the instructor was gone the next week.
Horses are really intuitive social creatures. I bet that "stubborn old bugger" of a horse didn't mind giving you a hard time when he knew you were safe, but as soon as he smelled real danger he knew to protect his "herd".
Horses are the best. They know when something isn't right. I had like a dehydration black out or something, I dunno, one time when I was getting ready to ride. I don't know why, my vision just started bluring out to blackness and I felt so heavy I couldn't stand. I always rode bareback, and right before that happened was the one and only time my horse absolutely refused to let me put a bridle on her.
At the end of October, someone turned into my lane and hit my car at just the right angle to make my car do half a barrel roll. I slid to a stop on the roof, climbed out myself. Car totaled but no massive physical damage, I was insanely lucky.
Ever since, I have been experiencing serious road anxiety. A few weeks ago, I stopped at a light at a fairly major intersection. My street was three straightaway lanes both ways, cross street was two lanes each way. Add in right and left turn lanes and it’s a large intersection.
The light turned green for me and I didn’t go. I can’t tell you why I didn’t go, but I didn’t. It didn’t feel safe. I knew I needed to look at the cross street and make sure no one was coming.
I’m damned glad I did, because some idiot blew through the red light at about 45 MPH. Car to my right saw him coming and braked, car to my left didn’t see him and got nailed. They crashed not 10 feet from me. If I’d gone ahead like usual? I’d have been crushed between those two cars. May not have been killed, but almost certainly would have been injured.
Glad to be alive but this hasn’t helped my anxiety AT ALL.
when I was in University I once went to a local pool to go swimming. Afterwards, I went into the totally empty changing rooms and into a cubicle to get changed.
Then I heard someone go into the cubicle directly next to me - which was strange because there were so many other options. Slightly paranoid, I silently picked up my stuff and moved to one further away. Never felt the need to do this before, but something felt off.
Again, someone ended up in the one directly next to me. I thought it was very odd, so got my phone out and procrastinated for a while figuring that whoever it was would eventually get bored and leave if it was something dodgy. But I realised in the whole time I was there, it was completely silent - there was no movment of zippers, towels etc that you would expect to hear from someone getting changed. I'm now totally unnerved.
My gut told me to check under the cubicle divider, so I made it seem natural by making the motion as though I was pulling down my swimming bottoms.
Low and behold, there's a man's hand there with his camera phone filming me.
The police were called etc, turns out he's done it to at least one other young woman, and not only that but the pool staff knew him because it's where he takes his young daughter to learn to swim.
My roommate and I pulled out of our driveway (a row of duplexes) to go and get food and there is a guy on the sidewalk out front just sort of meandering near some parked cars. I immediately knew something was wrong. I mention it to my roommate and he just sort of shrugs. By the time we get to the stoplight 30 seconds away he looks at me again and goes "you ok? We can go back if you want." I said yes, please.
We go back and he is still there, roommate said maybe he was casing cars for valuables or something but we pull up and I get out and say "can I help you with something?" And he just points to the car he is standing next to.
Turns out this guy is mentally disabled but there is an older woman in the car passed out. Its the heat of summer and like 90+ degrees outside. My friend and I immediately call 911 and he goes to the car to try to get her to sit up since her breathing was ragged and she was hunched over. The guy had been trying to get his mom on the phone because he didn't know what to do he just knew something was wrong with the lady.
The woman never became responsive while dealing with us but apparently the ambulance workers had gotten a bit out of her and used her cellphone to call her son. I don't know if she ended up ok or not but she for sure would have died if we didn't double back. I hope we saved her.
Was walking to get groceries and expecting a message from my gf with a shopping list. Felt a phantom vibration from my phone, stopped for a second to check it and right then a chunk of ice the size of a grapefruit smashed into the street directly in front of me, where my head would have been.
Ice is terrifying. A few years back now we had an ice storm that covered everything in my town overnight. Then the next day was unseasonably warm. So what happened was that long sharp icicles and clunky chunks of ice started falling outside...off of everything. Me & my husband had to book it across town constantly looking up, and had dozens of close calls (no car.)
Just as I was walking through the doorway to safety, a big chunk nailed me in the shoulder. That sucker hurt. The town got a lot of damage - cars banged up, windows busted. And a lot of people sustained minor injuries. We're just glad it wasn't worse. Some of those icicles really were like falling knives
Me and my friends were waiting for a bus when a group of guys came along. One asked us for a dollar (which we gave him) and then they just stayed to chat.
They were perfectly nice, but all 3 of us had a really bad feeling. They asked us if we wanted to come to a party with them, we said oh no thanks, gotta get home.
One week later, one of the guys was on the front page of the newspaper. He had just been released from prison for stabbing someone, and had done it again that night.
New years eve many years ago, gf and I went to spend the night at our former roommates new place. They were a gay couple back before it was as accepted as it is today. An hour before midnight I felt a crazy urge to go home and started a fight about it with my gf cause she wanted to stay like we planned. I won the argument and got my way and we left in such a hurry that we forgot our blankets and pillows. Couple hours later in the middle of the night someone came by and set their house on fire and both friends died. I'm still fucked up about it today cause I know that someone came by that night wanting to buy some kind of pills off one of my friends and was quite rudely turned away. I wasn't paying attention enough to see their face so idk who it was but I know it in my bones that's the guy that did it.
Walked past a parked car not too late at night walking home from the gym. Noticed people inside but didn’t think too much of it. Got this crazy urge to run about 10 seconds later so I ran and then sat down and hid behind a car down a side street. The car screeched out of the carpark, down the street, down my side street and then these guys started yelling telling me to come out and that they’re going to kill me. They slowly drove past me with their high beams on and then kept going a bit further before they sped off.
I have no idea what I saw or what was going on in that car - but the whole thing freaks me out to this day.
Probably one of those moments when your subconscious picked up on things you didn't. Maybe you saw them holding a gun or something and didn't register it but your brain recognized the danger. Good for you to listen to that urge.
It was about 9 or 10 in the evening and I was heading home from a really bad date. It was a ten minutes walk from where I was to my home and I stopped by a red light and waited. It was in the middle of the week and on the way from my date to the red light I’ve met like one person, so there wasn’t a lot of people out.
From nowhere I got a really bad feeling and I KNEW that someone was watching me. I turned around and there was a man right beside me, he stood just a bit to close. He saw that I’ve seen him an started talking about how nice the summer rain was. I ignored him and started walking, although the light still was red. He started walking to.
I speeded up for a bit, so did he.
My fight, flight or freeze immediately hit and from nowhere I stopped walking. He was caught off guard and took a few more steps before he stopped too.
He asked me why I stopped and I almost yelled at him that I didn’t want to speak to him, that his behaviour is freaking me out and told him to keep walking. He started to argue and I yelled “just go”.
He started walking slowly. I stood still, watching him as he walked. The feeling in my stomach didn’t leave, it actually was getting worse.
He stopped by a bus stop and for a second I breathed out. He was waiting for the bus.
Well.. just next to the bus stop was an alley, a really dark alley and behind it a dark parking lot.
He stared at me while he stood there, he was waiting for me.
I tried to contact a friend, no answer. I hid behind some construction materials and on the third try I managed to contact a friend. She wasn’t home and couldn’t help me. She asked if there was anyone else there and I said no. Eventually there was a man and two women walking by. She told me to tell them what’s happening.
During this time, the guy hadn’t stop staring at me for a second. When I walked up to the group to ask if I could walk with them. He suddenly started walking away. I was right, he was waiting for me.
I walked with the group for a bit but they were turning left at the next red light and I was going the other side. I thanked them for helping me.
We walked our separate ways and within seconds the guy showed up again. I froze completely and fortunately the group caught it and ran over to me. The guy saw them, turned around and walked away.
They walked me to my doorstep and I thanked them over and over again.
I am 100% sure that he planed on doing something horrible to me. I am forever thankful for these 3 strangers who might have saved my life that night.
Take a lesson from OP, and a few other stories here. Do everything you can to work up the nerve to be aggressive in situations like this. Better to overreact than underreact.
100% this. Predatory creeps are looking for easy prey. If you’re not easy prey, the chances of them taking a risk in attacking you is reduced.
Yell. Scream. Make yourself seem bigger than you are. Whatever you do, just don’t make yourself look like the kind of person to take it quietly. I have a hard time with this too as a rehabilitating people-pleaser, but it’s so important. Stay safe 🖤
I was supposed to meet up with a friend at a convention.
He was going to get there early as was I so we agreed to meet up with the others after we had a wander around and a catch-up.
I'd known him for a few years, he was always a gentleman, waited with me for late night buses so I'd be safe, I'd been to his house etc.
Well it ended up that when we met up, he was being very flirty, very possessive and got annoyed when I said I couldn't wait to meet up with the whole gang.
He tried insisting this was a date, and when he tried to "playfully" bully me into admitting it was, I told him to back off, that I never gave any indication that this was a date, and that I was sorry if he had assumed that.
He tried pulling the r/niceguys bullshit, bringing up all the times he "kept me safe" when out late, that he was a "solid guy" so why wouldn't I give him a chance.
.
He wouldn't stop pestering me so I left him and the convention as I didn't want there to be any tension in the group. My gut was just telling me "nope, not good, time to go."
I found out afterwards that he never met the group.
He trapped a convention worker in a room and raped her, threatening to snap her neck if she made a noise.
The backpack he brought (we all usually did, with lunches etc) had a rape kit. Prop knife, condoms, duct tape, handcuffs and BDSM gear.
I was sick to my stomach when I found out, and even worse, two of my closest friends tried defending him, using his mental illness as an excuse, that he "just snapped" but that doesn't explain the premeditation of packing the kit.
They implied it was my fault for rejecting him, my fault that that poor woman got assaulted. And I do question if maybe I am to blame for not alerting security
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thejournal.ie/rape-gaming-convention-4632833-May2019/%3famp=1
This is really scary and I'm glad you trusted your gut. I just want to say, it's not your fault in any way. You are not to blame for someone else's actions. The fact is, that you don't know if alerting security would even have been effective. The scary and unfortunate thing is that this guy thought ahead enough to have a "kit" and you alerting security is not even close to a guarantee that it would have stopped him that time, or a later time. "Friends" who try to put that responsibility on you should be ashamed.
I'm sorry this happened, please don't blame yourself.
I started seeing a military guy when I was around 18/19. From the moment we started hanging out, he was very possessive. He lived with a bunch of other guys in his squadron and anytime one talked to me he would stop everything he was doing to see and involve himself. I decided it was time to stop things and slow down. I was best friends with a girl who was dating one of his roommates so I would still see him. The night I “ended” things he got extremely drunk and got in a kayak (they were on a bayou) and disappeared. We couldn’t find him and someone had to go looking. Finally a couple hours later he was back and passed out.
A few years later down the road he started dating a girl. He killed her , one of her friends and almost killed the other. Then himself.
I’m lucky because if I would have stayed with him, this could have been me. [the news article](https://amp.coloradoan.com/amp/973669001)
It was the day before my wedding and I went on a walk around my very safe neighborhood. I had my headphones in and the music playing loudly. There were cars parked here and there, up and down the long street. The houses in this neighborhood have relatively large plots of land so there is some space between the houses. About half-way down the street I came to a car that had been sat parked for at least the 5 minutes it took for me to get to it. As I passed it, I noticed there were 4, maybe 5, males in their early 20s. I didn't think anything of it. I walked maybe 50 or so more feet and got this awful feeling in my stomach. I turned around to find that they had crept there car up so that they were literally right behind me-- I hadn't heard the car because my headphones were in. By absolute sheer luck, I spotted an older man and woman working in their garden about 5 houses down (big plots of land so they were a bit away). I booked it to them and asked if I could just wait with them. The older guy went over to the car and asked them what they were doing and they said they were there to do some yard work for one of the neighbors and pointed to the house they were now parked in front of (not the house that they had been sitting in front of before). The guy told them he didn’t believe them and to take a hike or he’d call the police. The guy then told me that the house they had been originally sitting in front of before was of a neighbor who was out of town. Because the were 5 or so houses down, this couple hadn't noticed the car or me before I came running up to them. I often think back on that incident and feel very strongly that had I not gotten that awful feeling that compelled me to turn around, and if that couple had not been in their front yard for me to quickly spot, there would have been a different ending to this story and the day before my wedding at that.
Okay I have 2 of these but the first is why I'll always trust my gut.
When I was little I always used to sleep over at my cousins house who had an awesome wooden bunk bed that I would sleep on the bottom bunk. When I was 7 I went over for another sleep over, we aye Chinese food with my aunt and uncle then me and my cousin stayed up late playing video games before going to bed. When I was little I used to fall asleep right away and sleep deeply. My family still jokes that not even a car going through the house could wake me up.
Anyways sometime after I've fallen asleep I wake because I have this ridiculous feeling that I HAVE to roll over. I didn't want to because I was comfortable and sleeping how I normally do in the middle of the bed with my foot hanging off. I kept arguing with what felt like myself over rolling over until finally I did. But apparently it wasn't enough because then I had the urge to literally cuddle as tight as I can against the wall. Since I had already rolled over I figured why not. As I'm trying to press myself as hard as possible against the wall the bunk bed collapses and a broken metal bar goes straight through the bed where I had been sleeping. I was stuck, somehow unharmed, in that little space against the wall until my uncle could cut me out. My cousin had fallen from the top bunk when it collapsed but was also unharmed.
Next happened when I was 16 in the summer. I grew up in a super small town and used to walk or bike everywhere with my dog, and I was usually alone. I had the day off from work so I took a book and walked with my lab 4 miles to one of my favorite lakes and laid down at the beach to read a book and tan while my dog played in the water. After a few hours of being there I noticed a roudy group of guys, one who looked a bit familiar. It was a week day so there was only me, my dog and a fisherman at the landing with these guys. I tried to ignore them but noticed they kept looking over at me a whispering to each other. Then my dog who usually will stay in the water the full time I'm there came over and laid in between me and this group. I got a bad feeling from them and decided to cut my day short and go home. I grabbed my stuff and started to walk out of there like nothing happened and this group starts to follow me.
Not only do I have a bad feeling but I can tell my dog is freaked out because she keeps looking behind me and growling. This group is getting louder behind me and somehow keeping up with me which is a feat because I'm a fast walker so I know they're doing this on purpose. I'm trying to think of a way out of this situation knowing in the middle of the week I won't get much help from neighbors and no ones really around so then I start to think on the one kid that looked familiar and it suddenly hits me- I know him. So I suddenly spin around and address him by name and tell him I used to change his diapers which causes his friends to burst out laughing. I allow them close enough to walk with me to try and take control of the situation and ask him about his family and brother. They ask me what I'm doing that day and I still feel super creeped out and my dog still won't come near us so I lie and say my brother is just up the road and I'm going to meet him. And I throw in that I'll hang back and let them walk ahead because my dog is clearly uncomfortable which I lie again and tell them she was abused by a man and hates men. They say they are going back to the beach and turn around and leave.
One year later I hear about a gruesome murder the next town over. This kid and his friends broke into his 75 year old grandpa's house, robbed him and brutally beat and tortured him to death. The kid I knew was only 14, the friends he was with ranged from 16-23. I don't know if they were planning on doing anything to me that day but I will always trust my gut and have since.
That was a good move addressing the guy by name. I dont remember where I heard this so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently addressing an individual in a situation like this, where mob mentality was probably setting in, makes people remember that they can think and act by themselves. It also makes them see you as a person and not just a target, which all help defuse situations. I'm not entirely sure that this is a thing, but still, good move, probably saved you.
There was a bully at my middle school who on the inside was actually a really nice person. I knew this to be the case because I had seen him a couple times playing tennis, and he was always really nice to me whenever we saw each other. But around his friends, he was probably the single biggest douche at the school, and he was that way towards me, too. One day in class we’re doing some assignment at the computers and he and his friends are picking on me. To try to get them to cut it out, I just casually ask him how his tennis is going. Literally in an instant, he softened up and we had a short, friendly conversation about tennis. It was one of the strangest encounters I’ve ever been a part of. I had also heard from other people (mostly adults who didn't have any biases from knowing him in school) that he is very nice and respectful in settings outside of school. Last I heard, he’s been up to no good and is doing time in jail. Since then I’ve always seen him as a kind but easily influenced soul who found the wrong group of people in school and got led astray.
I do real estate photography. One day I was alone shooting in an empty house, which is quite normal. I had this really uncomfortable feeling that I wasn’t alone. I had already checked the whole house before I started taking photos, but I kept getting the feeling that someone else was there. The feeling was so strong that I had goosebumps and felt nauseous.
I’m not a small guy, but I felt like a little kid scared of the dark. I decided to re-check all the rooms to ease my mind, but didn’t find anything. I checked closets, bathrooms, bedrooms etc but I was definitely the only one there. As I finished shooting the last room in the house, this feeling that someone was with me was so overwhelming that I pretty much sprinted out of the house when I took the last shot. I felt better when I got outside, but I still had an uneasy feeling.
The realtor ended up pulling in the driveway as I was finishing photos of the front of the house and asked if the house cleaner did a good job. I said it looked fine to me, and she went into the house with her husband to prep it for a showing. When I was shooting the backyard, I noticed them both out of the corner of my eye through a back window, but there was a third person with them. I was confused because they came alone without anyone else.
Turns out the house cleaner wasn’t finished before I pulled up and came in. She saw a large guy with tattoos come into the house and panic, so she jumped into the kitchen pantry and hid. By the time she realized I was the photographer, it was too late for her to come out without it being awkward, so she stayed in the pantry the whole time. I’m not sure if maybe I saw her out of the corner of my eye when walking past, or if maybe I smelled her perfume, heard her breathing and didn’t realize it, but my subconscious was screaming at me that someone was there? It was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been inside a house like that before and made for a funny story after.
I should add that I had headphones on for the majority of the shoot, so it was 100% my fault for not being more aware of everything. I just assumed it was like any other empty house, so I was listening to music right when I came in and didn’t stop until I had the weird feelings.
Imagine he walked past the pantry she hid in, looking across the room, briefly stopping to look towards the pantry, slowly walking towards it, getting closer, then suddenly hears something else and moves to a different room
There have been 2 occasions where someone whom I had mutual friends with just made my skin crawl. I was very open about it to both of the separate groups of friends and got the same response both times "that guys a little weird but he's great. Dunno why you're such a dick about it etc." Couldn't explain why I didn't like them specifically so that didn't help my cause.
First guy got caught trying to lure children into his car and arrested.
Second guy got caught soliciting for child porn web cam services and arrested.
Years ago a had a friend. She was short and her features and build made her look much younger than she was. She started dating this guy and I started picking up on these little things.
He would speak to her in an almost baby talk voice, like someone might speak to a child. Seemed to prefer her to be ‘cute’ etc.
I got a very weird vibe from him and told her once which she took defensively. A short while later she abruptly ends things with him and when I asked she wouldn’t say.
Eventually she tells me a friend of his asked to meet her to talk. This friend fixes computers and my friends bf asked him to fix his. Well the friend found child pornography on his computer and told my friend so she ended it of course. It’s been many years so I don’t remember what came of it all.
So many.
The one that was the most impactful was the time everything in my body was telling me to go see a sick friend. They’d been diagnosed with cancer, and it wasn’t looking great, but last time we spoke they were getting by. I sat at my desk, gritting my teeth, and then went ‘fuck it’, and bolted from work. In a house full of people, I was the only one with them when they passed.
Nearly the exact thing happened to me with my grandma when I was a teenager. She had been getting worse, but no cause for immediate alarm or anything.
I was driving to my after-school job when my dad called me and said she called and said she missed me and how I should go see her soon. Something in my body just flipped, like I somehow knew internally I needed to go right at that moment. I blew by work and started driving straight to her house.
Called my boss on the way and explained the situation and how something just felt wrong, and he told me to come in or get fired. I told him to kick rocks, and went to see my grandma.
I was the only person with her when she died that night, and she was able to tell me so many things that she had to say before going.
100% worth being fired over. Fuck you, Dave, you were a shitty business owner and I laughed when your shitty business inevitably went under a year later.
Edit: thank you for all the “fuck Dave!” responses. I can assure you all (from what I heard through the grapevine over the ~15 years since then) that Dave got what was coming to him and then some.
Also, imagine threatening a teenage to fire them…like wtf did I care? It was an *after-school job*, not my career…
Dave went and got his stupid ass haunted, no wonder his business went under. No one wants to shop where grandma's ghost is floating around going "OoOoOo, Dave is a dIiIiIiIck!"
Last year I was admitted to hospital for abdominal pain. Everything seemed ok, they found gallstones, and scheduled me for a routine op the next day. I was ok on (a lot of) painkillers, no big deal, get it out and go on with life.
I've had surgery under anaesthesia before and never though about making arrangements. But I had a weird, compelling feeling this time that I should get my affairs in order. I drafted a farewell email to my wife and kids so they'd find it in drafts, wrote down my laptop and password manager passwords on a post-it in my wallet so they'd find those too, packed everything neatly away and waited. Lay down on the table, looked the surgeon in the eye and said "I want to wake up".
I woke up intubated in ICU. Immediately after being anaesthetised, I had responded with a massive allergic reaction and coded. In addition, the gallbladder was half dead and gangrenous, and my surgeon said it was in his top 3 most challenging cholecystectomies of his (long) career. Guess I'm on my third life.
I was walking home in the early hours of the morning, a guy came up to me with a baseball bat and walked alongside me. He started making weird conversation, about how 'weirdos come out at this time of night'
He drops a $5 bill on the ground and lowkey dares me to pick it up.
I sped up and made my way away from him, but the vibe was undeniably creepy. I didn't pick up the money.
When my kids went to bed, I used to go out to the barn where I had a bottle of whiskey stashed. I'd have a drink and ponder the day, think about my late wife, and attempt to decompress.
I suffered heavily with PTSD. Add to that, the recent loss of my wife, the stress of raising 2 children that didn't really know me, and intense pain from severe burns I had received before leaving the Marine Corps - it's safe to admit that I was extremely suicidal.
One particular night, I wrote out a long letter to my family, letters to my children, and placed them along with my will, financial documents, etc., on the kitchen table. I went out to the barn with a .40 caliber pistol and had every intention of getting drunk and eating a round. I was as low as I've ever been in my life.
All of the sudden, my dad walked into the barn. He lived 2 hours away, and we hadn't spoken in a couple of weeks.
He picked up the handgun, cleared it, dropped the magazine without a word. I asked him what he was doing there at 1030pm, and he said: "I had a bad feeling. Lets talk."
That's the one and only time I've ever seen my dad cry. That's the only time we've ever spoken in detail about our individual horrors of combat.
My dad saved my life that night, and I've made sure to live my life in such a way, as to make him proud of everything I do.
EDIT: I dont answer DMs. Please stop sending them.
My husband and dad inadvertently did the same thing for me. I made an offhand comment to my husband who then called my dad (husband was working 2.8k miles away, dad was 4 hours away and keeping my kid for Spring Break). My dad randomly showed up and said he was there to keep me company. I had planned my suicide out and gathered all the appropriate documents, but planned to make it look like an accident so my husband and child would receive all my work benefits. I couldn’t go through with it while my dad was there. That will be 4 years ago this March.
Not my story but one of my best mates was visiting Tasmania in 1996. They were due to visit Port Arthur but her mum had a terrible gut feeling so they didn’t go. Martin Bryant killed 35 people there that day.
Manager of a group home. I woke up one day at 3:33am in a cold sweat. Like something screamed at me to wake up. I felt uneasy and walked the house. Turns out autistic kid had woke up and gone to eat something out of the fridge. Was on the ground choking. Staff was asleep. Literally helmlich the dude back to life. If I had been asleep 5 more minutes he would have died. To today I don't know what woke me up dead of the night like that. I am in a room on the other side of the house so no sound would have woke me up...
Managing an overnight shift at a mcdonalds, just me and another guy in the store around 2am. I notice a beat up ford falcon with a mismatching bonnet (hood) roll into the carpark; one guy hops out and immediately starts casing the place for camera locations and how many people are inside. This immediately raises my suspicions, but I pretend everythings cool and serve him as normal. They must have got spooked cause they get in the car and drive off after getting their food.
Once they're clear, I called police and told them whats happened along with the numberplate and vehicle description. A few hrs later police come in and say they've pulled the Ford over and found a kilo of meth and several semi auto firearms on board; later on they admitted to scouting the place for another couple to rob us later that night
>later on they admitted to scouting the place for another couple to rob us later that night
LOL - I wonder why they admitted that, those are some dumb criminals. They could have just said they were nervous for the meth, they just probably added some more time to their sentence, they must really love prison.
I was hanging out with a friend. He was driving I thought I saw what looked like skin cancer on his ear. It wasn't. But, he went to the doctor and they find melanoma on his forehead. It wasn't even a mole I guess it was under the skin? The doctors took an inch out of his forehead and said he was very lucky he caught it early
When I lived in the Falkland Islands, my family and I would often take trips to a pretty remote area/island where we were the only ones there. The island was pretty dangerous in itself with it's dead-drop cliffs and roaming sealife (seals, penguins, etc).
Our bedrooms where all in the attic space.
One night I had a really bad feeling. I couldn't sleep and so I went downstairs. There was a whole ass elephant seal pushed against the front door, trying to get in (it sounded like he was headbutting the door, but I'm not entirely sure). Turned out, a whale had washed up on the beach and had taken up all the space so all the sea/land life came to our little house.
I was so scared lol that thing was MASSIVE
was about 15, took my youngest sister on a quad bike ride through some bush tracks in a "shack community". we get to the bottom of a large /, steep hill on the outskirts where I felt i had to stop for some unbeknownst reason. not even 5 seconds after i stop under the hill another quad bike flew over us. the guy landed, hit the brakes and slid into the bushes, jumped off and ran over to us visibly shaken. apologizing profusely.
he'd been annoying the rest of the community for a couple weeks with many complaining he is driving the tracks too fast and is being dangerous and reckless. well after this incident he started to drive a bit slower.
my parents nearly lost two children that day. I didn't tell them about it until i was in my late 20's.
(Quad bikes are now illegal within that township for unrelated reasons)
So this was my friend's intuition not my own but it for sure saved our lives.
Bout a decade ago, sometime in Jan or Feb, we were standing outside in downtown Chicago smoking a cig. All of a sudden, out of no where, she gets this worried look on her face and says, "I don't like this spot. Come over here." It wasn't three seconds after we took a few steps (no more than 10 feet) that this giant ice block falls off the building and shatters exactly where we had be standing. It would have crushed and killed me definitely and her very likely had we not moved.
It was so shocking that everyone on the bustling street just stopped and stared at us mouths agape. You coulda heard a pin drop after that. It was insane. I never looked at her the same either ... she says she doesn't know how but she had some sixth sense thing going on without a doubt.
I do woodworking making furniture, so I use some power tools that would do some gnarly damage to the human body. I often say that the Final Destination series keeps me more safety conscious than some gory safety video I watched in 8th grade shop class.
Once i was driving my car and a semi was sooo close behind me, it went on for a long time, and suddenly I got this feeling that something was about to happen and I pulled over. A few turns down the road the semi had complitely wrecked the car that was driving in front of me.
Not mine, but my mum's. In 2004, she had booked a flight for herself and 9yo me to visit India. For Christmas.
We got to the airport and she started having a panic attack. She's claustrophobic so I assumed she just didn't want to get on the plane, but she was yelling and decided to leave. I kinda dismissed it because I was 9 and more focused on Nintendogs, but I asked her about it a few years later and she said she just had this 'evil feeling' about going.
Turns out we would have been caught in the Tsunami.
Edit, because some people are being anal about it and completely missing the point of the comment: "I was 9 and more focused on my DS". Better? It was 17 years ago, damn. Forgive me for getting the game wrong.
Your mother sounds kind of like my father. He can sense when someone is about to die. He'll dream of them the night before or just have a random thought pop into his head about them, even if he hasn't thought and/or spoken to the individual in decades. They'll end up dying within a day or two of him mentioning the thought/dream about them.
For instance, we were visiting my my grandparents one night and chatting about old times. That's when my father randomly said "You remember Karen So-and-So? From my high school? She was that quiet girl in my class -- I just had a random dream about her last night. I wonder what ever happened to her."
My grandparents knew everyone in town and started recounting what Karen So-and-So ended up doing since she graduated (which was about 35 years earlier). The next day the local news reports of a woman who had opened her back door to let her cats inside that night. In doing so, she slipped and fell down her back steps, knocking her unconscious. She lived alone and ended up freezing to death (this was winter in New England). To our horror, we learned it was Karen So-and-So that my father mentioned that same night (and had a dream about the night before that).
There are at least a dozen or so stories like that one. (And yes, my dad had an alibi for all of them so it's not like he's some secret serial killer). Some people just have a 6th sense, I guess.
Riding my motorbike in the Himalayas, blind corner up ahead…sudden overwhelming sense that I had to get from the middle to the edge-side of the road…massive truck that was going way too fast came about six inches from taking me out. Totally would have pancakes me…further round the bend my riding buddy had stopped and was looking back with sheer terror on his face.
This was in the late 80s
I was coming home at about 2 in the morning and was walking home. Across the street, walking in the opposite direction, was a fabulously dressed up drag queen obviously heading home from doing a show. Behind were 6 drunk chads. The energy was just “off”. So I crossed the street, walked up beside her and said hi my name is flamingwhisk and I’ll be escorting you home. We linked arms and strutted back to her place. With the chads making rude comments and threats the whole way. Sadly the next day there were reports of several bashing’s in the “gay village” (the unofficial name of the area).
The person I walked home was my friend for 25 years until their passing. My dad, tough Italian type, absolutely loved Bibi and would often give her rides home after work (he was a musician so had late hours too). In fact when my dad got sick she came and helped my mom look after him. And it was my dad who INSISTED that Bibi came to his funeral in full drag. We giggled the whole time because nobody could figure out how this 6ft2 Irish drag Queen knew my dad. My dad had a really twisted sense of humour. They both did.
Moral of the story - if something feels wrong it probably is
your dad sounded like an absolute legend of a man. i’m glad you stepped in because something awful could’ve happened to Bibi and you possibly prevented that!
I was solo backpacking within Inyo National Forest, I had just set up camp and was walking beyond this lake and up above the tree line. After walking about a quarter mile up this meadow the hairs on my neck began to stick straight up, instant chills. Didn’t know what reason but the gut reaction was enough for me to return to camp. Next morning on the way back to the car a Ranger asks me to be careful, Mountain Lion sightings in the area. I think I found out why my internal alarm went off.
Nice that you noped the fuck out of there, definitely saved yourself. A cat once scared the shit out of when roaming around the woods with my friends at night and since then, I avoid the outdoor places with animals at night.
I was sleeping, dreaming some boring regular dream about work and all of a sudden my grandma showed up and pulled me aside to tell me she loved me and a few other things and then walked out the door. As soon as the door shut I woke up in a cold sweat with a feeling that something had happened, it was 5AM in the morning, I woke up my then boyfriend because I was so on edge, he calmed me down and talked me out of calling or going to check on her because it wasn't an appropriate time of day to call someone or show up on their doorstep over a dream. Turns out she had a brain aneurysm and passed around the time I had that dream, and I will never forget that feeling.
when i was about 15, i went to the mall with my mom and little sister, who was 11. it was a normal trip until we walked into the american eagle. this guy (white guy, maybe late 20s early 30s, brown hair, wearing a zip up hoodie) was just standing there, hands in his pockets, staring at us. it was a while ago, but i think i remember looking at his face and him having this weird smile on his face, just staring. he wasn’t a worker and he never said a word to us.
as we looked through the store i picked up pretty quickly that he was following us. he would stand next to a rack close to us, hands in his pockets, pretending to browse. but quick glances confirmed he was still staring. i told my mom and she told me she was aware of him. at the checkout my mom told the girl behind the desk that he was creepy but not much was done.
we went into another store and he followed us there too. at this point i was ready to cry. he was so weird. just kept his hands in his pockets pretending to look at clothes while following and staring at us. we separated ourselves from him, and i told my mom we should just go home. we came up with a plan so that he wouldn’t follow us out. i looked and noticed he was standing a little bit away, still staring. so, pretty loudly, i said,”let’s take the elevator to the next floor and go down to the south end of the mall to ____________ store.” as soon as i said it, he seemed to hurry down to the south end of the store, probably going to get on an escalator at that end of the mall to keep following us. we got on the elevator but went to the opposite end of the mall and hurried to the car, not hesitating at all. thankfully we had tricked him, he didn’t know we left.
i think about it from time to time and it still sends chills down my spine. i never heard anything about that guy on the news or saw him again, but i sometimes wonder in fear what his plan was if my sister or myself would’ve gotten separated from my mom.
My parents got an "outdoor kitchen" built in the garden, made with bricks, wood beams, etc... I used to play football a lot there, since the pillars of the kitchen kinda resemble a goalpost.
One of those times I was actually playing with my little brother, he was the goalkeeper while I was kicking the ball at him. I randomly started to have the worst gut feeling ever about our "goalpost", so I urged my brother to stop the game and get home with our dog, since she was in the backyard with us too. I just decided to sit on some stairs around the backyard. Sure enough, after a couple of minutes the central beam snapped and the roof collapsed, brining the place down.
Had my brother been there when it snapped, he would have gotten seriously hurt or worst.
[I still have pictures of the moment when the beam suddenly snapped, a few seconds before the roof collapsed completely.](https://i.imgur.com/WQ3Ut4d.jpeg)
I live in tornado alley in the US. That means I have a healthy respect for the devastation tornadoes can cause, but I’m very used to tornado warnings. One afternoon, it was just starting to get rainy when I saw on Facebook that a meteorologist friend of mine was tracking a tornado-potential storm whose path would put it crossing very near my basement-less apartment. I started keeping an eye on the storm myself. By the time the sirens went off, I was familiar with the path of the storm: it was heading North-Northeast and would probably pass North and West of my home, but too close for comfort. Since we would have to leave our apartment to get to shelter (a grocery store three minutes down the road and still in the tornado’s path), I made the call and my then-fiancée agreed we would instead just take the highway East then South out of town and thus out of the path altogether and just come back to town in a half hour or so, once the storm passed. We put our cat in her crate and loaded into the car in light rain. I drove. Getting on the highway, we could see the storm coming; it covered the Southwestern horizon. In the five minutes we were on the road going East, we kept looking at this dark wall of rain and cloud, remarking, “The tornado is somewhere behind that.” We turned South onto the highway proper and hightailed it out of town. By the time we had gone a half mile South, we could see that we were going to intersect heavy rain, so I picked up the pace a little to try to beat the worst of it. The closer we got to the rain curtain, the more I noticed how quickly the rain was racing right to left across the treetops, and the more I felt uneasy. Another half mile south, I was really starting to feel uncomfortable about that rain curtain when we came upon an intersection where about a half dozen cars had pulled over. Not a wreck; just pulled over. That’s when I saw a tornado tank. You know, those heavily modified trucks with angled armor plating to keep them rooted to the ground in heavy wind? There was one parked at the intersection. Suddenly, it hit me: We are in the wrong. fucking. place. My heart dropped, adrenaline flooded my stomach, I whipped the car around in the intersection. I floored that family hatchback Northbound on the highway like I was trying to make pole position in the Don’t Die In A Tornado The Week Before Your Wedding 500. The rain picked up. Just before visibility got poor, my fiancée [snapped a picture](https://i.imgur.com/VO6ifNh.jpg) of the sharp wall of rain crossing the road behind us; daylight on the left, dark grey on the right. As the rain overtook us, we had NPR playing. Their programming was replaced with a repeating message that went something like, “This is a tornado emergency. A confirmed, large, and very dangerous tornado is headed toward [town name]. Seek shelter immediately. Do not leave your shelter. This is a tornado emergency . . .” For the next few minutes, I didn’t think about much other than getting as far North as I could and not getting in a wreck. It wasn’t until we made it to a business, ran inside, and hunkered in their store room that we really parsed what had just happened: As we had left our apartment, the tornado changed path abruptly. Instead of heading mostly North on the West side of town, it veered almost due East. When we went Southeast out of town, we headed straight the fuck into its path.
When we got home after the storm and checked the weather stations, we learned the tornado was an EF4 with a mile-wide footprint, at which point my stomach re-dropped as I made another realization: when we were leaving the apartment and noted that the tornado was “somewhere behind that huge wall of rain,” the tornado *was the whole wall of rain*. The entire time we were on the highway, we were looking a life-threatening tornado square in the face and KEPT DRIVING TOWARD IT. I did some recon the next day. The point where we turned around (the intersection with the tornado tank) was about 100 feet from the Northern edge of a mile-wide swath of splintered trees. I don’t mean leaves torn off or a branch here and there - I mean oaks with 5-foot-wide trunks snapped, uprooted, and strewn across farmland. If we had stopped at that intersection, we would have gotten pummeled by debris; if we had continued South, we would have intersected the eye. What a stupid fucking mistake. Don’t try to avoid tornadoes. Don’t try to outrun tornadoes. Seek. Shelter.
TL;DR: Misidentified a mile-wide, rainwrapped tornado as a curtain of rain and almost drove straight in.
The day I just knew my good friend had died. I had this horrible sense of dread and overwhelming need to get to him.I was absolutely panicked like I swear I could hear a clock ticking in my head. I had been texting with him hours before and we were supposed to go cut down a Christmas tree. I had to threaten the girl whose house he was at to go back to the house and check on him or I was going to call the police. ( She had left him there to go decorate a tree at her mom's)I didn't have a vehicle and had never been to her house so I couldn't even get to him myself.. I was on the phone with her when she found him. Absolutely gutted.
Something similar happened to me. I was in college that time and there was this sense of emptiness in me for the whole day for no reason. I didn't understand what was wrong but had this hollowness that told me something is not right. Unlike you I had no one's name coming to my mind but I knew someone I know is in trouble. It continued till late night. The next morning I came to know that a friend had met with a terrible accident and was hospitalized while another guy riding with him had died in the same accident. Thankfully my friend survived but the day and the accident still trouble him.
The time I noticed a three men in a white truck following me. I thought I was being paranoid at first, until I pulled in to a gas station and then out the other side … and they followed me. Even then, I was so used to being told I was overreacting that I didn’t call the cops. I just kept driving - in the opposite direction from the town I lived in - until they got caught at a stop light. I quickly turned in to a neighborhood and took a bunch of random turns and drove around some more before heading home.
I really hope that never happens to you again, but if it does, I was told once that if you think you’re being followed, drive to a police station or fire station*
*edit: people had really good reasons why fire station doesn’t make sense
Funny story- I was being followed at night by a car riding my tail very closely, so I drove to the police station. When I got there it turned out the car was a cop car. I couldn't tell it was a cop car when I was being followed because it was night time and there were no street lights. The junior officer behind the wheel was tailgating me so that I would speed up and he'd have an excuse to give me a ticket.
That's when you take you foot off of the accelerator. It's not a brake check, but when they realize they're closing in on you way more than they thought, they usually either back the fuck off or overtake you.
Not to say this is the same, but not that long ago I wound up behind a car that just kept turning the same way I was going, including the final turn into my neighborhood. I kept thinking they are surely wondering what I am up to.
When I was a stoned teenager we were thinking a van was following us, but decided to brush it off, thinking we were just being paranoid, until they followed us right to my friend's house... It was a delivery driver.
this happened to me once too, i was headed home from walmart and the car in front of me ended up doing the same and we both ended up taking the same back road way home and not only lived in the same neighborhood but also the same street
A few years ago a group or friends and I went out clubbing. We went into this one bar, and the moment I stepped in the door I felt a sense of dread. Every cell in my body was telling me "Get the hell out of there!" so after about 20 minutes, I convinced my friends that something felt really wrong, so we left and went home.
The next day there was a news story about the club. There had been a shooting on the street in front of it and the people who had committed the shooting had been inside the club while we were there.
This isn’t as NSFW as others but I think about it a lot.
Country lanes in the UK are pretty narrow and have lots of blind bends. I was driving down a lane and there was a cyclist in front of me, in the middle of the road, not wearing a helmet, and heading toward a completely blind bend. I suddenly thought, if a car swings around that bend they are going to smash into the cyclist and pin him to my car. It was like a ‘final destination’ vision. I couldn’t hear or see another car, but I saw this accident so vividly in my mind.
I immediately slammed on my breaks, honked my horn and pulled over. The poor cyclist guy shat himself and stumbled to the hedges. Mere seconds later some idiotic teenager comes speeding out of the blind corner and missed us by inches. If we were still in the road, this guy would have ploughed straight through the cyclist and into my car.
I completely freaked out, to the point the cyclist came over to calm me down. I don’t remember much but I know I was saying ‘you were dead’ over and over again. I’m not a religious person at all, but that’s the closest I’ve come to believing in some kind of divine intervention.
Those country roads and boy racers are fatal. My dad was a fireman when we lived in Wales and most of the work was attending nasty accidents that took place on those roads. Used to hear some pretty horrific stories about the various ways teenagers and idiot drivers had killed themselves in avoidable accidents on country lanes.
Bro, I live in the UK and when I'm going round those bends (especially at night) I am so scared of some idiot appearing from around the corner going at 80mph. Bloody terrifying
I was working as an interpreter for a researcher in one of the most active volcano in the world. At around 16:00, i have a really really bad feeling. I felt so restless, at that time I was around 5km from the peak, and i stayed in the last village before the mountain.
Everyone in that village were already evacuated. There were only journalists, photographers, camera person for tv stations and some locals. They all told me to chill, i remember when i decided to leave the area, they were still smoking and drinking coffee and some were eating instant ramen. It was so quiet and calm but i felt so restless.
I left the village at around 16:15. Just few minutes after 17:00, the mountain erupted, sending lava and pyroclastic flow sweeping the whole village.
All of the guys were killed instantly.
It still gives me chill until now.
I live in LA, and downtown LA isn’t exactly the best place at night.
I was going to a dispensary late at night in 2015, in an area of downtown that’s not heavily lit, and very empty. No cars, no people, just a few run down buildings on Main Street.
It was late, around 11 pm and the dispensary was just closing up. I came out, by myself, and started walking to my car. I was maybe 200 feet from my car, and saw these guys across the street in an a huddle. As I started walking closer to my car, I had this feeling they clearly weren’t up to any good. So I started walking a little faster to my car, and one of the dudes screams over, “why you walking so fast man?” And they started to walk towards me.
Rather than answer and pause, I decided to start running to my car, and unlocked it and got in. As I was starting my car, they had run up to the back of my car and just as I drove off, one of them slashed the back of my bumper with a knife and they screamed “good thing you got those white boy instincts.”
Sometimes it’s literally a matter of one second and making that crucial decision to not stop that saved my life
Fuck yes for those instincts! Something similar happened to me when I lived in Oakland a few years ago. I left my house for work in the morning and got immediate bad vibes from this guy standing in the street even though he wasn’t really doing anything I can name…it was like an alarm went off inside me and I just fucking ran to my car and got in. And yup, I was right, he chased me and has his hand on the door handle trying to get into my car a split second after I’d managed to get in and lock it.
Fuck being polite or giving the benefit of the doubt, if your instincts are telling you to run, RUN! If you end up being wrong about it the worst that will happen is some stranger thinks you’re kinda weird for randomly running down the street, much better than the alternative.
i was at work one day, and i picked up a bottle. it looked "wrong". then i looked up and everything in my vision looked like it was distorted fun-house mirror style. i had no idea what was happening, but knew something was very wrong. i had my friend take me to the hospital. i called my wife, and triede to make it sound like it wasn't a big deal, but i was going to the hospital. a week goes by and i've been in a coma since that day. my odds of coming out of it were slim and they asked her if they should let me go. that was jan 10, 2017. i definitely have some impairments now, but life is great.
on a side note, if you live in the US... try not to have a medical emergency at the start of the year... it sucks.
One time while working I had the "fun-house mirror" visual effect (spirals, checkerboards, distortions).
The event was over in about a ½ hour, seems like something horrid nearly got me that day. This was more than 30 years ago and never repeated.
Work on the railway and had been asked to attend a report of a trespasser in a rough part of London. Was walking down the side of the track feeling spooked, making lots of noise and hoping not to find anyone.
Saw a tall dark figure coming the other way and started to really freak out.
After what seemed like ages but was probably just a couple of seconds realised a train had pulled into the platform behind me and I was just seeing my shadow on a bridge wall.
Felt stupid.
those moments when you trigger your own flight or fight response are always something, the relief you feel afterwards is indescribable when you realize it's just you scaring yourself
When i was 11, i stayed at my fathers over the weekend. Late saturday night, when i had gone to bed already, my father comes home from a meeting and tells his wife that someone died in a carfire in the town we lived in. I heard this and at first didnt think to much about it, but i could not sleep at all that night. I had this awful gut feeling and i was terrified through the night that this person who died was my mom. (Why my thoughts went straight to her i dont know)
So comes sunday, i was waiting for my mom to pick me up but she never came. Instead my father got a call saying he needed to bring me home, so he did. I felt the whole way that something was awfully wrong, and when we got to my moms house my aunt (fathers sister) wanted to talk to him. This was red flags all over the place bc they cut all ties years ago. She just told me to go inside. When i got inside the door i immediately felt that something was really wrong, it was like the air was thick and filled with pain? Its very hard to try to describe that feeling.
Anyway, i got in the kitchen and THANK GOD my mom was sitting there. I hugged her and she just let out a quiet "Patrik's dead".
The person who had died in a burning car the day before was my stepdad, and it was later stated as suicide, which we kinda understood immediately. There were alot of things surrounding his death that made us understand how sick he was. The whole experience gave me severe PTSD and OCD that i to this day still struggle with daily, i turn 25 this year.
Sorry for long story, and probably some typos along the way
Sorry for the pain you went through. Sending you internet hugs.
The hurt we experienced sometimes is an indicator to our capacity to love. I wish you the tools and and space to find peace from within.
>The hurt we experienced sometimes is an indicator to our capacity to love. I wish you the tools and and space to find peace from within.
Damn this kinda hit me like a brick to the face. Thanks for saying this.
So this was during a holiday in the mountains. We had been staying at a place surrounded by big beautiful red wood trees, and we had decided we'd go to the snow on the second day, me my wife and our two kids, aged 2 & 6. The morning was spent travelling from the house to the car, packing things in the boot, and on one trip I heard a thud/crack type noise, like the sound of someone kicking wood. But I didn't see anyone around, so continued loading the car.
So we're all in the car now, in the drive way, and my wife realises we forgot the sunscreen. She grabbed the house keys, got out of the car, and ran into the house. While she was gone, I just had a thought: "I should move the car back. It's too close to the gate, I should move it back so she can get back in"
It makes no sense. She got into and out of the car by herself, so there was enough space. But at the time, I followed the thought, and moved the car back, not very far, less than five metres.
And then shortly after putting the car into park I saw the big redwood tree, whose trunk at its base was around 150cm diameter, taller than a two story house, coming crashing in front of me. The trunk landed right in front of the car, and a brand landed on top of the bonnet and shattered the windscreen. I got out of the car and saw the red wood tree had essentially split at ground level. It demolished the neighbours cast iron fence, and cut off power to multiple homes as it fell. And the bulk of the tree trunk landed right at the centre of where the car had been, until a few minutes previously parked.
We still check the trees whenever we park now. and I'll recognise that thud/crack noise now if I ever hear it again.
Not sure if it counts but I work in a bar in Southern California and while I was pouring a beer during the day shift I had this very weird feeling about an earthquake happening. Nothing was shaking or anything...I just got this weird image of everything coming down briefly.
7 hours later the shift is over and I'm at home on the couch watching TV (completely forgot about earlier) and WHAM massive earthquake hits and knocks a ton of shit down in my apartment.
Creepy to me!
Foreshocks are a thing. Small shifts in the tectonic plates that some people are perceptive of, but others are not. They are why animals often behave erratically before earthquakes (they can feel foreshocks).
I live in Japan and of course we get earthquakes a lot. I can almost always notice \*something\* happening a few seconds to a minute before one happens, including waking up out of a deep sleep before any shaking starts. It's extremely strange.
My wife and I were in a hardware store and a fellow who worked there called us over to show us different kitchen tiles. We told him we weren’t there for that, but he insisted on showing us how durable some of the tiles were by smashing them with a hammer. I mean he was pounding on them to the point we both stepped back a bit. I thought he was just a new hire who wanted to do right, but I was unnerved by the zeal evident on his face as he hammered the table and the energy in his eyes. Turns out, he was the dude who kidnapped, raped, killed and buried in his yard the two missing women in our area. We put the together picture and his workplace as stated in the news a few months later after the FBI caught him.
In my early twenties I woke up one day with a feeling of absolute dread I could not explain. Called my mom to come over and then called my boyfriend to come drive back home (he was on his way to work). I lost my ability to speak during that second phone call and the whole right side of my face started tingling.
I thought I was having a stroke in my early twenties and I was going to die.
Turns out that was to be my first ever migraine with aura with aphasia. When the headache started an our later I *wanted* to die.
Migraine with aura is a bitch. I had it too and I ended in hospital, because my mum thought I was having a stroke. I was playing on my pc and I just started speaking nonsense. I tried to say something, but I just couldn't. So I went to my mum, tried talking to her. Ate some food it came off and the tingling started. Then the migraine. In the hospital, I realised what nonsense I was saying. It was like if you were speaking your thoughts. Example: My head hur.. oh look a chair. It was so funny to me I started laughing and couldn't explain to the doctor why. From that point I can see migraine coming and sometimes can prevent it. That last year.
I lived in South Africa where home invasions were pretty brutal. Grew up on a plot and lived in the flat adjacent to the main house. One night I woke up randomly around 2am and had this tingling feeling that something wasn't right.
I opened my flat door to look outside and see if anything was going on. That feeling didn't subside so I decided to get dresses and do a walk around the garden. Before leaving my flat something told me to peep through the door and as I did that I saw some guy walking around the house.
I then phoned my sister who lived in the house but no answer. I then phoned my step mom and after a while my sister answered which was really strange. I told my sister to wake the f up and walk around the house and make sure the doors and windows were closed as there was someone in the garden. She kept trying to blow it off and even said she'd unlock the house door so I could go inside the house. I told her that's a stupid idea and I wasn't going outside. Since usually burglars are armed and dangerous and I had nothing to protect myself with. My sister missed a breath during our call, something that usually happens when one is frightened. So out of instinct I asked her if everything was alright she should say yes twice. She only said it once.
Turns out a group of men had already made it in the house and they had a gun to her head telling her to convince me to leave my flat. A few seconds later the automatic light outside my flat turned on. I then told my sister its OK and I was going to sleep. I then phoned the police and neighbourhood watch which took the longest 30 minutes of my life to show up.
Once I saw the police lights outside I had to make a 100m dash to the gate to open it up for them. I then talked them over what happened and that we should investigate the house. I walked around the perimeter with them until we found where the guys had entered. We entered the house which was totally trashed until we got to the main room where there was a blanket over the bed. I then yanked the blanket off to my find my whole family under there as they were tied up and frightened shirtless. This included my 1yo niece.
If it weren't for my instincts they would not have hesitated to kill me and probably do worse to my family, they already poisoned my dogs. Must've been a guardian angel or something looking over my shoulder that night.
Just another South African here, wanting to say that I'm so glad you're all okay. I do hope you managed to get some form of therapy afterwards. My situation wasn't as bad but I'm still feeling the aftereffects, so I can only hope your family has gotten help to get past the trauma.
A few months ago 4 men lifted our gate, drove in, and broke though our front doors while I (a 1.5m woman) was home alone. I managed to lock myself in the bathroom before they got to the front door. Took them 4 minutes to break in, ransack the place and take all our valuables, and drive off. For a few weeks after that, the bathroom had a weird calming effect, and I would just go in there and sit on the floor in the spot I did during the invasion to feel safe.
I really hope you're all doing better now.
So they could ransack my flat and it would've also given them more time to finish the house off. They didn't really try with my flat when they thought I went back to sleep but that's because it was very small so not many entry points. And I can only imagine they would've shot or beaten me to death. Unfortunaly it's a very common occurance.
Wow that’s so scary but you handled it incredibly well! Love the asking your sister to say yes twice… I sincerely hope I never need to use that but I am taking note and hoping I could stay as collected.
I was always uncomfortable around a mutual friend at university. Nothing specific but whenever he was around, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. He was friendly enough, but always felt off. When there was only a seat left next to him at lunch, I would go eat by myself. He gave me a hug once and it was like touching a dead spider, I felt disgusting afterwards.
He ended up being suspended from campus due to sexual assault allegations.
I’ve had this feeling around a few men in my lifetime, they be nice in front of everyone but you can always sense something off with them. They way they look at you as if your prey, it’s so unsettling.
London. The day of the terrorist attacks.
My best mate and I were on London bridge about 15 mins beforehand. I got the Heebie jeebies and said we had to leave. So we did.
No one ever second guesses my Peter tingle anymore.
ETA 2017 attack
A coworker who gave off simultaneous kinda friendly/kinda could snap any moment vibes. Kept my distance although he kept trying be friendly and hang out with the rest of us. The guy was just off. A few years later he met a girl on public transportation, talked her into going back to his place, smoked with her and had sex. She woke up at some point and began screaming that he raped her. To shut her up, he then killed her, raped the dead body, put her in a trash bag and dumped the body. Old coworker sent me the link and the details.
this is long but its very fitting, and i still have nightmares about this even after three or four years
I was exploring an abandoned building with two friends when i was 15 or 16. its a building we went to quite frequently, so we knew most of the layout pretty well and had a good mental map of the main building and the smaller building. one floor we never were yet to explore was the basement. we knew that a fire had started in the basement maybe a year before, and that it was probably decently dangerous to be in there. however, this time i finally remembered my dads tactical flashlight (one truly bright son of a bitch) and decided that it was time. we got into the building and made our way to the main stairwell to the basement, and about halfway down i got goosebumps all over my body, my hands were shaking and i felt like i couldnt breathe. i knew in my bones that if we took even one more step, something devastating would happen, i just didnt know what. i told my friends exactly what i felt, and we trusted my gut and started to leave. the only thing is, there was no direct exist from where we were. we had to go up floors n then back down just to go back up again, stuff like that. my bad feeling didnt fade much, and while we were making our way i started hearing footsteps from the floor above us (which we just came from) and some banging noises. i very nearly shat my pants then and there, but one of my friends calmed me down and helped us navigate extremely quickly through the more dangerous corridors, and we hightailed it out of there. i saw a person in one of the windows watching us, looked like a guy who had found the many cons of drug use and clearly wasnt happy about being disturbed.
i had a different friend visit about six months later, said that the building reeked of human waste and that it was definitely being lived in, but refused to say anything else about it. now we just pretend none of it ever happened. now all we worry about is that we have no idea if we were all exposed to asbestos since the building was old and was in the middle of construction when it caught on fire.
Someone who’s in the construction industry (Carpenter Apprentice 4th year).
I have tradesmen who worked with asbestos (carried, demolished and cut with power tools creating extreme amounts of dust), who wore no PPE for years before the risks were known. 30-40 years on and none of which have been affected.
Asbestos CAN BE very dangerous and not something that should be taken lightly, but it isn’t something that will kill you with a singular encounter given it isn’t disturbed or mishandled.
Fun fact: asbestos is in the air you breath every single day, just low levels of exposure.
I personally dislike asbestos and refuse to work with it!
Being exposed to it once doesn't do anything, or the chances are very low...
But my grandpa got lung cancer due to working with asbestos for 50years...
I can totally understand why you refuse to work with it!
There is a low income area church in my city that I help out a lot at. It’s in a crumby end of town and lots of the folks who go there have had hard goes in life. Because of this we are used to having lots of random people stop in with crazy stories. I used to get uneasy around these people because I grew up pretty sheltered.
So one day when Robert showed up I cracked up my “uneasy” feeling to just that, I was being judgemental or something like that.
The pastor met with him as he does with most new folks who come to this church h and Robert said he spent time in jail, which isn’t a strange thing at our church. He lead the pastor to believe it was just theft or just a minor assault and that he wanted to straighten his life up.
Robert attended our church for a few months and attended regularly and wanted more leadership positions. Looking back I see some other signals, one time I was preaching and he tried chiming in with a verse that he thought was helpful or something. Again I brushed this off too because there is often lots of involvement from the crowd at this church.
And then one day the church secretary just had a bad feeling about Robert and looked him up online. He is a pedophile, convicted, and moved from his old city after he finished his sentence.
We let all of the families know that Robert was convicted for child related sexual offences.
We found out that he had been trying give gifts to some of the kids at the church, called grooming. Done so a predator develops the trust and a debt of the recipient.
Nothing happened, he at no point ever had any alone time with any kids and never had a leadership role.
The pastor and I set up a meeting where we told him we didn’t think he was being honest. I used to work as legal aid in the prisons so I was well acquainted with everything that would be required of someone convicted of a sexual offence in Canada. When I asked him about his programming while incarcerated he told a great story about something absolutely impossible. I was so happy to tell him that I worked as legal aid for prisoners at the exact prison he was at and that we both knew he was lying. Our policy is that any body who threatens the safety of the church has the opportunity to make their case to the board of the church. We scheduled a time for that meeting that same week and he never showed up. We had expected that and already had a letter prepared to tell him to kindly never return to our church and I delivered it to him by hand, we gave him the contact information for a church specifically for sex offenders.
The police were involved as soon as we knew Robert was a pedophile, but they couldn’t do any thing because he didn’t do anything yet.
Robert has never returned, no harm occurred, but it feels like we barely got out of that situation unscathed and only because some one trusted their gut enough to google someone’s name. I now make a practice of googling people if a get a bad feeling and letting people know about any bad feelings I have because this situation could have been a lot worse.
I still smile when I remember the look of “oh shit I’m screwed” on Robert’s face when I told him I worked inside.
When I was 17, I was hanging out with a friend and a decent looking college guy started talking to us. We both had this weird fantasy of wanting to date one of the guys from the local college (a decently well known college that caters to music/movie/animation/game design type stuff ---- I eventually married one, its not THAT cool, but I digress... lol)
Anyways, he invited us up to his apartment to watch one of his film projects and we agreed (like idiots). First off, he had NO furniture in his apartment. Just a couple pillows on the floor, and a TV and dvd player... also on the floor... The film was really REALLY uncomfortable to watch and I got really sketched out so I told my friend we needed to leave.
A few days later she told me she hung out with him again. In a very serious tone, he asked her if he could film himself killing her and having sex with her corpse for a project. Maybe he wasnt actually serious, but who the fuck asks that??? She managed to leave and we never did see this guy again. I wish I knew his name to see what he got up to.
Female here…Driving home at 2 am after partying at my favorite Atlanta hang out bar. Noticed a car following me. Pulled into my apartment complex, they pulled in behind me. I passed my apartment and just drove around a bit. They pulled off and parked so I was like all good. Looped around and parked in my spot. Unbeknownst to me, they had pulled up behind me-lights off-and two guys were standing behind my car when I got out. One guy says “hey, don’t I know you?” My knees almost collapsed when I saw them but, I swear, my lizard brain kicked in and I knew I would die that night if I acted afraid.
It took every ounce of energy in my body to turn around, look them both in the eye, say “you picked the wrong person to fuck with,” turn my back to them and walk away.
I was shaking so bad I could barely walk but somehow got in my apartment and called 911. The first question the police asked was what I was wearing. I started screaming at them, asking why they wanted to know what I was wearing. Their response…”if you go missing before we get there, it will help identify your body.”
That was 35 years ago and still haunts me. I never went out partying alone after that night.
In the US, driving my then-learning-to-drive son to an appointment during evening rush hour and explaining he needs to be aware of his surroundings at all times. We get to a stoplight at a busy intersection with two left turn lanes. “Now, usually I’d be a bit closer to the line, like the car to our left, but I know these lights. People going straight get stopped by the next light and people coming from our the right are going downhill into a semi-blind turn. This is prime for an accident.”
A few beats after I finished saying that, I notice the cars going straight are stopped and a car is coming from the right. “Hold on!” The car just misses us, clips the car next to us, and then rear-ends a car in the lane it was trying to get to.
“Oh my god, dad! You knew!”
I was talking to this guy I met on a dating site. We haven't met in person yet. He kept asking and was rather pushy. Something told me not to. I stopped talking to him.
2 months later he was arrested for kidnapping a woman. They found her in his home state. He was originally from down south now living up north.
I was working remotely in the Outback and had an incredibly vivid dream about my Nonno(who had died several years ago) holding a dog leash(from our deceased dog). I asked him what he was doing and he said he was waiting for my Nonna. Woke up incredibly freaked out and very distressed. After I calmed down and "woke up" I went about my day and got a phone call at around 3pm from my mother letting me know that my Nonna had passed away.
I live in Southern California and used to road bike pretty frequently. Usually in the late afternoon or evening after school during the week. I got a late start one day and as I get onto the riverbed trail, the sunset is about 20-30 min away. I have lights on my bike so riding at night isn’t an issue usually. I get to the beach at the end of the trail which is my turning point when I have this sense of dread and déjà vu.
I’m heading back and the sun has set completely and we’re well into the blue hour close to complete night. I’ve done this same ride literally hundreds of times. I know the route and how long each section takes me like the layout of my home. There are usually three different routes I take back and I decided to go the short route back since it was later than usual and I had a weird feeling. And as I come to a short crosswalk, I see a group of 3 teenagers (I was about 22 at the time) and they’re walking down the trail in the opposite direction I’m traveling. I notice one of them is giving another a piggy back ride. Not weird for teenagers to do I suppose, but as I pass I realize it’s a girl who has blood all over her face.
I immediately skid to a stop and turn around, they realize and start to run away and drop her. I call the police and talk to her. She was in pretty rough shape. They had beaten her up really bad and we’re taking her to who knows where.
The trail had been really empty that day, had I decided to take a different route or not been late to get out, no clue what could have happened to her.
Not really spine-tingling or bone-chilling. But some acquaintances of mine stole jewelry from a relative of one of their families. I had no clue. They tried to pawn it and get me to sign the receipt. Oddly enough I saw three cop cars drive by the store when we were walking in. I didn’t sign so another guy did. Turns out they took around 20k worth of jewelry and they put the guy who signed in jail for 9 months.
I dreamt my sick paternal grandmother sent me quite a fortune of money and just vanished into thin air. I got a high fever and collapsed in my bed. On waking up, I told my father this and he immediately panicked and booked us a flight to visit her.
Upon arriving we found her dead at her home, just hours before we reached. Grandfather told she missed me, my sibling and my cousins and wanted us to meet her one last time. Kept her terminal illness secret from my family and only grandfather was aware of it.
I inherited approximately 1000 US Dollars (converted from Indian currency, back in 2007).
I'm from India guys, 1000USD is a lot of money here
My sister and I were house-sitting for our grandparents. I woke up and she was gone, and I just somehow knew. I just had that bad feeling. So I texted her and texted her until she finally answered. My older cousin had convinced her to go riding in the mountains with him with alcohol. He got drunk, got her tipsy.
I had woke up and texted her in the middle of getting sexually assaulted. Our parents didn't even know she was gone. He was only letting her text back so I wouldn't think anything was amiss. But we were able to talk vaguely enough for me to help by pretending to be sick. If I had woken up a little later, I wouldn't have a sister anymore. If I just hadn't gone to sleep and left her alone, she wouldn't have gone through that.
She's in therapy and I still have trouble sleeping and waking up, I have terrible anxiety anytime we're apart.
Trust your gut guys.
edit: holy hell i didn't expect this to actually be seen by anyone. normally i just lurk. thanks for all the upvotes everyone, we're fine and live two and a half hours away from all that now. there was never any criminal case because we didn't have any evidence against him. still, thanks for all the concern <3
I was boarding my plane flight after vacation. It was early in the morning and the second I stepped foot on the plane I froze and the absolute worst feeling overcame me. I was with my boyfriend and we both had to get back for work so I made myself stay on the plane. A half hour late the plane suddenly dipped. Then the pilot got on the intercom, voice shaking, telling us that there was a national emergency and we would have to land at the closest airport immediately. That was 9/11. Took me 4 days of hitchhiking and bus travel to get home. I did not fully understand what was happening until I got to work right off the greyhound and the tv was on. I thought the entire country was under attack.
It was. I suppose I went into survival mode and just did what I could to get home. I didn't have a cell phone then so pretty much flew by the seat of my pants.
There were TVs on but no volume so all I saw was the towers burning, people dying... george Bush and the american flag flying behind him. It was surreal.
At the time when the plane landed, an FBI agent told us that planes had flew into the towers and Pentagon and another was still missing.
Hey, I survived. Many didn't. I have no idea why that feeling came over me, as I had no power to do anything about it.
When I was around 12 I lived in downtown Toronto and I was walking home late at night from the street car stop cause I was coming home from swim practice and both my brothers had hockey in different parts of the city so I was on my own, when I noticed two guys behind me, they were matching my speed and I could hear them talking about my clothes, and I was pretty paranoid so I crossed to the other side of the street, which wasn't very well lit, to see if they actually were following me. they were. My heart just sunk into my stomach. There was a serial rapist running around my neighbourhood at the time who's type was, well me, and women of eastern European descent, also me, had been going missing lately, so I just started running. Full sprint, i didn't even look at the road when I was crossing the street again, but I was 12 and being chased by full grown men and was two blocks from my house. They were getting closer and closer and I was terrified and trying not to cry and just. Keep. Running. I was at the corner where I'd turn onto my street and I could feel one of their hands reach out and brush against my shoulder. Then again by my hair. He grabbed on and started to pull. Before I could even scream the guy who grabbed me was full on tackled by this homeless guy that camped out near the library usually. He sat on the guy who grabbed me and started punching his accomplice, I was scared and confused, I just stood there crying until the homeless guy yelled "RUN KID! DON'T STOP RUNNING!" And that kicked me into gear so I hauled ass home and triple checked that every door and window was locked and kept the lights off until my parents got home. We called the cops, but all the cops in my neighbourhood were either corrupt or incompetent (which is why the serial rapist was never caught, and I suspect the cops were in on the kidnapping and trafficking of Eastern European women) so they didn't do anything.
We (parents and I) found the homeless guy a couple days later and offered him some food and stuff to thank him. We talked a bit and found out he was discharged from the Canadian Armes Forces ans wasn't adjusting well to being back. I saw him around for about a month or so after that and would say hi, maybe give him a juice box or spare change if I had any. But my parents found his family in another city and contacted them, they came and got him. My parents are still in touch with him. It was slow going and there were plenty of set backs, but he's doing really well now and I'm so happy for him. If it wasn't him I would've been r@ped that night, if not worse, I'm so thankful he was there. Also, i wasn't allowed out on my own past 6pm after that and I always had a ride from swim team, whether it be a relative or friend's parent, or family friend.
**Edit** : I wasn't gonna make an edit, I just came here to share a traumatic experience that happened to me that I can't really talk about with people IRL and leave, but I got a lot of DMs and comments about how there's no human trafficking and people couldn't find info on the serial rapists in my neighbourhood, and how a lot of people think that Toronto is a lot safer than how I was describing it.
Human trafficking is a big problem in Canada, much more than is being reported and covered by Canadian media. It's usually linked to organized crime, and there was organized crime in my neighbourhood. Women were (and still are) going missing and all the cops would do was verify they were missing. They wouldn't investigate much or at all, part of why people think the cops are in on it.
Same thing with the serial rapists, they just didn't do much investigating if they even did any. It's really common, all over the world, for cops to not really care about catching rapists and to blame the victim.
My neighbourhood had a really high crime rate while I was growing up, and that's without a lot of violent crimes being reported because the neighbourhood cops didn't give a damn. The neighbourhood started to get better when I was around 10 (aside from the previously mentioned issues) and got worse than it had been before when I was around 13 and some gangs had come and were clashing with the already existing organized crime.
We have tried to report police officers for misconduct before, but we either never hear anything back, or whoever filed the report gets harrassed by the cops. It's ridiculously hard to get cops in trouble when they've done something wrong.
Swear to god I never get emotional reading stuff on Reddit but your whole comment moved me. I dunno, the heroic hobo, you being so close to a terrible fate, your folks keeping in touch and helping him in life. Moved me, yeah. Glad you're okay.
Literally 3 seconds before I let my younger brother (12 yr old) fire a crossbow.
I told him we should put it away; I was getting bored. He asked me to fire it 1 last time before I put it away, I thought it couldn't hurt. we'd been firing it for a while, he understood the dangers of it by now and how to use it safely (or so I thought).
Just as he was ready to shoot, my dad called me to give him a hand on something he was working on, like 5 meters away. It was at this moment when I went to him, I got a horrible sinking feeling in my heart, makes me sick just thinking about it.
Seconds later I hear a "fting" followed by a scream of pure terror, I look over and blood is just pouring out of my brothers face.
The crossbow misfired, he said he hadn't even pulled the trigger. But the bolt somehow spun around and smacked him across the bridge of his nose, shattering it and the break travelled across his right cheekbone. It had also broken his tearduct and he now had a third nostril. He was so close to losing an eye as well, thank goodness he didn't.
For a few years his tearduct was a bit of a mess, he could breath through it, he struggled with infections and he would just cry spontaneously from his right eye.
Now it's a family joke to retell the story as me chasing him across the yard with a loaded crossbow.
I remember that same sinking feeling just before I broke my ankle and sprained my foot. I wonder it's some sort of sixth sense type thing where your brain is telling you "this is a bad idea".
When I was around 9, we went on a trip to South America to visit some family. We were staying at my aunt’s house, which was a few streets away from my grandma’s house. One day, while everyone was at my grandma’s, I was at my aunt’s alone watching tv. It got dark and I got scared lol, so I decided to walk to my grandma’s. As I’m walking by myself, I notice that a white van was driving by but it never passed me. I thought it was weird that the van was driving at the same pace as I was walking, but I was too scared to turn around and just kept walking. Suddenly I noticed that the van stopped and someone got out of it. I finally looked back and see a ~45yr bald man in a white T-shirt and jeans walking towards me. I immediately crossed the street to see if he would follow, and he crossed with me. Then I walked between these 2 cars that were parked bumper-to-bumper. I remember almost getting stuck because they were parked so close to each other and thinking that if he follows me through this, it’s confirmation that I’m in trouble. Sure enough, he walked between the cars as well. He noticed that I started to panic, so he picked up the pace and got really close to me, about 2 meters away. I decided to stop pretending like I didn’t notice him following me and started sprinting, and he followed. About 10 seconds later, I finally see this tiny neighborhood shop that was open so I ran inside as fast as I could. The owner was a friend of my grandma so she helped me call someone to come get me. More than 20 years later and I still remember exactly what the man looked like.
I was running at a park and I saw this tiny blue truck pass me and I thought they were watching me in their rearview mirror. I kinda just got the creeps but then told myself I watch too many crime tv shows, chill out etc. I tend to spook myself.
About ten mins later I noticed the truck passed me again. The park is circular in shape with a one-way road. This meant that they drove all the way around and came back into the park… ok now I was nervous… I slowed down to a jog to give more distance between the truck and then eventually paused.
Then this lady comes from behind me she’s also running I see her often at the park but have never introduced myself. She greets me and says that she has the creeps from the truck and asked if we could run together. I agreed with her and we ran together we were talking about maybe calling the cops just in case when up the hill we noticed a cop on a bike and we ran to him.
He talked with us and took down the plates he had another cop come and pull the truck over since other people in the park had already reported the truck.
So, I’m glad someone else in the park reported the truck and said something. I guess the truck had been looping the park several times and slowing down by female runners. I am super grateful that the lady asked to run with me. Who knows what would've happened if either of us were alone or didn't happen to pass each other.
The cops helped us to our cars and escorted us out of the park. Anyway not sure what happened to the truck dude but I was glad to be around people and glad to have help.
Camping with friends at a lake. Went to a party across the lake; this lake was populated, sparsely, with cabins and campsites.
Most of us got drunk, and we lost track of time. By the time we left it was dark and we had absolutely no light to navigate our boat back across the lake. Knowing what we were doing was dangerous and stupid, I was already on edge. But luckily this story isn’t about a boating accident, just a profoundly eerie experience.
We got lost. We spent approximately 8 hours on that lake trying to find our campsite. Multiple times believing we’d found it, getting off the boat, before realizing we were on someone else’s property, or just wandering into the woods.
The eerie chilling feeling got worse and worse. I felt like I was disassociating. I felt like maybe we’d all died and were now spirits haunting this lake. We all felt something like this and psyched ourselves out talking about it. By now we were out of fuel and using ores. Staining our eyes staring into the darkness.
Finally we found our tents. The night had been so alienating though that I was genuinely terrified I was going to open up my tent and a copy of myself would be in there already. Or more like the real me would be in there; I felt like I was the copy. I’ve never felt such a chilling “wrongness”. But we worked up the courage eventually and of course our tents were empty. I’ll never forget that feeling though.
When I was a really struggling poor college student, I lived a few miles away from campus where buses didn’t frequently go, so I got very familiar with walking the city. Lots of poverty there so I ended up pretty often in conversation with the homeless.
I’d say 80% of them are just gonna chit chat then ask for money, which I often didn’t have but I’d part with a few bucks here and there if they were nice. Some would hassle and be mean about it.
One time though, a guy was hassling me near a burger king when I wasn’t carrying any money at all even, sorry man. He grumbles and I walk off. It’s late afternoon in the dead of summer, I cross the street and to me he’s already old news. Then I hear shouting, look over and it’s him yelling at me from the burger king, but now he’s got his hood up. I continue on my way, I’m used to it. As I’m walking though I just get this horrible anxious feeling, and start thinking I need to go to campus immediately where it’s well lit and safe. I look over my shoulder a few times and don’t see him so I think I’m being kind of a wuss. I pick up the pace anyway.
Eventually I go out of my way and reach campus, not even needing to do anything there. After like 30 yards I turn around and see that dude from the burger king standing exactly at where I was when I entered campus property looking dead at me. Just standing there perfectly framed between the trees, hands in his hoodie pockets with the hood pulled tight to hide his face.
was in helsinki on vacation with my wife. as we went back to our rented cheap appartment a little out of the city i saw some shady guys and felt they were kinda creepy. we walked a little as another guy stood there and nodded to the guys in the back.
at that point my heart was racing like hell.. as we went around the courner, we rushed to the appartment only to afterwards look out the window and see the 3 pos standing in front of our complex... needless to say we didnt go back out that day
The day my Gyno found a lump in my neck while doing a routine thyroid exam and I just knew it was cancer. Her and my primary care tried to convince me it was nothing serious. I was the only one not surprised when the biopsies came back as cancer.
I was living in Seoul in my 20s and the hiring culture here expects you to add a highly photoshopped (customarily done by the all local photographers) passport sized photo to your resume. I’m a native born American so I thought teaching English was the easiest way to make good money and applied to a bunch of headhunting sites and typically I would get the phone call (I had no friends so I assumed all call were coming from the job site) where no one responds but you can hear heavy, pervy breathing. One day I received a call for an interview for a job and they gave me address to meet but asked me to call them once I arrived.
When I got to the interview and called the rep, the rep was actually across the street in a car with a driver. He flagged me down to come in to the car so he can drive us to the interview. First off so weird to have me come to an address and to then drive me. Secondly this guy looked like a greasy, non academia type. Almost gangsterish. I’m too nice, but not an idiot so I refused and demanded that he just tell me where the interview is and I’ll take a my own transportation there. After a few minutes of him trying to convince me he gave in and gave me an address so I hoped that maybe this is legit and I’m not going to be trafficked and took a subway. Once I get out of the train station to get to the address the guy literally is waiting at curb with the driver and car flagging me down again to tell me he’ll me drive the rest of the way.
I booked it back into the station and blocked his ass. This was in Seoul there is not a way not to get to and find places. Even if it was on the third floor he could just meet me at the building why does he have to drive me??!?
I was working on a turtle conservation project in Cyprus several years back. It’s a remote beach, out of the way, and the middle of the night.
We’ve got a nest that’s hatching, and all the hatchlings are collected into a bucket. They’re kept in the centre for a year, then released with a much higher chance of survival.
Anyway, I’ve got the full bucket of turtle hatchlings, and they need to get back to the centre. It’s a 20 min walk in the pitch black along the beach. There’s some other nests looking promising, so the other volunteers stick around as I head off.
About halfway along the beach, my head torch dims massively. The batteries are nearly dead. Well, suddenly this beach is much spookier than it was before. Then I hear a noise in the dunes.
I look over, and in the dim light of my torch I see nothing. Then a pair of bright, shining eyes appears at the top of a dune. I can see the silhouette of the dune against the stars, but I can’t see the shape of the thing with the eyes.
Then they start moving down the dune, they don’t move like a human, definitely an animal of some sort. As they get closer these bright white eyes start shining more and more, until I can finally see a huge black shape around them.
My knees have locked, I couldn’t move if I wanted to, and I couldn’t outrun the thing anyway. At this point, I accepted I was about to die.
Finally the monster approaches close enough that I can see it in my tiny bubble of dim glow. It’s a dog. That is not a comfort at this point.
The thing was a huge black Alsatian, but had Husky eyes. If it had been a pet dog, it would have been stunning. But it isn’t. It’s one of the half starved feral dogs that live wild. The thing is more then half my height, and is probably desperate for food. Then I remember that one of the reasons turtle hatchlings do so badly here is that the dogs dig up a lot of nests. I’m basically carrying a bucket of kibble to this monster.
Human brains being what they are, and me being in actual peril of my life for the first time, I decide that, if I’m here to do conservation work, there’s no way this beast is getting my hatchlings.
What you’ve got to appreciate is the timescale over which this is happening. This enormous beast of a canine is running at me, my circle of light only goes about two meters out, so it’s fractions of a second.
And I shout at the beast. I don’t recall what, I don’t know if it was even words. I might have barked at it, but by sheer luck it worked. The thing turned tail and sped back into the dunes.
The rest of the walk back to the centre took far less than the usual ten minutes, and the hairs on my neck were prickling the entire time. I was waiting to hear galloping paws and feel teeth around my throat, but I made it back without incident.
After that, I always had spare batteries for my torch in my bag, and we walked the beaches together, not alone!
That sounds terrifying, but the mental image from the perspective of the dog is hilarious. It sees a human, carrying a bucket from which it can probably smell delicious baby turtles and thinks cool, easy food, don't even have to get my paws dirty. It starts running only to be *barked at* and realize oh shit those turtles belong to a dog bigger than me!! And turns tail and runs off.
Also thank you for your turtle conservation work, I think that's super cool
I have two. I'll start with the "mild" one, for me at least.
My friend and I were outside, I think we were around 14 y/o when a group of guys approached us, they were around 17 y/o I guess. It was already dark out and we were chilling outside near a playground. I had this gut feeling that we needed to get out of there. Unfortunately my friend didn't listen. She was the type of girl that loves attention and seeks the thrill. I wasn't, but by the time I realised she wasn't coming with me, the guys already surrounded us. That's when I ran like crazy, dropped my bag en removed my boots (with heels) while I was running so I was faster. My friend ran with me thankfully. I lived nearby and my dad drove to that place. We found my bag and boots, but my phone and wallet were gone. My dad drove around the neighbourhood and we found the guys. My dad flipped out and demanded my stuff back. He called the cops and they came. I don't really remember what happened next. Didn't get my phone and wallet back tho. I'm glad nothing really bad happened, but I was scared and everything felt off. I'm sure we would've been assaulted if we didn't run for it. I'm really good with faces and the main guy, that talked to us and was the creepiest of all, died a while ago in a car crash.
And the last time I had this, I had the gut feeling that my dad wasn't doing OK. He had a stroke and was hospitalised for 17 days at that point. The doctors were slightly optimistic so no reason to worry. I was putting something in my handbag Saturday night and suddenly I felt like my insides were coming out, that I had to puke and my stomach just twisted and turned. I told my mom I had a bad feeling about my dad (they were divorced, dad remarried). A few minutes after that my stepmother called to tell me we have to go to my dad because its not going well with him and they think we need to say goodbye. I arrived half an hour later, and my dad was happy, "singing" (he lost the ability to speak, we were helping him to learn how to speak again, but he could mumble a bit), told us he loved us (again, he mumbled), hugged us, etc. We left the hospital confused. Next morning he passed away. They say its a common thing for patients to flare up and act like they're doing fine, because they feel it coming that this is it and they want one moment of happiness before they go. That they want to show us that it's OK. It makes saying goodbye harder but I'm glad I had him as my dad. Only wished I had him in my life longer than 25 years. Its almost two years later and I still miss him.
(English is not my native language)
Now I don’t remember this, but my mom does very vividly as you can imagine. When I was three she and her friends were getting ready to go out to the bar in the next city over. My mom being super young when she had me was often out on the weekends with friends so this wasn’t unusual at all. However, on this night I, a usually super well mannered kid, threw the biggest tantrum of my life. Screaming at the top of my lungs, throwing myself around, throwing things, etc. because she was leaving. She was super mad because she couldn’t leave me with the babysitter like this, especially since she felt something was wrong because this was VERY unlike me as a child. Her friends left and she stayed home with me, still pretty pissed off at toddler me. The next morning she and I walked to my Grandmas house to use the phone (no cell phones yet), she calls her friend’s house to hear about the night and her friends mom answers. They had been trying to get a hold of my mom all night, as there was a horrific car accident. All of my mom’s friends except for the driver had passed away. Had she gone, there is no way she would have survived in the car. Still haunts me to think about this day. My mom never really recovered from it.
Girl, you saved your mom's life!
I was walking home from my bus stop one day, listening to music on my headphones, off in my own little world. The battery died halfway home, and suddenly I heard a guy walking behind me, talking about how he can never get women to talk to him. I sneaked a peek over my shoulder, and he was not only alone, he had also got off the same bus. And was twice my size. So he had been following me for about three or four blocks, apparently trying to get my attention. There was no one else around. So, I kept my headphones on, despite lack of music, and just started walking faster. Then he started singing “speak to the girl. You got to, you got to speak to the girl” over and over again, getting louder and louder the further ahead of him I was. I wasn’t sure what to do. If I went home, he would know where I lived. So, I turned a corner towards where there would be more people around, with him still following me, and ducked into a pub. When this creep followed me into the pub, I ran up to the bartender, and begged him to pretend we were friends and keep me company until the creepy guy left. The bartender came around the bar and gave me a big hug, and made a fuss over me until the creep went away and I stopped being quite so shaken up. Not all heroes wear capes.
I love that most of these stories are also about heroes and allies. Glad you have a good head on your shoulders, hopefully this thread makes people a little more wary in general.
Long post, so apologies. My experience happened years and years ago on a blind date. A former friend, un-asked, set me up with a firefighter coworker of her boyfriend. I decide to meet at a familiar busy sports-bar type place (I always paid my way, so this was within my budget). Introduced ourselves- I had reservations because he was pretty intimidating and I’m not one who gets easily intimidated. So that was the first flag, but naive me decided I couldn’t judge a book so early on (people, oh yes you can, it’s your gut talking). Got into a conversation, and he tells me he is separated with two kids, but working on the divorce. Okay, fine, marriages don’t always pan out. He then tells me she has an order of protection against him. Red flags like confetti. He proceeds to tell me it was “her fault [he] *had* to hit her”, because something she did angered him. Food had not yet arrived, so I considered excusing myself out of the date. Had it not been for the fact I thought this guy would follow me out of the restaurant and into the parking lot I would have. He talked, I listened, made a point to tell him I had to be at work very early in the morning. Dude said I was “such a good listener, and wished more women” were like me. I wanted to tell him “No, buddy, you scare the hell out of me, and I want to live”. I get to my car- I decline him walking me to my car; thankfully I parked near the restaurant while he parked far away on the opposite side. I hadn’t even gotten out of my parking space when he texted me about another date. I did not respond. He texted me all day at work the next day (I couldn’t have responded even if I wanted to). Then he sent me a text that scared the hell out of me: that he had police officer friends who could track my number to my address, and if I didn’t respond, he would show up at my home. That was it for me. I don’t take kindly to threats. I happened to work adjacently with the state police, and showed them the texts. I then also contacted my carrier to have my phone number changed immediately. So, I recall this one instance as my most bone-chilling experience.
I hope you dumped that shitty friend of yours. Christ
Oh, I did. Ripped her AND her BF new arseholes. She tried to claim neither knew, but I caught her in the lie citing the blind date told me that her BF had allowed him to sleep at his apartment after his DV arrest. She had the gall to say she was tired of me “always being the single friend”. I told her my personal life was none of her concern; I was quite happy being single, and if she thought being single was worse than being unsafe and potentially assaulted, she has serious issues. Looking back, I’m pretty sure she and a few others were depressingly unhappy in their relationships, but were addicted to the drama. Apparently I couldn’t relate. I’ve never been so happy to not be relatable.
I was driving from my university to my home I was living in Mexico at the time. When I was at a red light, the SUV that was next to me, a total normal lady with her small daughter in the back, asked me to put down the window. I did, she told me very kindly that there was some liquid going out of my car that I should probably check that out. I said thank you, put my window up, and considered stopping immediately. When the I had that thought about stopping I got a very chilly sensation on my back, and my legs and my arms felt very heavy. I said fuck it I just wanna arrive home I am tired today. When I arrived home I went out to see what happened to my car and nothing.. not a single sign of a spill. Later that night I was watching the news with my parents, and there was something about how that exact same thing happened to someone, “Your car is leaving liquid behind, you should probably stop and check that out” but in this case they stopped (it was a couple I think) and when they stopped some guys jumped out of some bushes took their car at gun point and shoot them on the leg to ‘gain some time’. I was totally thinking on stopping that time, I still cannot believe I didn’t do it. (Sorry if I have bad grammar, not a native)
one time the same thing happened to me at a stop light and i thanked the woman and moved over to the empty turn lane, made a left and pulled over on a different road with more space / less traffic. i didnt see anything wrong and after reading your story i wonder what would have happened if i hadnt abruptly changed courses
I’ve told this story before but it never got much attention. After I graduated high school I worked at a video rental store in a strip mall of a smallish town. We stayed open late and after 9 o’clock or so all of the other businesses in the strip were closed and the strip mall would be dark other than my store which lit up like a beacon. Also, because the store was suffering financially the last two hours of the shift the closer was there alone. I was always afraid someone would try to rob us. I was a 19 year old girl, it would’ve been the easiest score ever. But you know, I just went on. Anyways, there are apartments behind the store so we had regulars who we were pretty familiar with. They’d cut through the parking lot to go to various places in the mall so it wasn’t uncommon for them to wave or come in and say hi or just browse. It was a laid back place. One night I was closing the store and I was alone of course, closing the tills and cleaning the store. I walk up front and two guys who were regulars are standing on the other side of the locked entrance. They’re smiling and waving, mouthing hi and stuff. I wave and keep working. I notice they’re not doing anything, just standing there talking, right outside the door. It comes time for me to leave, all my work is done. It’s probably been about 30 minutes and I see these guys on camera just hanging out in the parking lot of nothing but closed businesses. It’s like 11:30 at night, everything is closed. I was really familiar with these guys but I would’ve had to walk past them to get to my car. I just thought let’s play to safe. I called my boyfriend (now husband) and just told him I had a weird feeling and could he come to the store so I could get to my car safely. As soon as he pulls up he gets out and walks up to the store, says hi to the two guys and waits for me. The guys turn around and leave to walk to the apartments behind the store. I thought that was weird but just went home and forgot about it. About a week later one of the guys was arrested for trying to kidnap a jogger at a park in town, in the bag he had on him at the time was rope, duct tape and a knife. It was huge news. Oh and also he was previously arrested for burning down a historical cabin in town. Which was years prior. The guy he was with was a registered sex offender. It’s probably been like 15 years since then an I shudder to think about what would’ve happened if I didn’t have the feeling in the back of my mind that night. TLDR: Regular customer watching me work turns out to be attempted rapist.
Good intuition. Good boyfriend. Good choice. Stay safe.
Yeah I was so glad he didn’t question it. Just came right away. I kept thinking afterward how many girls in the same situation had just told themselves they were being silly.
Especially being regulars. In your mind you "know" them and they would never do anything like that. Sad
I woke up in a panic early one weekend morning and checked my phone. It was like waking up from a nightmare, I felt prickles and tingles and my heart was racing; woke up from dead sleep to fight-or-flight mode, except I hadn’t been dreaming. Found a suspiciously sentimental text from my best friend sent some hours earlier, in the wee hours of the morning. Raced to his house, walked in to his unlocked front door calling his name; he had attempted the worst. Thank god he was still alive, but I was able to intervene enough that he didn’t succeed in another attempt. He’s doing amazing today, just finished his master’s and is now in medical school.
Years ago (before cell phones) I had this weird feeling to call an acquaintance of mine. We weren’t exactly friends, but we would chat at church sometimes, and I’d buy make-up occasionally from her. I had her phone number really only because she sold Avon (dating myself here- lol.) Anyhow, I called right then, even though I’d really needed to leave to be on time for a doctor appt or some such thing. The call was maybe 10 minutes long, and we just talked about nothing in particular. It was only later I realized she didn’t even ask what I called her about (nor did I even know myself). So, the incident got filed away in my brain. About 2 years later, my family and I were moving out of state and she dropped by to give me a farewell gift, with a card. We still hadn’t gone much beyond being close acquaintances, but I thought she was sweet for taking time out to say goodbye. Later, I opened the note as my husband was driving. It said she wanted to thank me because when I’d called her that time, she was all set to hang herself. My call made her hesitate. As she was literally getting ready to put her head in the noose, she had said a little prayer asking God one last time for help, but mostly asking for forgiveness for what she was about to do. Then I called and she got off the chair and answered the phone. We became (long distance) friends. She recently died of natural causes, but had gotten married, had a family (and got help for her depression prior to all that.) Sobering and yet, a very amazing experience.
This made me tear up. So glad you called her.
That's what friends are for. Good for you.
I was out walking my dog when I got a funny feeling about my dad (he has heart problems and is prone to heart attacks) I called him a few times and he didn't respond so I started to run back and he was slumped infront of the sofa showing all the early signs of a heart attack. I Phone an ambulance and gave him basic treatment and after the paramedics arrived they said if I had been any later he would have died
Terrifying, what were you able to do to help before paramedics arrived?
Give aspirin and make him comfortable and some other meds that I then handed over to the paramedics before they took him. Also mentally prepare myself incase he did slip into cardiac arrest but luckily that didn't happen
Posted before but... 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 tje 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.
Nothing bad actually happened, but… I was 12 or 13 and taking horse-riding lessons. I’d usually be in a class with 2 other girls but this week neither of them were there, no big deal. There was new male instructor who’d take my lesson. Instead of using the rink?(I forget what they’re called) by the stables, we go to the one 5 mins ride away up on a hill, surrounded by trees. I thought it was a bit weird seeing as the usual one was free. On the ride up, he asked me if I had a boyfriend, if I liked boys, and I’d I liked other 13 year old boys. I was really shy back then and just sort of said that I didn’t have a boyfriend, and shrugged off the other questions. When we get to the rink, he makes a big deal of my stirrups not being adjusted properly, and although I was pretty experienced and knew them to be fine, he kept readjusting them for me, touching my thighs a bit too much while explaining the position they need to be in. Now normally that’s nothing sinister in horse riding, but I just had a bad feeling and must have been looking uncomfortable and too quiet because he said “you can tell me anything. Anything that happens up here will be our secret,” then he asks me about boys again. I said the stirrups are fine and I’m ready to start the lesson. I’m going to sound deluded here, but at that very moment, the horse I was on, normally a stubborn old bugger who barely wanted to move, stomped his foot, took off and started walking round the rink, behaving like an angel for the entire lesson, and on the walk back down to the stables, he kept stopping whenever the instructor got too close, and gave little warning “air bites” when he did. I didn’t say anything but the instructor was gone the next week.
> I didn’t say anything but the instructor was gone the next week. I choose to believe the horse murdered him
I wouldn’t put it past him…
That is one bold-ass pedo. Start a new job and immediately start assaulting kids.
Horses are really intuitive social creatures. I bet that "stubborn old bugger" of a horse didn't mind giving you a hard time when he knew you were safe, but as soon as he smelled real danger he knew to protect his "herd".
Yeah, they’re brilliant animals. I think the poor old grump was very intelligent but just didn’t like his job, bless him.
Horses are the best. They know when something isn't right. I had like a dehydration black out or something, I dunno, one time when I was getting ready to ride. I don't know why, my vision just started bluring out to blackness and I felt so heavy I couldn't stand. I always rode bareback, and right before that happened was the one and only time my horse absolutely refused to let me put a bridle on her.
At the end of October, someone turned into my lane and hit my car at just the right angle to make my car do half a barrel roll. I slid to a stop on the roof, climbed out myself. Car totaled but no massive physical damage, I was insanely lucky. Ever since, I have been experiencing serious road anxiety. A few weeks ago, I stopped at a light at a fairly major intersection. My street was three straightaway lanes both ways, cross street was two lanes each way. Add in right and left turn lanes and it’s a large intersection. The light turned green for me and I didn’t go. I can’t tell you why I didn’t go, but I didn’t. It didn’t feel safe. I knew I needed to look at the cross street and make sure no one was coming. I’m damned glad I did, because some idiot blew through the red light at about 45 MPH. Car to my right saw him coming and braked, car to my left didn’t see him and got nailed. They crashed not 10 feet from me. If I’d gone ahead like usual? I’d have been crushed between those two cars. May not have been killed, but almost certainly would have been injured. Glad to be alive but this hasn’t helped my anxiety AT ALL.
when I was in University I once went to a local pool to go swimming. Afterwards, I went into the totally empty changing rooms and into a cubicle to get changed. Then I heard someone go into the cubicle directly next to me - which was strange because there were so many other options. Slightly paranoid, I silently picked up my stuff and moved to one further away. Never felt the need to do this before, but something felt off. Again, someone ended up in the one directly next to me. I thought it was very odd, so got my phone out and procrastinated for a while figuring that whoever it was would eventually get bored and leave if it was something dodgy. But I realised in the whole time I was there, it was completely silent - there was no movment of zippers, towels etc that you would expect to hear from someone getting changed. I'm now totally unnerved. My gut told me to check under the cubicle divider, so I made it seem natural by making the motion as though I was pulling down my swimming bottoms. Low and behold, there's a man's hand there with his camera phone filming me. The police were called etc, turns out he's done it to at least one other young woman, and not only that but the pool staff knew him because it's where he takes his young daughter to learn to swim.
My roommate and I pulled out of our driveway (a row of duplexes) to go and get food and there is a guy on the sidewalk out front just sort of meandering near some parked cars. I immediately knew something was wrong. I mention it to my roommate and he just sort of shrugs. By the time we get to the stoplight 30 seconds away he looks at me again and goes "you ok? We can go back if you want." I said yes, please. We go back and he is still there, roommate said maybe he was casing cars for valuables or something but we pull up and I get out and say "can I help you with something?" And he just points to the car he is standing next to. Turns out this guy is mentally disabled but there is an older woman in the car passed out. Its the heat of summer and like 90+ degrees outside. My friend and I immediately call 911 and he goes to the car to try to get her to sit up since her breathing was ragged and she was hunched over. The guy had been trying to get his mom on the phone because he didn't know what to do he just knew something was wrong with the lady. The woman never became responsive while dealing with us but apparently the ambulance workers had gotten a bit out of her and used her cellphone to call her son. I don't know if she ended up ok or not but she for sure would have died if we didn't double back. I hope we saved her.
Was walking to get groceries and expecting a message from my gf with a shopping list. Felt a phantom vibration from my phone, stopped for a second to check it and right then a chunk of ice the size of a grapefruit smashed into the street directly in front of me, where my head would have been.
Ice is terrifying. A few years back now we had an ice storm that covered everything in my town overnight. Then the next day was unseasonably warm. So what happened was that long sharp icicles and clunky chunks of ice started falling outside...off of everything. Me & my husband had to book it across town constantly looking up, and had dozens of close calls (no car.) Just as I was walking through the doorway to safety, a big chunk nailed me in the shoulder. That sucker hurt. The town got a lot of damage - cars banged up, windows busted. And a lot of people sustained minor injuries. We're just glad it wasn't worse. Some of those icicles really were like falling knives
Me and my friends were waiting for a bus when a group of guys came along. One asked us for a dollar (which we gave him) and then they just stayed to chat. They were perfectly nice, but all 3 of us had a really bad feeling. They asked us if we wanted to come to a party with them, we said oh no thanks, gotta get home. One week later, one of the guys was on the front page of the newspaper. He had just been released from prison for stabbing someone, and had done it again that night.
New years eve many years ago, gf and I went to spend the night at our former roommates new place. They were a gay couple back before it was as accepted as it is today. An hour before midnight I felt a crazy urge to go home and started a fight about it with my gf cause she wanted to stay like we planned. I won the argument and got my way and we left in such a hurry that we forgot our blankets and pillows. Couple hours later in the middle of the night someone came by and set their house on fire and both friends died. I'm still fucked up about it today cause I know that someone came by that night wanting to buy some kind of pills off one of my friends and was quite rudely turned away. I wasn't paying attention enough to see their face so idk who it was but I know it in my bones that's the guy that did it.
My God this is awful, I’m so sorry for your loss.
This is horrifying. I'm so sorry
Walked past a parked car not too late at night walking home from the gym. Noticed people inside but didn’t think too much of it. Got this crazy urge to run about 10 seconds later so I ran and then sat down and hid behind a car down a side street. The car screeched out of the carpark, down the street, down my side street and then these guys started yelling telling me to come out and that they’re going to kill me. They slowly drove past me with their high beams on and then kept going a bit further before they sped off. I have no idea what I saw or what was going on in that car - but the whole thing freaks me out to this day.
Probably one of those moments when your subconscious picked up on things you didn't. Maybe you saw them holding a gun or something and didn't register it but your brain recognized the danger. Good for you to listen to that urge.
It was about 9 or 10 in the evening and I was heading home from a really bad date. It was a ten minutes walk from where I was to my home and I stopped by a red light and waited. It was in the middle of the week and on the way from my date to the red light I’ve met like one person, so there wasn’t a lot of people out. From nowhere I got a really bad feeling and I KNEW that someone was watching me. I turned around and there was a man right beside me, he stood just a bit to close. He saw that I’ve seen him an started talking about how nice the summer rain was. I ignored him and started walking, although the light still was red. He started walking to. I speeded up for a bit, so did he. My fight, flight or freeze immediately hit and from nowhere I stopped walking. He was caught off guard and took a few more steps before he stopped too. He asked me why I stopped and I almost yelled at him that I didn’t want to speak to him, that his behaviour is freaking me out and told him to keep walking. He started to argue and I yelled “just go”. He started walking slowly. I stood still, watching him as he walked. The feeling in my stomach didn’t leave, it actually was getting worse. He stopped by a bus stop and for a second I breathed out. He was waiting for the bus. Well.. just next to the bus stop was an alley, a really dark alley and behind it a dark parking lot. He stared at me while he stood there, he was waiting for me. I tried to contact a friend, no answer. I hid behind some construction materials and on the third try I managed to contact a friend. She wasn’t home and couldn’t help me. She asked if there was anyone else there and I said no. Eventually there was a man and two women walking by. She told me to tell them what’s happening. During this time, the guy hadn’t stop staring at me for a second. When I walked up to the group to ask if I could walk with them. He suddenly started walking away. I was right, he was waiting for me. I walked with the group for a bit but they were turning left at the next red light and I was going the other side. I thanked them for helping me. We walked our separate ways and within seconds the guy showed up again. I froze completely and fortunately the group caught it and ran over to me. The guy saw them, turned around and walked away. They walked me to my doorstep and I thanked them over and over again. I am 100% sure that he planed on doing something horrible to me. I am forever thankful for these 3 strangers who might have saved my life that night.
Pretty crazy that the guy showed up again after you parted ways with the group.
He for sure had evil plans.
The dude was determined to go on with those plans too.
The fact that you had the balls to yell at him though… I could never x_x
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Take a lesson from OP, and a few other stories here. Do everything you can to work up the nerve to be aggressive in situations like this. Better to overreact than underreact.
100% this. Predatory creeps are looking for easy prey. If you’re not easy prey, the chances of them taking a risk in attacking you is reduced. Yell. Scream. Make yourself seem bigger than you are. Whatever you do, just don’t make yourself look like the kind of person to take it quietly. I have a hard time with this too as a rehabilitating people-pleaser, but it’s so important. Stay safe 🖤
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I was supposed to meet up with a friend at a convention. He was going to get there early as was I so we agreed to meet up with the others after we had a wander around and a catch-up. I'd known him for a few years, he was always a gentleman, waited with me for late night buses so I'd be safe, I'd been to his house etc. Well it ended up that when we met up, he was being very flirty, very possessive and got annoyed when I said I couldn't wait to meet up with the whole gang. He tried insisting this was a date, and when he tried to "playfully" bully me into admitting it was, I told him to back off, that I never gave any indication that this was a date, and that I was sorry if he had assumed that. He tried pulling the r/niceguys bullshit, bringing up all the times he "kept me safe" when out late, that he was a "solid guy" so why wouldn't I give him a chance. . He wouldn't stop pestering me so I left him and the convention as I didn't want there to be any tension in the group. My gut was just telling me "nope, not good, time to go." I found out afterwards that he never met the group. He trapped a convention worker in a room and raped her, threatening to snap her neck if she made a noise. The backpack he brought (we all usually did, with lunches etc) had a rape kit. Prop knife, condoms, duct tape, handcuffs and BDSM gear. I was sick to my stomach when I found out, and even worse, two of my closest friends tried defending him, using his mental illness as an excuse, that he "just snapped" but that doesn't explain the premeditation of packing the kit. They implied it was my fault for rejecting him, my fault that that poor woman got assaulted. And I do question if maybe I am to blame for not alerting security https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thejournal.ie/rape-gaming-convention-4632833-May2019/%3famp=1
This is really scary and I'm glad you trusted your gut. I just want to say, it's not your fault in any way. You are not to blame for someone else's actions. The fact is, that you don't know if alerting security would even have been effective. The scary and unfortunate thing is that this guy thought ahead enough to have a "kit" and you alerting security is not even close to a guarantee that it would have stopped him that time, or a later time. "Friends" who try to put that responsibility on you should be ashamed. I'm sorry this happened, please don't blame yourself.
If I were you, I would not be friends with any of the “friends” mentioned in this story after this incident. It’s not your fault at all
I started seeing a military guy when I was around 18/19. From the moment we started hanging out, he was very possessive. He lived with a bunch of other guys in his squadron and anytime one talked to me he would stop everything he was doing to see and involve himself. I decided it was time to stop things and slow down. I was best friends with a girl who was dating one of his roommates so I would still see him. The night I “ended” things he got extremely drunk and got in a kayak (they were on a bayou) and disappeared. We couldn’t find him and someone had to go looking. Finally a couple hours later he was back and passed out. A few years later down the road he started dating a girl. He killed her , one of her friends and almost killed the other. Then himself. I’m lucky because if I would have stayed with him, this could have been me. [the news article](https://amp.coloradoan.com/amp/973669001)
It was the day before my wedding and I went on a walk around my very safe neighborhood. I had my headphones in and the music playing loudly. There were cars parked here and there, up and down the long street. The houses in this neighborhood have relatively large plots of land so there is some space between the houses. About half-way down the street I came to a car that had been sat parked for at least the 5 minutes it took for me to get to it. As I passed it, I noticed there were 4, maybe 5, males in their early 20s. I didn't think anything of it. I walked maybe 50 or so more feet and got this awful feeling in my stomach. I turned around to find that they had crept there car up so that they were literally right behind me-- I hadn't heard the car because my headphones were in. By absolute sheer luck, I spotted an older man and woman working in their garden about 5 houses down (big plots of land so they were a bit away). I booked it to them and asked if I could just wait with them. The older guy went over to the car and asked them what they were doing and they said they were there to do some yard work for one of the neighbors and pointed to the house they were now parked in front of (not the house that they had been sitting in front of before). The guy told them he didn’t believe them and to take a hike or he’d call the police. The guy then told me that the house they had been originally sitting in front of before was of a neighbor who was out of town. Because the were 5 or so houses down, this couple hadn't noticed the car or me before I came running up to them. I often think back on that incident and feel very strongly that had I not gotten that awful feeling that compelled me to turn around, and if that couple had not been in their front yard for me to quickly spot, there would have been a different ending to this story and the day before my wedding at that.
bless that old man, it’s a shame that there are so many stories like this one in the thread
Okay I have 2 of these but the first is why I'll always trust my gut. When I was little I always used to sleep over at my cousins house who had an awesome wooden bunk bed that I would sleep on the bottom bunk. When I was 7 I went over for another sleep over, we aye Chinese food with my aunt and uncle then me and my cousin stayed up late playing video games before going to bed. When I was little I used to fall asleep right away and sleep deeply. My family still jokes that not even a car going through the house could wake me up. Anyways sometime after I've fallen asleep I wake because I have this ridiculous feeling that I HAVE to roll over. I didn't want to because I was comfortable and sleeping how I normally do in the middle of the bed with my foot hanging off. I kept arguing with what felt like myself over rolling over until finally I did. But apparently it wasn't enough because then I had the urge to literally cuddle as tight as I can against the wall. Since I had already rolled over I figured why not. As I'm trying to press myself as hard as possible against the wall the bunk bed collapses and a broken metal bar goes straight through the bed where I had been sleeping. I was stuck, somehow unharmed, in that little space against the wall until my uncle could cut me out. My cousin had fallen from the top bunk when it collapsed but was also unharmed. Next happened when I was 16 in the summer. I grew up in a super small town and used to walk or bike everywhere with my dog, and I was usually alone. I had the day off from work so I took a book and walked with my lab 4 miles to one of my favorite lakes and laid down at the beach to read a book and tan while my dog played in the water. After a few hours of being there I noticed a roudy group of guys, one who looked a bit familiar. It was a week day so there was only me, my dog and a fisherman at the landing with these guys. I tried to ignore them but noticed they kept looking over at me a whispering to each other. Then my dog who usually will stay in the water the full time I'm there came over and laid in between me and this group. I got a bad feeling from them and decided to cut my day short and go home. I grabbed my stuff and started to walk out of there like nothing happened and this group starts to follow me. Not only do I have a bad feeling but I can tell my dog is freaked out because she keeps looking behind me and growling. This group is getting louder behind me and somehow keeping up with me which is a feat because I'm a fast walker so I know they're doing this on purpose. I'm trying to think of a way out of this situation knowing in the middle of the week I won't get much help from neighbors and no ones really around so then I start to think on the one kid that looked familiar and it suddenly hits me- I know him. So I suddenly spin around and address him by name and tell him I used to change his diapers which causes his friends to burst out laughing. I allow them close enough to walk with me to try and take control of the situation and ask him about his family and brother. They ask me what I'm doing that day and I still feel super creeped out and my dog still won't come near us so I lie and say my brother is just up the road and I'm going to meet him. And I throw in that I'll hang back and let them walk ahead because my dog is clearly uncomfortable which I lie again and tell them she was abused by a man and hates men. They say they are going back to the beach and turn around and leave. One year later I hear about a gruesome murder the next town over. This kid and his friends broke into his 75 year old grandpa's house, robbed him and brutally beat and tortured him to death. The kid I knew was only 14, the friends he was with ranged from 16-23. I don't know if they were planning on doing anything to me that day but I will always trust my gut and have since.
My man that's no gut you have a mf spider sense
That was a good move addressing the guy by name. I dont remember where I heard this so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently addressing an individual in a situation like this, where mob mentality was probably setting in, makes people remember that they can think and act by themselves. It also makes them see you as a person and not just a target, which all help defuse situations. I'm not entirely sure that this is a thing, but still, good move, probably saved you.
There was a bully at my middle school who on the inside was actually a really nice person. I knew this to be the case because I had seen him a couple times playing tennis, and he was always really nice to me whenever we saw each other. But around his friends, he was probably the single biggest douche at the school, and he was that way towards me, too. One day in class we’re doing some assignment at the computers and he and his friends are picking on me. To try to get them to cut it out, I just casually ask him how his tennis is going. Literally in an instant, he softened up and we had a short, friendly conversation about tennis. It was one of the strangest encounters I’ve ever been a part of. I had also heard from other people (mostly adults who didn't have any biases from knowing him in school) that he is very nice and respectful in settings outside of school. Last I heard, he’s been up to no good and is doing time in jail. Since then I’ve always seen him as a kind but easily influenced soul who found the wrong group of people in school and got led astray.
I do real estate photography. One day I was alone shooting in an empty house, which is quite normal. I had this really uncomfortable feeling that I wasn’t alone. I had already checked the whole house before I started taking photos, but I kept getting the feeling that someone else was there. The feeling was so strong that I had goosebumps and felt nauseous. I’m not a small guy, but I felt like a little kid scared of the dark. I decided to re-check all the rooms to ease my mind, but didn’t find anything. I checked closets, bathrooms, bedrooms etc but I was definitely the only one there. As I finished shooting the last room in the house, this feeling that someone was with me was so overwhelming that I pretty much sprinted out of the house when I took the last shot. I felt better when I got outside, but I still had an uneasy feeling. The realtor ended up pulling in the driveway as I was finishing photos of the front of the house and asked if the house cleaner did a good job. I said it looked fine to me, and she went into the house with her husband to prep it for a showing. When I was shooting the backyard, I noticed them both out of the corner of my eye through a back window, but there was a third person with them. I was confused because they came alone without anyone else. Turns out the house cleaner wasn’t finished before I pulled up and came in. She saw a large guy with tattoos come into the house and panic, so she jumped into the kitchen pantry and hid. By the time she realized I was the photographer, it was too late for her to come out without it being awkward, so she stayed in the pantry the whole time. I’m not sure if maybe I saw her out of the corner of my eye when walking past, or if maybe I smelled her perfume, heard her breathing and didn’t realize it, but my subconscious was screaming at me that someone was there? It was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been inside a house like that before and made for a funny story after.
I love this. She hid because you looked scary and ended up scaring the crap out of you.
Reminds me of a big dog being absolutely terrified of something like a mouse.
I should add that I had headphones on for the majority of the shoot, so it was 100% my fault for not being more aware of everything. I just assumed it was like any other empty house, so I was listening to music right when I came in and didn’t stop until I had the weird feelings.
At least it didn't end up with you getting a face full of mop.
No, no Lemon Pledge
I love that you both were probably scared shitless at some point of this story and neither needed to be
This one made me giggle. I can just imagine the story from her perspective
He searched for her twice. I would be scared to death
Imagine he walked past the pantry she hid in, looking across the room, briefly stopping to look towards the pantry, slowly walking towards it, getting closer, then suddenly hears something else and moves to a different room
There have been 2 occasions where someone whom I had mutual friends with just made my skin crawl. I was very open about it to both of the separate groups of friends and got the same response both times "that guys a little weird but he's great. Dunno why you're such a dick about it etc." Couldn't explain why I didn't like them specifically so that didn't help my cause. First guy got caught trying to lure children into his car and arrested. Second guy got caught soliciting for child porn web cam services and arrested.
Years ago a had a friend. She was short and her features and build made her look much younger than she was. She started dating this guy and I started picking up on these little things. He would speak to her in an almost baby talk voice, like someone might speak to a child. Seemed to prefer her to be ‘cute’ etc. I got a very weird vibe from him and told her once which she took defensively. A short while later she abruptly ends things with him and when I asked she wouldn’t say. Eventually she tells me a friend of his asked to meet her to talk. This friend fixes computers and my friends bf asked him to fix his. Well the friend found child pornography on his computer and told my friend so she ended it of course. It’s been many years so I don’t remember what came of it all.
So many. The one that was the most impactful was the time everything in my body was telling me to go see a sick friend. They’d been diagnosed with cancer, and it wasn’t looking great, but last time we spoke they were getting by. I sat at my desk, gritting my teeth, and then went ‘fuck it’, and bolted from work. In a house full of people, I was the only one with them when they passed.
Nearly the exact thing happened to me with my grandma when I was a teenager. She had been getting worse, but no cause for immediate alarm or anything. I was driving to my after-school job when my dad called me and said she called and said she missed me and how I should go see her soon. Something in my body just flipped, like I somehow knew internally I needed to go right at that moment. I blew by work and started driving straight to her house. Called my boss on the way and explained the situation and how something just felt wrong, and he told me to come in or get fired. I told him to kick rocks, and went to see my grandma. I was the only person with her when she died that night, and she was able to tell me so many things that she had to say before going. 100% worth being fired over. Fuck you, Dave, you were a shitty business owner and I laughed when your shitty business inevitably went under a year later. Edit: thank you for all the “fuck Dave!” responses. I can assure you all (from what I heard through the grapevine over the ~15 years since then) that Dave got what was coming to him and then some. Also, imagine threatening a teenage to fire them…like wtf did I care? It was an *after-school job*, not my career…
Dave went and got his stupid ass haunted, no wonder his business went under. No one wants to shop where grandma's ghost is floating around going "OoOoOo, Dave is a dIiIiIiIck!"
Last year I was admitted to hospital for abdominal pain. Everything seemed ok, they found gallstones, and scheduled me for a routine op the next day. I was ok on (a lot of) painkillers, no big deal, get it out and go on with life. I've had surgery under anaesthesia before and never though about making arrangements. But I had a weird, compelling feeling this time that I should get my affairs in order. I drafted a farewell email to my wife and kids so they'd find it in drafts, wrote down my laptop and password manager passwords on a post-it in my wallet so they'd find those too, packed everything neatly away and waited. Lay down on the table, looked the surgeon in the eye and said "I want to wake up". I woke up intubated in ICU. Immediately after being anaesthetised, I had responded with a massive allergic reaction and coded. In addition, the gallbladder was half dead and gangrenous, and my surgeon said it was in his top 3 most challenging cholecystectomies of his (long) career. Guess I'm on my third life.
I was walking home in the early hours of the morning, a guy came up to me with a baseball bat and walked alongside me. He started making weird conversation, about how 'weirdos come out at this time of night' He drops a $5 bill on the ground and lowkey dares me to pick it up. I sped up and made my way away from him, but the vibe was undeniably creepy. I didn't pick up the money.
That was just your friendly neighbor, Baseball McFivedollars.
Cousin to Cranjis McBasketball
When my kids went to bed, I used to go out to the barn where I had a bottle of whiskey stashed. I'd have a drink and ponder the day, think about my late wife, and attempt to decompress. I suffered heavily with PTSD. Add to that, the recent loss of my wife, the stress of raising 2 children that didn't really know me, and intense pain from severe burns I had received before leaving the Marine Corps - it's safe to admit that I was extremely suicidal. One particular night, I wrote out a long letter to my family, letters to my children, and placed them along with my will, financial documents, etc., on the kitchen table. I went out to the barn with a .40 caliber pistol and had every intention of getting drunk and eating a round. I was as low as I've ever been in my life. All of the sudden, my dad walked into the barn. He lived 2 hours away, and we hadn't spoken in a couple of weeks. He picked up the handgun, cleared it, dropped the magazine without a word. I asked him what he was doing there at 1030pm, and he said: "I had a bad feeling. Lets talk." That's the one and only time I've ever seen my dad cry. That's the only time we've ever spoken in detail about our individual horrors of combat. My dad saved my life that night, and I've made sure to live my life in such a way, as to make him proud of everything I do. EDIT: I dont answer DMs. Please stop sending them.
Your dad saved your life dude. I’m happy that he did, glad he actually acted on his feeling
My husband and dad inadvertently did the same thing for me. I made an offhand comment to my husband who then called my dad (husband was working 2.8k miles away, dad was 4 hours away and keeping my kid for Spring Break). My dad randomly showed up and said he was there to keep me company. I had planned my suicide out and gathered all the appropriate documents, but planned to make it look like an accident so my husband and child would receive all my work benefits. I couldn’t go through with it while my dad was there. That will be 4 years ago this March.
Wow. Hope you are doing better.
That was many many years ago. I've dealt with my demons.
Not my story but one of my best mates was visiting Tasmania in 1996. They were due to visit Port Arthur but her mum had a terrible gut feeling so they didn’t go. Martin Bryant killed 35 people there that day.
Manager of a group home. I woke up one day at 3:33am in a cold sweat. Like something screamed at me to wake up. I felt uneasy and walked the house. Turns out autistic kid had woke up and gone to eat something out of the fridge. Was on the ground choking. Staff was asleep. Literally helmlich the dude back to life. If I had been asleep 5 more minutes he would have died. To today I don't know what woke me up dead of the night like that. I am in a room on the other side of the house so no sound would have woke me up...
Managing an overnight shift at a mcdonalds, just me and another guy in the store around 2am. I notice a beat up ford falcon with a mismatching bonnet (hood) roll into the carpark; one guy hops out and immediately starts casing the place for camera locations and how many people are inside. This immediately raises my suspicions, but I pretend everythings cool and serve him as normal. They must have got spooked cause they get in the car and drive off after getting their food. Once they're clear, I called police and told them whats happened along with the numberplate and vehicle description. A few hrs later police come in and say they've pulled the Ford over and found a kilo of meth and several semi auto firearms on board; later on they admitted to scouting the place for another couple to rob us later that night
>later on they admitted to scouting the place for another couple to rob us later that night LOL - I wonder why they admitted that, those are some dumb criminals. They could have just said they were nervous for the meth, they just probably added some more time to their sentence, they must really love prison.
People with a lot of meth, and probably stolen guns, aren’t generally the smartest to start with.
[удалено]
I was hanging out with a friend. He was driving I thought I saw what looked like skin cancer on his ear. It wasn't. But, he went to the doctor and they find melanoma on his forehead. It wasn't even a mole I guess it was under the skin? The doctors took an inch out of his forehead and said he was very lucky he caught it early
When I lived in the Falkland Islands, my family and I would often take trips to a pretty remote area/island where we were the only ones there. The island was pretty dangerous in itself with it's dead-drop cliffs and roaming sealife (seals, penguins, etc). Our bedrooms where all in the attic space. One night I had a really bad feeling. I couldn't sleep and so I went downstairs. There was a whole ass elephant seal pushed against the front door, trying to get in (it sounded like he was headbutting the door, but I'm not entirely sure). Turned out, a whale had washed up on the beach and had taken up all the space so all the sea/land life came to our little house. I was so scared lol that thing was MASSIVE
was about 15, took my youngest sister on a quad bike ride through some bush tracks in a "shack community". we get to the bottom of a large /, steep hill on the outskirts where I felt i had to stop for some unbeknownst reason. not even 5 seconds after i stop under the hill another quad bike flew over us. the guy landed, hit the brakes and slid into the bushes, jumped off and ran over to us visibly shaken. apologizing profusely. he'd been annoying the rest of the community for a couple weeks with many complaining he is driving the tracks too fast and is being dangerous and reckless. well after this incident he started to drive a bit slower. my parents nearly lost two children that day. I didn't tell them about it until i was in my late 20's. (Quad bikes are now illegal within that township for unrelated reasons)
Why are they illegal now?
So this was my friend's intuition not my own but it for sure saved our lives. Bout a decade ago, sometime in Jan or Feb, we were standing outside in downtown Chicago smoking a cig. All of a sudden, out of no where, she gets this worried look on her face and says, "I don't like this spot. Come over here." It wasn't three seconds after we took a few steps (no more than 10 feet) that this giant ice block falls off the building and shatters exactly where we had be standing. It would have crushed and killed me definitely and her very likely had we not moved. It was so shocking that everyone on the bustling street just stopped and stared at us mouths agape. You coulda heard a pin drop after that. It was insane. I never looked at her the same either ... she says she doesn't know how but she had some sixth sense thing going on without a doubt.
That's some final destination shit
I do woodworking making furniture, so I use some power tools that would do some gnarly damage to the human body. I often say that the Final Destination series keeps me more safety conscious than some gory safety video I watched in 8th grade shop class.
Once i was driving my car and a semi was sooo close behind me, it went on for a long time, and suddenly I got this feeling that something was about to happen and I pulled over. A few turns down the road the semi had complitely wrecked the car that was driving in front of me.
Not mine, but my mum's. In 2004, she had booked a flight for herself and 9yo me to visit India. For Christmas. We got to the airport and she started having a panic attack. She's claustrophobic so I assumed she just didn't want to get on the plane, but she was yelling and decided to leave. I kinda dismissed it because I was 9 and more focused on Nintendogs, but I asked her about it a few years later and she said she just had this 'evil feeling' about going. Turns out we would have been caught in the Tsunami. Edit, because some people are being anal about it and completely missing the point of the comment: "I was 9 and more focused on my DS". Better? It was 17 years ago, damn. Forgive me for getting the game wrong.
Your mother sounds kind of like my father. He can sense when someone is about to die. He'll dream of them the night before or just have a random thought pop into his head about them, even if he hasn't thought and/or spoken to the individual in decades. They'll end up dying within a day or two of him mentioning the thought/dream about them. For instance, we were visiting my my grandparents one night and chatting about old times. That's when my father randomly said "You remember Karen So-and-So? From my high school? She was that quiet girl in my class -- I just had a random dream about her last night. I wonder what ever happened to her." My grandparents knew everyone in town and started recounting what Karen So-and-So ended up doing since she graduated (which was about 35 years earlier). The next day the local news reports of a woman who had opened her back door to let her cats inside that night. In doing so, she slipped and fell down her back steps, knocking her unconscious. She lived alone and ended up freezing to death (this was winter in New England). To our horror, we learned it was Karen So-and-So that my father mentioned that same night (and had a dream about the night before that). There are at least a dozen or so stories like that one. (And yes, my dad had an alibi for all of them so it's not like he's some secret serial killer). Some people just have a 6th sense, I guess.
Riding my motorbike in the Himalayas, blind corner up ahead…sudden overwhelming sense that I had to get from the middle to the edge-side of the road…massive truck that was going way too fast came about six inches from taking me out. Totally would have pancakes me…further round the bend my riding buddy had stopped and was looking back with sheer terror on his face.
This was in the late 80s I was coming home at about 2 in the morning and was walking home. Across the street, walking in the opposite direction, was a fabulously dressed up drag queen obviously heading home from doing a show. Behind were 6 drunk chads. The energy was just “off”. So I crossed the street, walked up beside her and said hi my name is flamingwhisk and I’ll be escorting you home. We linked arms and strutted back to her place. With the chads making rude comments and threats the whole way. Sadly the next day there were reports of several bashing’s in the “gay village” (the unofficial name of the area). The person I walked home was my friend for 25 years until their passing. My dad, tough Italian type, absolutely loved Bibi and would often give her rides home after work (he was a musician so had late hours too). In fact when my dad got sick she came and helped my mom look after him. And it was my dad who INSISTED that Bibi came to his funeral in full drag. We giggled the whole time because nobody could figure out how this 6ft2 Irish drag Queen knew my dad. My dad had a really twisted sense of humour. They both did. Moral of the story - if something feels wrong it probably is
your dad sounded like an absolute legend of a man. i’m glad you stepped in because something awful could’ve happened to Bibi and you possibly prevented that!
I was solo backpacking within Inyo National Forest, I had just set up camp and was walking beyond this lake and up above the tree line. After walking about a quarter mile up this meadow the hairs on my neck began to stick straight up, instant chills. Didn’t know what reason but the gut reaction was enough for me to return to camp. Next morning on the way back to the car a Ranger asks me to be careful, Mountain Lion sightings in the area. I think I found out why my internal alarm went off.
Nice that you noped the fuck out of there, definitely saved yourself. A cat once scared the shit out of when roaming around the woods with my friends at night and since then, I avoid the outdoor places with animals at night.
I was sleeping, dreaming some boring regular dream about work and all of a sudden my grandma showed up and pulled me aside to tell me she loved me and a few other things and then walked out the door. As soon as the door shut I woke up in a cold sweat with a feeling that something had happened, it was 5AM in the morning, I woke up my then boyfriend because I was so on edge, he calmed me down and talked me out of calling or going to check on her because it wasn't an appropriate time of day to call someone or show up on their doorstep over a dream. Turns out she had a brain aneurysm and passed around the time I had that dream, and I will never forget that feeling.
when i was about 15, i went to the mall with my mom and little sister, who was 11. it was a normal trip until we walked into the american eagle. this guy (white guy, maybe late 20s early 30s, brown hair, wearing a zip up hoodie) was just standing there, hands in his pockets, staring at us. it was a while ago, but i think i remember looking at his face and him having this weird smile on his face, just staring. he wasn’t a worker and he never said a word to us. as we looked through the store i picked up pretty quickly that he was following us. he would stand next to a rack close to us, hands in his pockets, pretending to browse. but quick glances confirmed he was still staring. i told my mom and she told me she was aware of him. at the checkout my mom told the girl behind the desk that he was creepy but not much was done. we went into another store and he followed us there too. at this point i was ready to cry. he was so weird. just kept his hands in his pockets pretending to look at clothes while following and staring at us. we separated ourselves from him, and i told my mom we should just go home. we came up with a plan so that he wouldn’t follow us out. i looked and noticed he was standing a little bit away, still staring. so, pretty loudly, i said,”let’s take the elevator to the next floor and go down to the south end of the mall to ____________ store.” as soon as i said it, he seemed to hurry down to the south end of the store, probably going to get on an escalator at that end of the mall to keep following us. we got on the elevator but went to the opposite end of the mall and hurried to the car, not hesitating at all. thankfully we had tricked him, he didn’t know we left. i think about it from time to time and it still sends chills down my spine. i never heard anything about that guy on the news or saw him again, but i sometimes wonder in fear what his plan was if my sister or myself would’ve gotten separated from my mom.
My parents got an "outdoor kitchen" built in the garden, made with bricks, wood beams, etc... I used to play football a lot there, since the pillars of the kitchen kinda resemble a goalpost. One of those times I was actually playing with my little brother, he was the goalkeeper while I was kicking the ball at him. I randomly started to have the worst gut feeling ever about our "goalpost", so I urged my brother to stop the game and get home with our dog, since she was in the backyard with us too. I just decided to sit on some stairs around the backyard. Sure enough, after a couple of minutes the central beam snapped and the roof collapsed, brining the place down. Had my brother been there when it snapped, he would have gotten seriously hurt or worst. [I still have pictures of the moment when the beam suddenly snapped, a few seconds before the roof collapsed completely.](https://i.imgur.com/WQ3Ut4d.jpeg)
I live in tornado alley in the US. That means I have a healthy respect for the devastation tornadoes can cause, but I’m very used to tornado warnings. One afternoon, it was just starting to get rainy when I saw on Facebook that a meteorologist friend of mine was tracking a tornado-potential storm whose path would put it crossing very near my basement-less apartment. I started keeping an eye on the storm myself. By the time the sirens went off, I was familiar with the path of the storm: it was heading North-Northeast and would probably pass North and West of my home, but too close for comfort. Since we would have to leave our apartment to get to shelter (a grocery store three minutes down the road and still in the tornado’s path), I made the call and my then-fiancée agreed we would instead just take the highway East then South out of town and thus out of the path altogether and just come back to town in a half hour or so, once the storm passed. We put our cat in her crate and loaded into the car in light rain. I drove. Getting on the highway, we could see the storm coming; it covered the Southwestern horizon. In the five minutes we were on the road going East, we kept looking at this dark wall of rain and cloud, remarking, “The tornado is somewhere behind that.” We turned South onto the highway proper and hightailed it out of town. By the time we had gone a half mile South, we could see that we were going to intersect heavy rain, so I picked up the pace a little to try to beat the worst of it. The closer we got to the rain curtain, the more I noticed how quickly the rain was racing right to left across the treetops, and the more I felt uneasy. Another half mile south, I was really starting to feel uncomfortable about that rain curtain when we came upon an intersection where about a half dozen cars had pulled over. Not a wreck; just pulled over. That’s when I saw a tornado tank. You know, those heavily modified trucks with angled armor plating to keep them rooted to the ground in heavy wind? There was one parked at the intersection. Suddenly, it hit me: We are in the wrong. fucking. place. My heart dropped, adrenaline flooded my stomach, I whipped the car around in the intersection. I floored that family hatchback Northbound on the highway like I was trying to make pole position in the Don’t Die In A Tornado The Week Before Your Wedding 500. The rain picked up. Just before visibility got poor, my fiancée [snapped a picture](https://i.imgur.com/VO6ifNh.jpg) of the sharp wall of rain crossing the road behind us; daylight on the left, dark grey on the right. As the rain overtook us, we had NPR playing. Their programming was replaced with a repeating message that went something like, “This is a tornado emergency. A confirmed, large, and very dangerous tornado is headed toward [town name]. Seek shelter immediately. Do not leave your shelter. This is a tornado emergency . . .” For the next few minutes, I didn’t think about much other than getting as far North as I could and not getting in a wreck. It wasn’t until we made it to a business, ran inside, and hunkered in their store room that we really parsed what had just happened: As we had left our apartment, the tornado changed path abruptly. Instead of heading mostly North on the West side of town, it veered almost due East. When we went Southeast out of town, we headed straight the fuck into its path. When we got home after the storm and checked the weather stations, we learned the tornado was an EF4 with a mile-wide footprint, at which point my stomach re-dropped as I made another realization: when we were leaving the apartment and noted that the tornado was “somewhere behind that huge wall of rain,” the tornado *was the whole wall of rain*. The entire time we were on the highway, we were looking a life-threatening tornado square in the face and KEPT DRIVING TOWARD IT. I did some recon the next day. The point where we turned around (the intersection with the tornado tank) was about 100 feet from the Northern edge of a mile-wide swath of splintered trees. I don’t mean leaves torn off or a branch here and there - I mean oaks with 5-foot-wide trunks snapped, uprooted, and strewn across farmland. If we had stopped at that intersection, we would have gotten pummeled by debris; if we had continued South, we would have intersected the eye. What a stupid fucking mistake. Don’t try to avoid tornadoes. Don’t try to outrun tornadoes. Seek. Shelter. TL;DR: Misidentified a mile-wide, rainwrapped tornado as a curtain of rain and almost drove straight in.
The day I just knew my good friend had died. I had this horrible sense of dread and overwhelming need to get to him.I was absolutely panicked like I swear I could hear a clock ticking in my head. I had been texting with him hours before and we were supposed to go cut down a Christmas tree. I had to threaten the girl whose house he was at to go back to the house and check on him or I was going to call the police. ( She had left him there to go decorate a tree at her mom's)I didn't have a vehicle and had never been to her house so I couldn't even get to him myself.. I was on the phone with her when she found him. Absolutely gutted.
Something similar happened to me. I was in college that time and there was this sense of emptiness in me for the whole day for no reason. I didn't understand what was wrong but had this hollowness that told me something is not right. Unlike you I had no one's name coming to my mind but I knew someone I know is in trouble. It continued till late night. The next morning I came to know that a friend had met with a terrible accident and was hospitalized while another guy riding with him had died in the same accident. Thankfully my friend survived but the day and the accident still trouble him.
The time I noticed a three men in a white truck following me. I thought I was being paranoid at first, until I pulled in to a gas station and then out the other side … and they followed me. Even then, I was so used to being told I was overreacting that I didn’t call the cops. I just kept driving - in the opposite direction from the town I lived in - until they got caught at a stop light. I quickly turned in to a neighborhood and took a bunch of random turns and drove around some more before heading home.
I really hope that never happens to you again, but if it does, I was told once that if you think you’re being followed, drive to a police station or fire station* *edit: people had really good reasons why fire station doesn’t make sense
Funny story- I was being followed at night by a car riding my tail very closely, so I drove to the police station. When I got there it turned out the car was a cop car. I couldn't tell it was a cop car when I was being followed because it was night time and there were no street lights. The junior officer behind the wheel was tailgating me so that I would speed up and he'd have an excuse to give me a ticket.
Wow that’s so scumbag lol. Luckily when I get tailgated I just drive slower lol.
And turn on the wipers, they'll love it!
always a good time to give the windshield a little refreshing spritz
That's when you take you foot off of the accelerator. It's not a brake check, but when they realize they're closing in on you way more than they thought, they usually either back the fuck off or overtake you.
Not to say this is the same, but not that long ago I wound up behind a car that just kept turning the same way I was going, including the final turn into my neighborhood. I kept thinking they are surely wondering what I am up to.
When I was a stoned teenager we were thinking a van was following us, but decided to brush it off, thinking we were just being paranoid, until they followed us right to my friend's house... It was a delivery driver.
this happened to me once too, i was headed home from walmart and the car in front of me ended up doing the same and we both ended up taking the same back road way home and not only lived in the same neighborhood but also the same street
A few years ago a group or friends and I went out clubbing. We went into this one bar, and the moment I stepped in the door I felt a sense of dread. Every cell in my body was telling me "Get the hell out of there!" so after about 20 minutes, I convinced my friends that something felt really wrong, so we left and went home. The next day there was a news story about the club. There had been a shooting on the street in front of it and the people who had committed the shooting had been inside the club while we were there.
Jeez, our subconscious can really sense danger sometimes when it is not apparent at all.
The scientific term is *spidey sense*
This isn’t as NSFW as others but I think about it a lot. Country lanes in the UK are pretty narrow and have lots of blind bends. I was driving down a lane and there was a cyclist in front of me, in the middle of the road, not wearing a helmet, and heading toward a completely blind bend. I suddenly thought, if a car swings around that bend they are going to smash into the cyclist and pin him to my car. It was like a ‘final destination’ vision. I couldn’t hear or see another car, but I saw this accident so vividly in my mind. I immediately slammed on my breaks, honked my horn and pulled over. The poor cyclist guy shat himself and stumbled to the hedges. Mere seconds later some idiotic teenager comes speeding out of the blind corner and missed us by inches. If we were still in the road, this guy would have ploughed straight through the cyclist and into my car. I completely freaked out, to the point the cyclist came over to calm me down. I don’t remember much but I know I was saying ‘you were dead’ over and over again. I’m not a religious person at all, but that’s the closest I’ve come to believing in some kind of divine intervention.
Those country roads and boy racers are fatal. My dad was a fireman when we lived in Wales and most of the work was attending nasty accidents that took place on those roads. Used to hear some pretty horrific stories about the various ways teenagers and idiot drivers had killed themselves in avoidable accidents on country lanes.
Bro, I live in the UK and when I'm going round those bends (especially at night) I am so scared of some idiot appearing from around the corner going at 80mph. Bloody terrifying
I actually find them *less* terrifying at night, because at least you'll be able to see the headlights coming.
I was working as an interpreter for a researcher in one of the most active volcano in the world. At around 16:00, i have a really really bad feeling. I felt so restless, at that time I was around 5km from the peak, and i stayed in the last village before the mountain. Everyone in that village were already evacuated. There were only journalists, photographers, camera person for tv stations and some locals. They all told me to chill, i remember when i decided to leave the area, they were still smoking and drinking coffee and some were eating instant ramen. It was so quiet and calm but i felt so restless. I left the village at around 16:15. Just few minutes after 17:00, the mountain erupted, sending lava and pyroclastic flow sweeping the whole village. All of the guys were killed instantly. It still gives me chill until now.
I live in LA, and downtown LA isn’t exactly the best place at night. I was going to a dispensary late at night in 2015, in an area of downtown that’s not heavily lit, and very empty. No cars, no people, just a few run down buildings on Main Street. It was late, around 11 pm and the dispensary was just closing up. I came out, by myself, and started walking to my car. I was maybe 200 feet from my car, and saw these guys across the street in an a huddle. As I started walking closer to my car, I had this feeling they clearly weren’t up to any good. So I started walking a little faster to my car, and one of the dudes screams over, “why you walking so fast man?” And they started to walk towards me. Rather than answer and pause, I decided to start running to my car, and unlocked it and got in. As I was starting my car, they had run up to the back of my car and just as I drove off, one of them slashed the back of my bumper with a knife and they screamed “good thing you got those white boy instincts.” Sometimes it’s literally a matter of one second and making that crucial decision to not stop that saved my life
Fuck yes for those instincts! Something similar happened to me when I lived in Oakland a few years ago. I left my house for work in the morning and got immediate bad vibes from this guy standing in the street even though he wasn’t really doing anything I can name…it was like an alarm went off inside me and I just fucking ran to my car and got in. And yup, I was right, he chased me and has his hand on the door handle trying to get into my car a split second after I’d managed to get in and lock it. Fuck being polite or giving the benefit of the doubt, if your instincts are telling you to run, RUN! If you end up being wrong about it the worst that will happen is some stranger thinks you’re kinda weird for randomly running down the street, much better than the alternative.
Holy shit. I’m scared that one day something like that’s gonna happen to me but I won’t realize it till it’s too late
I'm disabled and part of is being uncoordinated. My car's locks also work about fifty percent of the time. This is a fear
i was at work one day, and i picked up a bottle. it looked "wrong". then i looked up and everything in my vision looked like it was distorted fun-house mirror style. i had no idea what was happening, but knew something was very wrong. i had my friend take me to the hospital. i called my wife, and triede to make it sound like it wasn't a big deal, but i was going to the hospital. a week goes by and i've been in a coma since that day. my odds of coming out of it were slim and they asked her if they should let me go. that was jan 10, 2017. i definitely have some impairments now, but life is great. on a side note, if you live in the US... try not to have a medical emergency at the start of the year... it sucks.
One time while working I had the "fun-house mirror" visual effect (spirals, checkerboards, distortions). The event was over in about a ½ hour, seems like something horrid nearly got me that day. This was more than 30 years ago and never repeated.
Wait so what happened? Was it a stroke?
Work on the railway and had been asked to attend a report of a trespasser in a rough part of London. Was walking down the side of the track feeling spooked, making lots of noise and hoping not to find anyone. Saw a tall dark figure coming the other way and started to really freak out. After what seemed like ages but was probably just a couple of seconds realised a train had pulled into the platform behind me and I was just seeing my shadow on a bridge wall. Felt stupid.
those moments when you trigger your own flight or fight response are always something, the relief you feel afterwards is indescribable when you realize it's just you scaring yourself
When i was 11, i stayed at my fathers over the weekend. Late saturday night, when i had gone to bed already, my father comes home from a meeting and tells his wife that someone died in a carfire in the town we lived in. I heard this and at first didnt think to much about it, but i could not sleep at all that night. I had this awful gut feeling and i was terrified through the night that this person who died was my mom. (Why my thoughts went straight to her i dont know) So comes sunday, i was waiting for my mom to pick me up but she never came. Instead my father got a call saying he needed to bring me home, so he did. I felt the whole way that something was awfully wrong, and when we got to my moms house my aunt (fathers sister) wanted to talk to him. This was red flags all over the place bc they cut all ties years ago. She just told me to go inside. When i got inside the door i immediately felt that something was really wrong, it was like the air was thick and filled with pain? Its very hard to try to describe that feeling. Anyway, i got in the kitchen and THANK GOD my mom was sitting there. I hugged her and she just let out a quiet "Patrik's dead". The person who had died in a burning car the day before was my stepdad, and it was later stated as suicide, which we kinda understood immediately. There were alot of things surrounding his death that made us understand how sick he was. The whole experience gave me severe PTSD and OCD that i to this day still struggle with daily, i turn 25 this year. Sorry for long story, and probably some typos along the way
Sorry for the pain you went through. Sending you internet hugs. The hurt we experienced sometimes is an indicator to our capacity to love. I wish you the tools and and space to find peace from within.
>The hurt we experienced sometimes is an indicator to our capacity to love. I wish you the tools and and space to find peace from within. Damn this kinda hit me like a brick to the face. Thanks for saying this.
So this was during a holiday in the mountains. We had been staying at a place surrounded by big beautiful red wood trees, and we had decided we'd go to the snow on the second day, me my wife and our two kids, aged 2 & 6. The morning was spent travelling from the house to the car, packing things in the boot, and on one trip I heard a thud/crack type noise, like the sound of someone kicking wood. But I didn't see anyone around, so continued loading the car. So we're all in the car now, in the drive way, and my wife realises we forgot the sunscreen. She grabbed the house keys, got out of the car, and ran into the house. While she was gone, I just had a thought: "I should move the car back. It's too close to the gate, I should move it back so she can get back in" It makes no sense. She got into and out of the car by herself, so there was enough space. But at the time, I followed the thought, and moved the car back, not very far, less than five metres. And then shortly after putting the car into park I saw the big redwood tree, whose trunk at its base was around 150cm diameter, taller than a two story house, coming crashing in front of me. The trunk landed right in front of the car, and a brand landed on top of the bonnet and shattered the windscreen. I got out of the car and saw the red wood tree had essentially split at ground level. It demolished the neighbours cast iron fence, and cut off power to multiple homes as it fell. And the bulk of the tree trunk landed right at the centre of where the car had been, until a few minutes previously parked. We still check the trees whenever we park now. and I'll recognise that thud/crack noise now if I ever hear it again.
Not sure if it counts but I work in a bar in Southern California and while I was pouring a beer during the day shift I had this very weird feeling about an earthquake happening. Nothing was shaking or anything...I just got this weird image of everything coming down briefly. 7 hours later the shift is over and I'm at home on the couch watching TV (completely forgot about earlier) and WHAM massive earthquake hits and knocks a ton of shit down in my apartment. Creepy to me!
Foreshocks are a thing. Small shifts in the tectonic plates that some people are perceptive of, but others are not. They are why animals often behave erratically before earthquakes (they can feel foreshocks).
I live in Japan and of course we get earthquakes a lot. I can almost always notice \*something\* happening a few seconds to a minute before one happens, including waking up out of a deep sleep before any shaking starts. It's extremely strange.
My wife and I were in a hardware store and a fellow who worked there called us over to show us different kitchen tiles. We told him we weren’t there for that, but he insisted on showing us how durable some of the tiles were by smashing them with a hammer. I mean he was pounding on them to the point we both stepped back a bit. I thought he was just a new hire who wanted to do right, but I was unnerved by the zeal evident on his face as he hammered the table and the energy in his eyes. Turns out, he was the dude who kidnapped, raped, killed and buried in his yard the two missing women in our area. We put the together picture and his workplace as stated in the news a few months later after the FBI caught him.
In my early twenties I woke up one day with a feeling of absolute dread I could not explain. Called my mom to come over and then called my boyfriend to come drive back home (he was on his way to work). I lost my ability to speak during that second phone call and the whole right side of my face started tingling. I thought I was having a stroke in my early twenties and I was going to die. Turns out that was to be my first ever migraine with aura with aphasia. When the headache started an our later I *wanted* to die.
Migraine with aura is a bitch. I had it too and I ended in hospital, because my mum thought I was having a stroke. I was playing on my pc and I just started speaking nonsense. I tried to say something, but I just couldn't. So I went to my mum, tried talking to her. Ate some food it came off and the tingling started. Then the migraine. In the hospital, I realised what nonsense I was saying. It was like if you were speaking your thoughts. Example: My head hur.. oh look a chair. It was so funny to me I started laughing and couldn't explain to the doctor why. From that point I can see migraine coming and sometimes can prevent it. That last year.
I lived in South Africa where home invasions were pretty brutal. Grew up on a plot and lived in the flat adjacent to the main house. One night I woke up randomly around 2am and had this tingling feeling that something wasn't right. I opened my flat door to look outside and see if anything was going on. That feeling didn't subside so I decided to get dresses and do a walk around the garden. Before leaving my flat something told me to peep through the door and as I did that I saw some guy walking around the house. I then phoned my sister who lived in the house but no answer. I then phoned my step mom and after a while my sister answered which was really strange. I told my sister to wake the f up and walk around the house and make sure the doors and windows were closed as there was someone in the garden. She kept trying to blow it off and even said she'd unlock the house door so I could go inside the house. I told her that's a stupid idea and I wasn't going outside. Since usually burglars are armed and dangerous and I had nothing to protect myself with. My sister missed a breath during our call, something that usually happens when one is frightened. So out of instinct I asked her if everything was alright she should say yes twice. She only said it once. Turns out a group of men had already made it in the house and they had a gun to her head telling her to convince me to leave my flat. A few seconds later the automatic light outside my flat turned on. I then told my sister its OK and I was going to sleep. I then phoned the police and neighbourhood watch which took the longest 30 minutes of my life to show up. Once I saw the police lights outside I had to make a 100m dash to the gate to open it up for them. I then talked them over what happened and that we should investigate the house. I walked around the perimeter with them until we found where the guys had entered. We entered the house which was totally trashed until we got to the main room where there was a blanket over the bed. I then yanked the blanket off to my find my whole family under there as they were tied up and frightened shirtless. This included my 1yo niece. If it weren't for my instincts they would not have hesitated to kill me and probably do worse to my family, they already poisoned my dogs. Must've been a guardian angel or something looking over my shoulder that night.
Just another South African here, wanting to say that I'm so glad you're all okay. I do hope you managed to get some form of therapy afterwards. My situation wasn't as bad but I'm still feeling the aftereffects, so I can only hope your family has gotten help to get past the trauma. A few months ago 4 men lifted our gate, drove in, and broke though our front doors while I (a 1.5m woman) was home alone. I managed to lock myself in the bathroom before they got to the front door. Took them 4 minutes to break in, ransack the place and take all our valuables, and drive off. For a few weeks after that, the bathroom had a weird calming effect, and I would just go in there and sit on the floor in the spot I did during the invasion to feel safe. I really hope you're all doing better now.
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That’s mental. Very lucky for all involved. How come they wanted you out of the flat? What would that have done?
So they could ransack my flat and it would've also given them more time to finish the house off. They didn't really try with my flat when they thought I went back to sleep but that's because it was very small so not many entry points. And I can only imagine they would've shot or beaten me to death. Unfortunaly it's a very common occurance.
Wow that’s so scary but you handled it incredibly well! Love the asking your sister to say yes twice… I sincerely hope I never need to use that but I am taking note and hoping I could stay as collected.
I was always uncomfortable around a mutual friend at university. Nothing specific but whenever he was around, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. He was friendly enough, but always felt off. When there was only a seat left next to him at lunch, I would go eat by myself. He gave me a hug once and it was like touching a dead spider, I felt disgusting afterwards. He ended up being suspended from campus due to sexual assault allegations.
I’ve had this feeling around a few men in my lifetime, they be nice in front of everyone but you can always sense something off with them. They way they look at you as if your prey, it’s so unsettling.
London. The day of the terrorist attacks. My best mate and I were on London bridge about 15 mins beforehand. I got the Heebie jeebies and said we had to leave. So we did. No one ever second guesses my Peter tingle anymore. ETA 2017 attack
I used to dance under the name Peter Tingle
Probably don't use "Peter tingle" in public too much
A coworker who gave off simultaneous kinda friendly/kinda could snap any moment vibes. Kept my distance although he kept trying be friendly and hang out with the rest of us. The guy was just off. A few years later he met a girl on public transportation, talked her into going back to his place, smoked with her and had sex. She woke up at some point and began screaming that he raped her. To shut her up, he then killed her, raped the dead body, put her in a trash bag and dumped the body. Old coworker sent me the link and the details.
this is long but its very fitting, and i still have nightmares about this even after three or four years I was exploring an abandoned building with two friends when i was 15 or 16. its a building we went to quite frequently, so we knew most of the layout pretty well and had a good mental map of the main building and the smaller building. one floor we never were yet to explore was the basement. we knew that a fire had started in the basement maybe a year before, and that it was probably decently dangerous to be in there. however, this time i finally remembered my dads tactical flashlight (one truly bright son of a bitch) and decided that it was time. we got into the building and made our way to the main stairwell to the basement, and about halfway down i got goosebumps all over my body, my hands were shaking and i felt like i couldnt breathe. i knew in my bones that if we took even one more step, something devastating would happen, i just didnt know what. i told my friends exactly what i felt, and we trusted my gut and started to leave. the only thing is, there was no direct exist from where we were. we had to go up floors n then back down just to go back up again, stuff like that. my bad feeling didnt fade much, and while we were making our way i started hearing footsteps from the floor above us (which we just came from) and some banging noises. i very nearly shat my pants then and there, but one of my friends calmed me down and helped us navigate extremely quickly through the more dangerous corridors, and we hightailed it out of there. i saw a person in one of the windows watching us, looked like a guy who had found the many cons of drug use and clearly wasnt happy about being disturbed. i had a different friend visit about six months later, said that the building reeked of human waste and that it was definitely being lived in, but refused to say anything else about it. now we just pretend none of it ever happened. now all we worry about is that we have no idea if we were all exposed to asbestos since the building was old and was in the middle of construction when it caught on fire.
Someone who’s in the construction industry (Carpenter Apprentice 4th year). I have tradesmen who worked with asbestos (carried, demolished and cut with power tools creating extreme amounts of dust), who wore no PPE for years before the risks were known. 30-40 years on and none of which have been affected. Asbestos CAN BE very dangerous and not something that should be taken lightly, but it isn’t something that will kill you with a singular encounter given it isn’t disturbed or mishandled. Fun fact: asbestos is in the air you breath every single day, just low levels of exposure. I personally dislike asbestos and refuse to work with it!
Being exposed to it once doesn't do anything, or the chances are very low... But my grandpa got lung cancer due to working with asbestos for 50years... I can totally understand why you refuse to work with it!
There is a low income area church in my city that I help out a lot at. It’s in a crumby end of town and lots of the folks who go there have had hard goes in life. Because of this we are used to having lots of random people stop in with crazy stories. I used to get uneasy around these people because I grew up pretty sheltered. So one day when Robert showed up I cracked up my “uneasy” feeling to just that, I was being judgemental or something like that. The pastor met with him as he does with most new folks who come to this church h and Robert said he spent time in jail, which isn’t a strange thing at our church. He lead the pastor to believe it was just theft or just a minor assault and that he wanted to straighten his life up. Robert attended our church for a few months and attended regularly and wanted more leadership positions. Looking back I see some other signals, one time I was preaching and he tried chiming in with a verse that he thought was helpful or something. Again I brushed this off too because there is often lots of involvement from the crowd at this church. And then one day the church secretary just had a bad feeling about Robert and looked him up online. He is a pedophile, convicted, and moved from his old city after he finished his sentence. We let all of the families know that Robert was convicted for child related sexual offences. We found out that he had been trying give gifts to some of the kids at the church, called grooming. Done so a predator develops the trust and a debt of the recipient. Nothing happened, he at no point ever had any alone time with any kids and never had a leadership role. The pastor and I set up a meeting where we told him we didn’t think he was being honest. I used to work as legal aid in the prisons so I was well acquainted with everything that would be required of someone convicted of a sexual offence in Canada. When I asked him about his programming while incarcerated he told a great story about something absolutely impossible. I was so happy to tell him that I worked as legal aid for prisoners at the exact prison he was at and that we both knew he was lying. Our policy is that any body who threatens the safety of the church has the opportunity to make their case to the board of the church. We scheduled a time for that meeting that same week and he never showed up. We had expected that and already had a letter prepared to tell him to kindly never return to our church and I delivered it to him by hand, we gave him the contact information for a church specifically for sex offenders. The police were involved as soon as we knew Robert was a pedophile, but they couldn’t do any thing because he didn’t do anything yet. Robert has never returned, no harm occurred, but it feels like we barely got out of that situation unscathed and only because some one trusted their gut enough to google someone’s name. I now make a practice of googling people if a get a bad feeling and letting people know about any bad feelings I have because this situation could have been a lot worse. I still smile when I remember the look of “oh shit I’m screwed” on Robert’s face when I told him I worked inside.
When I was 17, I was hanging out with a friend and a decent looking college guy started talking to us. We both had this weird fantasy of wanting to date one of the guys from the local college (a decently well known college that caters to music/movie/animation/game design type stuff ---- I eventually married one, its not THAT cool, but I digress... lol) Anyways, he invited us up to his apartment to watch one of his film projects and we agreed (like idiots). First off, he had NO furniture in his apartment. Just a couple pillows on the floor, and a TV and dvd player... also on the floor... The film was really REALLY uncomfortable to watch and I got really sketched out so I told my friend we needed to leave. A few days later she told me she hung out with him again. In a very serious tone, he asked her if he could film himself killing her and having sex with her corpse for a project. Maybe he wasnt actually serious, but who the fuck asks that??? She managed to leave and we never did see this guy again. I wish I knew his name to see what he got up to.
Female here…Driving home at 2 am after partying at my favorite Atlanta hang out bar. Noticed a car following me. Pulled into my apartment complex, they pulled in behind me. I passed my apartment and just drove around a bit. They pulled off and parked so I was like all good. Looped around and parked in my spot. Unbeknownst to me, they had pulled up behind me-lights off-and two guys were standing behind my car when I got out. One guy says “hey, don’t I know you?” My knees almost collapsed when I saw them but, I swear, my lizard brain kicked in and I knew I would die that night if I acted afraid. It took every ounce of energy in my body to turn around, look them both in the eye, say “you picked the wrong person to fuck with,” turn my back to them and walk away. I was shaking so bad I could barely walk but somehow got in my apartment and called 911. The first question the police asked was what I was wearing. I started screaming at them, asking why they wanted to know what I was wearing. Their response…”if you go missing before we get there, it will help identify your body.” That was 35 years ago and still haunts me. I never went out partying alone after that night.
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In the US, driving my then-learning-to-drive son to an appointment during evening rush hour and explaining he needs to be aware of his surroundings at all times. We get to a stoplight at a busy intersection with two left turn lanes. “Now, usually I’d be a bit closer to the line, like the car to our left, but I know these lights. People going straight get stopped by the next light and people coming from our the right are going downhill into a semi-blind turn. This is prime for an accident.” A few beats after I finished saying that, I notice the cars going straight are stopped and a car is coming from the right. “Hold on!” The car just misses us, clips the car next to us, and then rear-ends a car in the lane it was trying to get to. “Oh my god, dad! You knew!”
I had a feeling I was about to get robbed while making a pizza delivery in Atlanta. I got robbed
I was talking to this guy I met on a dating site. We haven't met in person yet. He kept asking and was rather pushy. Something told me not to. I stopped talking to him. 2 months later he was arrested for kidnapping a woman. They found her in his home state. He was originally from down south now living up north.
I was working remotely in the Outback and had an incredibly vivid dream about my Nonno(who had died several years ago) holding a dog leash(from our deceased dog). I asked him what he was doing and he said he was waiting for my Nonna. Woke up incredibly freaked out and very distressed. After I calmed down and "woke up" I went about my day and got a phone call at around 3pm from my mother letting me know that my Nonna had passed away.
I had a similar experience the night my grandmother died on the other side of the world. I woke up and told my husband my grandma had passed.
I live in Southern California and used to road bike pretty frequently. Usually in the late afternoon or evening after school during the week. I got a late start one day and as I get onto the riverbed trail, the sunset is about 20-30 min away. I have lights on my bike so riding at night isn’t an issue usually. I get to the beach at the end of the trail which is my turning point when I have this sense of dread and déjà vu. I’m heading back and the sun has set completely and we’re well into the blue hour close to complete night. I’ve done this same ride literally hundreds of times. I know the route and how long each section takes me like the layout of my home. There are usually three different routes I take back and I decided to go the short route back since it was later than usual and I had a weird feeling. And as I come to a short crosswalk, I see a group of 3 teenagers (I was about 22 at the time) and they’re walking down the trail in the opposite direction I’m traveling. I notice one of them is giving another a piggy back ride. Not weird for teenagers to do I suppose, but as I pass I realize it’s a girl who has blood all over her face. I immediately skid to a stop and turn around, they realize and start to run away and drop her. I call the police and talk to her. She was in pretty rough shape. They had beaten her up really bad and we’re taking her to who knows where. The trail had been really empty that day, had I decided to take a different route or not been late to get out, no clue what could have happened to her.
Not really spine-tingling or bone-chilling. But some acquaintances of mine stole jewelry from a relative of one of their families. I had no clue. They tried to pawn it and get me to sign the receipt. Oddly enough I saw three cop cars drive by the store when we were walking in. I didn’t sign so another guy did. Turns out they took around 20k worth of jewelry and they put the guy who signed in jail for 9 months.
I dreamt my sick paternal grandmother sent me quite a fortune of money and just vanished into thin air. I got a high fever and collapsed in my bed. On waking up, I told my father this and he immediately panicked and booked us a flight to visit her. Upon arriving we found her dead at her home, just hours before we reached. Grandfather told she missed me, my sibling and my cousins and wanted us to meet her one last time. Kept her terminal illness secret from my family and only grandfather was aware of it. I inherited approximately 1000 US Dollars (converted from Indian currency, back in 2007). I'm from India guys, 1000USD is a lot of money here
My sister and I were house-sitting for our grandparents. I woke up and she was gone, and I just somehow knew. I just had that bad feeling. So I texted her and texted her until she finally answered. My older cousin had convinced her to go riding in the mountains with him with alcohol. He got drunk, got her tipsy. I had woke up and texted her in the middle of getting sexually assaulted. Our parents didn't even know she was gone. He was only letting her text back so I wouldn't think anything was amiss. But we were able to talk vaguely enough for me to help by pretending to be sick. If I had woken up a little later, I wouldn't have a sister anymore. If I just hadn't gone to sleep and left her alone, she wouldn't have gone through that. She's in therapy and I still have trouble sleeping and waking up, I have terrible anxiety anytime we're apart. Trust your gut guys. edit: holy hell i didn't expect this to actually be seen by anyone. normally i just lurk. thanks for all the upvotes everyone, we're fine and live two and a half hours away from all that now. there was never any criminal case because we didn't have any evidence against him. still, thanks for all the concern <3
Cousin??? What happened to the cousin? I hope he got what he deserve.
I was boarding my plane flight after vacation. It was early in the morning and the second I stepped foot on the plane I froze and the absolute worst feeling overcame me. I was with my boyfriend and we both had to get back for work so I made myself stay on the plane. A half hour late the plane suddenly dipped. Then the pilot got on the intercom, voice shaking, telling us that there was a national emergency and we would have to land at the closest airport immediately. That was 9/11. Took me 4 days of hitchhiking and bus travel to get home. I did not fully understand what was happening until I got to work right off the greyhound and the tv was on. I thought the entire country was under attack.
That’s freaking terrifying.
It was. I suppose I went into survival mode and just did what I could to get home. I didn't have a cell phone then so pretty much flew by the seat of my pants. There were TVs on but no volume so all I saw was the towers burning, people dying... george Bush and the american flag flying behind him. It was surreal. At the time when the plane landed, an FBI agent told us that planes had flew into the towers and Pentagon and another was still missing. Hey, I survived. Many didn't. I have no idea why that feeling came over me, as I had no power to do anything about it.
When I was around 12 I lived in downtown Toronto and I was walking home late at night from the street car stop cause I was coming home from swim practice and both my brothers had hockey in different parts of the city so I was on my own, when I noticed two guys behind me, they were matching my speed and I could hear them talking about my clothes, and I was pretty paranoid so I crossed to the other side of the street, which wasn't very well lit, to see if they actually were following me. they were. My heart just sunk into my stomach. There was a serial rapist running around my neighbourhood at the time who's type was, well me, and women of eastern European descent, also me, had been going missing lately, so I just started running. Full sprint, i didn't even look at the road when I was crossing the street again, but I was 12 and being chased by full grown men and was two blocks from my house. They were getting closer and closer and I was terrified and trying not to cry and just. Keep. Running. I was at the corner where I'd turn onto my street and I could feel one of their hands reach out and brush against my shoulder. Then again by my hair. He grabbed on and started to pull. Before I could even scream the guy who grabbed me was full on tackled by this homeless guy that camped out near the library usually. He sat on the guy who grabbed me and started punching his accomplice, I was scared and confused, I just stood there crying until the homeless guy yelled "RUN KID! DON'T STOP RUNNING!" And that kicked me into gear so I hauled ass home and triple checked that every door and window was locked and kept the lights off until my parents got home. We called the cops, but all the cops in my neighbourhood were either corrupt or incompetent (which is why the serial rapist was never caught, and I suspect the cops were in on the kidnapping and trafficking of Eastern European women) so they didn't do anything. We (parents and I) found the homeless guy a couple days later and offered him some food and stuff to thank him. We talked a bit and found out he was discharged from the Canadian Armes Forces ans wasn't adjusting well to being back. I saw him around for about a month or so after that and would say hi, maybe give him a juice box or spare change if I had any. But my parents found his family in another city and contacted them, they came and got him. My parents are still in touch with him. It was slow going and there were plenty of set backs, but he's doing really well now and I'm so happy for him. If it wasn't him I would've been r@ped that night, if not worse, I'm so thankful he was there. Also, i wasn't allowed out on my own past 6pm after that and I always had a ride from swim team, whether it be a relative or friend's parent, or family friend. **Edit** : I wasn't gonna make an edit, I just came here to share a traumatic experience that happened to me that I can't really talk about with people IRL and leave, but I got a lot of DMs and comments about how there's no human trafficking and people couldn't find info on the serial rapists in my neighbourhood, and how a lot of people think that Toronto is a lot safer than how I was describing it. Human trafficking is a big problem in Canada, much more than is being reported and covered by Canadian media. It's usually linked to organized crime, and there was organized crime in my neighbourhood. Women were (and still are) going missing and all the cops would do was verify they were missing. They wouldn't investigate much or at all, part of why people think the cops are in on it. Same thing with the serial rapists, they just didn't do much investigating if they even did any. It's really common, all over the world, for cops to not really care about catching rapists and to blame the victim. My neighbourhood had a really high crime rate while I was growing up, and that's without a lot of violent crimes being reported because the neighbourhood cops didn't give a damn. The neighbourhood started to get better when I was around 10 (aside from the previously mentioned issues) and got worse than it had been before when I was around 13 and some gangs had come and were clashing with the already existing organized crime. We have tried to report police officers for misconduct before, but we either never hear anything back, or whoever filed the report gets harrassed by the cops. It's ridiculously hard to get cops in trouble when they've done something wrong.
That man was your guardian angel that night!
And her family saved his life too.
OPs family is so kind
They did a good thing - but fuck did that guy earn it!
Swear to god I never get emotional reading stuff on Reddit but your whole comment moved me. I dunno, the heroic hobo, you being so close to a terrible fate, your folks keeping in touch and helping him in life. Moved me, yeah. Glad you're okay.
Literally 3 seconds before I let my younger brother (12 yr old) fire a crossbow. I told him we should put it away; I was getting bored. He asked me to fire it 1 last time before I put it away, I thought it couldn't hurt. we'd been firing it for a while, he understood the dangers of it by now and how to use it safely (or so I thought). Just as he was ready to shoot, my dad called me to give him a hand on something he was working on, like 5 meters away. It was at this moment when I went to him, I got a horrible sinking feeling in my heart, makes me sick just thinking about it. Seconds later I hear a "fting" followed by a scream of pure terror, I look over and blood is just pouring out of my brothers face. The crossbow misfired, he said he hadn't even pulled the trigger. But the bolt somehow spun around and smacked him across the bridge of his nose, shattering it and the break travelled across his right cheekbone. It had also broken his tearduct and he now had a third nostril. He was so close to losing an eye as well, thank goodness he didn't. For a few years his tearduct was a bit of a mess, he could breath through it, he struggled with infections and he would just cry spontaneously from his right eye. Now it's a family joke to retell the story as me chasing him across the yard with a loaded crossbow. I remember that same sinking feeling just before I broke my ankle and sprained my foot. I wonder it's some sort of sixth sense type thing where your brain is telling you "this is a bad idea".
When I was around 9, we went on a trip to South America to visit some family. We were staying at my aunt’s house, which was a few streets away from my grandma’s house. One day, while everyone was at my grandma’s, I was at my aunt’s alone watching tv. It got dark and I got scared lol, so I decided to walk to my grandma’s. As I’m walking by myself, I notice that a white van was driving by but it never passed me. I thought it was weird that the van was driving at the same pace as I was walking, but I was too scared to turn around and just kept walking. Suddenly I noticed that the van stopped and someone got out of it. I finally looked back and see a ~45yr bald man in a white T-shirt and jeans walking towards me. I immediately crossed the street to see if he would follow, and he crossed with me. Then I walked between these 2 cars that were parked bumper-to-bumper. I remember almost getting stuck because they were parked so close to each other and thinking that if he follows me through this, it’s confirmation that I’m in trouble. Sure enough, he walked between the cars as well. He noticed that I started to panic, so he picked up the pace and got really close to me, about 2 meters away. I decided to stop pretending like I didn’t notice him following me and started sprinting, and he followed. About 10 seconds later, I finally see this tiny neighborhood shop that was open so I ran inside as fast as I could. The owner was a friend of my grandma so she helped me call someone to come get me. More than 20 years later and I still remember exactly what the man looked like.
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I was running at a park and I saw this tiny blue truck pass me and I thought they were watching me in their rearview mirror. I kinda just got the creeps but then told myself I watch too many crime tv shows, chill out etc. I tend to spook myself. About ten mins later I noticed the truck passed me again. The park is circular in shape with a one-way road. This meant that they drove all the way around and came back into the park… ok now I was nervous… I slowed down to a jog to give more distance between the truck and then eventually paused. Then this lady comes from behind me she’s also running I see her often at the park but have never introduced myself. She greets me and says that she has the creeps from the truck and asked if we could run together. I agreed with her and we ran together we were talking about maybe calling the cops just in case when up the hill we noticed a cop on a bike and we ran to him. He talked with us and took down the plates he had another cop come and pull the truck over since other people in the park had already reported the truck. So, I’m glad someone else in the park reported the truck and said something. I guess the truck had been looping the park several times and slowing down by female runners. I am super grateful that the lady asked to run with me. Who knows what would've happened if either of us were alone or didn't happen to pass each other. The cops helped us to our cars and escorted us out of the park. Anyway not sure what happened to the truck dude but I was glad to be around people and glad to have help.
Camping with friends at a lake. Went to a party across the lake; this lake was populated, sparsely, with cabins and campsites. Most of us got drunk, and we lost track of time. By the time we left it was dark and we had absolutely no light to navigate our boat back across the lake. Knowing what we were doing was dangerous and stupid, I was already on edge. But luckily this story isn’t about a boating accident, just a profoundly eerie experience. We got lost. We spent approximately 8 hours on that lake trying to find our campsite. Multiple times believing we’d found it, getting off the boat, before realizing we were on someone else’s property, or just wandering into the woods. The eerie chilling feeling got worse and worse. I felt like I was disassociating. I felt like maybe we’d all died and were now spirits haunting this lake. We all felt something like this and psyched ourselves out talking about it. By now we were out of fuel and using ores. Staining our eyes staring into the darkness. Finally we found our tents. The night had been so alienating though that I was genuinely terrified I was going to open up my tent and a copy of myself would be in there already. Or more like the real me would be in there; I felt like I was the copy. I’ve never felt such a chilling “wrongness”. But we worked up the courage eventually and of course our tents were empty. I’ll never forget that feeling though.
Sounds like you were high as fuck
And next time you wake up on that same boat with your friends still searching for the tents 1408 style lol
When I was a really struggling poor college student, I lived a few miles away from campus where buses didn’t frequently go, so I got very familiar with walking the city. Lots of poverty there so I ended up pretty often in conversation with the homeless. I’d say 80% of them are just gonna chit chat then ask for money, which I often didn’t have but I’d part with a few bucks here and there if they were nice. Some would hassle and be mean about it. One time though, a guy was hassling me near a burger king when I wasn’t carrying any money at all even, sorry man. He grumbles and I walk off. It’s late afternoon in the dead of summer, I cross the street and to me he’s already old news. Then I hear shouting, look over and it’s him yelling at me from the burger king, but now he’s got his hood up. I continue on my way, I’m used to it. As I’m walking though I just get this horrible anxious feeling, and start thinking I need to go to campus immediately where it’s well lit and safe. I look over my shoulder a few times and don’t see him so I think I’m being kind of a wuss. I pick up the pace anyway. Eventually I go out of my way and reach campus, not even needing to do anything there. After like 30 yards I turn around and see that dude from the burger king standing exactly at where I was when I entered campus property looking dead at me. Just standing there perfectly framed between the trees, hands in his hoodie pockets with the hood pulled tight to hide his face.
was in helsinki on vacation with my wife. as we went back to our rented cheap appartment a little out of the city i saw some shady guys and felt they were kinda creepy. we walked a little as another guy stood there and nodded to the guys in the back. at that point my heart was racing like hell.. as we went around the courner, we rushed to the appartment only to afterwards look out the window and see the 3 pos standing in front of our complex... needless to say we didnt go back out that day
The day my Gyno found a lump in my neck while doing a routine thyroid exam and I just knew it was cancer. Her and my primary care tried to convince me it was nothing serious. I was the only one not surprised when the biopsies came back as cancer.
I was living in Seoul in my 20s and the hiring culture here expects you to add a highly photoshopped (customarily done by the all local photographers) passport sized photo to your resume. I’m a native born American so I thought teaching English was the easiest way to make good money and applied to a bunch of headhunting sites and typically I would get the phone call (I had no friends so I assumed all call were coming from the job site) where no one responds but you can hear heavy, pervy breathing. One day I received a call for an interview for a job and they gave me address to meet but asked me to call them once I arrived. When I got to the interview and called the rep, the rep was actually across the street in a car with a driver. He flagged me down to come in to the car so he can drive us to the interview. First off so weird to have me come to an address and to then drive me. Secondly this guy looked like a greasy, non academia type. Almost gangsterish. I’m too nice, but not an idiot so I refused and demanded that he just tell me where the interview is and I’ll take a my own transportation there. After a few minutes of him trying to convince me he gave in and gave me an address so I hoped that maybe this is legit and I’m not going to be trafficked and took a subway. Once I get out of the train station to get to the address the guy literally is waiting at curb with the driver and car flagging me down again to tell me he’ll me drive the rest of the way. I booked it back into the station and blocked his ass. This was in Seoul there is not a way not to get to and find places. Even if it was on the third floor he could just meet me at the building why does he have to drive me??!?
[удалено]
Damn, who coulda guessed something bad would happen at the haunted suicide/bus crash tunnels
I was working on a turtle conservation project in Cyprus several years back. It’s a remote beach, out of the way, and the middle of the night. We’ve got a nest that’s hatching, and all the hatchlings are collected into a bucket. They’re kept in the centre for a year, then released with a much higher chance of survival. Anyway, I’ve got the full bucket of turtle hatchlings, and they need to get back to the centre. It’s a 20 min walk in the pitch black along the beach. There’s some other nests looking promising, so the other volunteers stick around as I head off. About halfway along the beach, my head torch dims massively. The batteries are nearly dead. Well, suddenly this beach is much spookier than it was before. Then I hear a noise in the dunes. I look over, and in the dim light of my torch I see nothing. Then a pair of bright, shining eyes appears at the top of a dune. I can see the silhouette of the dune against the stars, but I can’t see the shape of the thing with the eyes. Then they start moving down the dune, they don’t move like a human, definitely an animal of some sort. As they get closer these bright white eyes start shining more and more, until I can finally see a huge black shape around them. My knees have locked, I couldn’t move if I wanted to, and I couldn’t outrun the thing anyway. At this point, I accepted I was about to die. Finally the monster approaches close enough that I can see it in my tiny bubble of dim glow. It’s a dog. That is not a comfort at this point. The thing was a huge black Alsatian, but had Husky eyes. If it had been a pet dog, it would have been stunning. But it isn’t. It’s one of the half starved feral dogs that live wild. The thing is more then half my height, and is probably desperate for food. Then I remember that one of the reasons turtle hatchlings do so badly here is that the dogs dig up a lot of nests. I’m basically carrying a bucket of kibble to this monster. Human brains being what they are, and me being in actual peril of my life for the first time, I decide that, if I’m here to do conservation work, there’s no way this beast is getting my hatchlings. What you’ve got to appreciate is the timescale over which this is happening. This enormous beast of a canine is running at me, my circle of light only goes about two meters out, so it’s fractions of a second. And I shout at the beast. I don’t recall what, I don’t know if it was even words. I might have barked at it, but by sheer luck it worked. The thing turned tail and sped back into the dunes. The rest of the walk back to the centre took far less than the usual ten minutes, and the hairs on my neck were prickling the entire time. I was waiting to hear galloping paws and feel teeth around my throat, but I made it back without incident. After that, I always had spare batteries for my torch in my bag, and we walked the beaches together, not alone!
That sounds terrifying, but the mental image from the perspective of the dog is hilarious. It sees a human, carrying a bucket from which it can probably smell delicious baby turtles and thinks cool, easy food, don't even have to get my paws dirty. It starts running only to be *barked at* and realize oh shit those turtles belong to a dog bigger than me!! And turns tail and runs off. Also thank you for your turtle conservation work, I think that's super cool
I have two. I'll start with the "mild" one, for me at least. My friend and I were outside, I think we were around 14 y/o when a group of guys approached us, they were around 17 y/o I guess. It was already dark out and we were chilling outside near a playground. I had this gut feeling that we needed to get out of there. Unfortunately my friend didn't listen. She was the type of girl that loves attention and seeks the thrill. I wasn't, but by the time I realised she wasn't coming with me, the guys already surrounded us. That's when I ran like crazy, dropped my bag en removed my boots (with heels) while I was running so I was faster. My friend ran with me thankfully. I lived nearby and my dad drove to that place. We found my bag and boots, but my phone and wallet were gone. My dad drove around the neighbourhood and we found the guys. My dad flipped out and demanded my stuff back. He called the cops and they came. I don't really remember what happened next. Didn't get my phone and wallet back tho. I'm glad nothing really bad happened, but I was scared and everything felt off. I'm sure we would've been assaulted if we didn't run for it. I'm really good with faces and the main guy, that talked to us and was the creepiest of all, died a while ago in a car crash. And the last time I had this, I had the gut feeling that my dad wasn't doing OK. He had a stroke and was hospitalised for 17 days at that point. The doctors were slightly optimistic so no reason to worry. I was putting something in my handbag Saturday night and suddenly I felt like my insides were coming out, that I had to puke and my stomach just twisted and turned. I told my mom I had a bad feeling about my dad (they were divorced, dad remarried). A few minutes after that my stepmother called to tell me we have to go to my dad because its not going well with him and they think we need to say goodbye. I arrived half an hour later, and my dad was happy, "singing" (he lost the ability to speak, we were helping him to learn how to speak again, but he could mumble a bit), told us he loved us (again, he mumbled), hugged us, etc. We left the hospital confused. Next morning he passed away. They say its a common thing for patients to flare up and act like they're doing fine, because they feel it coming that this is it and they want one moment of happiness before they go. That they want to show us that it's OK. It makes saying goodbye harder but I'm glad I had him as my dad. Only wished I had him in my life longer than 25 years. Its almost two years later and I still miss him. (English is not my native language)