People From Around The World Share Times Their Gut Instinct Saved Them


People From Around The World Share Times Their Gut Instinct Saved Them


A lot of the time we get funny feelings that seem to come out of nowhere. It's easy enough to dismiss them as the jitters, or fatigue, or a touch of paranoia. A lot of the time, they may be just that.

But sometimes those feelings are your body warning you that something very bad is about to happen. Sometimes, the choice to heed those feelings (or not) is a matter of life or death.

These are the best stories from people around the world about times their gut instinct saved them.

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43. "Someone was standing just outside the door"

Worked as a waitress at a pub. One night I rejected this guy who attempted to get my number. Not unusual and he didn't seem that bothered. The whole exchange wasn't strange to me.

In the early hours, after the bar closed, I went to leave through the back door into the car park like usual when I saw the sensor light outside was on. Someone was standing just outside the door. For some reason, I felt uneasy about that, so I went out the front and asked one of the bouncers to walk me round the back to my car.

As we rounded the corner we spotted the guy I had rejected lurking outside the door holding his belt like a makeshift garrotte. When he saw us, he started screaming obscenities at me and saying that I should die. When he saw the bouncer, he scampered off into the road and never came back.

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42. You dodged a knife

Went out on a couple dates with a girl and got a weird vibe from her so I eventually ghosted her and didn't stay in touch. She stabbed her next boyfriend 2 months later.

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41. Thank god for cellphones

I was walking home from work one night last week and I could hear footsteps behind me. I was on the phone to my partner at the time like I do when I have to walk home alone at night. The footsteps start getting louder and when I crossed the road I could hear this person running and saw them out of the corner of my eye, seemingly coming toward me.

So I turn around and look right at them which seems to startle them and they ran in front of me and kept walking. I slow right down at this point and just watch them, describing very loudly to my partner what this man looks like and what he was doing. He was acting very shifty, crossing the road over and over when he didn’t need to and constantly looking back at me.

I hid behind some bushes and waited for him to go out of sight after that then carried on home. Pretty sure he was planning on mugging/attacking me.

I saw him again when I walked home last night but I wasn’t alone this time. Still pretty freaked out.

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40. That's not instinct, it's premonition!

When I was 12, I had a dream where I learned from a firefighter that I would have exactly two children, and they would be boy/girl twins. I told many people about this because I was absolutely, 100% certain it would be true.

When we were just dating I told my future wife about it to make sure she was okay with carrying and raising twins.

My boy/girl twins graduated high school this year and are getting started in college. Their grandfather was the fire chief of his town.

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39. The cat knew something was wrong too

I woke up at 3am once sitting upright in bed. I felt on alert and my heart raced when I saw that my cat was on alert too, wide awake by my feet with his ears perked up. But I didn’t see or hear anything weird. Something didn’t feel right and I couldn’t relax. So I got up and went to the kitchen. Turned on some lights and ate food even though I wasn’t that hungry. Eventually went back to bed.

We discovered the next morning that someone had stopped while in the process of using some kind of tool to silently cut a big hole in the glass window in the living room. They were trying to break in. Right next to the bedroom. I think the lights I turned on scared them away.

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38. What's that smell?

I was seven years old. It was about 4:00pm -- I was home from school, but my father had yet to get back from work. I was upstairs in my room playing Crash Bandicoot, and my mother (who had a drinking problem) was downstairs, sprawled out on the couch with a bottle in her hand, and I knew she’d soon start the daily process of hiding her bottles, blitzing her mouth with mouthwash, drinking a coffee to further cover her breath, etc.

Usually I’d just stay in my room until my dad got home and called me to dinner, but that day, I felt a sudden urge to go check on my mother to see if everything was okay. I crept downstairs, and sure enough, she was sprawled out on the sofa with a smoke in one hand and the bottle in the other.

I walked down the hall to the kitchen and as soon as I stepped into the room, the smell of gas hit me. I didn’t know what the smell was at the time, but I somehow knew it was bad, so I ran back to my mom in the lounge and told her we needed to go out the front of the house because there was a poisonous smell in the air.

In her half-conscious stupor, she let me lead her by the hand out the front door, and when we were outside, she asked me to repeat what I’d said. I told her, there was a poisonous smell in the kitchen.

I think she sort of sobered up quite quickly when she realized what had happened -- she’d left the gas on on the stove. The kitchen, and half the hallway, was filled with gas. She threw down her smoke and stomped it out, dusted herself off, handed me the bottle, and told me to stay outside. She went in, turned the gas off, and opened all the windows.

My dad arrived home as all this was happening, and he saw me stood outside, holding the bottle. He was completely perplexed, as he thought she’d managed to kick the habit after a successful detox course six months earlier. I never told him. She eventually got clean for good and now works with other people with drinking problems as they try to turn their lives around.

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37. The ransacker

Was sitting in my bedroom one day when I got this intense feeling in my gut, which was sort of saying, "You need to get out of here. Right now." Then I started to get this immense feeling of terror (like I was being watched).

I immediately got myself out of there and went to my friend's house, as I didn't want to be alone at the time.

When I finally got back to my own house, it had been ransacked. Things had been knocked over, lots of glass had been broken everywhere, and a window was left wide open.

Now I always take that gut feeling more seriously.

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36. Those hairs on the back of your neck

Went to a college party and one of the guys made me feel very uncomfortable. He didn't ever do anything to me, but something seemed off. I kept dumping my shots because getting smashed seemed like a bad idea. I ended up taking a friend and leaving while he told us that we were being lame by not having more of the Grey Goose

He attacked another girl at the party that night.

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35. "I got a strong feeling that I should go back"

After my shift ended, I went into the lunch room to get my lunch bag. I noticed one of my guy coworkers was sitting at a table, constantly looking at the opposite entrance (our lunch room has 2 entrances). Around that time, my coworker/friend (who is a girl that the guy really likes) was getting an interview for a lead position.

I had a bad feeling about him being there. Almost as if he was waiting for her to come out. At work, he's a creep. He'll follow her, get mad when certain people talk to her and has gone through her phone. She has zero interest in being with him and has told him, but he's still convinced he has a chance.

Anyway I thought I was overreacting so I went home. Within 30 minutes of leaving, I got a strong feeling that I should go back and drive to her car. So I did and when I got to her car, I saw him trying to get in from the drivers side. She was already inside her car and was trying to kick him away from her (but it wasn't working).

When he noticed me, he backed off and looked very angry at me. He stayed for a few seconds until he realized I wasn't going to go away so he left. After he left, she explained what had happened.

Turns out he followed her because he wanted a hug and she refused to give one. She was trying to get away, but he kept pulling her back. That I had "saved her life." Yeah... I can't imagine what would've happened if I hadn't shown up.

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34. Just asking for directions

I was walking home from a restaurant with a carryout box of food for family dinner (I was 13 at the time), and I see this black van ahead. I lived in a fairly affluent area, and I was used to seeing similar vans like this (landscaping companies drove them). The only thing that stuck out out me was the fact the windows were tinted and the hood had no logo on it.

I didn't think much of it, but I felt a hand on my shoulder.... it was an old lady, walking one of those Chinese Crested terriers (the ugly kind with no fur). "Hey, do you know where Bullrush Court is?" she asks. I point out the street, and start to walk home. The van is now gone, having made no sound.

"I actually just wanted you to not go near that van. I felt uneasy, with you walking home so late at night," the lady called from behind me. I shrugged and thanked her, parting ways.

Turns out a van matching that description was being driven by a known offender. I owe that lady. I still live in the area, and haven't seen her or her dog since.

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33. If I had gone to the movies that night...

I'd asked for days off to see The Dark Knight in theaters. I had the seniority at my retail job to get the days off and asked 3 weeks in advance for the days. The scheduling manager hated me and didn't give me the days off.

I'd really wanted to say screw it and go anyway and just go to work on 4 hours or less of sleep. But the day rolled around and my gut instinct told me to just go to bed and to see the movie the next week.

Had I gone that night, I would have been in the Aurora theater James Holmes attacked. I had 3 friends in the theater that all lived but multiple coworkers lost friends or family.

My dad heard the news break when it happened (he worked nights out of his truck and heard it on the radio) and called my mom frantic to check I was in bed and hadn't gone to the theater since he knew I loved Batman and wouldn't shut up about the movie.

I'm glad I went to bed. I saw the movie when it was released to DVD. I couldn't bring myself to see it in a theater.

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32. That's not my idea of a party

Had a friend who said we should go to this party he was invited to by a classmate of his. We ended driving out to the house, but we noticed the neighborhood was not too pleasant and everything seemed pretty sketchy. We saw that house had some lights on in the backyard but it seemed kind of quiet for a party.

I decided that we should not go inside since something felt really off.

My friend later found out that the classmate who invited him got robbed and threatened when he showed up at this 'party.' It ended up being a fake party that was thrown to attract people and then rob them.

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31. It's important to teach your kids to spot stuff like this

I was about 11, and this neighbourhood man started kind of hanging around my friends and me sometimes. He was friendly and would buy us junk food from 7-11. My little friend crowd was mostly boys and it wasn't unusual for me to be the only girl with them. This man started inviting them over for snacks, would give them money for 7-11, etc, and they thought he was the greatest thing. I got a creepy feel and didn't like how he seemed to look at me more than the boys, so I never went to his house.

Creep started bringing gifts to my house for me until my mom answered the door one day and told him to hit the road and never come back. The next we heard of him was in the newspaper because he was serving time for "interfering with a minor".

I'm grown up now and I really hope that piece of crap is long dead. I think about how lucky I am all the time, and how important it was that I listened to my instincts.

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30. A last second decision

When I was in middle school and around 14 years old I was returning home. I live like 5 minutes away from said school and I noticed there was a man following me. He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at his phone and he wore a cap so I wasn’t able to see his face fully. Anyways he gave off this weird vibe.

I reached my apartment building and the guy was still behind me. I know mostly everyone who lives in my neighborhood and I couldn’t recall him. At the last moment I decided I wasn’t going to go inside the hallway. Instead I turned around and went to a store where I waited for my mom to come.

A few weeks after there were some news about a girl from my school who was attacked in the building right behind mine 2 days after the incident. The guy they caught looked a lot like the guy who had followed me, and given the time frame and the proximity, there’s a high chance that it was him.

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29. Intuition saves a baby

My daughter was a year and a half at the time. She had a cold, but bedtime went off without a hitch. I woke up in the middle of the night that night, really uncomfortable and anxious. Something was off and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I got up, had a midnight snack, tried to calm my nerves. I decided to check on my kids, who shared a room, before trying to go back to sleep.

I get in there and immediately I hear a light sound coming from her crib -- wheezing. It was so quiet, there was no way to hear it outside of the room. I got her up and saw that her breathing was fast and labored. I took her to the hospital, where she ended up with an overnight stay, oxygen, and nebulizer treatments because her oxygen had dipped. She was diagnosed with Reactive Airway Disease due to the cold (which triggered the asthma attack).

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28. I wish I had this superpower

I was on my way home towards the end of a 2.5 hour commute. I spent the whole trip going about 100 mi/h and for whatever reason I thought "I'd better slow down. I'm making good enough time." And sure enough as my speedometer hit 70 (the speed limit) I came over a small hill to see a cop tagging everyone that passed. Nailed it.

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27. A more serious speed story

My ex-girlfriend and I were driving home late at night from a concert. It was about a three hour drive, so it was probably somewhere around 2AM. It was mid-January and was snowing pretty heavily. She was going around 70mph. I don't know why, but I asked her to slow down.

She slowed to around 35mph and not a minute or two later we had to slam on our brakes because there was a semi jack-knifed across both lanes. The brakes locked up and we slid through the slush and only stopped about 15 feet short of the trailer. If I hadn't asked her to slow or if she hadn't listened, I would have likely been a head shorter.

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26. Feeling infidelity

I used to work overnights, and for whatever reason I had a weird inkling that my girlfriend was cheating on me. So I went home (we lived together) early one night and, what do you know, there's a naked dude lying in our bed with her.

That really freaking sucked, but I'm glad that my intuition helped me to find out before our relationship progressed even more.

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25. Subconscious mind warning you?

I had this really bad dream where a man stuffed me in my trunk in order to abduct me. I woke up at this point very upset because it felt so real, and it bothered me all day.

Two days later I am at the grocery store and as I am walking out the door I see a man loitering around near my car. He had a shady look to him, like he was pretending to be busy or to fit in with his surroundings, but he was not actually doing anything except acting weird and wandering around.

I had a feeling something was not right so I just stayed right there at the exit to the store for about 10 minutes until he was not close to my car and there were more people around.

I feel like that dream and my gut instincts made me much more aware and it could have saved me from something bad. I also called the store after I left and told the manager. There was a girl taken in a Target store parking lot in broad daylight a few years ago so this does happen.

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24. "The party's around back"

I was a birthday party princess in college. Dress up as a Disney character, sing some songs, help with cake, paint faces, typical party stuff. I get called to a party that began at 8 PM. Unusual but not unheard of in our industry, a lot of Spanish-speaking families party well into the night. But I pull up down the street (princesses don't drive) and begin walking to the house, dressed as Sleeping Beauty, my "party box" of supplies in hand.

But when I saw the house I knew immediately something was wrong. There were no lights on, no cars, no balloons...but against my better judgement I knocked on the door. This super creepy looking guy in his mid-fifties answers, in a dirty t-shirt and jeans, and the first thing he says is, "The party's around back."

I took one look at this guy and booked it as fast as I could while holding a box, wearing a ballgown and being mildly crippled to begin with. I got into my car, locked the doors, floored it to a 7-11 and called my boss.

The "party" never called demanding to know where their princess was. No one asked for their deposit back. My boss called police non-emergency but I don't know if anything was ever done. I'm 100% sure there was no "party" in that house.

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23. Smoking saves a life

I live in Pennsylvania, but used to work in Manhattan when I was 20 and still living at home with my folks. My older brother also worked in NYC and we usually took the same train to get up to the city.

One fall morning, my brother had to go in to the city early for a meeting, so I went with him to the station to catch the early train. This would’ve got me to my office pretty early and since I was a junior help desk guy, I didn’t have much I could DO if I got to work early. And I’d been up to the top of both the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty before, but never to the observation deck of the World Trade Center.

So, I figured, why not take the early train, hop off with my brother to cross into lower Manhattan, and go take in the view? I’d be a LITTLE late to work, but no problem.

The train pulls in and I just felled compelled to have a smoke. Like the single most important thing in the world was for me to just sit on a bench, light another one, and let that train go. So I told my brother I’d catch the next train and head straight to work. I’d go to the World Trade Center another day.

And that’s what I did. I lit a smoke, I waited for the next train, and got to New York City in the middle of the waking nightmare that was 9/11.

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22. Don't take the tube

Not me but when my mum was a teenager on 18th November 1987, she was going to London to visit a friend. It was around 7:20 pm and she decided she was going to take a taxi instead of going by tube because it didn't feel right (King's cross tube station). Ten minutes later the whole station caught on fire and 30 out of the 40 people died. If she had decided to take the tube she would likely have died.

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21. Good thing you met that cop

I had my laptop stolen about a year ago. I used the 'find my laptop' function and traced it to a hotel nearby. I was on my way over there to try and break in and get it back when I bumped into a policeman walking nearby the hotel.

I stopped and asked him to come with me and explained the situation. He called for the case officer and he brought some back up with him. When they broke into the guy's room, three men attacked the policemen. They found many weapons alongside a stack of money. Definitely glad I decided to ask for help!

By the way, the way that I found out which room he was in was because he had wiped my Laptop and re-named it Stuart's Macbook Pro instead of Adam-wests Macbook pro. You can see this on Icloud, however, the username is registered to the serial number of the laptop so no matter what you do, you can always find it.

After this I went to the hotel and asked if my friend was staying there and they gave me his room number. I left to call my Dad for advice and it was on the return journey that I met the policeman. I definitely should have got the police in the first place but they had let me down the last time I called about this case so I didn't bother. I was expecting to knock on the door and some scrawny thief would answer. I guess what had happened is one of this guy's customers had sold it to him.

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20. Dead bolt

Last summer, after I had gotten out of the shower, and climbed into bed, I had this overwhelming feeling that I should deadbolt the door. So I got up, and walked the length of my house, completely naked, and locked my side door. By the time I had gotten back to the bedroom, and turned off the lights, someone was at the door, trying to kick it in.

I called 911 and had a three minute response time, but the guy got away by running into the field behind my house and he disappeared. The police on the scene told me that they suspect that it was the same guy that had broken into other area houses and had assaulted and raped an elderly woman only a few days before.

We bought a shotgun a few weeks later.

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19. "I got this sinking feeling and something told me to run"

Was walking home by myself one night years ago. Being the naive 15-year-old girl that I was at the time I wasn't really worried about walking by myself so late at night.

These two guys were walking down the road towards me. They were talking to each other and just walking. They didn't look at me, say anything that I heard or make any kind of movement that would indicate they were anything more than just two people on their way home.

I got to the corner of my street and they were just across the road, perhaps 15 feet away. My street only has a sidewalk on the one side, the side they were approaching. Suddenly I just got this awful sinking feeling in my stomach and something told me to run. I didn't run (because I immediately reasoned I was being crazy) but I did turn immediately down the side of my street with no sidewalk, walking as quickly as I could.

After a moment I looked back at the two men. They had stopped at the corner (were perhaps 20 feet away from me now) and were clearly having a quick and intense conversation. My heart was pounding at this point.

I turned around and kept walking fast. Looked back again, they had crossed the street and were following me. I live on a dead end street, the only reason to be on it is if you live there. So I started running, lucky for me I have long legs and have always been a good sprinter. Also Fortunately my house was not very far down and I was quickly in my driveway and pulling out my keys. I opened the door and was stepping into the house when I looked behind me again.

They were standing at the end of my driveway. They looked at me, turned and walked back the way they had come. Perhaps reasoning that no teenager would live in a house by themselves and obviously I had parents who would have heard me scream at this point.

I still shudder to think about what might have happened if I hadn't listened to my gut and turned early instead of walking within arms reach of them.

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18. Changing majors

Freshman year of college, I was supposed to meet with a professor after class one morning to talk about switching my major to his field (materials engineering).

Early in the morning of the meeting, I e-mailed the professor to cancel, mostly because I didn't think I would actually like engineering and was just doing it because it seemed prestigious.

I went to Virginia Tech. I would have been in Norris Hall during the shooting if I'd kept that appointment.

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17. "He stared at me for a good 10 seconds"

Well I was walking home. Wasn't late and I'm from a pretty safe area but it was that time of year when it starts to get dark really early so felt kind of ominous.

Anyway, I pass this guy in a red sweater and red tracksuit bottoms and he looks at me funny. Maybe he's been partying, maybe he's crazy... either way, something not quite right about him.

I keep going. Look behind me, he's still there. Cross the road. He crosses with me. As soon as I turn a corner I sprint to my apartment complex and run into the coded gate and wait. He rocks up a minute later and stares at me through the gate. He just stares at me for a good 10 or so seconds then runs back the way he came.

Shivers.

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16. More nostrils than teeth

About 9 years ago my engine died on the Florida turnpike on my way to a family event. I was waiting for AAA when an older man with more nostrils than teeth pulls up in a dumpy, unmarked pickup truck offering to help. I got that funny "I'm in danger" feeling so I kept the windows up and the doors locked and told him AAA was on their way.

He told me (through the window) that AAA wasn't coming and he was sent instead. He told me to pop the hood--which I did as I redialed AAA to confirm. I was still going through prompts on the phone when he came back to my window and told me there was blue stuff all over the engine. He told me to come out and take a look. I said that I appreciated his help but I'm on the phone with AAA and they're sending someone else out and to take care and have a good day. All the while my hands are trembling and I'm as close to pants-crapping as I have ever been.

He lingered awhile before driving off. When I was finally connected to someone at AAA they told me (as I suspected) my tow truck had not been canceled and they'd be there soon. When AAA got to me two things happened. 1) The driver said "Oh, you're HOT" when I stepped out of my car, leading me to think I might be in danger again. 2) I looked at the engine and there was nothing blue anywhere.

To this day I still remember peering at that scary old man's gums through my window and thinking I didn't want his mouth to be the last thing I ever saw.

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15. You can hide but you can't run

This is going to sound completely unbelievable, but it's absolutely true. When I was 9 or 10, a friend and I were were walking home from playing at a 3rd friends house a few blocks away. It's rush hour, and we're on a fairly main road.

Three guys in a Firebird/Camaro pull up and ask if we need a ride. My friend says no. Guys get out of the car and try to force us in. We run, they jump back in the car and go around the block to make another try. As we see the car coming, we run into an open garage and hide under the car.

30+ years later I can still see all three of their faces.

The decision to run into that open garage rather than try to outrun them probably saved my life.

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14. The jogger

Some dude get off the bus at the same stop as me. It's about 8pm and October so it's quite dark out already. He had spoken to me on the bus, one line about nice weather.

Anyway, he gets off the bus after me. I cross the road and make a mental note of him walking the opposite way to me. I make sure to watch him walking away. Something in my gut says not to trust him.

To get to my house I have to walk up a hill with a path alongside a high stone wall. It is secluded. Usually I listen to music as I walk. I decide not to this time.

I'm about halfway up when I get this awful feeling. I take out my phone, dial my mother's number and as I do I hear fast steps of someone running up behind me.

I know it's the guy before I turn around and as I do he is literally running full speed towards me. I look him dead in the eyes, ready to fight for my life. As I do this, my mother answers her phone and I say 'hi mom'.

He slows right down to a light jog and says 'evening' as he jogs past me. I ask my mom to stay on the line. Her boyfriend comes out to meet me at the top of the hill. The guy is nowhere to be seen.

He was definitely running up behind me to strike me and by turning to face him I'm certain it threw him off.

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13. When they say 'don't swim'... don't swim

A few years ago a few guy friends and I had a "guys only" vacation from our girlfriends and wives in Florida. We went down to the keys and camped, snorkeled, went boating. All that touristy crap.

After almost a week of doing all that we got bored with the designated snorkeling areas and decided to find a less populated and more interesting area to snorkel.

We ended up finding some salt water marshes in a National park, walked around the edges until we found a dilapidated and collapsing tower near the water. Maybe an old life guard tower. No swimming signs were everywhere, but being a bunch of young dudes we decided to jump off the tower and into the water. No big deal. Jumped off a few times, swam around a bit.

After a bit, everyone else was saying they wanted to stay in the marshes and swim around and explore a bit. I just didn't have a good feeling about how murky the water was, and how nobody else was around. Everyone else wanted to do it, and in a way I did as well. But regardless, just had a gut feeling. Eventually after some arguing I told them they could go ahead but I was going back to the bar street to party. For whatever reason, they decided that was a better idea and we all left.

It was only a few days later that we were leaving the campsite that we ran across a ranger and had a conversation with him. Ended up chatting about the marshes and how we jumped in a few times, all of the sudden he got intense and his eyes got wide. Turns out those marshes were off limits because they were absolutely infested by Salt Water Crocodiles and to a lesser extent sharks. It was actually a tourist destination simply because they were so commonly seen there.

If we swam there and left shore, I don't know what would have happened. That water was so murky that you could scarcely see a foot in front of your face, and there were 11 of us.

I don't know that any of us would have been seriously hurt or killed, but I wonder what would have happened.

That also marks one of the few times that I didn't follow through with a sketchy plan, so I'm proud of it.

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12. "Did you see my face?"

There’s been a few times where I hadn’t listened to my gut but one sticks out where I did.

I used to live in a smaller Minnesotan town down near some train tracks and a bike/running path that extends out of town into the woods. One evening I’m sitting outside on my porch having a couple of drinks with my buddy. Two dudes walk up on us kind of out of no where and immediately something seemed off with them.

It’s a college town and party people come up onto your porch a lot or randomly just say hello on their way to or from the bars downtown. But these dudes had a bad vibe to them. I had a little black Louisville slugger lying next to me on the porch so I grabbed it and just held it across my lap.

One dude asks us, “You guys got an extra smoke?” Buddy says nope. The other guy comes up real close almost onto the porch and says, “Did you see my face?” I just kept looking forward but not directly at him and just said, “Nah man we didn’t see anything.” He said something like, “Good... lil' punk.” And they both walked away.

Two nights later I’m sitting in my living room with the same buddy and the local news is on. Two guys were arrested for robbing and stabbing a man a couple nights back on the trail down by the train tracks next to where I live. My buddy had looked at their faces coming up and I had seen the dude clear as day that had asked for the smoke. It was those same guys.

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11. Nearly retired

Was riding my motorcycle with a friend on the back. We were going down a country road behind a truck hauling a bunch of old car tires when all of a sudden I decided we shouldn't be there, so I slowed way down to let the truck go ahead of us. Just as I did one of the tires fell off the truck and landed right where we would have been.

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10. "I felt like I was being watched"

I was out picking mushrooms last May in the wilderness. About two-thirds up a hillside I felt like I was being watched. I slowly realized that I couldn't hear ANY animals making noise.

Hackles raised, I immediately started down the most direct path to my car. One trail above where I was parked I saw a partial juvenile male deer skeleton under a large conifer. As I double-timed it past, I looked up and saw the rest of the bones and sinew slung up in the branches.

Out came the knife and I slowed down, turning and scanning every few yards until I got into my car and booked it out of there.

The next day, 2 mountain bikers were attacked by a cougar and one was killed very near to the area where I was hiking.

I carry a handgun now for my mushroom hunts.

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9. "It actually felt like some supernatural force was beckoning me"

I was in Turkey for vacation when I was about 7 or 8 years old and I made friends with some other tourists but also some locals, all around the age range of 8-16. These two local guys were about 16, and at one point during the late afternoon they asked if I wanted to go with them to go-kart outside of the hotel area, and I agreed.

Approximately 30 seconds of walking along with them, I got the most chilling feeling I've ever had in my life. All the hairs on my skin rose up and I had this super uneasy feeling deep in my gut. It actually felt like some supernatural force was beckoning me to dip. I turned on my heels and sprinted so fast to get back to the hotel. I didn't even look back. When I returned, my mother asked where I had been. I told her I had been in the bathroom because I didn't feel well.

Oddly enough, I was quite fond of those guys before this happened. But, thinking about this in retrospect, why would two local 16-year-olds have any genuine interest in go-karting with a young 8-year-old tourist? I feel like I may have dodged a bullet. We may never know.

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8. Sometimes the wrong play is the right play

I think my best play in my college baseball career was me rounding second base without any prompting on a routine force out at first. I don't know why I just did it, it just felt right. The first baseman overshot the throw by a mile and I ended up scoring and giving our team a one run lead that we held onto for the last four innings. I got so much crap from the coaches for going rogue like that but screw it, I was right!

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7. But what happened to the groceries?

I am a petite woman, and was 19 at the time. Had a late shift that ended at 10pm. Hit the grocery before my walk home (about 10 blocks). I’ve got arms full of groceries and notice a car drive past me in the opposite direction. Heard it pull a U-turn behind me and park. I tell myself, ‘probably just getting home from work too.’

But then I hear footsteps behind me. I turn around and it's a man in his 30s, I’d guess. He doesn’t say anything, but stops walking when I stopped walking. I keep walking, bit faster now and I can hear him speed up too. I turn around again and say, ‘hey man, whats up?’ He says nothing.

I turn around and keep walking, almost at a mini-jog pace and I hear him speed up too. I was about 4 blocks away from home. The adrenaline kicked in, I dropped my bags and booked it. Made it home, told my boyfriend what was happening. As he goes outside to find the guy, dude drives by in his car. Right past my house.

We call the cops, give them a description and the operator tells us they’ve had other calls about the same guy. Really hoping he never actually caught someone. Really hoping his creepy butt wound up in jail. Really happy I listened to my gut.

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6. Never swim alone

I live in Southern California and growing up living by the beach I would go surfing a lot. Almost every day during the summer with my buddies. One day I wanted to go but no one else could go so I decided it was fine and I would go by myself. Not a huge deal I’ve gone surfing alone in the past and there are always other people in the line up to hang around.

Anyway, I get to the beach and when I paddle out I noticed there wasn’t anyone out yet. “More waves for me”, I thought, but after a while something just felt... off. I don’t really know how to explain it but it was a very, very eerie feeling as if I was being watched. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such an acute feeling like that before or since then but I just listened to my gut feeling and paddled in and went home.

The next morning a swimmer died at that exact beach from a great white shark attack. I haven’t been surfing since and that was 10 years ago.

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5. Ambush the ambulance

I volunteered as an EMT in a small village just outside NYC as a senior in High School and my first few years of college. This night we were on call for not only our town but the surrounding two villages, who were out of service. One of the villages isn't exactly the best neighborhood. Now, generally we always have a police officer on every scene we go to just because they can always get there faster.

This time around, though in this bordering village, there was a fire on the other side of town and some sort of crime investigation elsewhere. Basically PD resources were stretched thin. A call came in for a 25 y/o male with a facial wound at a private residence with instructions that the patient was in the backyard. We were dispatched and told that there was no PD available and no Advanced Life Support (ALS) available. It was just me and my driver. (Note: this is standard in most agencies, it just felt very unnerving for me.)

So we get on scene and it was an apartment building with a open yard in the back that we could drive onto. My driver pulls onto the field and he sees the patient sitting in the shadows as though he was hiding. Something felt off and that feeling prompted me to hit the flood lights on the ambulance illuminating most of the yard.

The moment the lights came on we saw 5-7 men with tire irons and baseball bats standing in what was once pitch blackness.

My driver hit it in reverse and we got the heck out of there. I got on the radio and called for immediate assistance. Turns out those guys were planning on jumping us, stealing the meds from the ambulance, and taking the rig for a joy ride.

To this day I fear what would have happened if we had just walked up to the patient.

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4. Friedfighters

I'm a firefighter. We got called out to a tree fire started by fallen power lines. We pull up in the truck and I'm trusting that my driver and crew leader are doing their job and have good situational awareness.

We get out of the truck and we've parked next to a set of power lines (not fallen). It's a very windy night and I can see the lines swinging so I voice my concerns to my crew leader who says it'll be fine.

We get our hose out (risk of the tree fire catching onto a house outweighing potential risk of arcing plus the line disconnected when it fell) and I'm on the branch ready to start putting it out with 2 others near me when I get a chill.

I look up, see the lines swinging violently, and yell "everyone freaking move!!!" As the 3 of us sprint and dive out of the way, we hear a thwip and crack and sure enough the line we were under came loose and stayed connected to the power pole.

If I hadn't got that chill chances are we would have been 3 fried firefighters.

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3. Caveman brain vs. Italian brain

My husband was out of town on a business trip and it was a glorious sunny summer day and I had some new trail runners to break in, so I took my dog and headed out to one of my favorite hiking spots. My goal was a trail junction about 7-ish miles up the trail, after which I planned to turn around and head home.

At about 6 miles into my hike I hit a point beyond which the trail was clearly disused, lots of brush and blow down. I hadn’t seen another hiker in a while and it was suddenly uncomfortably quiet, not that this section of wilderness is usually loud or anything, but it just felt too still. I kept scanning the horizon, seeing nothing, walking a little further, feeling like I was being watched, scanning the horizon, etc.

After about a quarter mile I decided I was being stubborn and dumb, since I was unlikely to encounter any other hikers that day, I had no reception, no PLB, and if anything happened I’d be SOL. I sucked it up, turned around and hiked back to my car without incident.

Two months later a lone hiker was attacked and killed by a mountain lion on a trail just up the ridge from where I was hiking. She fought, emptied an entire can of mace at it, still lost. The day of my hike I was extremely glad I listened to my my cave-person brain instead of my stubborn Italian one.

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2. Saved when someone came down the stairs

This happened about 12 years ago.

There were missing women in the area, but we weren't sure if it was just rumors. I should also mention this is a border town. Anyways, I went out for a meal with coworkers after shutting the bar down. This was around the time a smoking bylaw came into effect and you could no longer smoke under awnings.

After I finished eating, I went out for a smoke by myself. It is about 3am at this point. The awning ended adjacent to the parking lot, and there was a car with out of country plates on it from across the border. The restaurant was also a motel, so there was a second story where there were rooms.

As I'm smoking, this creepy guy from inside follows me out. It was winter, and he was sitting at the bar alone drinking a milkshake. Not weird in and of itself, but something was... off about him. He begins to approach me, making unwavering eye contact, and starts saying really weird stuff. "I figured since I was getting the cold shoulder inside, I should come stand out in the cold."

This was 12 years ago, so I can't remember much detail on what he was saying, but every hair on my body stood up. I knew something was really wrong. And as he reached into his pockets and continued walking towards me, I became acutely aware of how close I was to what I now guessed was this man's car.

He wasn't large or physically imposing, but I couldn't see his hands, and something about how he looked at me, it was like looking into the eyes of a predator. I had no doubt he was planning on abducting me. I just knew. It was a primal sense of "I have to do something." My back is against the wall, his car and the empty parking lot to my right, and this creep edging closer and closer, blocking my path into the restaurant door, which is about 70 feet away across the patio.

He is no longer speaking, and is approaching, almost within arms reach. I knew I had to fight him, or I would end up in his trunk. Seconds before I'm about to kick him in the balls, you could hear the footsteps of someone coming down the steps from the hotel. At that exact moment he took a giant step back and took his hands out of his pockets. It confirmed every horrible suspicion I had. An innocent person wouldn't react that way.

I flicked my smoke and ran inside. A bunch of bouncers from the bar were eating, and I told them as quickly as I could what happened. Within the 20 seconds it took to explain, the man and his car were gone.

To this day, I know if that person didn't come down those stairs at that exact moment, he likely would have tazed me and put me in the truck of his car.

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1. "I could see the scene playing out almost as though it was a memory"

There's a Boy Scout retreat in Colorado called Camp Cris Dobbins, which hosts week-long stays in shelters called "wall tents." They're essentially metal frames with thick canvas draped over them, and the ones at the camp in question offered just enough room for two people and their belongings. It was while I was seated in one of these tents that I experienced something which I previously pointed out as evidence of my having precognitive powers (back when I wanted to believe in that sort of thing), but which I now understand to be the result of some subtle warning sign that I hadn't consciously recognized.

Either way, a split-second decision may very well have saved my life.

I'd been hanging out with my bunk mate, trying to put the finishing touches on a campfire story that we were going to tell later on that evening. He was seated on his cot, I was on mine, and we'd positioned a trunk between them as a sort of makeshift table. Notes and sketches on scraps of paper had been arranged in a fairly haphazard manner all around us, and anyone who happened to peer inside would have likely assumed that my friend and I were working toward a very tight deadline... which wouldn't have been far from the truth.

See, the two of us were supposed to be helping the rest of our Boy Scout Troop build an enormous tower out of nothing more than wood and rope. We could already hear everyone else shouting back and forth to each other as they sawed branches apart and dragged fallen trees from the forest, and we knew that it wouldn't be long before someone noticed our absence. I kept my attention half-focused on those sounds as we worked, listening for anyone calling for either me or my friend.

That's probably what triggered my intuition.

With no recognizable prompting whatsoever, my mind was suddenly filled with images of my head being smashed open by a thick log. I could see the scene playing out almost as though it was a memory: The battering ram was going to fall through the back wall of my tent, catch me squarely in the skull, then plow me into the floor before I could even think to react. It seemed like an oddly specific (and unlikely) sequence of events... but after hurriedly shouting to my bunk mate to follow my lead, I moved out of the way nonetheless.

Barely a second had passed before everything played out exactly as I'd imagined: A broad log came tumbling through the tent's rear wall, landing squarely between my cot and my friend's trunk. Our papers went flying, several of our belongings were crushed, and the Scouts who had been transporting the timber came running around to survey the damage. Nobody was hurt, thankfully, and my brain was intact (at least as much as it had been), but I was so shocked by the accuracy of my prediction that I almost convinced myself I could genuinely see the future.

In the end, my friend and I wound up using that near-miss as the basis for our campfire story.

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