Intuition, instinct, or the sixth sense - call it what you want, we're lucky to have it. That gut feeling that's stirred up whenever we're in danger has saved us countless times, whether we know it or not. Sometimes it's goosebumps when a friend is in trouble, a voice in your head that warns you of a trap, or the hair on the back of your neck standing up before you hear a footstep behind you on a dark night. We asked people from around the world to share those moments when their gut feeling saved a life.

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55. Too young for swimming lessons.

My mom dropped my 3 year old brother off at daycare before she had to work in the morning. When she got to work she had this terrible feeling something was wrong with him. She ended up leaving work and drove to the daycare. She found the daycare lady inside sleeping while the daycare kids (including my brother) were running around the pool. My brother never went back to that daycare again.

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54. Bagging the bag man.

I had a gut feeling I should pull my wallet and phone out of my purse. Not even 20 seconds later, I get mugged. The man dragged me across the sidewalk and stole my purse but all he ended up getting was a juice box and my birth control.

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53. The nose knows.

I smelled burning plastic early in the morning at my family cottage and almost went back to sleep (I was around 15), but got up to investigate. A socket on the outside of the building had caught fire and flames were shooting up the wall. The rest of my family was still sleeping and there wasn’t enough smoke for the alarms to go off. I ran and got the fire extinguisher, got my dad up, and put it in his hands and pointed him towards the fire. Stopped it and called the fire department.

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52. That family feeling.

My aunt told me a story about my dad, who greatly dislikes his sister and is an all around jerk 98% of the time, calling her out of the blue one night while she was in college. She answered, he said he didn't know why but he had this urge to call her, to make sure she was okay. She told him she was fine and thanked him for calling to check on her.

She never told anyone else except me, and hopefully a therapist or two, but she was holding the bottle of pills she was planning to commit suicide with right when he called her. Twenty some years later and she's very happy with her decision to live.

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51. Staying off the market.

I was going to meet up with someone from marketplace to buy a phone and the feeling hit me so I called the woman and a man answered trying to play off the fact he's a man and I passed by where we were meeting at and it was dark and I heard voices in the background on the phone call. I never stopped the car and kept going. Pretty sure I saved myself from at the very least a mugging but learned a good lesson, always meet in a public place.

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50. Stand clear of the saw.

I was downstairs helping him with some woodworking when I was 10 or 11. My dad went to run a 2x4 through the table saw when he noticed I was at his elbow rather than behind him. He stopped and told me to never stand behind a board when it’s going through the saw in case it gets thrown. I thought he was being overly cautious and I didn’t have as good of a view from behind him, but whatever, I got behind him. He flipped on the saw and ran the board through. He only got 1/3 of the way through, though, when the blade hit a knot and flung the 2x4 hard enough to crash against the wall 10 feet behind. If I hadn’t moved it would’ve hit me square in the chest and could’ve killed me.

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49. Saved from the waves.

In 2004, on Boxing Day. Not me but my mother. Family trip including all cousins and extended family on my dad's side to visit the coastal South of Sri Lanka on vacation, about 20 people in all.

Well planned trip, last moment my mother didn't want to go. No reason at all. None of us could get her to explain why but she refused to go. So we went inland on a different trip to see some other relatives.

Around midday, the entire extended family now on both sides were sitting shocked in front of the television watching the very same hotel we booked being washed away live by the tsunami.

To date, she still can't explain what she felt.

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48. Dad to the rescue.

My dad had to go to court to settle a way overdue payment for the place he worked at. He was going to take me with him so I can be more exposed to the adult world so to speak. However that meant he would have to leave the office back door unlocked so the rest of the staff could clock in. He suddenly didn't feel right about it and decided to have me man the office instead. He got T-boned outside the courthouse on the passenger side of the car that day. The car was totaled and I would have gotten severely hurt if I was there.

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47. Beware the flying objects.

I had a teacher who was teaching in a class next to a wood work class. The wall between the classes were very thin. When he was teaching, he had a feeling something's not right, so he moved away from where he was standing. Not a second later some shrapnels cut through the wall and flew pass where his head was in the original spot. Turns out it was some kid using the circular saw and the tip of it flew off. If he hadn't moved he wouldn't be teaching today.

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46. Stay away from strangers.

I was 15 years old and my mom dropped me off at McDonald’s to get breakfast while she went across the street to get Starbucks. It was a shopping mall in suburbia and we were on the way to pick up a new kitten a few hours away. Instead of walking the 100 yards to my mom I sat outside waiting for her to pick me up. Teenagers I guess. As I’m standing there a guy in an old station wagon with two kids in the back starts talking to me. He asks me where I’m going and I say whatever town it was. He says he’s going there too with his kids and asks if I want to come. I tell him no that my mom is across the street and he comes closer. My gut is saying something is off so I see a random woman walk out of Starbucks and I point to her and say that’s my mom right there. He freaked out and left really quick. I still remember those two kids in the backseat. They looked so off. I wonder to this day if they are okay.

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45. Woke up to an emergency.

I was falling asleep in the car. My friend was driving. All of a sudden he stops talking and I think to myself, “Something's not right.” I open my eyes and turn over. Dude was having a seizure. His legs were stiff and his foot was on the gas. We were going downhill towards a busy intersection. We had the red. So I slammed the car in park and pulled the keys out. Car starts rattling making a weird noise but it gained so much momentum it was still rolling down. So I grabbed the steering wheel and veered us off the road into the side of an abandoned building. I opened his door and climbed over him. I was able to get him out and turn him on his side. The police officer that showed up was like “you couldn’t have done this in a safer fashion?” I just said “sorry” but inside I was like “no, dude”.

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44. Slaying the conference creep.

I was president of a club, and a guy who'd recently joined just set off my alarm bells, but he never did anything wrong. I still couldn't shake the feeling he was off. I asked my best friend, a pretty burly guy, to just keep an eye on him during a conference we went to.

Most of the club (minus me) went to a party at the conference, my best friend kept an eye on the weird guy for most of the night, and ended up stopping him from carrying a passed out girl up to his hotel room.

I pretty much always trust my gut feelings now.

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43. It gives you wings.

This one happened to my boss. It was any old day at work, it was about to be dinner rush and I was tired. As usual I was going to go to the dollar store to get some RedBull. I asked my manager if he wanted to split it because they were 2 for $5, he said no but as soon as I reached the door he said wait. I asked him what was wrong and he said I should go later, he didn't give me a reason and we're pretty relaxed so I told him to get lost and as soon as I pushed the door outwards I hear a sound I can't even describe aside from just BREAKING. Whatever it was it was broken, that's all I knew. Turns out an SUV drove straight into that dollar store's front door and their red bull fridge. My manager has annoyed me like that a million times, but I'll never forget the time he saved my life.

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42. Having a hot flash.

We were looking at houses a while back, and found one that was great location, would have been perfect size for us, and didn't appear to need any work other than new carpet, and stuff I wanted to do like painting and switching the it over from oil burning furnace. I just had a nagging feeling about it, and my husband agreed. As much as we loved it something was off with it (I actually thought a ghost or something silly like that ), and we ended up passing on it. I was still kicking myself about it until a few months later when it had a major electrical fire. The whole house and everything in it was a total loss, and the family that lived there barely got out alive.

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41. An argument for quitting coffee.

Not me, but my dad was driving to a client's office to do some IT work for them. He left the house without his coffee mug so thought about stopping to get coffee but he said he just had a weird feeling and decided not to. He gets to the office and goes inside, and 2-3 minutes later there's a massive crash outside. When he comes back out into the parking lot he sees his car and the 2 parked on either side of it stacked up on top of each other - his upside down in the middle - like a car sandwich. Some guy was driving down the street and had a seizure and veered into the parking lot at near highway speeds. Had he stopped for coffee he likely would've just been getting out of the car at that moment.

40. A warning from a ghost.

Not me but my mum, she used to work in one of the buildings in Manchester (in an office) and one day she got a gut feeling to move away from her desk because she thought she saw her deceased father waving her over (he died when she was 9) so she moved away from her cubicle. Soon after that the building shook like crazy and glass went shooting around the room due to the ira car bombing that happened that day. When she returned to her seat she found a huge piece of glass sticking through her chair which would of definitely killed her. Luckily because of that she’s here today, so thanks grandpa!

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39. Like something out of a movie.

I was on a road trip with my dad through mountainous terrain and it started raining. We were stuck in our car because of a traffic jam on a very narrow mountain road. I got a feeling that we should not be here and I told my dad that we should get out of the car just in case. My dad gave me a puzzled look but agreed after I insisted. It probably was only a minute that passed after we took shelter in a nearby tea stall that a thunderous sound startled the bejeezus out of us. Lo and behold our car was nowhere to be found. In its place was a boulder. A boulder the size of a house. From that moment onwards Final Destination has been my least favourite movie.

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38. Safety under the sea.

My family was out visiting relatives in California when I was about 12 years old. My brother and I were at a beach attempting to Bodyboard, with my dad keeping a close eye on us from the shore. At one point, every nerve in my body just screamed "dive!" so I ducked under the water. When I resurfaced, there was a surfboard floating away in front of me, some guy frantically swimming after it, and my dad waving us to come to shore. Apparently the second after I dove under water, the surfboard went over my head. Probably would have cracked my skull open if I had been there.

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37. Villains in the night.

When I was around 14 or 15 I was walking home at night with my sister and her friends (all of us around the same age) when I saw a parked car further down the block. It was around midnight and this car was just sitting there with its lights on. As we got closer my gut was telling me something was off. I told my sister and her friends to trust me and that I had a feeling we should walk back to the house we came from. As soon as we changed directions a man hopped out of the car and started chasing us. Luckily we were far enough from the car and close enough to the house we left to all make it back safe.

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36. Deer oh dear.

I used to just drive around country roads when I would feel stressed out or sad as a way to just get away and listen to music. One evening I was driving with my best friend in the car and we're on a gravel road that has a huge hill. We were driving towards the sunset but it was winter and the light was fading fast. As the car started down the hill I had this moment where I thought to myself "my brights should be on" and I flicked them on and at the bottom of this super steep hill stood 6 deer on the road. I slammed on the brakes and the car turned sideways and skidded to a stop like 4 feet from the deer. Those stupid deer didn't even move, they just stared into the passenger side of my car and my best friend pointed at them and said "hey, deer." The car was fine, we were fine, and Bambi was all good. I don't drive around like that anymore.

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35. High speed chase and rescue.

I had an instance where I was travelling down I-5 near Wilsonville Oregon, its 3 lanes, and I watched a guy go from the far left lane through the other 2 with no blinker fairly rapidly. Everyone went past but I had the feeling something was wrong. As I came up next to him I watched him continue off the road and driving over steel wire barricades, held up by short steel posts. Just ripping his truck apart. Everyone else continued past but I slowed and moved over keeping pace with this guy, just slightly ahead of him, once I saw an opportunity I went ahead and parked on the shoulder and ran back toward his still approaching vehicle. He was only doing about 5-8 mph so I managed to step onto his running boards and get inside the vehicle, slammed it into park. Fellow was having a heart attack. My fiance was on the phone with 911 and within 3 minutes they were on scene and this guy got the help he needed. Saved him from a bigger wreck and most importantly, his life.

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34. White out leads to a wipe out.

I was driving and it started to snow. I noticed that I was going a bit fast and strongly sensed I should slow down. I did and a couple seconds later I came up around a bend with the road suddenly being covered in ice. I started to fishtail while sliding directly towards two people standing outside their car. They had wrecked in the same manner that I was about to do and were standing outside their car, with me heading straight for them. I quickly thought of my options and ended up doing a hard right straight into the highway barrier. I slid nearly 100+ feet dragging the front of my car to slow it down. Because I had decided to slow down, I was able to give the two guys enough time to get out of the way before I slammed into their cars. Even though I totaled my car, which was sad, I did not end up killing two people that night. The police did not end up ticketing anyone thankfully and they finally sanded the road AFTER we had all wrecked. Snow while driving still scares me to this day.

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33. That sibling connection.

My boyfriend and I were visiting friends for a week in Phoenix. We girls were lounging at the pool while the guys were flexing their grilling skills. My boyfriend paused a moment, stood very still then told me to go get dressed, we had to go. Right now. I wanted to fuss but something told me not to. We drove straight through to San Antonio right to his parents very rural house. (before cell phones and they didn’t have a land line within a half mile) Seconds before we arrived his little sister had jumped off of a rain barrel and landed on a metal spike that went straight up through her foot and into her leg. His dad was at work so there was no car available there. She was bleeding like crazy and his mother had just walked out and found her. I don’t know what spoke to him in Phoenix, but it would have been all bad if we had not arrived exactly when we did.

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32. In the jungle, the mighty jungle...

I was in the Amazon as the end to a 3 month solo trip around Latin America. Wanted to enjoy one last walk through the jungle before leaving so left my jungle lodge around 8am to walk down to a small river nearby.

I stop and close my eyes to listen to the sounds as the jungle is super loud with crickets, birds, insects etc. Almost immediately I got a weird feeling and felt really uncomfortable - which was weird because up until then I'd only felt peaceful and happy. When I opened my eyes, I realised everything had gone completely quiet which was definitely NOT normal and not something I had experienced in other rain forests I'd been to. It was bizarre. I immediately felt that I had to leave and fast.

After I dipped and got back to the jungle lodge, I told the tour guide what happened and he said it usually only gets quiet when there is a big predator close by - thanks but no thanks!

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31. Clues that mom's trying to kill you.

Not quite sure if it was a "gut feeling" but kinda close. It was Christmas eve night in my childhood house (not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse), and my mom had gotten a large TV for my dad and hid it in my (doorless) closet along with some other presents. At one point in the night, she had come back into my room to retrieve one of the smaller items and ended up moving the TV right in front of my wall heater, and didn't put it back. I didn't notice and went to sleep a little later. I don't know if it was the smell or a gut instinct but thank god I woke up because that night/early the next morning I woke up to find my room filling with smoke and a nice orange glow coming from the back of the TV box. Luckily no large flames had formed yet and I was able to stop it simply by moving the box out of the way, and of course turned off the heater and evacuated the room. The smoke wasn't super bad so the house didn't get too much and my room eventually stopped smelling of it.

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30. Instinct for self-preservation.

I was an unpopular kid, and I always wanted to go on sleepovers but it rarely happened. In 6th or 7th grade I get invited to this girl's house for a birthday party. I am friendly with her but not close. I go to her house and I feel weird right away. Her mom and stepdad were sitting in the living room smoking, but being perfectly friendly. The whole night, I couldnt shake this feeling of oppressiveness, despair, and danger. I spent the evening keeping my guard up and keeping an eye out for the entire family, without any idea why. At night the girl begs me to spend the night. Even though it hurt to say no when I could tell she was desperate, I lied and told her my parents wouldn't let me, when they said over the phone they would. A couple of months later, a student told me she had left the school and moved because her stepfather would visit her at night in her bed. I think of her often, and hope she wasn't hurt that night, and hope she's doing better - but I'm glad I got out.

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29. Look the part.

About 10 years ago, I was working security at a site about 50 miles from home, got off shift at midnight, and didn't bother to change out of uniform because I was only going to stop for gas. Two stations in the town I was working in were open after midnight, but it slipped my mind as I drove past the first one. Pulled into the other, (same brand, same gas price, same sort of dump entirely) and just didn't like something about it. Nobody else around but the clerk that I could see, but I decided to go back to the other one.

Topped off and headed back out of town, I get close to that station again. Three city cop cars, two deputies and a state trooper are outside blocking the road with guns drawn. Turns out a city cop walked in on a robbery. Dude put a bullet in his vest, and the store owner knocked the robber out cold with a bat before the cop could recover enough to get his gun out.

That would have been me, in a uniform with a nice shiny badge, but no body armor.

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28. Give the kid a break.

So, my gut technically didn’t save me, but it would have if my parents had listened to me. Anyway, a couple months after my 10th birthday we went on family vacation to visit my dad’s side of the family; they lived a state away. My mom was about 6 months pregnant with my (only) baby brother at the time. We got to our hotel at about 2:00 and by 3:00 we decided we wanted to make the most of the day and go to the aquarium. I got fully dressed and ready to go and suddenly I was hit with this crippling feeling of dread. At that age I’d never experienced anything like it. Pure anxiety. But I knew, I just knew if we waited 5 minutes I would be fine. I tried telling my mom this and she was having none of it. I even tried to just stall her by begging. Nope. Got dragged out of the hotel and into the car. We pull out of the parking lot and get T-boned so hard we do a 180 into oncoming traffic. As soon as we all realized we were okay I was like, ah, yep, there it is. I’ve never let either of them forget it either.

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27. Surviving the death machine.

I'm afraid of rollercoasters (mostly heights but they go hand in hand). My friends and I went to a theme park and went on one that was in darkness and went underground. I rode it once, sitting in the back, and really enjoyed it surprisingly.

When we reached the start again, there was no line (as it was the end of the day) so they asked if we wanted a final go before they shut down. Something in my gut told me not to go on so, despite my friends nagging, I didn't and waited with the bags.

My friends came back around a few minutes later white as a sheet. About 3/4 of the way through the ride, there's a big drop then it goes fast and just before that, my friend in the back's bar had risen up. Apparently they had to grip onto her for the rest of the ride whilst trying to push the bar back down.

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26. Best grandson ever.

When I was 6 my brother (8 at the time) and I would go to my grandmas house while our mom worked late some nights. Anyway one day I was just randomly thinking about fire alarms. I don't know what caused me to think about it but after I started I couldn't stop. I have adhd and this super focus thing so whenever i'm thinking about something as simple as fire alarms it consumes my mind. I asked my grandma and she said she hadn't tested hers in a while. just for kicks she did and sure enough the batteries were dead. She replaced the batteries and made sure they worked. The VERY next morning her house caught on fire while she was asleep. If she didn't hear the fire alarms she would've been trapped in her room on the second story without a phone or anyway to contact help. She most likely would've died. I always make sure fire detectors/alarms work in my house now.

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25. No fun in the toy department.

One time when my little sister and I wandered off in a superstore and a strange man was standing behind us in the toy aisle. I was getting super weird vibes about him (keep in mind I was only around 9-10) and he also looked super shady, he had a big hoodie dark sunglasses—- you name it! Just screaming serial killer.

So obviously my first thought was to just move away from him because we could just look at different toys anyways. Nope, apparently not. He just kept following us but maintaining a small distance at the same time and eventually I whispered to my sister that a man was following and we started walking in circles around different aisles to lose him until we found our dad. I remember how he looked at us one last time before walking away. I was scared of strangers for a while after that even though I was really outgoing as a kid. I was afraid he’d followed us home for some reason.

And looking back on it now he could have been trying to snatch us or something but maybe he just wanted to help but I’m pretty sure there was something wrong with him.

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24. It's electrifying.

Not me but my science teacher, when she was a teenager she was standing near some lights at a pedestrian crossing with her and her friend. Very chill but out of nowhere she had this gut feeling that both of them had to move.

They moved just a couple metres away and the next moment a car had hit another car and had hit one of the street electricity utility poles and it had fell and exploded (minor explosion enough distance away that it didn’t hurt the girls) exactly where they were. One of the wires had also snapped and hit it exactly where they were standing as well.

They basically were in a scene of car wreckage and snapped wires and electricity explosions and the pole collapsed. Just real insane. If the pole had missed them, the wire would have hit them and if not that then most likely the cars.

That gut feeling of moving away saved both of them. I remember this story so clearly from high school science class, pity I only paid attention to these things and not actually science.

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23. Your tax dollars at work.

When I was 18 in my first year of college, I was walking into a convenience store and two girls popped out of a car to ask me to buy them smokes because they said they were 17 (needed to be 18). I said sure, took their money and order, and as I was walking in, a bald 40-something guy wearing a button down shirt walked out.

I immediately was thinking that guy's a cop. I bought for me and the girls, and asked the clerk straight up if that guy was a cop. Clerk confirmed it for me.

So I walked out, told the girls to meet me across the street, and walked back to my dorm.

Across the street I saw the cop creeping behind a building in his unmarked Crown Victoria, and so I walked right back into my dorm without waiting for the trap.

The whole thing was a sting set up outside a dorm to catch college freshman buying smokes for people a year younger than them. Such a waste of time. The girls were in on it, the clerk knew but had no choice, and because of my hunch and his confirmation, I walked right out of it with two free packs of smokes.

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22. Don't send me home, doc.

I went to hospital with shortness of breath and my heart racing. They did a chest x-ray, blood test for blood clots, ecg, and a few other tests but it all came back normal. After observing me overnight everything still looked good, oxygen saturation was perfect, my heart rate was still a bit elevated but nothing too crazy, and it seemed that it was likely leftover symptoms from a bad virus that I'd had a week or so earlier.

The ER doctor asks me how I would feel if they sent me home and I just had a bad feeling about it all. I told him as such and that I had no real basis for it except that I just felt off about it. He said fair enough, let's try one more test and if that comes back negative then we'll send you up to General Medicine and see if they can track something down.

That test was a VQ scan that found despite all other tests showing no results for blood clots, I actually had a whole bunch of them in both lungs. I ended up with a diagnosis of unprovoked bilateral pulmonary embolisms and am on blood thinners for life.

Super grateful both for the bad feeling and the ER doctor who was willing to listen to it!

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21. Heartwarming heroism.

My mother saved my grandfather's life when he had a stroke in his chair in their living room.

We had all started to walk around the the development, when my mother, after about 50-75 meters from the house said, "I am going to go back and check on Dad." I went with her, and I nearly witnessed my grandfather die. He was on the chair, conscious, but unable to move or talk... Just looking at my mother with bulging eyes. She called 911 once, then twice when she felt that they were running late. Ambulance came, got him on the stretcher, but it was too wide to fit out the door. We ended up tearing the door frame off to get him out.

Because he was conscious, he actually remembers the ride to the hospital. He told us later that he heard the driver or someone say, there is not a chance that this guy lives. That was when I was around 5-6 years old. He is still alive to this day, more than a decade later.

At my mother's funeral, part of his speech was about how, without my mother, he would not have been able to spend time with her during her final years of life. And for that, he is eternally grateful.

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20. Narrow karaoke escape.

A guy definitely roofie'd my drink at a bar.

He was totally mild mannered and not creepy at all. Asked me how to sign up for karaoke and pick a song. Sat beside me and talked casually. Didn't touch me once.

But then he pointed to something behind my head to distract me. I looked away and looked back at him and he was looking away from me into the crowd of people. Was a very stupid way to distract someone, to point and then act like you didn't do anything as opposed to pretending to have thought you saw something.

Then, I saw him screwing one of those little canisters back shut on his keychain. I asked him what he kept in there to call him out. He was cold and expressionless as he began to slowly twist it back open and said there was nothing in there.

I stopped drinking my drink and he performed his song. Then I sang and he took off immediately after. It was really messed up and I'm glad he wasn't very smooth or who knows what could've happened.

What always freaked me out was how normal he seemed (before he became suddenly cold and robotic when I called him out on that canister thing). But it made me realize, of course a predator would seem normal - that's how they get close enough to you to attack you.

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19. Caught in the line of fire.

I had gone to this bar back home with a few friends and afterwards everyone was supposed to go to this house party. I was game to go from the moment I was invited. Halfway through the night I had this gut feeling to not go. I told my best friend that she shouldn’t go but she insisted that she wanted to go because there were a few cute guys there. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we shouldn’t go, but she talked me into it. When we got in my car to head to the party the gut feeling was worse. I grew up around cars and drive a manual (my best friend is completely clueless when it comes to cars) so I deliberately grinded the gears and jerked the car and made it stall, acting like something was wrong. I pretended to try to fix what wasn’t broken and after about 15-20 minutes of “fixing” my car, cops and fire trucks followed by EMS flew by us. I “fixed” my car but told my best friend that I just wasn’t feeling well and she agreed and said my car breaking down ruined her mood, so we went back to my place to watch movies. About an hour after getting home we got a call from a friend of ours saying that the girl who owned the house and who was throwing the party was cheating on her husband who was deployed and came back in leave to surprise her and caught her in bed with his buddy. Dude pulled a gun and started shooting at this girl and his friend while everyone else fled the house.

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18. A mother's intuition.

My daughter was 8 months old and started acting strange, clingy, easily upset, running a fever, but not much else than that. I decided to take her to the ER one day because the fever wouldn't go away and I just had a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. The ER doctor told me she was teething and to put oragel on her gums and she'd be fine. I brought her home but just couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was going to happen. So I brought her back to the ER. This time they told me she had the flu, even though she tested negative for it, and gave me some tamaflu and sent us home again. I couldn't accept that as an answer so a few hours later I brought her back to the ER, at which point they told me again it was the flu. I KNEW something was wrong. I knew it deep down in the pit of my stomach. So I brought her to the ER for a fourth time (in the span of one day) this time they were annoyed I kept taking up spots for other people more deserving to be seen than my daughter, were rude to me etc. They decided to run every test they could think of just to prove I was crazy and get me out of there once and for all.

My daughter was severely dehydrated, had RSV, a UTI and yeast infection and very severe kidney infection. She was immediately admitted and was in the hospital for nearly a week on an iv drip and medications. Her doctor told me if I hadn't brought her back to the ER that last time she would have died that night from kidney failure.

I don't blindly trust doctors anymore.

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17. Two tickets to Thunderdome.

Running with my dog next to the beach, it had just gotten dark. This is an area where the super rich frequent, so we'd passed a row of lamborghini's and porsches with their lights on. After them we're approaching this small government trash truck, which picks up each bin along the path. These two guys are just standing next to it, staring at me. I'm thinking "What a weird time to pick the trash up?", we pass them and they're both still staring at me. After them, out of these bushes two big dobermanns jump out and start sniffing us, and my dog is immediately stiff as a board. She can be defensive, but I've never seen her look terrified. So I try petting one of them and it was like touching something cold, as if it was foriegn to affection. Then in the bushes this guy, who's hiding, gives a quiet whistle, and they jump back in. So we keep going, I'm getting a weird feeling now. Along the way back we're about 100 meters away from this spot, and the word MURDER flashes into my mind. It scares the crap out of me and I stop running. There's nobody around, nobody on the path where the car lights are. I've never had a feeling like that in my life, so I decide to get off the path and run on the road. We're now coming up to the parking lot where the super cars are, and it looked like a panick. They fired up their vehicles and SPED out of there, their steering shakey, onto the road and away from me. So all I can think is. A coincidence, or was I close to being killed? Is that a business people pay for, to watch people die?

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16. In the path of a raving lunatic.

My wife and I had an apartment in a really sketchy area of a city we used to live in. One day, we were walking home and could hear people yelling and a general commotion from a house about a block ahead of us. Nothing out of the ordinary for this area though.

For whatever reason, something didn't feel right to me. I put my hand down low and whispered to my wife "Give me your phone, give me your phone" (this was before everyone had a phone, only my wife had a cell between us). I dialled 9-1-1 as soon as she handed me the phone. Within 2 seconds after I dialled, a guy burst out of a car parked in front and ran at the house with 2 giant butcher knives screaming "I'm gonna kill everyone!"

I got the operator just as he was banging and trying to break down the door. As I was talking with the operator, he turned and looked at us and started running full speed toward us. He was about 40 feet away when 4 cruisers came screaming up the street and stopped between us and him. The cops were able to arrest him without any issue.

I don't know what it was about an everyday ghetto yelling match that set my gut off, but something told me it wasn't going to end well if I didn't get the police there ASAP.

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8. What the neighborhood is known for.

A big group of friends and I were walking home from an event in a town we weren't used to. It was night, and hardly anyone was around - empty streets and all that. We were walking down a sidewalk that had high fences next to it, so when you turned a corner, whatever was around it was out of sight. One of the girls fell behind (distracted by her phone, I think), and I noticed, so I started drifting behind as well to become a sort of midway point between her in the group.

Soon, we were nearing where we were staying, and our group rounded a corner, then started making their way into the yard where our living quarters were. I saw a car drive past us, then turn the corner down the street the girl was still on. As soon as I saw it, I suddenly got this suspicious, awful feeling, so I stopped, and went back to the corner to keep an eye on the friend.

The car drove past her, stopped, did a complete u-turn, and slowly started creeping up behind/alongside her. She was still on her phone, and wasn't noticing a thing. I stepped out from behind the corner, and started walking towards her. The car sped off quickly as soon as the driver saw me.

It scares me that someone could have grabbed her, and none of us would have seen a thing. It would have just been one of those cliche movie moments where you turn around, and realize a member of the group is missing. To compound that potential tragedy, she'd just gotten engaged a few weeks prior.

I think the fact that we had worked with some safe houses in the area that discussed human trafficking probably aided in me being on high alert, and the area we were in was known for that sort of thing.

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7. This is not a truck stop.

When I was young (around 8 or 9 probably), I lived 3 blocks from a convenience store. It was the early 90s. My best friend and I convinced our parents to let us walk to the store alone to get some snacks. Important to add that the two blocks closest to the store are connected but the 3rd block we lived on was it's own unconnected neighborhood. So anyway, as we are walking back from the store, we are coming up to the first street and a truck drives by and stops on the side of the road in between the first and second block on our side if the road. I stopped and told my friend that we should go down the first street and go through the neighborhood, come back out the second street and then head to our 3rd street to avoid the truck. She thought I was being stupid but I refused to keep walking on the main street so she followed me down the first road. We are now in the first neighborhood and about halfway between the first and second street when we see the truck slowly driving down the second street into the neighborhood. The driver sees us and immediately slams on the gas and turns his truck towards us on the street. We ran and hid in some bushes further into the neighborhood for about ten minutes.

We heard the truck driving by back and forth for about the first five and then it was quiet so we started making our way out of the neighborhood towards the second street again. Suddenly. Here comes the truck again slowly, sees us and guns it towards us again. We jumped over a fence into a back yard and started pounding on the back door. By the way this is a Tuesday. Middle of the day during summer vacation... most people are at work. But miraculously, a man and woman open the door and let us in. The woman had just had a baby like a week before so they were home on leave. They called the cops and my mom and the man went outside. He said the truck drove by and the man saw him standing outside and sped out of the neighborhood. Cops and my mom showed up minutes later and we gave a description and never heard anything about it again. Our parents just drove us to the convenience store from then on. My mom still talks about it to this day and how shocked she was that I had such a strong intuition at that age.

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6. Close to getting carjacked.

I was hanging out with friends at a bar but then going to head to my friend’s to stay the night. We drove separately though. It was in a city with a super high crime rate and in an even rougher part of town. We left the bar at like 3am and the drive wasn’t far, but I was really low on gas and wasn’t sure if I was going to make it.

I’m not normally a person who’s paranoid over city/neighborhood crime rates and I spent like half my time in this city and in the area we were in anyway, so it wasn’t foreign to me by any means. Even so, just to be on the safe side, I picked a gas station that was well lit and at a relatively busy intersection. I was the only car at the gas station and when I pulled up to the pump I luckily took a moment to text my friend that I’d catch up with him in a few minutes.

As I’m doing that, though, another car pulls up right on the other side of the pump that I was at. I have no idea what made me pause, but I just waited a second to let them get out first. But I had to keep waiting, because they weren’t getting out. At first, I thought that maybe they were taking a moment to get their wallet, text someone, just doing something. I couldn’t see through the window tint at all, though, but I also tried to not stare at them or make it super obvious. I’m also not a very intimidating guy.

I waited it out for 5 minutes and then started getting more worried. I texted my friend to tell him exactly where I was. I couldn’t leave because I didn’t have enough gas to get anywhere else and I didn’t want to just drive to my friend’s place in the event that they followed me.

Another 10 minutes later, the car pulled off. No one ever got out to get gas - including me. I just headed to my friend’s and decided to risk getting there on what I had left in my tank.

I’m not sure what made me that paranoid in that moment, but I’m really glad I hesitated.

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5. No spark for the stalker.

A little over a year ago I matched with this guy on tinder. He was a great looking guy. We chatted for a couple weeks and I couldn't put my finger on it but something just didn't feel right so I just stopped texting one day. A couple weeks went by and he messaged me to say hi. I ended up looking through the previous messages to try to remember why I stopped texting. I couldn't pinpoint a single reason. He seemed fine. I thought maybe I was just having a bad day. So I asked him out. We went out a couple of nights later.

I didn't really find a connection with him in person. He seemed like a nice guy and all and he was as good looking in person as he is in pictures. But he just jibber-jabbered about topics instead of trying to have a meaningful conversation. Annoying and not my thing but harmless.

So we get to the end of the date and I decided to get coffee at his place. No future for a relationship, but maybe he's good in bed, y'know? We were making out on the couch a bit and suddenly that feeling hit me again. He was on top of me, but not even pressing down on me that hard, but for some reason it just felt so oppressive and scary. I told him I needed to get home and left. He was definitely annoyed but let me leave without a fight.

I got in the car and as soon as I pulled out of the parking lot, he was texting me. I assured him it was me and not him and he's a great guy, blah blah blah. He just kept texting. I started ignoring them because I can't text and drive in the dark in the rain. So he starts calling me. I answered and he started giving me a lecture about how "unprofessional" what I just did was. He started out calm then just kept getting angrier and angrier. I hung up on him. I don't have time for that crap.

Dude texts and calls all. Night. Long. It was terrifying. He slowed down in the late morning hours. I think he finally got a little sleep. Then started up again and continued on for the better part of a week. I reported him to tinder and was seriously looking up the process for getting a restraining order. He finally just stopped on his own.

And this is why I use a fake name on tinder and listen when my gut tells me something!

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4. Feeling insecure.

When I was in college, I lived in a sketchy part of Chicago (Humboldt Park/Logan Square before gentrification).

I liked to take late night strolls, even when I was living in that neighborhood as a 20-year-old woman. Yeah, I know. Pretty dumb of me.

One night, I was feeling stressed out so I embarked on one of my late night strolls.

I was walking along a somewhat busy road. Cars were zooming past me. Pretty normal. I wasn't paying much attention because I was too wrapped up in whatever was stressing me out that night. Suddenly, a chill shot up my spine. Hyperviligance washed over me and I became more alert than I had ever been. Something was wrong. Someone was watching me.

I quickly spotted a car. It was driving in the opposite direction, a little slower than usual. It was too dark for me to see anyone inside the car, and the car was pretty unassuming. But I still knew something was off. They were watching me. I just knew.

The car drove past me and then made a u-turn. Now it was right behind me, creeping along the curb.

Luckily, there was a Walgreens a few blocks ahead. I started walking faster, and the car eventually sped past me and disappeared into a corner. I somehow knew I wasn't safe yet, so I still sprinted to Walgreens.

I told the security guard what happened, and we both went outside. The car was parked up the street, about 50-100 feet away. The security guard was a big guy who looked intimidating. He marched toward the car, and the car immediately backed up, made a u-turn, and then booked it out of there. The security guard called the cops, and they drove me home.

I never took a late night stroll again.

My gut made me more alert, but it was really the security guard who saved my life. I'm positive that if he wasn't there that night, something bad would've happened to me. I wish I could find that security guard to thank him.

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3. It's life and death out there.

Two friends and I were filming a music video and got back to our friend’s house around midnight. As we’re walking in his back door I see what looks like a mannequin laying by the trash can. I honestly thought it was a prank at first because the alley was completely dark and the “mannequin” was laying perfectly under the one light in the alley. I decide to check it out and my two friends come with. As we get closer we realize that it’s a girl. We figure she’s mid twenties and probably just passed out cause there’s a bunch of dive bars in the area. My one friend shakes her, after a few shakes she comes to and has this absolutely wild, animal-like look in her eyes. She hops to her feet, thrashes at us a bit, before taking off down the dark alley. She’s understandably afraid because she just came to in a dark alley with three dudes hovering over her. As she makes her way down the alley, we try to tail her while giving her space because she’s acting wild. I want to call the cops, my one friend wants to help her but not call the cops and get her in trouble and my third friend wants to leave her figuring she’s just inebriated and headed home. While arguing about what to do/ keeping our distance so we don’t freak her out, we actually lose track of her but find her phone in the middle of the alley. It's got 100s of missed calls, it starts ringing so we answer it and it’s an extremely and understandably upset friend who says everyone has been trying to get ahold of her. She says she’s not in the state but says she will call her mom and have her call us in a minute. A minute later, the mom calls and tells us that her daughter is 15 and went missing earlier that night. She is eerily calm and nonchalant about the whole thing and says something to the effect of “oh she had her Wisdom teeth out earlier that day and is probably just messed up from the meds”. She says not to worry about the cops, she’ll handle them and her and her boyfriend will be by shortly to grab the phone.

About ten minutes later, the mom and the boyfriend show up with flashlights, grab the phone and all the info we have, make a few weird jokes and go off down the alley. The whole thing was weird but we figure they’re not worried so we go on about our night feeling uneasy. The next day, my buddy calls me and says the mom showed back up at his house, has a full on break down in his living room, tells him that they found her down the road a few minutes after we met with them. Turns out she had downed almost a whole bottle of vodka and every pill she could find in the house. They had to pump her stomach and the doctors said if we hadn’t found her and she would have been dead before morning. The mother then hugs my friend, gives him and envelope and leaves. The envelope had $1000 dollars in it. Luckily we had exchanged addresses with the mother earlier, so my buddy went and slipped the money back under her door.

I think about her a lot and truly hope she’s doing ok.

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2. Saved by a bluff.

A few years ago, when I was 19 and studying abroad in Europe, my friend and I decided to go to Turkey. It was our first time really traveling on our own without a group and we decided to walk around the square outside of the Blue Mosque. We felt very safe during the day and decided to see the city at night with the lights. As we were in the square, we were hounded by typical store owners trying to sell us something. Finally, most went away and as we were going back to our hotel, a younger guy approached us. He said he had a shop on the corner, which he pointed to with lots of souvenirs including carpets. I grew up with a lot of handmade, woven carpets from my parents travels to the middle east and Asia. I decided it would be a nice gift. So we follow him, when we get to what we thought was his shop, we stopped.

We started to walk in and he said not that one, the one around the corner. We poke our head around and sure enough see a store, only selling carpets. I started to get a slightly strange feeling but nothing overwhelming, so we followed him as we could see the store. When we walked in, about 13-15 other men were in the shop. They were pointing out carpets and showing us around and I started to get really uncomfortable. My friend seemed completely at ease, so we followed the group around the bend to the other part of the store. In Turkey, it is common to be offered tea, so that part is not particularly odd, but the men, who were now circling us, were insistent that we have tea with them in the basement. I kept saying no but they were leading us towards steps, completely surround us. We got to the steps and my friend started walking down, my body began to sweat, my heart went crazy, and I never had such an overwhelming fear. I kept trying to think of how we could overpower these men.

I grabbed my phone, stopped in my tracks, gasped my friend's name, and said, "We need to go right now. My mom just texted me asking why we aren't back at the hotel yet cause the map shows we're at this store. We're supposed to facetime with them in 10 minutes."

The men kind of look around and tell us we can have tea in less than that amount of time. I keep insisting that my parents are freaking out because they can tell were in the carpet store and not the hotel and that they will likely contact the embassy if we don't get going. They continued blocking the staircase. I told them that we would come for tea in the morning as I still really wanted a carpet and that we needed to get out of the store and back to facetime. It took a little persuading but they eventually opened a path for us to go to the door. One of them followed us back to the square insisting that we return/come back and see them. Of course, we didn't.

I have no idea if they were completely harmless or not but I had never had such an overwhelming feeling. They easily could've knocked us out, placed us in carpets, and taken us out. My parents didn't actually have our location as my phone was on airplane mode. So who actually knows, on the other hand, I might've been paranoid, but it wasn't a situation I ever wanted to be in again. Once we were back at the hotel, she told me she was really scared too but that she thought I was fine so she went with it.

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1. A tale full of danger and suspense.

I normally go to the club with my husband. He was out of town but I had friends that said they'd be out. My club has always been a very safe club but the area it's in has had it's ups and downs, (because drinking and a bunch of clubs in a small area comes with ne'er do wells of all kinds) Since I was alone I chose my parking spot carefully. The usual spot was a few blocks off and that was farther than I was comfortable. The paid parking lot was open but they cram so many cars in that getting in and out could be difficult and that just made me uncomfortable for some reason. I chose street parking two blocks down. The block itself was dark but the next block up was very brightly lit thanks to a big name hotel. Basically I had a semi dark block, a very well lit block (with the paid parking lot and parking lot attendant across from it) and then I was at my club. Straight shot. My car and the club was in eye sight of each other if one stood at the corner and leaned over enough.

The MOMENT I got into the club I knew something was wrong but I couldn't put my finger on it. None of my friends showed up so I'm alone. Normally this isn't an issue, but the vibe was seriously off. Without going into too long of a story with details, some dude kept trying to buy me a drink that I kept turning down, partly because I don't accept drinks from strangers and partly because this dude didn't seem to be flirting with me and so I couldn't understand why he was so insistent on getting me a drink. I lied and said I was on medication but he kept insisting so I agreed to a water (because it comes in a sealed water bottle). Dude comes back with the type of glass that mixed drinks usually come in. The moment he gives it to me he leaves and I don't see him again for the rest of the night. The "water" went straight down the bathroom sink and I started looking for someone to walk me out because my alarm bells are going off.

Partially due to my own impatience to get myself gone and partially because the one person I knew had also disappeared, I ended up just leaving without having someone walk me. Two blocks, straight line, mostly brightly lit... what could happen?

Once again THE MOMENT I crossed the street and was walking that first block this voice in my head says "Get your keys out and get ready!" I'm having a full on conversation with this inner instinct/voice/what have you, trying to figure out why I'm freaked out. I thought about heading back to the club and that voice said "Nope! It's too late. Don't run, or they'll know you know. Just keep your eyes forward and be ready to jump in your car. Don't stop for anything!" I'm looking to make eye contact with the parking lot attendant but he's not there so I have no witnesses to at least WATCH me get to my car. Now, I'm suddenly terrified of that half a block of unlit road that I'm parked on. I almost froze at the corner but that voice said "Go! hurry! NOW!" Crossing that road into darkness felt like jumping into the unknown. I'm freaking out and I have NO idea why but now I'm picking up my pace and hoping I don't drop my keys because my hands are shaking so badly (and also, I've had nightmares like this before). For no reason! There wasn't a single thing that gave me reason to feel this panicked.....

Until I get to my car door....

As soon as I get my door open another car pulls up from behind me and slid into the spot directly behind mine. This is weird because it's street parking, so 1. they parked sloppy with the back end half in the street, 2. they're parked facing the wrong direction. 3. Holy crap, I don't think they're meaning to actually park. I hit the door locks and start to back up. In my review mirror I see the torso of some guy jump out and head toward my passenger door. I'm already pulling out of the parking spot but I could see his tensed up arm and closed fist just outside my passenger window. I was terrified that I hadn't given myself enough room to pull out and would have to reverse again. Had he parked any closer, I wouldn't have had enough room! At that point I was FULLY committed to hitting the car in front of me if I had to because that voice was still screaming "Don't stop! GO GO GO!!!"

And then I was gone, and that voice was gone, and I'm speeding down the highway in the most deafening silence I've ever experienced as I tried to understand what just happened. It took me a bit to put the pieces together but I THINK Drink Dude was spiking drinks and Car Dude was pick up. The more I think about it the more I get the feeling that it was a trafficking operation. If I had been two seconds slower for any reason, I can only imagine how that night would have ended.

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