Yahoo News 25 Chilling Stories Of People Getting The "Gut Feeling" That Something Was Terribly Wrong — And Being Right
Please note: this article contains mention of violence.
No, that creepy, spine-tingling gut feeling you get that tells you something is wrong isn't just you. Recently, I wrote about people sharing their stories of the scariest time they had a, "We need to leave... now" gut feeling, and they turned out to be right.
These stories were so compelling that many members of the BuzzFeed Community felt compelled to share their own. Here are the most chilling:
1."My now-husband and I got into an argument late at night, so I left my apartment at midnight to walk a lap around the block and cool off. I lived in a well-off part of town and thought nothing of it. On the other side of the road, a man was walking in the opposite direction and said hello. I waved and continued walking, but something 10 seconds later told me to turn around."
"I did, and he was now barely 15 feet behind me. I luckily was approaching the trash door to my apartment and booked it. By the grace of God, it was unlocked. I slammed it so hard behind me I hurt my hand. It still scares me four years later to think what could have happened had he gotten ahold of me."
2."My grandma and her friend drove to San Francisco together in the late '60s, young ladies in their 20s just wanting to make their way west and explore."
"They didn’t have any money; my grandma told me about sleeping on the wood floor in an apartment they’d sublet and using their suitcases for pillows. Her friend started hanging out with people in the hippie culture, especially these particular two girls who kept asking them to come visit their ranch. My grandma didn’t like their vibe, but the friend continued to hang out with them. Eventually my grandma went back to Minnesota because she wasn’t having fun.
The hippie friends my grandma’s friend was hanging out with? The Manson family."
3."Many years ago I stopped at a drug store on my way home from work. I needed to buy cough medicine for my 13-year-old daughter and some shampoo. While I was looking at the cough medicine, a guy walked down the aisle and stood a few feet from me."
"I felt something was off so I went to the shampoo aisle and he followed me. I then went to the feminine hygiene aisle and he followed me, standing a couple of feet away. It was fall, and dark out.
I rushed to the counter and checked out, then ran to my car. He followed me out and got in his car. I drove away with him following me. I knew I couldn’t go home because I was a single parent and didn’t want him to know where I lived.
Fortunately, my parents lived on the way home, so I drove to their house. I ran inside when I noticed my brother was visiting. He came outside with me, and the guy sped away. My brother was a 6’4" Marine. I was never so glad to see him."
4."My parents have a camper at a campground in the Berkshire mountains. It’s very rural and densely forested. One night, my sister and I drove their golf cart to a clearing to look at the stars. We both lay on our backs and looked at the stars for a bit, before I started to get this sinking, terrified feeling in my gut."
"Just then, my sister piped up and said, 'Why do I suddenly sense… BEAR.' I agreed, and we both jumped up and drove back to the campsite.
That place has two black bears around this year. We didn’t see one that night, but I think it’s because we both sensed it."
5."Back in the mid-'90s I was a DJ and played all kinds of clubs. I met up with a friend while I was playing a popular goth-themed nightclub in L.A. He met a smoking hot woman and spent most of the night talking and drinking. They exchanged numbers and she left."
"A couple of hours later we were leaving to hit an afterparty when he got a phone call from a nearby police station. That same woman was booked for DWI and was calling for a rescue. I thought it was weird and told him not to go.
Out of curiosity and desire for sex, off he went. The next day, he recounted how mellow she was about getting arrested, and to break the ice, he had said it could have been worse. She commented, 'At least they didn’t book me for the murders.' He blew it off as a dark sense of humor.
They got back to her place, and he immediately noticed she was heavy into satanism and the occult by the decor and weirdness of her place. Due to drugs, alcohol, and hormones, he ignored his gut instincts and moved forward."
"About an hour into sex, she freaked out — started screaming at him, hitting him, and telling him sex was a mistake. She chased him out of her apartment. End of the date, but not the story. A couple of days later, he called me up, totally weirded out."
"Apparently, she was on the news for killing a doorman at her building along with some neighbors and another gentleman caller she hadn’t gotten along with. Other murders down the road were linked to her as well.
We think my friend was spared because he was such a nice person, and she sensed that and could not justify his death. Either that or random luck. They say nice people finish last, but I’m glad my buddy is the exception to the rule. He’s always been kind and has always come to the defense of people when they are at their lowest. I’m glad he was spared."
6."I lived in San Francisco in the early '70s. My roommate and I had gone out to dinner and taken the bus. On the ride home there was a guy sitting behind us who gave us both a creepy feeling. Our apartment building was right in front of the bus stop, so we got our keys out to the security door and waited until the last minute to pull the cord. We rushed off the bus, and he followed us."
"We got the security door open and got inside but he was pulling the door open and we were trying to close it. On the count of three, we pulled the door shut. He pressed his face against the glass, then walked away — but he didn’t leave. He was trying to see which apartment we went into. We went to the roof and stayed until he left."
7."A friend’s dad was working at the Pentagon on 9/11. He was in a conference room watching coverage of the Twin Towers with co-workers when he suddenly got that feeling. He went to a bathroom to splash his face with water. That’s when the plane hit. He was spared while everyone in that conference room perished."
8."I was 15 taking the bus home and I felt someone staring at me, so I turned around. It was a guy at the back of the bus and he didn’t look away when I caught him. As a young girl, I got instant alarm bells."
"When it was my stop, I waited until the very last second to jump up and run off the bus. He jumped up after me, but the bus doors closed.
As he was still standing in the bus window staring at me, I turned the opposite direction, walking away from my house. Then when the bus pulled away, and thankfully since there were no back windows in the bus, I ran home. I knew the next stop wasn’t very far, but my house was close.
It wasn’t until years later I saw his picture all over the news when they caught him and my blood ran cold. It was Paul Bernardo the serial killer and Scarborough rapist. He would ride the bus looking for victims."
—Anonymous
9."I was walking to my car, about to go to the bank on lunch. It was payday. A guy was walking toward me and our eyes met as he passed. Something in my brain said, 'Hope he doesn't try to rob me.'"
"The next second there was a gun stuck in my side, and he said, 'Give it up.' I gave him my purse and he grabbed my car keys. He told me to get on the ground, and I watched him drive away in my car. Luckily he only got my checkbook, not actual money. I was pretty fucked up about it for a long time. But I guess I knew when he looked at me."
10."I was set to go on a date. I was getting ready and this feeling just came over me and a voice kept telling me to skip it, don't go. He called me about 10 minutes later and said he was running late, slurring his words and repeating himself the entire time. "
"I just plainly asked him, 'Are you drunk or something?' and he said he was 'a bit' because he was nervous, but he was 'fine' and could handle it. I canceled on the spot and told him not to pick me up. He called me a bitch and hung up.
A few hours later, he was on the news: he ran straight into a concrete barrier going 70+ in a 40 MPH zone very close to my house. Luckily, he only hit that, and no one else was hurt, but his entire passenger side was crushed in. He walked away with scratches, as most drunk drivers do. I probably would have been dead if I had gone with him."
11."I was on my way to the library at Riverside City College to work on my chemistry term paper due the next day. It was already fully dark as I parked on the road behind the library."
"I got out and walked around the quadrangle in front of the library to put a book in the library drop box, then proceeded through the quadrangle to the library front door. As I passed the middle entrance to the quadrangle on my left, I felt a really uneasy feeling, [and looked] in that direction to see if anybody was standing there out of immediate sight.
There was no one there that I could see, but it was such a strong feeling that I was surprised. I was suddenly very afraid and thought I should hurry to get inside.
The next morning, the news headline in Riverside reported that a young student had been found dead, partially decapitated, near the entrance that had concerned me the night before. Many years later, it was reported that she was the first Zodiac murder."
—Anonymous
12."Not me but my mom. She had gone to high school with these four guys and had been friendly with them. After graduating she ran into one of them and they decided to hang out."
"They had gone to a bar and were having a good time. Then, he offered to give her a ride home. The whole dinner she hadn’t had a feeling that anything was wrong until that moment her gut told her to leave. She quickly made an excuse to leave.
About four months later on the news she saw him and the three other people arrested for killing and raping a woman. This had happened a year prior to her seeing him."
—Anonymous
13."I was around 19. I used to go out to the bars to hang with friends. Occasionally, I would pick someone up to have a quickie. One night l met a cute young man. We got into his truck and started to make out."
"We decided to drive to a nearby make out spot instead of doing anything in the parking lot. As we were driving, he asked me if I’d mind doing something for him. He said he had some 'sexy t-shirts' in the back, and it would really turn him on if I’d put one on.
I thought it was a bit weird and started to get a bit creeped out but decided what the heck. As I looked in the back, there was a box filled with neatly folded t-shirts. I began to get this creepy vibe.
When I pulled the top shirt out, it had dried blood stains all over it. I silently freaked out. When I looked at him, he had this creepy smile. I don’t know how, but I managed to maintain my control and told him to turn around and take me back or let me out now. He drove back and dropped me off. I told my friends, we never saw him again."
14."It was a hot August day at a remote Cape Cod beach. My sister and I went for a hike down a path through the dunes, chatting away. Suddenly, we both fell silent and began to slow our pace."
"Simultaneously, for no reason, we both halted and said, 'Let’s take a swim first,' and returned to the beach. While swimming, we saw a convoy of police cars show up and drive up the path.
Turns out, there was a body on the path and a handgun in the bushes. Someone got whacked overnight. We would have walked right into it."
—Anonymous
15."At about 13 years old, my group of friends religiously went to a local mall every Saturday. There was no question that we would arrive at a specific time via public bus and return home around 5 p.m."
"That morning, I had an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. I let my group of friends know that I was not going. They also had hesitations.
We later learned that a grandmother had been waiting at the bus stop, at our bus time, and was killed in the crossfire of a gang shootout."
—Anonymous
16."My parents were friends with an older man in the neighborhood. One Saturday morning, they left me home as I was still in bed. I must have been about 13. I had just gotten up when I saw him walking up the road to our house."
"He knocked on our door, but for some reason, I didn’t answer. Something told me to hide so I went to our kitchen and hid under the table. This was a small town where you didn’t lock your doors.
He walked in and started calling my name. I kept quiet, but my heart was pounding so hard I was shaking. He walked into the kitchen, then turned around and went out to the living room. He walked around our house outside, calling my name. He never called for my parents.
I locked the door and hid. He finally left. I told my parents what happened. They broke off the friendship. Don’t know if I was in danger, but something told me to hide."
—Anonymous
17."My work colleagues and I used to go to this bar after work. I was waiting for some friends and this guy approached me. He said he was a modeling agent and extended his card, saying what a beautiful woman I was."
NBC / Via giphy.com
"I got immediate bad vibes from the guy. I said no thanks and didn’t take his card. His demeanor immediately changed from smiling to angry.
Thankfully, I knew the bouncer, and he tossed this guy out because he became really nasty. About a month or two later I saw his picture in the paper. He was pretending to be a modeling agent so he could assault women."
—Anonymous
18."I was a bartender in my 20s and would get off work very late. One night, after two in the morning on my drive home, I saw a car pulled over to the side of the road. I lived out in the country so you noticed things like that. About half a mile up, there was a girl running from a house, so I slowed down. She looked terrified and almost ran into me."
"I rolled down the window and she was frantic, asking for help. I told her to get in, she immediately calmed down, and I got a very bad feeling. She asked me to take her back to her car to get her purse, but something warned me not to. I told her I’d take her someplace safe but would not take her back to the car.
She got upset with me but said she needed the ride. The car ride to her house was very unnerving; I could tell she was scared, too. When I pulled onto her street, I could see a dark figure, so I slammed the brakes and told her to get out. She did.
I drove back to the spot where I had picked her up and the car was no longer there. Two days later, I heard on the news how a woman was murdered and robbed by people pretending to be stranded. So glad I listened to my intuition."
—Anonymous
19."In 1989, I was 13. I was having fun at my best friend’s house and desperately wanted to sleep over so we could keep playing. I was not allowed to sleep over because my family was going to a boat show the next day. All of a sudden, I blurted out from nowhere, 'You know, I bet my parents are going to be in a car accident, no one is going to be hurt, and we won’t go to the boat show the next day, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t be allowed to stay over."
"A while later, my dad called. He and my mom were in a car accident. No one was hurt. Two teenage boys were in a car that was going too fast and flipped over. They both got out without a scratch. My parents' car ended up in a ditch. He said we weren’t going to the show the next day, but I still had to come home. When I told him the story, my dad said if I ever got that feeling again, I should call him right away."
—Anonymous
20.A few years ago, my fiancé moved in with me and my mom on the West Coast. Like many millennial-Gen Z cutoffs, we were flat broke. Because we lived about 90 minutes from the nearest city, we had to switch my fiancé’s cell service and needed an exchange."
"We couldn’t do it at the franchise in our town; we had to drive back to the corporate store. I decided to bite the bullet, take a day off my freelancing job, and just go in the morning by myself. All fine and good…except, when I woke up, I had a deep, sinking feeling that kept getting worse, like a bowling ball rolling around in my stomach, and my intestines were the pins.
Now, I’m not generally religious or superstitious, but anytime I’ve had this feeling and ignored it, something majorly bad has happened, so I’ve learned to pay attention. And despite all my efforts trying to convince myself it was anxiety about driving that steep, isolated road into the mountains, I knew I loved that drive too much — I’d taken it many times to visit my dad and had an established driving route all perfectly timed within five minutes, so that didn’t make sense.
"I stressed myself out so much that I finally burst into some of the most dramatic sobs you’ve ever seen, squeezed my fiancé, and said, 'If I go today, I’m never going to see you again.' Of course, he told me not to worry, we’d go in a couple days, and the feeling immediately dissipated."
"It was like something out of a book, just whoooosh, and I felt better. My grandma even called me a few minutes later (she knew I was planning the drive; she had no idea how I was feeling), and told me from five states away that she had a bad feeling and thought I should stay home today.
Two days later, we went and did the exchange together; everything was great; the new phone worked, and we went home. Cool.
The next week, a friend sent me two social media posts with news about the day I’d originally planned to go:
1. About the time I would have been driving through the beautiful, isolated, heavily wooded area just a few minutes from home, a giant tree fell and instantly killed the two inhabitants of the car it landed on.
2. About 75 minutes later, at the exact time I would have stopped for a bathroom break on my established driving route, a man had wandered the parking lot of my preferred pit stop, opened the driver’s door of at least two occupied vehicles, and shot the inhabitants with a shotgun. To my knowledge, he was never caught, and no motivation was ever established. I don’t know what would have killed me that day — the tree, the gun, or some third unknown horror — but I’ve never ignored that feeling again."
—Anonymous
21."I was 19 and in college. I had a sociology class with this really cute girl who, for some reason, decided to sit next to me and talk to me every class. After a few weeks, I started getting this weird feeling every time she sat down. It wasn't coming from her, but I just couldn't shake it. This went on until right before spring break when she asked me to hang out with her at a coffee shop after class."
"While we were sitting there, I got the feeling again and told her about it. She said she felt fine and looked at me like I was crazy. I ended up finishing my tea and taking off. After spring break, she wasn't in class.
Apparently, a guy from her dorm, who she didn't know and had never even approached her, was stalking her.
The Monday after spring break, she went out on a coffee date similar to the one I had been on with her at the same shop. Her date got up to order another cup, and the stalker ran up behind him and quickly stabbed him nine times with a pocket knife. The stalker was arrested, she left school, her date lived but transferred to a nearby college, and I am glad I didn't order another tea."
—Anonymous
22."I, a girl, grew up in rural, heavily wooded farm country and as a kid spent many hours hiking the local trails alone. Occasionally I would get a really bad feeling on a specific trail and turn around and go home. Strange, but no explanation."
"Years later, I discovered the boy on the adjacent farm was a serial rapist and murderer. I am glad I listened to my gut, which is really my guardian angel speaking in my ear."
—Anonymous
23.And finally: "It was New Year's Eve in the late '80s and my at-the-time girlfriend’s birthday. After considering various ideas, we decided to go to the ball drop in Times Square."
"After the ball dropped, my girlfriend wanted to go downtown. The hair on my neck was standing up. I decided we should go home. Something was REALLY off with the crowd.
We grabbed the train at Herald’s Square around 12:05 a.m. and headed home. The next morning, the paper showed that the first murder of the New Year was at Herald’s Square station at 12:06 a.m."
—Anonymous
These stories just go to show that if you ever have a gut feeling, listen to it. You never, ever know: It might save a life. If you have your own "gut feeling" story, feel free to tell it down in the comments below, or, if you prefer, you can check out this anonymous Google Form. Who knows — your story may be included in an upcoming BuzzFeed article!
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
