Yahoo News 19 Chilling Moments Where People Got The "Gut Feeling" That They Needed To Leave — And They Were Right
Please note: this article contains mention of violence and sexual assault.
Tingles up the spine or pressing feelings of wrongness might seem like they only happen in horror movies, but in real life, too, people often have a sixth sense for danger. Recently, Reddit user u/ElectroIsland took to the popular Ask Reddit page to ask users, "What was the scariest 'We need to leave… now” gut feeling that you’ve ever experienced?" and the stories were absolutely chilling. Here are some of the most fascinating:
1."My little sister and I went camping in the woods very close to our house when we were kids. We'd seen this bald guy with a blue shirt and a dog walking around, which isn't unusual for the area, you'll often see people walking and say hello. For some reason though, I just got this tight feeling in my chest, and my sister must have too, because we both just gave each other this look."
"I don't know what it was that made me do it, this is very out of character for me, but I took a photo of the back of him as he was walking away.
"A while later, we saw the same guy AGAIN near the lake. He came over and asked about the tent [we were] carrying, where [we'd] be setting up, and [were we] camping with our dad? We said 'yes, we're just going to see him now' (a lie)."
"We must have had the same moment of psychic-ness, because we walked off up a fork in the path until we were out of view, then looked at each other and jumped down a path hidden by the bushes and waited behind them on the parallel trail for a bit."
"The guy watched us walk off, pretended to play with his dog until he couldn't see us, then turned around and ran up the path after us.
"Thankfully he didn't see us hidden and carried on up straight where he thought we'd gone. We decided camping was a bad idea and went home.
"That evening my mum [showed] us a post in the local residents' group: a picture of the same bald guy trying to break into someone's house. Apparently, he'd just been walking 'round trying people's front doors and claimed to be a repair guy when he was stopped. I dread to think what his intentions were, but it was very lucky my sister and I knew those woods so well; otherwise, we wouldn't have thought to go down one of the hidden paths."—u/lavenderacid
2."In 1985, when I was about 8, an old El Camino pulled up alongside my friend and [me, driven by] a man saying he knew my mom. He did know her name, but something felt off, so I grabbed my friend and ran."
"When we told my mom, she went white and called the cops. Turns out, this guy thought my mom had 'stolen' his job at the steel mill she worked at at the time and wanted to hurt her. He already had a warrant out for nearly killing his wife that morning."
3."Years ago, before cell phones, I was driving home from dropping my husband at the train at 4:30 a.m. Only me and one other car [were] on the road."
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"He [turned] where I turned twice so I didn't go home, [but] went to an all-night gas station and called the police. I gave them a description of his car.
"Three weeks later, he was arrested. Turns out he was following women home, driving past their houses, and doubling back to rape them. No one had noticed his car. I'm glad I paid attention."
4."I bartend, and years ago I kicked this guy out because he was acting very strange, muttering under his breath that he would kill my other customers, just really hostile. He had missing fingers on one hand and he was kind of a bigger guy."
"After the bar closed, I was almost finished counting money like an hour after everyone left, and I was just about to leave [but] I had that gut feeling.
"I looked out the window and that guy was standing on the corner watching me in a ski mask. I know it was him because of the build. As soon as I grabbed my phone he took off, but the cops knew who he was. Now he has a vendetta out against me. He’s well-known around town; he’s fuckin' nuts."
5."I was at the state fair with my mom and my best friend. [My] friend and I were looking at the rides and the games. This creepy guy and his blonde girlfriend kept babbling at us about taking headshots, [saying] that he was a modeling agent. "
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"He just seemed off and really sleazy and the girl was giving me the creeps, so I pretended that I saw my mom telling us to come and grabbed my friend and dragged her off. [My friend] was close to 5'8 and not a small girl at 13 years old, I was 4'9 and around 65 lbs at 14 years old.
"A few days later, there was a news story and rumors going around the school about two girls being kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered. They were taken from the fair the same day we were there, just [a] few hours later.
The creepy couple were Gerald and Charlene Gallego, serial killers."
"Wow, I just went down a 2:30 a.m. Wikipedia deep dive on this. How wild that you were so close to being a victim."
6."[I was on a] Wednesday midday run along a beautiful river pathway near my apartment block. About 1km in I felt people watching me and directly turned around and ran home, even though I did NOT see anybody!"
"[I] closed the two magnetic gates leading up to my door and didn’t see anybody around or following me.
About 10 minutes later two guys were at my front door trying to push it in. I was luckily on the other side of the door at that moment and pushed it back closed with all my force and began screaming, I managed to securely lock the front door and text my apartment block for help."
"I was on the second floor, and they [had] obviously watched which apartment [I'd gone] into. Looking back at the apartment's security cameras, [we] were able to see the two guys pull apart the magnetic security gates — two of them! The block then quickly changed the gates to a mechanic lock that cannot be pulled apart."
7."[I was] surfing a fairly secluded reef break, offshore across a channel. This place is in a very southern state of Australia. Overcast weather, but a still, amazing day for the waves. I was surfing with only one other guy — we were trading waves and getting to know each other in between sets."
"I asked what he did for a living and he was a marine biologist. We’d both recently moved to the area and were new to surfing it as well."
"Despite it being extremely good surf, after 40 minutes he said, 'I don’t like this, something feels off, I feel like I’m being watched, like I’m bait.'"
"I didn’t want to leave as it was excellent surf, but this guy was a marine biologist so I took his instinct as a sign to play it safe. We paddled back across the deep channel together as quickly as we could without panicking and walked the 15-minute trek back to the [parking lot] talking shit the whole way. I got his mobile number for future surfs together given how small-town it is here."
"We noticed a 15-foot inflatable boat pull up near the reef and hang around for a bit. [We didn't give it] much thought."
"Later that night while looking at my social media, I read about three fishermen at the same location we were at that morning, at the same time, in their boat. As they pulled up to check their cray pots on the beach side of the reef, they were circled twice by a great white shark that was as big as their boat.
"That guy most likely saved me from a horrible experience that day. I messaged him with the link to the Facebook page with the comments regarding their experience. Chills ran through my body for a good twenty minutes. He was adamant he felt the presence of something, and he was right."
8."I stopped by a friend's house to watch a ball game. He, his wife, and I were just relaxing, and someone knocked on the door. It was the middle of the afternoon, [so] he opened it up; he was expecting others might come by also."
"I heard him greeting someone; the guy was his brother, [whom] I had never met, but had heard about. [He was a] very sketchy looking guy: meth teeth, scrawny, long greasy hair. My friend had told me that he had a brother who lived in the area and had a serious drug problem."
"[My] buddy was talking to his brother about nothing, and the guy got a call on his cell. Whoever called, all he told them was, 'Not yet, I'll call you later.' Seemed pretty obvious this guy had come to rob and most likely to take out witnesses. I looked at my buddy; it seemed he had come to the same conclusion."
"Now my buddy's wife is a no-nonsense type of woman, sweet, but athletic, on the tall side. She had left the room to go to the bathroom, or so she said."
"She came back in the room with a handgun — I'm thinking 'WTF did I walk into!' But she calmly said, 'Ron, you're strung out and came here with bad intentions, you need to quietly leave."
"She said, 'If you get any ideas, Chris, (their son,) is sitting outside in his truck to make sure you go.'"
"Ron didn't say a word, he just turned and went out the door. We could hear his old pickup drive away rapidly. Chris came in and said, 'He's gone, I don't think he's coming back.' They asked me to leave so they could decide what to do; they'd already called the police, who are well-acquainted with Ron."
"The next morning my buddy called me. The police said they found his brother in the trailer park where he lived, murdered with multiple gunshots. They are guessing he was in serious drug debt and had come to rob his brother. I told my buddy I was sorry. He said, 'Don't be.'"
9."In college I was studying at my school’s business school building, waiting to meet a friend, and I had a sudden sense of dread. I texted my friend that I would just meet her at her dorm later instead of meeting at the business school, and I left to walk to a nearby library instead."
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"When I got to the library about 20 minutes later, I checked my phone and I had nearly 20 missed calls and texts from my friends who knew I was at the business building."
"Literally seconds after I left, a student entered the building and stabbed multiple people, killing one professor and injuring several students. It happened in the room I had just been in."
10."I was walking down the street in a very unfamiliar city with a group of friends. I got this feeling and didn't know how to articulate it so I said to the group, 'Hey, I've gotta use the restroom, can we just duck inside this Subway real quick? I promise I'll be quick.' About a minute later there was a shootout just up the block. If we [hadn't] gone into the restaurant, we would've all been standing right in the middle of the incident waiting to cross the street."
11."We were smoking a joint by the lake downtown. We saw a group of about eight guys walking towards us and joked 'Yeah, I bet those guys will totally try to beat us up.' We ignored the feeling. They jumped us, beat us down, and stole my phone, so I guess we should have listened to our intuition."
12."When I was around 9 or 10, my mom took me with her on a business trip to a nearby city. This was before smartphones, when you still had to Mapquest stuff. We were supposed to meet my mom’s friend/coworker at the mall."
"We got lost and ended up pulling into a small storage unit place to pull out a map. It was just two rectangular buildings, maybe a total of like 20 units. I don’t remember why, exactly, but I was really scared and kept crying and asking if we could just go back to the hotel. I assume [my mom] got fed up with her kid crying in the passenger seat and she couldn’t quite figure out where we were, so we went back."
"The next day they found the bodies of two teenagers in one of the units we pulled in front of."
13."Years ago I was at a club with some friends. I was at the bar and for some reason looked down at the other end of the bar and saw two guys quietly arguing. They tried to keep from being overheard but I saw their agitated faces. I went back to my group of friends and told them we should go."
"This was a popular club and it took us forever to get in so they didn’t want to leave. I don’t know what came over me, but I picked up my friend’s girlfriend (she was barely 5 feet tall) and started walking to the door. She was kicking the entire time and the rest of the party followed me outside, telling me to put her down."
"When we got outside, we heard the distant pop pop and people screaming. We looked at each other for a second then ran for our cars. I forgot to put her down and was still carrying her over my shoulders."
"It was the early 1990s and we were at a club in Miami. If I recall correctly from the local news, it was a drug deal that went bad between two groups. No one was killed, but they wounded each other and a couple of innocent people."
14."I was around 10 or 11 years old and had been invited to a sleepover. My mom didn't really like me going to those, because I'd usually end up staying up way too late and then being cranky the whole next day. When she dropped me off, she told me her usual send-off: 'Just remember, if you want to leave, I will come get you. It doesn't matter what time it is, just call me.'"
"The sleepover party itself was the usual routine: we watched a movie, gossiped, prank-called some boys (this being before cell phones and caller ID), broke out the Ouija board, etc."
"It turned out that the girl hosting the sleepover had an older brother, high school-aged, who also had some friends over. I remember they stood in the doorway of the rec room where we were and something about them made my blood run cold and I just remember thinking, 'I'm going to go home.'"
"I went upstairs and asked to use the phone, saying I wasn't feeling well and needed to go home. Her mom at first told me no."
"...Then [she] berated me for being a baby, but I just kept saying that I needed to call my mom; and I still remember the feeling I had that I needed to leave."
"Finally, I was allowed to use the phone, my mom came to get me, and we swung by Dairy Queen on the way home. My mom was always cool like that. I still remember the huge feeling of relief I had when she pulled up and I hopped into her car."
"Years later, I found out that the brother and/or his friends had molested some of the girls at the sleepover while they slept. No one reported it at the time, and I think it actually took years for any of the girls to compare notes and find out that they weren't the only ones this had happened to. I feel bad that that happened to them, but I'm still glad that I listened to my gut and got the hell out of there."
15."Picture it, 1994. I was 18 and waitressing in a sports bar. A comedy club was upstairs. One night a comedian kept visiting between sets. He was funny and charming, and he seemed quite smitten with me."
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"He asked me out to late-night breakfast. If you’ve ever been in hospitality, you know we go out and eat at 3:00 a.m. I changed after my shift and waited a few minutes for him. I realized I really didn’t know this person, and I should not let him in my car. I decided to be smart and GTFO."
"A few years later, I was absentmindedly flipping through a People magazine at a friend’s house. That is when I saw my comedian date, Vince Champ, had been arrested as a serial rapist."
"His favorite target was young college girls and they finally caught him after putting the puzzle together between victims and his campus circuit. Holy shit I dodged a bullet! I think he may still be in jail; he was that terrible."
16."When I was looking for a new place to rent a few years back I found something not far from the house I was leaving, and to my surprise [when I went to tour it] the front door opened to reveal someone I knew from school. He was a few years younger and didn't remember me."
"As we were talking I started to get this sense of danger. I couldn't explain it: everything the guy was saying sounded reasonable and the price for the room was about average for the time, but something about him was very unsettling."
"This guy was skinny as [could be] and normally I wouldn't feel threatened by someone with his build, but there was something that was setting off alarm bells."
"It was at its worst when I was being shown the room and I had my back to this guy. It was like I could his eyes boring into my skull or something. I maintained a polite facade but left shortly after that claiming I had a few other places to check out that day."
"About 18 months later I was driving past and the place had police tape all over it. I tried to find out what had happened online but couldn't find anything."
17."When I was in college I was waiting at my boyfriend's apartment for him to get home from work. My boyfriend's roommate was sitting on the couch, rocking back and forth and rubbing his hands on his knees, just giving off a very bad vibe."
"I immediately started getting a 'fight or flight' feeling in the pit of my stomach and [then he asked], 'Is it me, or is there a LOT of sexual tension in here?' I immediately said, 'It's you,' and bolted."
"He's now served almost ten years of a 40-year sentence for raping old women and children."
18."When I was about 13, my little sister and I were deemed old enough to see a movie on our own. My mom was in the mall working out in the gym and told us to get her when the movie finished. About 15 minutes into the movie, a man with a backpack sat in the seat next to me."
"The theater was almost empty. Max 10 people total. Well, my sister and I were both overwhelmed with a ‘bad feeling,’ but we didn’t think to just move; we were frozen."
"After about an hour the man got up and walked out, but he left his backpack. Right after he left, my sister and I ran to get our mom."
"Unbeknownst to us, an older couple in the theater also got a bad feeling and called the cops (not even getting a manager [first]). They took his info from his bag; he was wanted for kidnapping and sexual assault."
19.And finally: "When I was about 16 my best friend and I used to hang out in a coffee shop before we went to a local college for a class we were taking together. There was a guy in our class around 17 or 18, and we would make small talk but something about him made my bones feel cold."
"My friend kept saying that we should invite him to the coffee shop with us but I kept making excuses. Eventually, she invited him to meet up with us and some of our other friends, but I couldn’t shake this feeling of danger that I felt around him. The guys in our friend group all said that he gave off creepy vibes but most of the girls thought he was cute so didn’t agree. I started getting up and moving when I saw him after that."
"About a month later, he sauntered into the coffee shop with a manic, fixed grin on his face. He looked completely terrifying and kept letting little laughs escape. He came up to our group and said he was paying for everyone’s food and drinks because 'Today is a magical day.'"
"I was really freaked out, so made an excuse and left and went home."
"The next day there was a photo of him in the newspaper, a selfie that he took of himself grinning at the camera and pointing at the police station behind him. After he had had lunch and a drink with my friend group he casually walked over to the police station and turned himself in. The crime: that morning he had murdered both his parents with an axe."
I, for one, was terrified by some of these. 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 share in the comments below, or, if you prefer, check out this anonymous Google Form. Your story may be included in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community post.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
