Some people like to believe that there are people in this world who have powers of precognition, that they can see the future or know when something bad is about to happen. Personally, I feel like that's pure fantasy. I'm a man of science, after all.
That being said, sometimes some really crazy stuff happens that we just can't explain. So I'm not saying I believe in psychics, I'm just saying that after reading these stories I can understand how some people can.
45. You were meant to save her
44. This guy needs to be in jail
43. That's the guy
My husband is really friendly with everyone and when he was maybe 18 or so, some random guy was speaking to him and my husband got an off vibe, he spoke about Adult World to my husband, who he had just met. Anyway, fast forward a few years and I see a photo of him and it said he assaulted some boys that I happen to have gone to school with. I showed my husband his photo and he said, " that's the guy! "
Sometimes I have gut feelings for simple things like if I should or shouldn't say something.
My husband had a job that he was on the road a lot and if he drove far I would join as I love long drives, he had to go quite far but I decided not to go with cause my son wouldn't have been able to be strapped in as he was going in a truck, so I stayed home, when he got to the place, he left and the client told him to take the scenic route but he just followed the GPS and he got into an accident, he was driving slower than usual though, it was raining and there was a diesel spill so he slid. It was a horrible accident but he was unharmed besides whiplash.
42. How to save a life
I have ALWAYS worn my seatbelt. Always. One day I was teaching my ex how to drive on a gravel road with my daughter in the backseat and had a strange feeling not to. I always follow my gut and did just that. Sure enough, my ex isn't listening to me to slow down and tops a steep hill at 45, loses control and rolls the car. I managed to jump into the backseat and cover my then 18mo old daughter just before my giant Thermaltake gaming pc (one of the huge old steel ones) hit her. Instead, it ends up bouncing off my head and flying out the window with enough force to fly a good 50ft down the road.
I'm also the guy that always slows down just before hitting the range of a speed trap. I grew up always being at the wrong place at the wrong time. As an adult, that never happens anymore.
41. Hang on a second while I go make sure my doors are locked
I think this is a combination of both my and my husband's gut instincts working together. My husband worked nights at the time. We lived in an area when murders were rare and "don't happen". Anyway, I was in the living room watching tv after putting the kids to bed and happened to have a window open when I heard footsteps. Hearing people walk past my house wasn't rare- the neighborhood was set up as a grid and there was plenty of room between houses to pass through to the next street. However, the footsteps stopped as if the person didn't want to be noticed and that set me on edge.
I casually shut the window and decided to forgo my nightly smoke, feeling a bit creeped out by the whole thing. I decided to put all of the kids in the bed with me and lock us in my room. (If someone wanted to get in my house, it wouldn't be hard.) I texted my hubs to explain what and why I was doing. He couldn't use his phone during work, but I assumed he'd see it on his lunch break. So, after a few hours of sleeping, I hear a knock on the door. It's my husband. After getting my text he'd taken the night off from work. There was a man standing on our front porch jiggling the lock when he came home.
40. Well that escalated quickly
I went out on a couple of dates with a girl and got a weird vibe from her so I didn't stay in touch. She stabbed her next boyfriend 2 months later.
39. He sounds like a real piece of trash
The first time I met my ex's dad, he was friendly, joking, etc. But, something immediately set off this dread in me, and I remember thinking "I should never, ever be alone with this man." I felt like a jerk as soon as I thought it because I had just met the guy and he seemed normal enough. It's not something I had encountered before upon just meeting someone.
Later on, after we split up, he ended up going to jail for assault and it was found out he had been doing this to girls in the family as well. I never ignore that instinct now, with anyone. It's proven to be true more than once, unfortunately. I guess something subtle in our awareness picks up on something being off in their demeanor even if we can't say what it is.
38. Just wonder what would have happened if you stayed
I was sitting in my bedroom one day when I got this intense feeling in my gut, which was sort of saying, "You need to get out of here. Right now." Then I started to get this immense feeling of dread (like I was being watched.)
I immediately noped out of there and went to my friend's house, as I didn't want to be alone at the time.
When I finally got back to my own house, It had been ransacked. Things had been knocked over, lots of glass had been broken everywhere, and a window was left wide open.
Now I always take that gut feeling more seriously.
37. Just call the cops if HR won't do anything
After my shift ended, I went into the lunch room to get my lunch bag. I noticed one of my guy coworkers was sitting at a table, constantly looking at the opposite entrance (our lunch room has 2 entrances). Around that time, my coworker/friend (who is a girl that the guy really likes) was doing an interview for a leadership position.
I had a bad feeling about him being there. Almost as if he was waiting for her to come out. At work, he's a creep. He'll follow her, get mad when certain people talk to her and has gone through her phone. She has zero interest in being with him and has told him, but he's still convinced he has a chance.
Anyway I thought I was overreacting so I went home. Within 30 minutes of leaving, I got a strong feeling that I should go back and drive to her car. So I did and when I got to her car, I saw him trying to get in from the driver's side. She was already inside her car and was trying to kick him away from her (but it wasn't working). When he noticed me, he backed off and looked very angry at me. He stayed for a few seconds until he realized I wasn't going to leave so he ran.
After he left, she explained what had happened. Turns out, he followed her because he wanted a hug and she refused to give one. She was trying to get away, but he kept pulling her back. That I had "saved her life"... Yeah... I can't imagine what would've happened if I didn't show up.
He's been harassing her for months. After the first incident, I've been trying to get her to go to HR and tell them what's going on. Apparently, I can go and say something to HR, but they need to have the person that's getting harassed to come speak.
36. This one is sad
In high school, I worked at a coffee shop a few blocks away from my house, which is also close to a large hospital. My brother had been sick at home for several days, so when an ambulance rushed by the coffee shop with sirens and lights going my first thought was, "That's for my brother, I think he died."
30 minutes later the shop phone rings and it's my mom asking me how quickly I can get to the hospital. I was right. The ambulance had been going to my house to get my brother. He had died.
Pixabay
35. It's hard out there for a princess
I was a birthday party princess in college. Dress up as a Disney character, sing some songs, help with the cake, paint faces, typical party stuff. I get called to a party that began at 8 PM. Unusual but not unheard of in our industry, a lot of Spanish-speaking families party well into the night. I pull up down the street (princesses don't drive) and begin walking to the house, dressed as Sleeping Beauty, my "party box" of supplies in hand.
But when I saw the house I knew immediately something was wrong. There were no lights on, no cars, no balloons. Still, against my better judgement, I knocked on the door.
This super creepy looking guy in his mid-fifties answers, in a dirty t-shirt and jeans, and the first thing he says is, "The party's around back." I took one look at this guy and booked it as fast as I could while holding a box, wearing a ballgown, and being mildly crippled to begin with. I
got into my car, locked the doors, floored it to a 7-11, and called my boss. The "party" never called demanding to know where their princess was. No one asked for their deposit back. My boss called police non-emergency but I don't know if anything was ever done. I'm 100% sure there was no "party" in that house.
Pixabay
34. Congrats on the liver
I was very ill at 17, failing liver. Got up to vomit, puked in the sink. I was going to just rinse it and go to bed but thought I should turn the light on for some reason. Good thing I did, the sink was full of blood. If I'd gone back to bed that burst esophageal varice would have kept bleeding and I'd have died of internal bleeding.
Luckily that bleed proved that my liver was shot and they finally listed me for transplant. Two years of waiting later I got my liver. In September this year will be my 7th liverversary!
33. I would have been taken to get ice cream after the game if I did this
I think the best play in my college baseball career was me rounding second base without any prompting on a routine force out at first. I don't know why I just did it, it just felt right. The first baseman overshot the throw by a mile and I ended up scoring and giving our team a one-run lead that we held onto for the last four innings. I got so much crap from the coaches for going rogue like that but screw it, I was right
32. Want to find out if someone is following you? Take 3 left turns in a row
A guy followed me home from the bus stop, this is pretty common as I live in/around big apartment complexes though. I walk fast and he was keeping up, he slipped in the key-carded door behind me. So in the hallway, I slowed my pace and he slowed to stay behind me.
He gets on the elevator after me, I press my floor and he doesn't press one. On my floor, he walks off behind me and follows me down my hallway. A few feet from my door I sprint to the emergency staircase, run down half a flight of stairs, turn around and look behind me under the door.
I see his feet standing there. Then he turns around and walks back towards the elevator. I called the police and told them what happened, by the time they showed up the guy was gone though.
I don't know what his intentions were, but I'm glad I didn't stop to open my door.
31. Not all heroes wear capes
My best friend and I were at a wedding and we got absolutely wasted at the after party. It was an outdoor wedding with tiki torches and a little bar, etc. Anyway, my best friend was doing that stumbling thing where you kind of just lunge from one place to another instead of taking steps. So I turn my back on him and I'm getting myself another drink, and I don't know what made me turn around and grab him, but I whipped around and caught him around the waist and righted him - he was falling backward directly onto a tiki torch that someone broke in half and left sticking out of the ground. Totally saved him from being impaled.
30. Always be on the lookout for roving car thieves
Walking back from my girlfriend's house, I always cut through a hedge in my garden to get home. I've done this hundreds of times. For some odd reason I just decided to go the long way, I said to myself it's a nice night out I'll walk around, no idea why I would do that. Then when I came in there was a person right where I would have exited the hedge, robbing the car, we would have been face to face and he would have gotten a fright thinking I was jumping him with whatever he had in his hand to jam open the car. I attribute it to my gut instinct because I must have subconsciously sensed something.
29. Luckily this is illegal now
My wife and I had just signed a contract on a $200,000 house. First-time buyers ready to start our family. When I got to the office the day before the sellers would sign the closing papers I had an uneasy feeling felt sick most the day. I pulled up the house on the net and looked it over again, did some math. Found out the man we put in charge of the Mortgage left a "fee", that would have increased our payments by $200, if I had not checked.
28. Knew exactly where this was going from the first sentence
When I was in my early teens I was an altar attendant in the church (Catholic). I've never been particularly religious but at the time it basically just made mass slightly less boring since my mom made me go anyway. When I was 14-15 (I forget the year), the archdiocese decided they were no longer going to leave priests in one location indefinitely and start rotating them every 7 or so years. Our current priest was super nice and everyone loved him, but he'd been there 9 or so years at this point so with the new rule it was time for him to go.
We got this new guy and he was OK, but we all just kinda missed the old one. Well after a few months I told my mom I wanted to stop being an altar attendant, I didn't really have a solid reason, I just didn't get a good vibe from him. So I quit, and a few months later we switched to a different church in a neighboring town because my mom didn't like him much either.
Fast forward 2 years and he was removed from the church by the archbishop because of some inappropriate behavior with teenage boys at a church event that just came to light (although it had taken place 10-15 years earlier and there were no known incidences in the recent years). Also, two other kids my age quit around the same time as me for similar reasons. To my memory he was never inappropriate with me or anyone I knew in any way, we just all got a bad vibe from him and didn't want to be around him
27. What a creeper
I never liked my wife's best friend's husband, got a "weird vibe" from him felt like he was disingenuous/dishonest.
Wife thought I was being cold towards him (I was definitely not interested in hanging around him and not being my usual gregarious self).
Come to find out he had been married before (but never told my wife's best friend), washed out of ROTC for mental and physical standards failures. He was also seeing someone on the side during their engagement and their "marriage" lasted less than a year for obvious reasons. Basically, he was a dishonest weakling scumbag with mental issues (possible psychopathy/sociopathy).
Since then my wife had paid heed to my gut when meeting someone for the first time.
I have been right several times with a few others in my life as well and I always pay heed to my "feelings".
Pixabay
26. Listen to yourself, you know you better than anyone
When I first saw my future ex something inside me said, "Promise yourself you will never date him." I am not sure why. I hadn't even spoken to him, I just saw him across the room. Eventually, after months of getting to know him, I pushed down my gut instinct and asked him out. The relationship was great in the beginning and quickly became awful. Emotionally he was abusive. The relationship turned into a year-and-a-half long train wreck that left me broken and feeling used. The breakup was the worse part of it, messy and lasting months. I am not sure what caused my gut instinct to tell me not to date him, but I wish I listened
Pixabay
25. Well at least you got the milk.
In Mexicali, Mexico, I was once walking to a store for some milk. As I crossed a street, I saw another young man walking towards me with a broomstick. Really, he could have been just some other kid walking with a stick because in that neighborhood it wasn't really out of place. Despite this, I got a bad feeling from the guy.
He ended up walking behind me, and every time I glanced through my peripherals he seemed to be gaining on me slowly. I could hear his stick dragging, and soon he was about 10 feet behind me. At one point, without looking at the guy, I dove to my side and saw the broomstick crack right into where I'd been walking. Instantly, I broke out in a full sprint to the store, and inside I asked for help and pointed toward the guy trying to hit me. He had actually chased me into the store and the store manager stepped in and blocked his path toward me.
I bought the milk and sprinted back home while the manager still had the guy blocked off. To this day, I don't understand what prompted me to dive to my side like that, but I'm glad those instincts were there that day.
Pixabay
24. Don't throw caution to the wind
Driving to work one day I got a terrible feeling and just started freaking out like I was going to die. It was horrible, especially because my toddler was in the car. I dropped him off and everything was fine but I couldn't shake the feeling.
I was only 5 minutes from work but I slowed down, trying to be alert, actually sat through a green arrow instead of turning left. There was some angry honking behind me but I couldn't bring myself to turn.
Seconds later, I see a truck speeding straight at me (he had crossed the double line to illegally pass and was on the wrong side of the road). He flew through the red light doing at least 50 in a 25 mph. Had I turned left when the green arrow came on, I believe I would have died that day.
Pixabay
23. Be careful on dirt roads
I grew up driving back roads all my life. It was 5 miles of dirt roads between my house and pavement. I knew them all by heart, every turn, bump, frost heave. One night on my way home I got a really bad feeling driving along a stretch of road that goes downhill. And about halfway down there's a sharp turn right. I slowed down and took my time. I started to see skid marks 100 feet before the turn and they led to a 4 wheeler just off the road that hit a tree head-on. The guy was still on it, no helmet, no pulse. I called 911, answered questions the police had, and I haven't driven that route since.
pixabay
22. A gun is always loaded, even when it's not
I was playing paintball with a friend and we both had no more ammo. We were just shooting in the air for a while to use out the CO2. He took his mask off and I was gonna shoot in the general direction of his face and then I thought what if. Lo and behold the next shot a little ball came out. Could have shot his eye out.
21. I'm sorry for your loss
When I was in high school, my mom's addictions had gone full-force to the point she'd regularly leave the house and not return for days/weeks at a time. One of these times, it had been about three days since she's gone missing. This was basically par for the course, at this point, but something felt really wrong about it. I was having lunch outside with my friends when we started noticing helicopters flying overhead. I made a joke that they were looking for my mom (my friends were well aware of the situation with my mom), but it felt like less of a joke this time. Sure enough, next period I get signed out of school by a family friend only to come home to three police cars, a bunch of news vans, an ambulance, and a black morticians vehicle.
She'd been found dead in a ditch about two blocks away from my house by a grass-cutter.
20. Standing is good for your health
In the bus station near my school, there was a bench under a street light with signs hanging from it with chains. Most of the time I wait for the bus standing up but it was a very exhausting day so I decided to sit on that bench. The wind started to blow extremely fast then I decided to get up because I was afraid of the signs falling on me. Just as I walked away a middle-aged lady sat on the bench and a sign fell onto her head, heavily injuring her. If your gut tells you something isn't safe, its probably true.
Photo by Inzmam Khan from Pexels
19. Ah the classic "war on good times"
When I was about 19 or so I used to hang out with a group of guys who were pretty much trouble makers. It was one of those groups I only hung out with so I could smoke with them. The guy I met everyone through was someone I knew when I was younger and he was kind of the ring leader. One night he had a party at his apartment and he showed me stacks of DVD players he had stolen off a truck or something.
Usually, the parties were just smoking, but this was over the top and something told me I need to get out of there. I found out a few days later that the cops showed up because of a noise complaint, and everyone who was there had been arrested. My friend, the "ring leader", got locked up in prison for years after that. If I had stayed, I would have been arrested too. I seriously dodged a bullet. I never hung out with people like that again.
18. My mom killed my first hamster
When I was around 6-7 years old I had a dwarf hamster named Sally. She developed a large tumor in her armpit, that grew to be as large as a marble when the hamster itself was only about an inch and a half long. I loved this stupid creature, but my parents didn't believe taking such small animals to the vet because they are more disposable than larger pets. So one night I woke up crying, and I had this immense put of dread and fear and sadness, so I ran to my parents who were still up in the living room, also where Sally's cage was kept.
My mom did the "oh what's wrong" thing and I told her what I was feeling and I did what comforted me, opened up the hamster cage where Sally had her little bed. And there she was, cold, stiff, and somehow peaceful. I wasn't woken up by the absence of noise or anything, I truly was woken up by the sadness of her death even before I knew of her passing.
17. Better safe than sorry
I showed up to my last day of work at an upscale restaurant. The owner, who was entering a downward spiral of addiction had trashed the place the night before. Broken tables, glass, awnings ripped down, safe emptied, the works. It was my last day and I was used to his antics and was intent on cleaning the place and opening by myself, as I was used to doing by this point. I get a call from the owner, who is convinced that he left 1500 in cash laying around somewhere and he wanted me to find it. Of course, there is no money, he took it and blew it all the night before. Keep in mind, at this point I am very used to his antics and just about nothing phases me. He had always treated me like a daughter and has never given me a reason to think he would hurt me, despite being a jerk with a record of multiple assault charges.
After I hung up I felt sick with fear that he was going to show up to look for the nonexistent money. I was shaking and felt panicked about even being the restaurant. The cook tried to convince me that he wouldn't show up and not to worry, but I couldn't shake my gut feeling that something bad was about to happen. I called my boyfriend who had dropped me off and told him to turn around and get me. Shortly after I left, the owner showed up in a frenzy and got into a fight with the cook. I don't know what would've happened had I stayed, but it couldn't have been good.
16. That is absolutely horrible
This happened in Afghanistan.
I was a brand new Platoon Leader, like brand new. I literally got to my unit after BOLC and they basically let me know we were deploying.
Fast forward a few months in and we were checking out a possible IED (I was EOD, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, ie the bomb squad) and the convoy started taking fire. Not regular fire, but erratic potshots coming from a rooftop so we took cover behind the vehicles.
At this point, we had the option to call QRF, shoot back from the vehicle turrets, or Leeroy Jenkins and have detail kick the door in and take them down. I called the situation in, was told it was my call, deliberated with my platoon sergeant for a quick second and the popular opinion was to lay suppressive fire from the vehicles and let detail clear and sweep and eliminate the threat.
But something felt, off. The shots were just kind of happening with no real sense of intent and the shots were landing so randomly that getting hit seemed to be a game of chance. I took this in for a second and I hear one of the squad leaders call out "SNIPER!!" and a direction.
Now at this point, we're pinned on both sides. This erratic shooter on one side and a sniper on the other so I had to make a decision. On the one hand, you have a shooter that doesn't seem to be able to hit anything, and one guy saying he saw the glare from a scope on the other side. Basically, we have a confirmed threat and a reported threat. One has to be taken out immediately or we face getting gunned down or picked off.
Being that the sniper hadn't fired yet the obvious priority was the rooftop shooter but I decided against it and detail went after the sniper while we took cover until the shooter on the roof ran out of ammo. So basically there's a shooter popping rounds down at us, the vehicles, us, and we're completely exposed to this sniper.
In the end, the "sniper" was a guy (still a bad guy though) with a video camera and had been filming us and had a vantage of the roof where the shooter was. When we got to the roof we find the most innocent looking kid, like maybe 5 or 6 pretending to fire an AK at us and running around like it was a game. When the interpreter questioned him as to why he was shooting at us he told us a man paid him to "play soldier with us"
Basically, he was trying to film us killing a kid.
Pixabay
15. Sister dodged a literal bullet there
When I was in basic training, I had a young, attractive male Drill SGT, SSG type. I had a few pictures of my (very cute, similar in age as him) older sister in my wall locker. He saw them during an inspection, said he'd like to meet her. He seemed to be a strong leader who could relate to soldiers, so I shared some stuff about my family, he told me some stuff about him and on paper would've been a perfect match for my sis. He asked if he could be introduced on family day/graduation. I sent my sister his name, she looked him up on Facebook and thought he was cute, so I agreed to set them up. I immediately felt uneasy after agreeing. He seemed a bit... off. I withdrew a bit, wondering if he was blurring the line between PFC and DS. A few days after this exchange, he pulled me into his office and asked if I was okay. I assured him I was, and he mentioned he'd heard things about my "partner" (I'm gay, joined under DADT and was dating a female 2LT in the Guard) and told me my secret would be safe with him because we'd practically be family soon enough. I was freaked out and had no idea how he found out about her but was anxious to stay firmly in the closet. Anxiety overload, bad feeling intensifies.
Closer to family day/graduation, he keeps pressing me for information about my sister, gushing over how awesome she, this woman he'd never met, is and how he'd never tell anyone my "special secret." The uneasy feeling multiplies. Graduation Day, I pull my sister to the side and make up some story about me and Drill SGT getting in trouble for fraternizing if she goes through with it. She reluctantly agrees to stay out of his line of sight and not pursue him. She was mad for a few weeks, because of the cute, single guy with a stable career and toyed with the idea of adding him on FB or Myspace. Ultimately, she let it go.
A few months later, he found my cell number (?) and called me a few different times, just to talk. He'd always ask about my cute sister at the end of our calls. I thought it was weird but brushed it off, figuring good mentors would be hard to find. The last time he called me, he said he'd gotten in some trouble, but his legal "dream team" would help him out. I googled his name. He was arrested for murdering a girl he was dating, hiding her decomposing body upstairs in her house. He also slept with a few strippers downstairs on the couch while she was upstairs rotting. Classy.
14. This is a cute, if not frustrating, story
Got rejected by the same girl twice, was ready to totally give up until my gut told me. "Nah, bro. She's into you. Stick it out."
Now I'm in the best relationship I've ever had. Best girlfriend ever.
We've known each other since high school (class of 2013), and last year around this time we went to the same music festival. All of our friends go to this same one every year. We get to know each other there a bit, and I'm feeling good, so after the festival was over, I asked to take her out. She said no, she wasn't looking for romance. At this point, I found out that my, at the time, "best friend" had swooped in on her after me going on about how I was gonna try to swoon my new crush. That hurt pretty bad but life went on.
A while later, I heard that the same "best friend" had broken ties with my crush out of nowhere. He then got together with another girl (who was also at the festival) and they've now been dating ever since. I had a feeling that these two wanted to be with each other from the beginning. I think they used me and my crush to make each other jealous, but that's a whole other story. I was relieved to hear that "best friend" and my crush never slept together during this whole thing.
Fast forward a few months, and I'm back to going to classes in September. I get a text one day after classes from my crush. She learned that I played guitar from us all hanging out all summer after the festival when I brought my guitar along to a few hangouts. She asked me if I would teach her. Of course, I said yes. We start hanging out a couple of times a week for lessons and follow them up with Netflix in my room. We would just hang out on my porch and then watch whatever on Netflix. My parents worked a lot and weren't home mostly at night. I honestly didn't expect much of it, and still assumed she wasn't into me. At least, that's how I felt until she starting staying later and later. Eventually, it was at the point where it's 1:30 AM and she's saying to me "Should I leave anytime soon?" I reply no. I say something like "You can stay as long as you want, I'm enjoying your company." So she stays. She does this a few weeks in a row, we just play guitar and hang out until like 1 or 2 am.
At this point, I start to think she HAS to be into me. Why would she be staying over like this, sitting on my bed right next to me, constantly making conversation over the show? So I make a move. "Can I kiss you?" I ask. She hesitated and said no. She apologized and asked if it was something she did to make me feel some vibe. I said no, apologized as well, and said I was just "taking a chance, you know?" She told me she thought that was brave. We sat in silence for a while before I said: "I hope that doesn't make this awkward for you." She was thinking the same thing.
Anyway, one week later to the day, she's over once again for guitar lessons. She stays for Netflix, again. It's about midnight, when she looks at me and says "Are you a cuddly person?". This surprised me, and I said. "Yeah, I love to snuggle." To which she waits for a bit and says "Would it be okay if we cuddled?" and I obliged.
The rest is history. It was a while before we were "in a relationship," but ever since that night, she's made me the happiest, luckiest, guy in the world. We're going on 7 months now. Nine if don't you count the months we were "officially" dating.
13. Stranger danger!
When I was 6 I was out shopping with my mom in one of the bigger cities in India (Madras). I zoned out and kept walking and didn't notice my mom was lagging behind me. Some guy came upto me and asked me to come with him.
He seemed vaguely familiar but something seemed off. From what I can remember I asked him if he knew my mom and worked in her office, to which he said yes. Something seemed off so I didn't go with him until my mom appeared out of nowhere and glared at the guy.
He then walked off, and she told me to never trust random strangers and said I could have been kidnapped.
So I guess my kiddy gut instinct to not follow a completely random stranger is why I'm here today
Flickr
12. Man if it had been real you would look like a real jerk right now
A couple of years back my wife asked if we wanted to donate to a child going through cancer treatments, had tube in nose thing in public, oncologist appointments, fire department of that town let her ride in a fire truck and they raised a boatload of money for her and they even had Make a Wish take her to Disney World I believe, maybe not make a wish, but she got a trip for it for this cancer.
She was publicly diagnosed as terminal a few short months after all the big stuff happened. Husband and Wife were devastated...
My wife kept asking me if we could donate...I kept telling her no, I don't have a great feeling about this, something isn't right with it.
Well lo and behold a few months later, it comes out the wife/mother had lied about the whole thing to everyone in the community and even her own husband..."How?" You ask? She took her daughter to all the appts herself, while she told the husband to stay in the car. She stuck a feeding tube up her nose and down into her stomach and fed her cannabis oil. "Why wouldn't anyone ask for proof?"
Well, the cannabis oil made her extremely lethargic, the mother cut the girls hair off and her skin turned a pale-ish greyish(not a lot, but the "tired" look).
So it all literally looked legit..until she enrolled her kid in school and they school needed doctors notes and hospital records, and upon looking for said records found nothing...
This mother had done this before as well quite a few years ago in another town a few hours away, still in the same state though. Not with her kids, I think with her dog. She scammed people out of literally thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. She went to jail for like...6 months? Has a no-contact order with her children until they're 18 I think. Which she just tried to get an appeal for.
I knew it was fake...I don't know how I knew, but I just KNEW something wasn't right with it, and so we never donated.
11. ATV's are super dangerous
On a weekend trip to upstate New York, we entertained ourselves riding an ATV around an off-road "track" the neighbors made.
On the last day of the trip, my SO says he is going to take one last spin on it, and I knew something terrible was going to happen.
I told him exactly how I felt and he dismissed me. As he was leaving the house I said, "Just promise me that you won't go really fast just because it's the last ride... I don't trust it and I think you will lose control."
Luckily, after he went too fast and lost control it was only his ankle that suffered. Finding him on that trail leaning up against a tree was the single scariest moment of my life. Thank god it was just his ankle.
10. Deer are the most deadly animal in North America
I was driving normally and had to slam on the breaks for this deer, kept going normally on a straight road for about 2 miles. When I saw the stop sign pretty far away I had this feeling like I should just slowly approach it. I let off the gas and just glided almost all the way there, slowing from 60 to 20, I finally try to break and my breaks were totally out and I had the veer off into the field. This was at a highway crossing road and I almost definitely would have been injured or killed if I for some reason didn't slow down so much before it.
9. That got dark
The first time I recall having a weird feeling was when I went ice skating as a kid, despite feeling like something bad would happen and that I should stay home. I went out anyway, and broke my arm on the ice.
In more recent years I was invited to a party in the woods with a bunch of people from uni, most of whom I didn't know. It sounded fun, but I had an increasingly bad feeling about it, so I skipped out on the party at the last minute. The next day, it was all over the news that a friend of friends had been stabbed to death at said party.
When I was on the student union board at my school, this guy was also running for a position. Everybody else loved him - he was plenty charming, knew how to shake hands and grin, but was a complete snake-oil salesman as far as I could see. Slimy and corrupt as all get out, and he gave me the heebs every time I saw him, but for some reason, I was the only one who felt that way. I mentioned it to a couple of friends, who didn't make much of it, until the guy got arrested (and, of course, kicked off the student union) for domestic violence after throwing his girlfriend across the room.
An old friend I hadn't seen in a long time invited me to crash at his place when I came in from out of town. I figured this meant he had a spare couch, so I gladly took him up on the offer. The minute we met up, I knew his vibe was way off - as in, way off - but I didn't want to be rude and ditch our plans just because of a feeling. We got back to his place, and... no couch. Just his bed. Where a lot of things happened that I didn't want. While it was going on, my intuition was going "This is a lesson. You'll be alright, but this is a lesson you needed to learn. Never disregard that feeling again." Needless to say, I haven't since.
8. Sure you were dude, sure you were
I went to France in 2014 for Hellfest. Now on the billboards and on signs all around they tell you to check your pockets because I guess they've had a bit of a pickpocketing problem in the past. I'm in the crowd next to The main circle pit for the band Hatebreed jumping up and down like a maniac my cell phone in my cargo shorts pocket zipped up and velcroed on top of that. So being that that phone was my only contact back to the US my instincts tell me to feel the outside of my pocket every once in a while to make sure no one pickpocketed me... The Velcro and the zipper both undone my iPhone completely missing.
I start bugging out, searching for my phone on my hands and knees in Hatebreeds mosh pit at freaking Hellfest. I start asking around if any ones seen an iPhone and of course everyone answers no... But this one nerdy looking guy in particular just stood out to me for whatever reason. A major gut feeling that he either pickpocketed my phone or at least saw it. I keep asking other people at this point begging and praying that I'm going to find this thing...
Finally, I said screw it and went back to that nerdy guy because I just knew he was lying to me. I ask again and again he denies seeing it but as I go to turn away I catch him feel the outside of his pocket like he's checking to see if something was there. So I wait a minute or two... Go back up to him and just straight out ask " I thought you said you didn't have my phone?" He said he didn't. I then said "oh really? What's that in your pocket right there?" And he goes "Oh!! That's just a piece of paper in my pocket.." At this point, I can clearly make out a rectangular shape in his pocket... Reach into the dudes pocket and pull out my iPhone put in my password and the guy was speechless.
Proceeded to tell me he didn't know and was going to give it to security
pixabay
7. That could have been a really bad time
I was volunteering to give eye exams and glasses to kids whose families couldn't afford basic care. It was a two-day affair, with different doctors helping each day. My job during the mission was to assist the doc by giving dilation drops to each child before they got to the doctor.
Day one I was working with an optometrist I had just met. He asked that I check for proper pupil constriction with a penlight before applying the drops. Did it all day long. Shine, shine, drop, drop. Sorry kid. Next!
Day two I worked with my usual doc and asked if she wanted me to swing the light, she said: "if you have time but don't stress over it." There were SO MANY kids to see that I basically decided I didn't have time and skipped it all day. For some reason, I pulled it out randomly for a cute girl about eight or nine years old. Just had a feeling. The light made her right pupil close, but when I swung to the left it didn't budge. In fact, it wasn't even circular. Her pupil was a very jagged oval. I put the drops away and walked the girl up to the doctor. She took one look at her and I knew something was really wrong just by the look in doc's eyes. She called over the school principal as I headed back to my battle station ready to shine every eye that came my way.
After the craze of the day died out, my doctor came up to me and explained to me that this little girl had iritis. This is an inflammation of the colored part of your eye and can be treated if easily with antibiotics. This young lady had not complained to anyone about blurry vision and consequently, her case had progressed so much over many weeks, that her iris was stuck to the crystalline lens in her eye.
I got absolutely sick to my stomach when the realization that I would have blinded her if I had dropped her with medicine that forces the pupil open. It would have torn the iris off of the lens. Since then I follow my gut and make sure to make time for simple tests that could make a difference for that one in two thousand that could be affected.
6. Don't invade people's privacy, that's not cool
My fiancée's parents had given us crap for several months because I wasn't the right kind of Christian for them. We had completely stopped talking to them. Any communication went through a third party who could help ensure civility.
One day, we're sitting in church, and it hits me. My fiancée was writing in her journal, notes from the sermon, I think. I don't remember exact details of the order, but I think right after church I asked her if she had written in her journal about having had sex whenever we first started. It was a big deal for us, because we both were previously the save it til marriage sort, but we were progressively growing more liberal on most everything. Anyhow, she said she had, and right around that time frame, she had gone to her parents' place for a weekend or something.
I don't recall how we confirmed it, but her mom read her journal, a total invasion of privacy. We were livid. Her mom was scared because this homophobic, evolution denying pastor found out I supported gay marriage and believed in evolution and my fiancée might do the same now. Clearly, I was an evil man leading her astray, since women can't have thoughts and opinions of their own.
Whatever. Following that guy cost her parents 9 months of not seeing or talking to us except through a counselor and did permanent damage to our ability to trust them. They never seemed to understand how badly they hurt us.
We're married now, 3 years as of recently. We have a decent relationship with her parents, but it is not what I'm sure it could be. They still occasionally say awful things on account of their religion without realizing it. I'm no longer religious, partially because of these experiences, sadly not my first run-in with abusive religion, dispelled the social ties I had to my beliefs, at which point I decided there was no real reason to believe.
All because they read my fiancée's journal.
5. Some people never learn
A few years ago, I was dating an artsy chick. I went to a showing she had for some class she took. We were standing by a piece made from a salvaged aquarium, talking to her friends, when I got a strange twinge just outside of my peripheral vision. My left arm shot out reflexively and my hand closed around something heavy and glass.
It happened without any conscious effort on my part. My girlfriend was mid-sentence "well, I think the romantic period is..." and it just happened. I turned to look at what I'd done, and it turned out that the aquarium piece had spontaneously fallen apart on its pedestal. I'd caught a pane of the glass... just before it could fall on the teacher's 6-8 yr old daughter's face. The rest of it hit the ground and shattered.
So. She passed that class.
Another; A long while back, a friend of mine decided to go into business for himself. We are in the same profession but I was just finishing up my degree, while he was about a year ahead of me. I'd honestly hoped that we'd go into business together, but he seemed rearing and ready to go, so I offered to help out as much as I could in return for a second internship.
He took on three partners. The first was "Troy". Troy was a namaste douche. You know, the kind of guy who likes to make a show of how he's into Led Zeppelin and not as esoteric as he claims hippy music and ohhhhh so spiritual. The kind of jerk who says "Namaste". He'd alternate between virtue signaling and alpha dogging constantly. You just couldn't have a sincere conversation with the guy without him launching his act. I hated him quickly.
The second guy, "John", was actually a good dude. I liked him a lot. But his girlfriend was a total Yoko. Totally pretentious. Constantly posturing. And constantly trying to insert herself into John's business without any understanding of it or skill in it. When I met her and asked her what she did for a living, she answered "I'm in fine dining,". She was a waitress at a somewhat expensive restaurant. She was in fine dining like I was in "music distribution" when I worked at a record store.
And there was Dick. I also liked Dick. But he had massive ADD. He couldn't sit still. He'd constantly interrupt people, or get distracted, or wander off. And he was a total flake. He'd disappear for days to weeks sometimes.
I met these guys over the course of a weekend and each one of them set off that same twinge. I kept it to myself, though, because I didn't want my friend to think I was just spewing sour grapes and jealousy.
Now, here's the thing; I was finishing up my last semester, but I already had a couple years of experience in an adjacent industry in a much larger city. So, I had certain insights into the business and how to operate it that my colleagues did not.
I tried to be helpful. I tried to explain to them how to keep books, organize, which licenses and permits they'd need to look at, how to drum up pr, how to approach legal counsel, and most importantly what the standard split of the money was.
None of them wanted to hear it. In fact, one time my friend Paul started lecturing me and cursing me out for having the audacity to make a suggestion of how to track certain clients while he was discussing it with John. Like in a "how dare you think you can talk to me!?"
I was entirely taken by surprise. I had a full course load, two jobs, and another internship already. I was doing everything I could just to be useful to my friend who seemed to find in me the most use as his whipping boy and scapegoat for whatever issues were arising in his life.
And I took it. Because the whole time, I was convinced that I was the problem.
Then some weird stuff started happening. Money and equipment would disappear. Jobs would not be completed correctly. Record keeping was barely existent. The name of the business kept changing. For months, Paul and Troy had constant passive aggressive arguments about what to call the business. They couldn't even get that done.
One day, I told Paul how it all looked from my side. What mistakes I'd seen others make that they were repeating. What mistakes nobody else would ever make. The uneasy feeling that each of the guys gave me.
He argued that none of those problems existed. He argued that I'm a judgemental idiot. He argued that nobody else would put up with my crap, so I'd better shape up.
Eventually, I got to a point where I wanted to run a very small job for a very small client. Just to get my wick wet. Paul had agreed to allow me to do this through his company as a representative and project manager. I didn't even expect any money for it.
Then Paul decided that we weren't friends anymore. It was a Wednesday and I had scheduled my client to walk through the facility that weekend. Paul hadn't returned my calls to confirm all day. Nor did he on Thursday. And again on Friday.
I had to go to my client and tell them that I could not provide the agreed upon services because I had not heard from Paul all week and could not keep to the agreed upon schedule.
On Saturday, I got a text from Paul berating me for bothering him.
"What about the plans we'd made?" I asked. "You can be annoyed at me for whatever all you want, but we made business agreements."
He didn't care. I was too negative. I was too judgmental. I was entitled and blah blah blah blah.
Three years later, I ran into Paul in a bar in another city. I'd spent the whole time building my career up pretty well.
Dick was in rehab and jail. At some point, he disappeared. When he resurfaced, it was facing charges of GTA, possession, theft, kidnapping, and weapons posession. He'd also managed to knock up two different women in rapid sucession.
John and Yoko turned out to have opened up a company credit card in whatever business name they'd decided on. She ran it right up on fine dining and expensive baubles. Immediately. John also made the mistake of knocking Yoko up. His problem always was that he lost all spine wherever she was concerned. I really liked him, but everything seemed to be a masked ploy to get her whatever she wanted. He had also taken to stealing stuff from the facility and selling it.
Troy was the worst of them. He was the liaison with the property owner. He was the one controlling the bill payment.
He never paid a cent of his share of it. In fact, he was taking from the other guys and constantly coming up with ways to insist they needed more expense money. "Yeah, but guys, we have to pay for these repairs. Sure, we could wait for the landlord, but do you want clients to see this?"
And right into his pocket it would all go.
And Paul. Paul was back to essentially a mailroom guy. He was also homeless, sleeping on people's couches.
I decided to consider it lessons learned and forgive him. I was angry because we could have built an amazing company together if he had treated me with half the respect as the people who ripped him off.
Seven years later he did the same exact thing.
4. Hostel hostility
3. You're not alone out there...
2. Open up in there!
1. He just reloaded a checkpoint
There's a Boy Scout retreat in Colorado called Camp Cris Dobbins, which hosts week-long stays in shelters called "wall tents." They're essentially metal frames with thick canvas draped over them, and the ones at the camp in question offered just enough room for two people and their belongings. It was while I was seated in one of these tents that I experienced something which I previously pointed out as evidence of my having precognitive powers (back when I wanted to believe in that sort of thing), but which I now understand to be the result of some subtle warning sign that I hadn't consciously recognized.
Either way, a split-second decision may very well have saved my life.
I'd been hanging out with my bunk mate, trying to put the finishing touches on a campfire story that we were going to tell later on that evening. He was seated on his cot, I was on mine, and we'd positioned a trunk between them as a sort of makeshift table. Notes and sketches on scraps of paper had been arranged in a fairly haphazard manner all around us, and anyone who happened to peer inside would have likely assumed that my friend and I were working toward a very tight deadline... which wouldn't have been far from the truth.
See, the two of us were supposed to be helping the rest of our Boy Scout Troop build an enormous tower out of nothing more than wood and rope. We could already hear everyone else shouting back and forth to each other as they sawed branches apart and dragged fallen trees from the forest, and we knew that it wouldn't be long before someone noticed our absence. I kept my attention half-focused on those sounds as we worked, listening for anyone calling for either me or my friend.
That's probably what triggered my intuition.
With no recognizable prompting whatsoever, my mind was suddenly filled with images of my head being smashed open by a thick log. I could see the scene playing out almost as though it was a memory: The battering ram was going to fall through the back wall of my tent, catch me squarely in the skull, then plow me into the floor before I could even think to react. It seemed like an oddly specific (and unlikely) sequence of events... but after hurriedly shouting to my bunk mate to follow my lead, I moved out of the way nonetheless.
Barely a second had passed before everything played out exactly as I'd imagined: A broad log came tumbling through the tent's rear wall, landing squarely between my cot and my friend's trunk. Our papers went flying, several of our belongings were crushed, and the Scouts who had been transporting the timber came running around to survey the damage. Nobody was hurt, thankfully, and my brain was intact (at least as much as it had been), but I was so shocked by the accuracy of my prediction that I almost convinced myself I could genuinely see the future.
In the end, my friend and I wound up using that near-miss as the basis for our campfire story.
