A good rule of thumb to follow is to always trust your gut. If your instincts are sounding the alarm bells left and right, yelling at you that something is wrong, then it probably is. Listening to that feeling of yours can protect not just you, but the folks you care about, too.

In a brutally honest and captivating online thread, AskReddit revealed the times that their instincts told them that they or someone else was in danger, and that they needed to leave ASAP. They went into detail about what happened when they decided to ignore their instincts and stay. Keep scrolling to read their scary experiences. And remember… always, always, always trust your gut!

#1

Participating in the LDS (Mormon) Temple endowment ceremony as an 18 year old kid. Made terrifying promises to a religion and a god without having much say in the matter which then created severe anxiety, shame, and guilt that I lived with on a daily basis until I finally left the cult 8 years later.

Image credits: pomegranateprints

#2

In 5th grade my math teacher made me and another girl stay after school. He said we did too well on the test. We must have cheated. I always got a weird feeling around him, but when it was just him and us, he was actually smelling our hair. When I finished my test, he told me to leave.

There was no way that I was going to leave him alone with the other girl. I told him my dad said I had to walk home with the other girl. The teacher said I was lying. I was, but I told him to call my dad and tell my dad that he thought his daughter was a cheater and a liar. My dad was super friendly but built like a grizzy bear. He let me wait for her to finish the test.

Image credits: SpendLessLiveMore

#3

My old boss was an…interesting guy. He came from a rough part of town and had a bunch of tattoos that really made him look scary but he was actually a nice guy. I asked him about his massive chest tattoo which led him to a story about his younger brother, John.

John was a pretty gentle guy but he started hanging out with blokes from his home town that weren’t exactly right in the head. One night they all hanging around drinking, as they did most nights when one of the blokes breaks out some m**h, John politely declines and just continues drinking. The energy was getting really weird, guys breaking windows with their bare fists, bleeding all over the place, verbal a**se being hurled, just an all round wonderful atmosphere. At one point someone broke out a tattoo gun and started doing home jobs. John really wanted to leave but couldn’t because he was quite drunk so he had to stay. Some one ended up spiking his drink so while he was blacked out one of the guys tattooed a sw*stika on his forehead.

Image credits: anon

As noted by the BBC, people tend to be the most accurate with their gut feelings when judging other individuals’ honesty. When asked to go with your intuition, you are more likely to guess correctly that someone is lying about an event than when you have to think through and verbalize the reasons.

However, how strong your intuition is depends a lot on your life experiences. “The unconscious brain rifles through its stored knowledge to find the best answer to our problems, without us consciously recalling the precise memories that power those feelings.”

The BBC points out that intuitive decision making can be especially vital when you’ve got tons of complex information to process. When you let your mind wander and do activities unrelated to all of that data overload, your unconscious brain sifts through the info.

#4

When I was a teenager I was best friends with a girl who had an older brother who had mental health issues. This led to him also drinking a lot and generally being a d**k.

One night we were hanging out in her basement and he came home drunk. As soon as I heard him coming down the stairs I knew it was going to be bad.

He walked into the room, looked at us and said “ What are you b**ches doing down here?”

My friend had a big shepherd/ chow mix and the dog immediately got up and stood between him and us growling.

My friend yelled for her dad and that set her brother off. He lunged at her and the dog grabbed him by the arm. Suddenly I was trapped standing on a couch, up against the wall .

Her brother is on the ground kicking at the dog. The dog is clamped down on his arm and not letting go. My friend is next to me screaming for her dad.

Dad rushes in, tries to separate them to no avail. Her Mom had called the cops from upstairs ( not the first time ) and they show up.

I s**t you not, the second the cops came the dog let go on his own and stood in front of my friend again. Cops arrest her brother and her dad drives me home. I never went over their again unless she could promise me he wouldn’t be there.

Image credits: sugamonkey

#5

I worked with a girl when I was 18. She was 4 years older than me, and we came from the same small hometown so knew some of the same people. I quickly understood she was not a great person. Narcissistic. Loved to pit people at work against each other by spreading rumors. Backhanded compliments. Dominated every conversation by turning into something about herself. You probably know the type. She didn’t like me because I ended up explaining her behavior to our boss after she tried [and failed] to get me fired over a rumor she created.

She didn’t last long, thankfully. People caught on, and they knew me well enough to trust that I’m a decent person in that regard.

Fast forward to my later-twenties, back in my hometown. She walks into a bar with my friend. We are awkwardly polite. The night wears on. Drinks. We get to talking and are actually laughing together. It seems like the past is distant. I say I’m going to leave. She looks directly into my eyes and asks if she can come with me.

It was like looking into the eyes of a demon. Every hair on the back of my neck and forearms. Heart rate increased. Cold sweat and the blood drained from my face. But, drunk me, severely lonely from previous years, thinking only of that night’s chemistry, said yes. Told myself it was just the anxiety of such a physically attractive woman asking to come home with me.

We ended up dating for almost a year. I have never been more physically, psychologically, or emotionally ab**ed, cheated on, and just destroyed inside. It was severe. My cat’s hair started falling out from the stress in the home [he’s been a happy, healthy chonk before and after, don’t worry]. I won’t go into details. But, it was ugly. I was so turned around as a male abuse victim that I had been gaslighted into thinking I was an a****r.

I finally got out, but had to do it alone. With narcissistic ab**ers, they tend to look for people they can use, that have something, that are unique, stand out, etc. People with potential. I made myself seem thoroughly “pathetic” [what a person like that would think is pathetic], and she casually moved away and found a new victim.

We still shared some friends and she had convinced most of them that I was a bad person. But in time her nature hurt all of them, and while I had moved on and made new friends, they slowly trickled back into my life and related their own horror stories of her.

Ultimately I became stronger and grew in many ways from it, and can even trust, but I’ll always have to struggle with thinking no one is ever interested in me so not picking up on it, and confusing boundaries/self-respect for hurting my partner and potentially causing a serious altercation.

That night in the bar I should’ve just left. Every sense in my body told me to get away from her. But I stayed.

Image credits: Marshall-947

#6

I got this feeling on my wedding day to my now ex husband. Getting my hair & makeup done, putting on the big white dress, listening to how excited everyone was, and the entire time I felt white and sick to my stomach. It was like a burning ball inside me, and I felt cold all over. I kept wanting to hide, and I remember my Dad jokingly saying “We can still make a run for it!” and I wish now I’d of taken him up on it. Not even three months after the wedding, he started picking out what I could wear (you shouldn’t be wearing pants, women should wear skirts & dresses!), complaining that I wasn’t working TWO jobs instead of just one, and not ever letting me out of his sight when I was home from work (I couldn’t even walk to the mailbox alone).

A month or so after that, when I’d had enough and started pushing back, he attacked me and started hitting me, right in front of his brother. I remember begging his brother to help me, and instead he sneered and said “Women like you get what you deserve”, and when I yelled that I would call the cops, my husband said “Go ahead, I have many cop friends.” The very next day I made a phone call to an old school friend telling him my address and that I would be at the end of the road at a certain time. When my husband was outside working on his boat, I threw a few clothes into a bag and ran.

Filed for divorce and never looked back. Ended up working two jobs (haha) and living with my grandmother until I could get back on my feet. Listen to your gut ladies. It might save you a lot of bruises and maybe even your life!

Image credits: paramourns

When you focus too much on analyzing your options, you can sometimes end up making worse decisions than when you rely on your often quite accurate, intuitive impressions. In short, when you feel overwhelmed, take a breather, get some space, and let your mind sort things out on its own.

Meanwhile, if you want to improve your intuition, you should aim to grow in terms of emotional intelligence. A core part of that means working to understand exactly what it is you’re feeling and where those emotions come from. “Over time, you may find it easier to discern when you are receiving a genuine and accurate signal. Your gut feelings will never be completely foolproof, but with practice, they can become an important guide.”

#7

Lots of bad stories but I don’t feel like telling those.

Probably the biggest life lessons had to do with getting fired. I was unhappy with my workplace but stuck it out because I believed that’s what you do. If I ever get that feeling again, I’m looking for work elsewhere. It doesn’t matter how woke your workplace claims to be, if you’re feeling stressed and like people are out to get you, they are.

Same with romantic relationships, friends, whatever. That’s your early warning system, listen.

Image credits: coldbloodedjelydonut

#8

I used to work at a theme park as a food and beverage supervisor (this was about 10 years ago).

I knew the place like the back of my hand because I grew up in the area and went a lot as a kid, and had been working there about 3 years.

During the quiet periods of the day we would take it in turns to go for a “cigarette break”, our nearest break area was past a nearby rollercoaster. On my way back from one break I stop mid stride and look down at this coaster going under the path. “That didn’t sound right” I think to myself. I check my radio is tuned in, and press on back to my food outlet.

20 minutes pass and I’ve forgotten about this when there is an almighty thud, the lights flicker and in less time than it took to check the fryer settings were ok my radio lights up, chaos on the waves.

I hear amongst the chaos “Echo 4, code 11, section 8” which roughly translates to “watsis-name, serious incident, emergency service access only, section 8.” I respond “Received, on it.”

We shut everything down and start redirecting customers around the area, that rollercoaster had crashed, 2 people died and 3 are now perminently disabled.

That turned out to be a rough day.

Image credits: Watsis_name

#9

Kinda late but when I slept over at my then boyfriends house with a few of his friends.
I had a horrid feeling right away.

I hated the girls who were also sleeping over so that didn’t help things but my bf told me not to worry about them, as the night went on I was starting to feel sick from being around people I didn’t like and the food. I took some ibuprofen in hopes it would help and 20 minutes later I was throwing up some back substance.

It was 1am at this point. I couldn’t go home so my ex took me upstairs to his bed so I could get some proper rest, the feeling only got worse after he left.

I tried sleeping but after 2 hours I was still awake, I opened the window to get some air and there was my boyfriend in the garden in a makeshift bed hugging with both of the girls…

I just went to sleep crying.

He continued to “cheat” on me thoughout the rest of the relationship. I finally left him last October and I’m definitely a lot better.

Image credits: anon

As per The Guardian, based on research done by neuroscientist and psychologist Joel Pearson, from the University of New South Wales, there are five rules for understanding and safely using your intuition. These rules are easy to remember using the acronym SMILE:

1. Self-awareness of your emotional state, not trusting yourself when you’re stressed or emotional
2. Mastery refers to the fact that your intuition isn’t reliable if it’s your first time doing something
3. Impulses and innate reflexes are not the same as intuition
4. Low probability means that our brains are bad at understanding odds, and we tend to attribute random events to intuition
5. Environment refers to the idea that you should trust your gut only in predictable, familiar contexts

#10

I got bitten in the shoulder by a homeless person I had one too many drinks with .

Another time would have to of been an an illegal squat rave – was tripping hard on ac*d sitting at a desk in this abandoned office. Some dude came upto me and I could tell maybe from tripping that he wasn’t at all a good person… Stayed anyway and he robbed me and my girlfriend for all our possessions.

Image credits: willswavey

#11

Middle of food service in the kitchen, I slid on some grease, but didn’t care because it was busy. I was almost off but stayed to help the other dishwasher get caught up. A small grease fire breaks out on the grill, no big deal, this happens a lot and they often times put themselves out, then some of that flaming grease gets on the floor and kitchen fire. Get the extinguisher and put it out… yeah, not fun.

Image credits: anon

#12

I was at a carnival when I wanted to go on the ride but I wasn’t tall enough, one of the staff for the ride offers to go on the ride with me so stupid 10 year old me went, even though I felt something was VERY off.

I am on the ride and the staff member starts asking very weird questions such as “are you from this area?” “What school do you go to?” “How old are you?” And I remember this one question very clearly and it was: “do you like boys or girls?”

10 year old me didn’t know what that meant at the time or that I shouldn’t have answered those questions. I even ended up giving him my f*****g address. I was such a moron…

We get off the ride and I go home immediately after. I tell my parents and they don’t pay much attention to it. A day later I’m trying to sleep in my bed when I hear my door creek open: “mommy” I said because I thought it was her about to kiss me goodnight. Nope.

It’s the same staff member trying to pull me out of my bed pointing a glock to my face. My dad right behind him with a baseball bat. My chad of a father walks him and calls the police, they get the man out of the house, and turns out he was a wanted kidnapper. He had kidnapped multiple children, also, at the time of him trying to kidnap me, he was extremely overdosed on c*****e.

Well, there’s my story, if anyone has any questions I will do my best to answer them as quickly as possible. Have a great day everyone and good luck sleeping tonight if your a parent!

Edit: TL;DR I almost get kidnapped as a little 10 year old after going on a ride with a stranger at a carnival ignoring my natural instinct to get the f**k out of there.

Image credits: anon

Which of these stories shocked you the most? When was the last time that your gut told you that something was incredibly wrong, and this turned out to be true? When did you last ignore your instincts? Generally speaking, do you think your instincts are trustworthy or do they miss more than they’re accurate?

We’d like to hear from you. Share your close-call experiences in the comments section at the bottom of this post.

#13

First year of college. Was on the subway going back home. There are three girls sitting in front of me, laughing. I look at them. They seem to be laughing while looking at me sometimes. I get the feeling that something is off and I get the urge to stand up and leave while there are still people around. I stay though, trying not to give it any importance. A few stops later, Im alone with only the three girls and the driver.

Then I see it. One of the girls has a switchblade on her hand. I get nervous but try not to show. I miss my subway station and wait for the next one. In the next station, right when the doors are about to close, I bolt out of the wagon.

Sure enough, the girl bolts behind me. Now I do know I’m in trouble. Luckily, on the other side, the other train has just arrived. I change platforms running and manage to squeeze into the other train. She doesn’t make it. As the train leaves, I see her smiling at me from the platform while running the open switchblade through her neck in a menacing motion.

Image credits: FalkenDagenhart

#14

It was Silvester 2016/17. I went down to throw some firework as usual. But on the way down I felt a weird feeling in my stomach but I ignored that. Long story short, a polish firecracker exploded from the other side on the road and the leftovers flew right into my left eye and I couldn’t see on said eye for at least 2 month. Since then I’m not participating Silvester and I also don’t ignore that d**n feeling in my stomach 😄.

Image credits: Galil030

#15

It was summer of 2016 and my mom wanted to do something fun as a family. We had been having a really tough year since my dad had died in February and we needed some time to have fun.

My mom, brother, sister, and best friend (she’s basically a part of the family) all went to the Wisconsin Dells and got a really nice room and everything. A few days into the trip, my sister started talking about how much she wanted to go horseback riding while we were there since she had never been. Horseback riding isn’t a big attraction of the Dells, but there was a small ranch a little bit out of our way that we could go to.

Nobody believes me when I tell them, but after we got out of the car and were about to meet the horses I felt this feeling of dread. I felt like something was going to go wrong and that we should leave. My mom convinced me that I was just nervous and we went to ride the horses.

We all got on our horses and everything was going fine. The group was led in a straight line down a path. So my brother was in front, my friend was in front of me, behind me was my sister, and behind her was my mother. (this doesn’t seem important, but you’ll understand later) Throughout the ride, my mother’s horse wanted to go faster and went in front of my sister. My sister got left behind a bit, but when we were getting off the horses she caught up.

At the station where we were getting off the horses, my mother’s horse was getting fussy. As I was getting off my horse, I heard my mom yell a bit, a lot of shuffling from her horse, and my sister scream. I look back and see my sister hunched over her horse and her flip flop had flown off her foot.

She got off the horse and upon trying to walk on the leg shrieked in agony. She got rushed to a hospital as soon as possible.

My mom’s horse had kicked my sister’s leg and snapped her calf in half.

Basically, the person leading our group of horses knew that my mom’s horse was supposed to stay in the back due to its habit of kicking, but didn’t enforce it. We couldn’t sue because of the contract we signed beforehand.

Sadly, the story doesn’t end there. We went home after the trip with my sister in a splint. The doctors near the Dells had said that surgery wouldn’t be necessary, but when she went to get a cast on back where we live, the doctors decided she would need surgery. During the surgery, they found that the wound had not been cleaned properly and that a hole down to her bone had been exposed all this time. She had three staph infections and needed to have a pic-line at home for weeks.

It also didn’t help that my sister is a very… agitated person. So after a while, my mother refused to help her due to the verbal abuse. This left me responsible for her medication and to take the abuse on myself.

Long story short, I should’ve listened to my instincts and made my family leave that ranch while we had the chance.

#16

When I was 19, my friend (19F) and her sister and cousin (both 21F) and I, drove all the way from Boston to New Orleans to attend a three day music festival. We ended up meeting with a random group of guys (who also happened to be from Boston and had mutual friends) at a bar. We hung out together as one big group and went bar hopping. By the end of the night, when it was time to go back to where we were staying, my friend insisted on going to one of the guy’s hotel rooms. I knew right then and there it was a bad idea and we needed to get out of there. However, she refused to listen. I could have left and gone back to where we were staying, but me her sister and her cousin, felt it would be better if we stayed with the group of guys in case something ended up happening to my friend. Me the cousin and the sister and the group of guys all walked down a side street to get liquor from a liquor store. While walking down that street we were robbed at gunpoint. The guys we were with RAN AWAY. The men who were robbing us took everything. After the robbery, a police officer let us use his phone to call my friend. Because we were mad at her for putting us in the situation SHE REFUSED TO HELP US. I have never hated somebody more in my life.

#17

When I was in 8th grade, my family went on a cruise and on the last day, the cruise was supposed to stop at the ship’s private island. We had pre-rented bikes for that day, but when we left the ship, the sky looked like it was about to storm.. and badly. I remember telling my parents that I didn’t want to go bike riding anymore, that I had a bad feeling about it. They brushed it off bc they had already paid and they wanted their money’s worth. We got to the bike rental and they didn’t have hand brakes, second red flag. I know some bikes now don’t have hand brakes but I’ve never ridden one, so I wasn’t super comfortable with stopping by backpedaling. Fast forward 30 minutes or so into our bike ride and I took too quick a turn, hit a rock and flew off my bike, hitting my head (thankfully had a helmet on), breaking my collarbone, and scraping up my elbows and knees pretty badly. I still hold it over my parents head to this day (jokingly of course).

#18

My grandpas funeral. we were all at the funeral home and i just had this uneasy feeling. my mom and dad got mad at me when i asked to go outside, saying it wasn’t right and i was disrespectful. Anyway, 5 minutes later, everyone starts screaming because the attic of the funeral home caught fire. We had to evacuate, and then my late grandpas wife starts screaming about where the body was. My dad started laughing saying that his dad is probably laughing at us.

#19

I was hiking down a trail and I felt like I was being watched. I’ve read a lot of stories about people going missing in the woods, so I was hyper aware of every little thing. Instead of going down this one path, I turned around and walked back. I still felt like I was being watched, so I power up my blue tooth speaker, plug in my hiking mp3 and blast some heavy music. A few minutes later the feeling passes.

A day later I heard someone was attacked by a mountain lion on the trail I was going to hike on.

#20

5 years ago I was at a family Christmas party, (I was 10) to visit my dad’s side of the family as we new he wouldn’t be there because he was in jail. My memory’s a little fuzzy due to a lot of memory blockage but I remember feeling very sick and uncomfortable on the way there. I wanted to leave immediately but ended up staying.

The whole time I felt like my body was screaming at me that something was wrong and I needed to get the hell out. I was extremely uncomfortable the whole time and everytime I went near my uncle, usually because he wanted a hug, the feeling got worse.

There was one moment when I was sitting on my other uncles lap (let’s call him B), because I really adored him and hadn’t seen him in ages, and I was really tired, and I felt safe. Eventually he had to get up and my uncle who made me uncomfortable (let’s call him K) suggested I sit on his lap. I agreed uncomfortably.

Every fibre of my being screamed and twisted, and I froze in place. It felt nothing like sitting on B’s lap. It felt disgusting and made me want to scream. I got off not soon after and went to the bathroom and cried. I felt so sick and horrible and I just wanted to leave. I was terrified because I had no idea what was going on. I tried my best to avoid K for the rest of the evening before we eventually left.

Halfway during the drive back home I broke into hysterics. I was screaming and crying in the front seat and my mother was terrified because I wouldn’t tell her what was wrong. Part of my memory had come back and I remembered/realised uncle K had sexually a**sed me for most of my childhood. Still severely suffering from that.

#21

I had a really bad feeling at my boss when I worked at a Public Access Cable channel. I felt like she was a really bad person, a manipulative narcissist, and just a monster in general. Whenever she came into the room my whole body would go numb and I just knew that it was a sign that she wasn’t a good person. Sometimes after we would talk I would go into the bathroom feeling totally shaken and start crying and I didn’t really know why.

As time wore on I started to get more anxious and became convinced that she was installing listening equipment in my office and that she could hear when I would talk to my coworkers or when I would waste time at work. At some point I believe I had my coworker help me look for it. She just knew a lot of things and it didn’t make sense how she knew them. She told me that she used to date girls too, and she knew I was a lesbian, so I often wondered what the motive was behind that and if she was into me.

Maybe 6 months or so into the job I had somewhat of a mental breakdown and was held against my will in a psych ward for 6 days and medicated for bipolar 1 disorder. After 2 months or so of partial hospitalization and not seeing her because they were doing construction, we met for lunch.

And all the bad feelings were gone. And I could see that she cared deeply about me. She’s even gonna write a recommendation letter for me to get into grad school, and occasionally checks in on me.

Mental illness f***s you up, man. The feelings I had around her were just… feelings. But they were so intense I couldn’t question them. I’m grateful (sometimes) to be medicated now because I can see my relationships for what they are and not what I’m feeling. I’m also glad I kept that job while I had my breakdown, and that I stuck around even though I wanted to leave because I was so terrified of her.

I mean she definitely had her faults (she’d call every morning super early and pretend like she was ordering a pizza from the office lol, she had genuine boundary issues and she was SUPER MANUPULATIVE) but she wasn’t a monster by any means.

Ok that’s it.

#22

I helped my friend run away from her parents that night, she wanted to leave town because they wanted to send her to rehab (we were both heavy m**h users at the time, at the ripe ages of 15-17 & we knew what was best. Duh). Ended up having someone we knew drove by, saw us, and they called the cops as everyone in town knew said girl was reported missing. Twenty mins later we had the cops at the door, her parents, (her little sister in the freaking car outside, listening to her parents scream at her older sister.
I’ll never forget hearing her scream loudest through all the chaos) as we were all screaming and crying as well lol last thing I remember is running down the road with my five other friends, leaving the one behind with her parents and the cops. She ended up going to rehab, got clean, and is in nursing school now. I can’t say the same for myself lol I got pregnant at 22, but I’ve been clean since I was 18. That was about five years ago now.

#23

Family all visited my grandparents, and I always took that time to be rowdy outside with my cousin. We played games inside all day until they told us to play outside. Walking around at night with my cousin, we tried to come back to the house and turns out we got locked out, as it was like 12 and they thought we were in bed. We had his yellow lab, Yoshi, walking with us. They lived pretty deep in the country, so his dog was used to coyotes, bears, etc. I got this awful feeling in my chest, mentioned it to my cousin who just said “Yoshi isn’t acting weird, so everything is okay!” I trusted that for the most part, but knew Yoshi could outrun us and we really didnt have a house to bolt back into in case something happened.

We kept walking until I nearly tripped on Yoshi who was just frozen and whimpering. Her tail was between her legs, and she was staring at this huge bush. The feeling I had in my gut hadn’t left me, and I just panicked and stared into the bush. I heard a rustle and Yoshi started barking like crazy, before growling. My cousin and I took that queue to take off running back towards the house. I heard Yoshi yelp but we kept running.

Whatever it was didn’t follow us, and after about 5 minutes Yoshi came running back to us. She didn’t have any scratches on her, but it scared the s**t out of me. After we calmed down, I remembered my Grandma telling everyone she could have sworn she saw a Mountain Lion in her garden a few days ago. They were in Oklahoma, so no one took that seriously as a Mountain Lion that far into OK was pretty uncommon. Week or so later, it was all over the news that there was a Mountain Lion in the area. It had been hit and k**led a few miles from where we were. I am positive that the awful feeling I had was us being stalked.

#24

Horrible s**t. I think I’m just unlucky.

Watched a man die.

Watched a man get his s**t f****d up by 5 attackers.

Saw cops aggressively arrest someone in front of a liquor store and they damaged my car.

The people I was around started shooting up d***s.

A guy jumped from a building and broke his arms and legs.

The people around me commited a hate crime.

My car died and I had to walk home with a very angry and drunk person.

Got mugged. During a school trip.

Had to explain a break and enter that I had nothing to do with. For 14 hours.

A guy took a baseball bat to his wife at a party and sone people locked him in a trunk and threw him off the balcony.

I like to hurry up and get my a*s away, but when I didn’t, it was stressful. It was always peer pressure, or my own fear of being a party pooper that got me in trouble.

#25

Ive been r***d twice by two different men. I dont stay anywhere that my internal alarms tell me not to. I also don’t really trust men. 1 was a guy I didnt know well. The other was a man I had known since I was 14, was like a father to me, and had never done anything that would lead me to believe he would do that.

The first one took my virginity when I was 13. Friends left me f****d up (d***s and alcohol) and passed out. I woke up to this happening.

The second one was the worst though. I trusted this man with my life. We were all partying and drinking (I was in my mid 20s) and I got too drunk to drive and decided to stay and sleep it off. As I’m falling asleep my alarms start ringing, I needed to get up and go home asap. I’m like nah, all is good in safe here. I always was before, right? Not that night… That’s the one that still haunts me.

#26

I got invited to a party by some random guy I met outside a club, I went to said “party” with him as I was drunk and thought “Sure, why not?”, this entailed going to a run down house in a Council Estate (the UK equivalent of a Project I guess), to enter the house we had to climb in through a window where there were five people sat in a circle made of half broken chairs and a mouldy couch. After entering the window the guy locked it behind him, it was at this point I instantly felt sober again and realised that something was wrong.

That’s when the Cr*ck C*****e and H****n came out, a woman who was part of the circle who apparently owned the house started telling a story about how her husband had hung himself in the stairwell, her kids had been taken away and that she kept a sharpened screwdriver under her pillow in case “they” came for her.

I was well past wanting to leave at this point, I didn’t have an escape though and my nervousness showed, that’s when paranoia set in within the “circle”, the guy who had brought me there had become incredibly tense, the slightest noise and he would flip out. He stood by the curtains peeping through mumbling to himself about the police watching him. I had to prove I wasn’t wearing a “wire” at this point.

Before long however the d***s began to run out, this made the paranoia be temporarily forgotten. I saw a chance here and said I had money and I could buy more d***s, the guy said he would book a taxi for us to go in.

About 15 minutes later a taxi turned up, he unlocked the window and I jumped out first and slammed it shut behind me, ran as fast as I could towards the taxi, jumped in the front seat and just shouted “DRIVE!, DRIVE!” to the taxi driver who took off down the street and to the safety of home.

Closest I’ve ever felt to being m******d.

#27

I was walking home from the library in college and decided to dip into the bar to see friends. It was about midnight/1am when I left the bar, maybe after one drink, put my backpack back on and decided to call my brother who was three hours behind to walk me home. As we were chatting, I was getting into the more residential part of campus. Few people. Dark streets. And a guy starts walking along the other side of the road from me. I just barely notice. It’s a big two lane rd and he was about five feet behind. I sped up, slowed down, and he matched pace.

“[brothers name] I have to get off the phone and call the cops, a guy is following me” I said as loudly as I could.

The guy f*****g SPRINTS away as I hang up on my brother.

Being 20, I then decided it was stupid to call the cops if the guy was already gone, went back to the Main Street and found a sober guy and asked him to walk me home. Luckily, it worked out. My brother called like eight times to make sure I was okay.

There was a string of stabbings on campus that semester and I wish to this day I’d called the cops.

#28

I have a great story for you all.

Went to visit my sister in a very small town for the school holidays, met some guys (2 guys) across the street from her house, hung out with them for a couple of days, smoked A LOT of weed.. Weed supply got low and the 1 guy said we could go get some more from his friends, got in the car and he pulled up at a police station and went in, said he’ll be back soon.. Bad feeling, paranoid AF, and as high as a kite, me and the 1 guy in the car freaked out, as we were planning our escape, I was sitting in the back, only 2 door car, the guy came out of police station with 4 cops, they got in their police van and he got back in casually, we were asking loads of questions but all he said was – just chill and you’ll be fine. He drove deep into the woods/plantation with the police following us, I left my phone at his house, dont know her number by heart, couldn’t let my sister know where I am, guys in front won’t give me their phone, at that moment I thought.. this is how I die and my body will never be found, or get sold on the black market, thoughts racing wild in my mind, trying to plan which way to run, only girl between 6 men, 4 of them armed, don’t know their last names, nothing..

We stopped in the middle of nowhere, both guys and the shady looking cops got out, stood oneside and chatted, 1 cop instructed the guy that was driving to get me, I refused to get out the car, guy promised me everything will be fine… I just thought, its over.. let me just co-operate, cops asked me if I have been smoking weed, where I’m from, does anyone know where I am, do I have a phone on me, answered honestly… stupid I know.. the interrogating cop grinned and said, well thats great news, looks like we will be having some fun today, other cops and guys chuckled, he pulled out a massive joint, lit it up and blew the biggest cloud i have ever seen.

As it all turned out, we had a great time, smoking some A class evidence, turns out all the guys were great, had a blast, came out of the situation unscathed with a great story to tell.

#29

This one’s a bit long so bear with me. I went to a house party thrown by a friend and while i was there, i met a bunch of people whom i ended up having fun with. A little while after midnight, one of the guys i met asked if i wanna go clubbing with their group so he called an uber and i went with them.

The red flags started popping up when we were lining up for the first club we went to. He was saying stuff like “i only wanted to go to town bc you wanted to” even tho he was the one who asked me to come. He then proceeded asking questions about my living situation. I live in a very strict apartment where u need an access keycard just to get into the building and one of the rules stated in the contract was no visitors after 10pm. The guy clearly wanted to go home with me after clubbing because he kept trying to make loopholes just so he could come back with me to my place. I was persistent in saying no to all his efforts on that matter.

Later on, when we finally got into the club, we “lost” the other people we came with. At that time i didnt think much of it, but looking back at it, i now find it quite dodgy how he didnt even try and look for them and that he was intentionally trying to separate me and him from the group. After buying some drinks, me and the guy (it was just the two of us at this point) bumped into a group of people he knew from high school while the guys were catching up, i was talking to the girls in that group. They were so kind and friendly that I was gonna stay a bit longer to talk, but the guy pulled me away and said “theyre just gonna talk your ear off” and pulled me to the dance floor. Not even 30 minutes later, he asked me if I wanna go to a different club bc the music sucked at that one and I agreed to it. While we were making our way thru the crowd, heading for the exit, i saw one of the guys who we were with at the beginning of that night and I tried calling out his name, but the guy ended up pulling me away and saying “it’s fine. He’s in his own vibe, let’s just go.”

When we were walking to the other club, he was telling me about the fights he’s had at his workplace and it honestly kind of bothered me how much he was bragging about getting into fights (he works at a club but that night it was his day off). When we finally got to the other club, I felt more and more uncomfortable as he was trying to position me so he can grind on me, while we were on the dancefloor. He was literally grabbing me like I’m a ragdoll. Everytime I move towards the crowd, he would try and lead me back towards the wall and it confused me at first as to why he was doing that. Eventually, he tried pinning me against the wall and talking to me with his mouth close to my ear, as though he was just waiting for the timing to try and do something else. I managed to get away from that position, but then he grabbed me and wrapped one arm around my waist and the other one was kinda just going places while his groin was pressed against my back. I was trying my best to move forward to break free from him but every time I do, he would just pull me back.

After a while, I told him I needed water, because I was trying to come up with a way to get away from him but he just followed me. While I was at the bar getting water, I told him I was tired and I just wanted to go home and he became agitated, telling me I k**led his vibe and how I ruined his night and he wouldnt have gone clubbing if it weren’t for me, etc.

I’m thankful nothing worse happened to me that night, but to be honest, I let my fear and anxiety get the best of me hence why I decided to just go with the flow instead of walking away from the situation or calling a bouncer for help because I didn’t want to cause a scene and create drama especially because we have mutual friends. I’ve definitely learned my lesson tho.

#30

I went to some kinda church thing with a friend, it was like a little Christmas play or something. We were sitting in the auditorium waiting for the show to start when I started seeing smoke pour out from behind the stage… it was bellowing out too, and nobody seemed to be noticing it. It reminded me of videos I’ve seen of fires. Anyway, I wanted to leave but didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ so I stayed. Turns out it was just a smoke machine and I’m a d*****s, but man was my fight or flight activated.

#31

I went to the CN Tower with my family. As soon as we got to the top, I started feeling like something was wrong but I couldn’t pinpoint what the problem was.

I didn’t see anything amiss, I was not in pain or dizzy or anything, but I just knew I had to leave. Since I was 10, I couldn’t just go back down on my own and I didn’t want to ruin my family’s fun so I tried to ignore the feeling.

Every second I was up there the feeling that I had to leave got stronger and stronger. After about 5 minutes I couldn’t ignore it anymore and found my dad and told him I was going back down. At least, I tried to tell him, I got about two words out and everything went black.

I woke up to a crowd of people standing over me and an employee bringing me a wheelchair. The first thing the employee asked was if I had ear problems. I do have extensive ear problems.

Turns out that people with ear problems are known to have issues with adjusting to the change in altitude when going up the tower. I’m just glad I learned that lesson before I ever tried to get on an airplane haha.

#32

Two knife wounds, five broken bones, a concussion, various scrapes and bruises, and a crushed testicle.

Got ambushed walking home from a friend’s place, because I took the wrong shortcut. Two of them against me. One with a small baseball bat, the other with a pocket knife.

#33

I got in a fistfight that ended with me having a broken nose, broken wrist, and my face torn because they were wearing rings. I stayed cause my ride was doing something.

#34

This actually just happened.

Boyfriend and I went with the realtor to look at a house. We knew it was a not great area, but the price was right and it looked decent.

We had to park at the nearby beer store because we couldn’t fit the suv in the narrow driveway. As we walked two blocks to the house, I said I’m not feeling safe. I actually grew up nearby, and I didn’t have a problem with the overall area, but something felt really sketchy.

As soon as we get inside the house, not even closed the door yet, a guy who looked very dangerous and had a face tattoo, walked up and knocked on the screen door. The house had a for sale sign out front and it was obvious we didn’t live there. He asked how much the place was going for. The realtor was hesitant but said she would have to look it up. I knew the price and told him, hoping he would just leave. Realtor closed the screen door again, and he was cupping his hands over his eyes to peek inside. She closed the main door.

We were talking in the kitchen and saw him move past the side of the building, checking out the backyard. He was casing the place to rob it.

As we left, my boyfriend asked if we should call the cops, but all we had was our suspicion and a vague description.

Later that day, someone posted a screenshot from their porch camera of someone stealing a package from them. It definitely looked like the same guy.

#35

As a teen, two of my friends were going to meet a guy one of them had met at the mall. The second friend was going for safety. I had a terrible feeling about this, tried to talk them out of it. For some reason, I’m oddly compelled to go with them (and usually there would have been no chance of me doing something that seemed reckless and dangerous). Anyway, we all get picked up from the school. We’re driving along, guy heads to the city from the suburbs. As we’re talking, he gets a phone call, tells the caller what he’s up to, picked up girls, from x school. I get put on the phone. It’s my cousins boyfriend. Put the driver back on the phone. Driver becomes uneasy, drives us to a place in the city. A bunch of guys show up. Their all talking (not in English) and I can’t understand them but I have a really bad feeling about this, and they are getting agitated. They are gesturing, and I know my being there is a problem for them. My friends said something, the guy starts slapping her and grabbing at her breasts. I tell them all we’re going to the bathroom. Take the girls to the bathroom, sneak out the back, get them on transportation, go home. Staying off sidewalks, we could hear their cars speeding up and down streets looking for us on the way to the station. As scary as it was, it looks like it would have been so much worse if I hadn’t been there or we stayed.

#36

So when I was 24 years old I really wanted to visit San Francisco. I’ve never been there but always wanted to visit. Well I had someone that I knew who was FWB with me for short time, so why not? I told him I’m visiting there. I already had s*x with him and knew him for little bit, better than traveling by myself.

My friend warned me to be careful. I said I know the guy, don’t worry.
I was still nervous but I ignored that feeling.

Well, he ended up r**ing me when I was drunk. He didn’t ask for consent, he didn’t wait for me to sober up(he was sober) or anything. Just r***d me when I was laying down because I felt super dizzy from drinking(I’m also lightweight).

It took me years to be healed and it still angers me to this day.

#37

I was at a party with a friend, I knew absolutley no one there. It’s a small redneck town I was lucky to escape from as a kid. One guy there is very drunk and occasionally comes around to me to make a just a little too loud gay joke at my expense, I’m not gay. I just laugh at his jokes and play along with it, he seems offended by that.

Eventually the night winds down and the entire party has migrated to the back yard to sit and watch the stars. A feeling of unity emerges, it’s a nice moment. Suddenly the warning bell goes off. Get up and get out, right now! I look around to see GayJokes finally stumble around to the back to find everybody. “What the hell is everybody looking at?” I guess the concept of stargazing never occurred to him. He sees me and my friend sitting not far away. Without indication he lurches forward and punches my friend in the face. Then he swings at me, I have barely enough time to duck and I get popped in the ear.

As I regain my composure, I stand up to face him. I’d never been punched before but I know I can take this guy down. The crowd beats me to it though and swarm the guy. Not to fight him but to get him away from me and talk him down. I help my friend up, bid the party a curt adieu and leave.

#38

Happened when I was in High School. I had finally broken up with my boyfriend who was super a*****e but also incredibly popular at the school. But, after a month or so of dating he started hitting me when I disagreed with him and r***d me a few times. I had gone to the school counselor and she discouraged me from going to the police because it could “ruin his life” and turn me into a “social pariah.”

Anyway, after being discouraged from reporting and being afraid to tell my parents because I didn’t want to upset them I finally broke up with him. One night the weekend after the break up one of his friends called my home phone at 1 am. I answered the phone before my parents woke up and the “friend” informed me that my ex was incredibly drunk and ill. That he needed someone to take him home or the hospital. They were all freaking out but everyone at the party was too drunk to drive. Could I come get him? I said no and told him to just call my ex’s parents. But he freaked and threatened to just keep calling my home number until my parents woke up. And I didn’t want to have to explain everything to my parents because I was a dumb 16 year old girl. So I snuck out of the house and drove over to the party. The friend told me my ex was in the upstairs master bathroom. When I opened the door I was immediately grabbed by multiple guys. My ex and several of his friends had decided to punish me for leaving him. They pushed me over the tub and took turns holding me down to r**e me. I’m not even sure how many guys were there. I think 4-5. I was screaming my head off and finally someone else at the party heard. It was one of my own guy friends. He threw the guys off me and carried me out of the house. I was pretty shaken up. He asked what I wanted to do and I just wanted to go home because I was just so afraid. So he put me in my car and he got in his truck and followed me home. And for the rest of the school year he escorted me from my car to all of my classes and back to my car every single day without me even asking him to. He 100% saved my life that night. I’m so thankful for him and I just wish that I had been brave enough to have ignored that dumb school counselors advice and gone to the police all those years ago.

#39

Didn’t move to Canada and watched the US go to s**t.

#40

First boyfriend, 18 y.o., having a little party with close friends at his place where he lived with 2 more guys. One of them was super weird. Very religious but would get absolutely wasted and break stuff, his bedroom walls were full of bible verses, he was failing at most classes and overall, an absolute mess.

Anyway, another friend had bought some expensive bottle of whiskey so we were drinking it. This guy takes the bottle and just chugs on it. Then starts to jump like crazy, hitting the ceiling with his hands, just being weird and inconvenient.

Half an hour later we are talking and laughing and I hear him mumble to himself “stop laughing, I know you’re laughing at me”.

And he gets up and closes the kitchen door. I just knew something was up. I looked at my best friend and said “get up. We gotta go.”

As I finish my sentence he comes out holding a kitchen knife, with the f*****g craziest look I’ve ever seen in my life. The conversation stops. Everyone just freeze.

I knew I had to say something. So I said “Hey, can you put the song you used to play with your band? I wanna show everyone else”, with the most trembling voice that ever came out of my me lol.

And it was like he snapped out of it, my ex boyfriend told him to put the knife down, he got inside again and everyone just noped out of there. The night was over and my boyfriend asked me to sleep there. I, being the dumb f**k I was, accepted. But I locked the door and put all the furniture I could in front of it and heard that guy trying to open the door during the night.

Not knocking, not asking for us, just trying to open it. The other day my ex boyfriend told him he had to leave. I’m so glad I never had to see that guy again. Still freaks me out.

#41

The work culture at my old job. The very first day I realized there was something off. Tension in the air and everybody was quite focused on their tasks, silent. Unusual, because it was a casual place, not some big name formal place with a huge reputation to uphold for investors or whatever. I figured there was something in the onion that was poison, but I was genuinely curious and needed a job after being unemployed for a few months. I was trained well, there was no incompetency on the supervisors part, and everything was running smoothly. Then another new hire came in, clearly not well experienced in the field and made some minor f**k ups. That’s when I figured it out. The boss came out from his office and started screaming at him in front of everyone. He threw some s**t too. But I’ve never seen a man freak out so intensely over a mistake that could be resolved in two minutes. Like veins popping in his eyes type of rage.

I stayed for eight months sorta as a challenge, but after a while I came to the conclusion that a work place of fear is incredibly limiting. No creativity, everybody is always searching for another job, and only the status quo is fulfilled. Growth past what is established is impossible because it’s brutally crushed immediately. The owners essentially crippled expansion of a company that cannot succeed for long if it doesn’t open new branches.

#42

When I was a kid, I had a pet frog that lived in this big terrarium in our living room, with misters and all that. One week, we left the state to visit family, and I was insistent that we get someone to check in on my frog while we were gone (I think we’d put a lot of crickets in there before we left, so he had food? I can’t remember), but my parents said he’d be fine. While we were visiting our family, one of the aunts got a hangnail infection and we stayed a couple more days until she was good to go home. The whole time I was anxious about my frog.

Finally, we leave, travel like 12 or so hours to get home, and when I check on my frog, he’s just dried up. Flat as a pancake. I cried so hard and told my parents, who finally conceded that maybe we should’ve gotten someone to check on him. It’s been years, but I feel like that incident made me especially anxious whenever I have to leave my pets home for longer than I planned on.

#43

When I was 15 I was walking home from school and decided to cut down a path through a ravine to shave a couple minutes off the trip. It wasn’t a particularly sketchy place, the stretch of path I was walking on was only a few hundred meters long and lined by the backyards of homes, but my parents still told me never to walk down there alone. So I’m walking along, and up ahead I see a couple guys standing there near the exit to my street. Internally I started to freak out and had a strong feeling that I should turn around. As stupid as this sounds, the biggest reason I didn’t turn around is because they were both POCs and I didn’t want them thinking I was some racist kid turning and running at the sight of them. Plus, I was maybe 3 in the afternoon and we weren’t exactly in a secluded area. So I keep walking, and sure enough as I near them they stepped out into the path and blocked my way. Next thing I know there’s a gun in my face, another pointing my way, and I’m out a wallet and my iPod. And go figure, they told me to turn around and go back the way I came, so I still had to take the long way home.

#44

Buckle up, this is a long one.

I worked at an independent retail establishment. It was there for decades with the same landlord. Out of the blue, the old landlord sold the property. The new landlord was a d**k, and although he initially said the business owner, my boss, could stay, he reneged on the promise. My boss was the trusting sort and didn’t get it in writing. Because of that, my boss, had lost the lease. So she had to go. She was in the process of getting everything not already sold packed up. Note- shortly after receiving news that she had to close the business there, she got injured in a freak mishap at home. She was unable to actually participate in the packing, so it was mostly me by myself at the store. Because of her being unable to work, it was taking longer than expected to vacate the property.

The new leaseholder seemed friendly so my boss was nice enough to let him start moving his things in as her things emptied out. He had the keys and had been there to take measurements and what not a few times while I was otherwise alone. He seemed nice, but I was a little skeptical. The new property owner had invested heavily in new tenant’s business, and because of that association, I wondered if new tenant may have been shady too.

One night I was working late and was about to leave when I got a weird feeling. Something bad was going to happen. But I chalked it up to being overworked and tired and hungry, so I shrugged it off and went home.

The next morning when I went in it was a disaster. The place had been ransacked. The cash box had been pried open, ceiling tiles were pulled out, and the office and front desk looked like a tornado blew through. All the money on the premises was gone. The alcohol in the office (left over from a wine and shopping event some months before the close) all had been drank and empty bottles littered the floor. Random items were missing, mostly of which seemingly had no value, like the wall calendar and the crappy office chair.

The cops were called but really fudged the investigation. First, they didn’t interrogate anyone with the keys to the place (those people would have been the top suspects, myself included). And second, they didn’t take the empty bottles for DNA evidence or fingerprints. Boss and I are convinced it was either the new landlord, or possibly landlord and tenant working together.

So not only did my boss lose her business, she lost it with a lot of disappointment and shame. (Business couldn’t easily relocate because the building itself was a big part of the appeal.)

I felt really bad. If I had heeded my instinct, I would have told my boss about my gut feeling. I couldn’t have prevented everything, but I could have at least taken the cash off site that night before leaving and given it back as soon as I saw her. But no, I assumed I was just tired and hungry. And I’m gonna feel bad about it forever.

#45

January 8th, 2011, was in a Safeway supermarket in Tucson, Arizona, got a really bad gut feeling but went to get a few more groceries with my mother, we heard shooting in the parking lot and we ducked down in an aisle till we heard police. Turned out it was an assassination attempt on US Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

#46

I was a dumb 17 year old. My friend “Joe” and I smoked weed, a lot. One of then guys we brought it from, “David”, was in his early 30’s, lived in a normal house, had a wife (who he was in the process of divorcing and not living with), and one or two young kids. But he sold a lot of stuff besides weed: pills, m**h, etc. So he was involved with some sketchy people, but he was always really nice to us. A few times he fronted us weed when we couldn’t afford it. One time I had had the worst day ever and he just gave me some just to be nice. So needless to say, what happened to him really scared and upset me.

One night (sometime between 9-10pm), Joe and I went over to get some weed. David told us he was waiting on his connection to drop it off, it’d be about an hour if we wanted to wait here. I said yea sure, no big deal. But Joe said “no I want to leave.” I looked at him, surprised, and said it’s just an hour wait, by the time we drive home and come back it will be an hour anyways. Joe said “no, I think we should leave, I just don’t want to stay here.” I asked him why but he said he just got a bad feeling. I will admit that David did seem off, he seemed really nervous and tense. There was a girl I knew from school there (like everyone bought weed from this guy), she decided to wait, but Joe didn’t want to, so I left with Joe.

About an hour or two later we tried calling David, no answer. He never called back so we just hung out and watched TV til the next morning. He still didn’t answer so we drove by there (we really wanted our weed), and the entire house is covered in crime scene tape, part of the house is black and obvious there was an extremely recent fire that significantly damaged the home. We had no clue what happened and weren’t about to stop and ask the cops there.

I found out from the news, and then from friends of ours what happened. Around 12am, 3 guys kicked down the door. David, and the girl I knew from school were sitting on the couch, they were both shot in the head and k**led instantly. The guys then tried to set the house on fire to destroy any evidence, but a neighbor called the fire dept shortly after they left so the house wasn’t badly burned enough to destroy much evidence. It took them years to catch the guys who did it.

#47

Friend’s party during school years, one of guys in the upper class… well molested the host’s younger sister. ended up having their mother calling me in the middle of the night absolutely hysterical when they were trying to track him down.

Ended up finding out also it wasn’t the first time he had done it and his folks were the kind who pay quite a bit to keep things out of the spotlight and they finally met someone who didn’t have a pricetag.

*edit* sorry folks if any replies are a bit vague or dated on details. the entire family basically shut everyone out during the process for either legal reasons or to protect the daughter. what little my friendgroup got was what her folks were comfortable sharing or what those who were into the local politics found out…

*edit again* my fault also, to refer to the original question: if i had left earlier there may have been a chance to run into the f****r before anything had happened.

#48

My cat died.

I was away for a week, in another country. I never usually worry about my pets like that, but two days in I was finding myself thinking about my cat more and more and being increasingly concerned about him. Few days in I was having dreams of me going back home in a rush. Instead, I stayed and thought I was projecting the stress of spending the week in an unknown place with people I didn’t know a lot yet, and just missing my cat.

Now that cat had come to me from the street, so whenever I left for a few days that’s where he’d spend his time. He would only respond to my call but not my friend’s so I had no one to send to check on him.
When I finally came home I just rushed to all his spots and called for him.

I did that almost every 2 hours when I was not working, for 3 days, including at night.
Found him 3 days later, hardly breathing, but walking. Took him to the vet in a rush. Turns out he had cancer and the tumor pushed against his lungs etc. In the past week, something had broken and was filling his lungs with liquid. Had to put him down. I’m just glad I found him and he didn’t die alone on the street.

#49

When i was like 5 i had a dream i was peeing in a toilet and i knew it was a dream but i stayed to finish peeing and…

#50

College party. Everyone is varying degrees of drunk/drinking.

Somebody brings out a spear gun. Loaded.

Went to another side of the house and waited for the screaming to start. Fortunately, nothing went wrong but I wasn’t gonna take that chance.

#51

At a night out with a bunch of guys from my old school, one of us gets in a fight with three guys. I sat back near enough to make sure nothing develops and one of their guys joins me. He strikes up a conversation and very quickly tells me hes a Neo-N**i, he even showed me his tattoos of a swastika and the Waffen SS emblem. It was very clear why he was telling me this because I happened to be the most a***n looking person there. He ended up telling me everything from how he got into the cult like ideology to all the different minorities that he hates. One of the guys I was with thankfully noticed and gave me an excuse to leave once the situation had calmed down

Altogether a very interesting night.

#52

In my 30s, my husband was having an affair and I was sick of staying home alone, so I went to a dance club in Boise by myself.

I had a fantastic time and met a friendly couple, James and Tammy, ended up spending most of the night with them laughing, dancing, joking. Just really fun, open people.

We shut the place down, and out on the sidewalk Tammy says, “Want to go for pancakes?”

“That’s a great idea! I’m starved,” I said. “My car’s around the corner. Should I just follow you to the restaurant?”

“No, don’t do that! We’ll give you a ride, then bring you back,” said Tammy.

“Thank you!” I said. “I’m worn out from all that dancing, haha.”

As soon as I get in the car and it pulls away from the curb, I get this sense of dread.

Just a few blocks down the road, James says he wants to pick something up at their apartment, and asks if it’s okay if we stop off there for a minute. I’m ignoring my warning bells, still hoping that everything’s okay, don’t want to ruin a great night by freaking out unnecessarily. They’re both still super casual and friendly, so I say, “Okay…”

A short jaunt turns into a long drive, getting further and further away from any restaurant. We get to their apartment, which is really low rent and scummy, and my alarms are getting louder.

“I’ll just wait in the car while you get your thing,” I said.

Tammy stays, too, and we talk about this n’ that, and I start to relax again. There’s no pressure coming from her, she genuinely seems delighted to have made a new friend.

“Let’s go check on James,” she says after a bit.

As soon as I walk through the door, I know I’m in trouble. Tammy’s between me and the only door, and James is on the sofa watching TV. Why is he watching TV? Tammy offers me a drink, which I decline, then goes to fix herself one.

“Are we staying here?” I ask. “Let’s go to the restaurant.”

“You bet! I just want one drink, then we’ll go.”

All this time, James is silent, staring fixedly at the TV, all tense and excited, but trying not to show it. I’m getting super weird, scary vibes from him and this whole situation.

“Do you party?” Tammy asks brightly.

I’m distracted and have no idea what this means, so I say, “I guess.”

She sets up some c*****e on the coffee table and she and James have a toot. I’ve never seen c*****e in my life. I can’t believe what I’ve gotten myself into. I look away from the coffee table toward the TV and finally realize that James is watching g******g pornography.

I stand up and announce that I’m going to call a cab.

“Oh, don’t! Do you want to go?”

“Yeah,” I say faux-apologetically. “I’m just really tired.” I start walking for the door.

“We’ll take you back. Don’t pay for a cab, honey. We’ll drive you.”

I don’t remember how she convinced me to get back in the car, but she and James ended up driving me back to the bar and giving me a friendly wave as they drove away.

I think it was an honest misunderstanding: they thought they’d found a willing third, and if I wasn’t down with a t*******e, that was perfectly okay. And, c*****e was just a normal Saturday night, I guess.

But, man… When I recall turning to face that TV screen, my heart still drops into my stomach. I always, always trust my instincts now.

#53

Coming home from a holiday and got into a cab to take us to the airport, immediately I got a gut feeling of “something is going to go very wrong” as we were travelling a big storm broke out so I was thinking “it must be that, we’re going to crash because of the storm” but no. Arrive at the airport with no drama but still the feeling of something bad won’t go. As we walk into the airport I look at the departure board and see our flight has been cancelled, my immediate feeling was one of relief and the feeling of dread disappeared immediately. Like “ahh that was the problem”.

#54

I have always listened to my instincts.

One one occasion a fellow detective and I were hunting a bail Jumper in Pennsylvania. We got a contact who gave us a solid lead and told us where to find our guy. For 50$ he also lure the bail Jumper to the one and only gas station in town. We paid the guy, gave him a time to make it happen. It didn’t sit right so not being complete f***king idiots, right after we paid our mole, we told the guy that we skip out town for a few hours. In reality we went out of town, made sure the mole saw us go out of town and then we doubled back in another way and set our self up on a bluff overlooking the gas station. About thirty minutes before show time, the locals with their guns showed up and started to hide around the place. The bail jumper didn’t show up with them. We noticed our mole was always looking in the same direction when he was on the phone.

Ten minutes prior to the time we given our mole, we decided it was not in our interest to go into town. We called out mole and told him we were running 20 minutes late and to sit tight. We on a hunch went and snuck up on the ridge where the mole was looking and found our bail jumper. We got him before he could alert anybody. After we got him in the car and was heading out of the area, he asked how we heard about the ambush.

Tolds him nothing. Just let him ramble on.

#55

Mum’s new boyfriend. My siblings and I never discussed it until years later but we avoided talking to him, left a room he entered, and hated going to mum’s place when he was there. We had no control over the situation as we were children with divorced parents. I was probably around ten.

Many years later mum actually told us why she left him – because she found out he was a p**ophile.

#56

Ended up in an emotionally, mentally, and nearly physically a*****e relationship for two years. A couple dates in, he told me about one of his many ex girlfriends. He told me that this girl was extremely physically a*****e and constantly treated him like complete s**t. He then told me that this girl lied to the police about him physically a**sing her, which ended in him getting sent to jail for a month (supposed to be longer but he got out on good behavior), so that she could take his apartment. Alarm bells went off in my head when he was telling me this story. It didn’t add up then and it still doesn’t add up. Everything in my gut was telling me to ghost this guy and never talk to him again. But I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

During our two years, he never got actually physical with me. However, i watched him destroy countless amounts of furniture. I watched him shatter his phone. I watched him floor his car and drive like a maniac over something silly. And when i broke up with him, he pushed a dozen full beer bottles off the table in my direction. When I threatened to call the police, he accused me of being like his ex.

#57

I was in high school, had just walked into my English class, when this horrible feeling washed over me. Like I’d suddenly fallen into deep, dark, cold water. I managed to get into my seat, turned to my friend and said “Something bad has happened”. She asked me what was going on, I told her I didn’t know, I just felt like something was wrong, something bad happened, over and over. She must have thought I was nuts. The bell rang and jolted me out of it. Since I was not the type of kid to ditch school, I stayed.

When I got home, the whole house was dark, and my father was crying. I’d never seen him cry before. I found out that my grandfather had just died.

What’s weird is that days later, I found out that the time of death was within 5 minutes of the time that I got the horrible feeling. Since the feeling was right before the bell rang for 3rd period, I could corroborate it with the bell schedule. Then I thought, well surely I imagined it? Nope, my friend remembered the whole thing. I think it freaked her out a bit too, we didn’t really hang out much after that.

Not that leaving school would have helped, or that school had anything to do with it. It was just that feeling. Very creepy.

#58

Got that feeling when I was 13 hiking alone in some nearby woods, I ignored it. Turns out I was being followed, got knocked down and r***d.

#59

Trigger warning for child s*xual a**se.

I was about 4 or 5, so my brother was 2 or 3. We had a male babysitter who wanted to play a game of taking our pyjamas off. It was really weird and I wouldn’t do it, no matter how much he cajoled me.

I woke up in the night. My brother was standing up in his crib, laughing. My pyjama bottoms had been removed and I was being molested.

I sat up and he left the room. I got dressed again and waited for my parents to come home, wired with adrenaline. I heard them when they came back. I waited until I could hear that the babysitter was out of the house. Then I ran out to my parents and told them what happened. They didn’t really seem to react, and sent me back to bed.

So I did everything right. The next part is what really f****d up my childhood. A few days later, my mother sat me down and said they had spoken with the sitter’s mother and he wasn’t going to do that again, the next time he was going to babysit. I felt rage.

In the following years, I always knew I had been molested but I blanked out the part about my parents trying to bring the babysitter back. But I did recall it and the “why?” burned within me. I was also in therapy, where I was diagnosed with PTSD. . I finally asked my mother why? She said it was the late 60’s, not everyone talked about sexual abuse, and they had not believed me. Until they tried to bring him back and I had an uncharacteristic temper tantrum.

So I learned that anger has its uses, otherwise I would have been molested again. To this day, I keep my mother at a distance, my father is dead.

#60

They tried to k**l me when I did leave.

I met this person when I was in a particularly dark place. They were nice on the surface, but something felt very… off. I hated them and couldn’t point at why. So I kept being nice and “giving them a chance”, because they “hadn’t done anything wrong”.

They seemed very sweet, and seemed to have taken upon themselves to take care of me, which is something I desperately needed. Nobody else gave a flying f**k. So we started dating, despite an increasing number of red flags and a constant, troubling feeling that this is just *wrong*.

Now, we talked multiple times about mental health. I just lost someone I loved to schizophrenia, and I was deeply distraught. So I made it very clear that if I get to a point of losing grasp on reality in such a manner, I would commit s*****e. Hell, I made them promise me that they would assist me if things ever came to it.

Eventually, I started getting my life back together, and it was clear this person should not be a part of it. I wasn’t attracted to them, there was no way I could build a life with them, and I was fed up with the creepy feeling that’s always there… They were obviously upset, but since we had a falling out for quite a while, seemed largely accepting. They started dating someone else in less than a week. I started dating someone else pretty quickly, too [for the sake of convenience, lets call her Michelle].

Soon enough, things started to *happen*. I started getting the feeling that people around me are suddenly cold and hostile. People I barely know or literally just met, too. Exes resurfaced and started accusing me of abusing them, or making up events I clearly remembered that happened. At one point I thought that something must be up, but then realizing how *crazy* that sounded.

I concluded I was probably losing it. I locked myself in my room and refused to see anyone in fear I would hurt them, while trying to figure out how to pull the plug on myself.

Then Michelle calls [I think? I don’t remember if she did or just showed up], and said that “You’re not crazy! Something really IS up”.

As it turns out, my ex did a mistake. They sent their new girlfriend to “warn” Michelle about me. And that girlfriend… Was a bit of an idiot. So she told Michelle exactly what was going on: ex was contacting friends, and random people in my general circle, telling them I was a monster, contacting my exes and getting them to do the same, in hope that I “realize I’m dangerous” and “do the responsible thing” and k**l myself.

#61

Right here we go, when I was around 18 years old me and my girlfriend at the time were both homeless and living in a very dodge a*s house with a bloke we didn’t really know. Now when I say dodge; it was a cr*ck den. We had a**icts coming through getting on it pretty much through out the week. Any way one day it was just me and my ex misso up stairs having cones (bongs) and we hear the front door smash open. So I grab the golf club behind my bed and run too the stairs and I see Three blokes and a 40 year old woman storm into the house I’m immediately thinking what the f**k is this? , and the chick starts going about how one of my roommates owed her money and was asking me where he was, so I told her I had no idea which I didn’t, and pretty much she stole my kitten saying that a kitten shouldn’t be living in a place like this (which to her credit she was probably right) but she still took my f*****g cat. And yea pretty much me and my girlfriend at the time decided from then we needed to find a new place but it took us awhile.

#62

Well, nothing that I know of happened to the person while I was there and after I left, but the feeling of wanting to leave definitely happened.

When I was in highschool, I went to this girl’s house so that we could work on a project we were supposed to do. I arrive there and am greeted by her father, a very extroverted guy. He was very loud and smiley and very “Hii!! Heyyy! How are you!! Yayy!”. You would think he was just a bubbly guy, but he was a little too extroverted for my taste.

Anyway, before we get started on our project, the father mentions that they are evangelical christians, and that in their house they only listen to, and watch, gospel stuff, that their house is “The Lord’s house”, and so on. In my head, Im like “sure, whatever”, and we move on.

At one point I was by myself doing part of the homework in the living room and go to the kitchen to get me some water. Mind you, this is a tiny home, it looked like a one bedroom apartment, so the kitchen was just around the corner, literaly. Anyone couldve gone there at any moment, such as the mother, who was at home.

When I get to the kitchen. I see the daughter, washing a plate slowly, with a very tense look on her face. And I see her father, RIGHT BEHIND her, bodies VERY closed to each other, face near her neck, grabing and massaging her hair in a very… sexual way.

All of sudden, snap: the father goes back to his “OHH, heeyy you!!!, hiiii!!” facade, and I didnt even blink; I smiled and acted like I hadnt seen anything wrong and said I wanted some water and that was it.

The girl and I go back to the living room and the girl is like.. “I forgive my father..”. Tecnically, she was talking about his obnoxiousness, but she was really talking about his abuse, I think, thats what I sensed. I knew that there was something wrong going on, but I played along because I was young and didnt know any better.

But thats not the worst of it. A bit later on, the father comes back and all of a sudden decides to talk about hell. And about what happens to people who *sin*. That they *burn in there*. That they are *punished*. And I *immediately* thought: “he is threatening her”. He wasnt talking about religion, he was telling her to not tell me anything. Thats when I was like “I need to get TF outta here.”.

I dont remmember how much longer I stayed, but it wasnt for very long. The girl and I were aquaintances and never talked about it again. Nowadays I wouldve acted differently and wouldve try to help her, if she wanted to. But it is crazy how some abusers have the nerve to do things right under other people’s noses… it gets you thinking…

#63

Story for my sister, who is no longer around to tell it.

My sister was absolutely beautiful, and it got her into a lot of trouble. She would often drop off, very into d***s and alcohol and partying a few states away from where I lived, so it wasn’t uncommon for me to not hear from her for a while.

Well she went to a party one day. She said she wasn’t comfortable pretty quickly, but they were giving her free d***s and she was an a****t so free anything was welcome. Next thing she knew, she was in their basement. There was never a full story of what happened. I learned all of this way post event, through sobs.

They kept her in the basement for weeks, dr**ging and r**ing her. She managed to get out because apparently one of the guys felt guilty, had a breakdown, and released her. She had newspaper clippings of the event and everything…

Trust your instincts, people. At worst, you’re uncomfortable or make people grumpy. At best, your life could be saved, in more ways than one.

#64

Spent six years married. Finally broke free when visiting my mum intestate when she waa dying. I feel like I escaped with my life then. Flash forward to today, five years later, I have a new wife, two kids, three cars, a kick a*s job and money in the bank. Plus my mental health back.

The day I met my ex wife I knew I should have run fast and far but I didn’t.

#65

I’ve posted this a million times but f**k it, here’s the abridged version.

I live on farmland. I used to walk the square mile trail to keep coyotes away because I had pet goats. If I saw coyotes, I would chase them and possibly beat them with a stick if they tried to stand their ground because f**k coyotes. Anyway, I was about half way through my walk at about 1 AM when I got a really bad feeling, and went into alert mode. I started scanning the area and then I saw it. It was roughly 12 foot tall because it was above the orchard line, completely vantablack, as in darker than the surrounding area. It walked on two legs and had extremely long arms, and a long animalistic head. That’s all I could tell from its silhouette.

I shut off all my lights and crouched down. About 2 seconds passed and then I said f**k this and sprinted half a mile home. Felt like I was being chased the whole way but didn’t see anything. Went out the next night and saw the picture. I wear a size 11 wide boot. So this paw print was at least 4 inches wide. Anyone who knows anything but prints knows that s**t doesn’t happen, especially in California.

#66

When I was a kid I had a 78 Chevy truck that you had to let the starter cool down for 15 min or so after turning the motor off before you could restart it. We were driving home from surf fishing around 2AM and had to stop for gas. While sitting there waiting on the starter to cool a Oldsmobuick Cutlass pull up, parks sideways at the front door and a guy gets out of the passenger side and goes inside. I figure we are about to witness a murder and try to start the truck, no deal. We sit there ready to die and the guy runs out of the store with cases of beer under each arm. One breaks open and beers spill onto the ground. He jumps in the cutlass and it speeds off as the very large Polynesian man who works the store comes running out. He grabs a beer off the ground and throws it at Mach 3 at the car breaking the back window. He then looks over at us and we put our hands up and yell we just got gas but our truck won’t start, we’re not with them! He wasn’t pissed or anything and says it happens all the time. He picked up the beers and went back inside the store.

#67

When my fiancée and I started dating I lived across the street from a fairly popular bar so we would go over there and hang out to watch football games.

One night we were there having a few when I got this weird feeling about a small group of people who were playing pool across the bar. My girlfriend asks what’s wrong so I tell her I was feeling off about the situation. The very second I say this a fight breaks out amongst the group. The fight ends up spilling outside and the cops get called but not before someone gets stabbed with a piece of bottle. Cops come in and start clearing everyone out so we call it a night.

It’s weird how humans can have feelings like that.

#68

A few months after the movie theater shooting in Aurora Colorado, I was watching a Resident Evil movie with a friend. As we were watching it in 3D, we were heeding my usual preference which was front row seats (the less of the theater you can see, the better the effect works).

Midway through the movie something made me look backwards, and I saw a guy standing right at the end of the tunnel to the door, watching the screen. I figured he was just someone peeking in at a movie after having gotten out of his or something, I’ve done that before. About 5-10 minutes later, he comes walking up to the front and stands right below the screen, facing the wall. It’s hard to see him but I could see his silhouette. I looked at my friend and we both just sorta shrugged at each other.

A few moments later something changed. I want you to imagine what it would look like, someone loading bullets into a gun, but you are seeing them from behind. The way their elbows sort of shift back and forth as you hear a “click…clack!….click…clack!” sound. At this point my friend and I sit up in our seats, we can both hear the sound and the implication of what we are seeing is pretty clear. I shift my seat and glance towards the exit, wanting to see if the coast was clear.

It was but…

I couldn’t help but notice the 15-20 people scattered around the seats. Up until this moment, if you would have given me this situation as a hypothetical, I would fully and unashamedly have declared my response would have been to sprint out of the theater and leave everyone to their fates. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I turned back forward, to look at this guy that was still facing away in the dark and I felt a sort of calmness just slam down on me like the proverbial anvil.

I knew I was going to die, and that was ok.

At that moment in time, the SINGULAR fear I had in my head was now that I would fail to stop this man from harming other people. I knew I wouldn’t survive no matter how things went, all I wanted was to have accomplished something. So I leaned a bit to my right and whispered to my friend “The moment he turns, I’ll go left, you go right. He can’t get us both.” and he gave me a little nod. It’s weird…as confident as we were that this man was about to turn and shoot us, we were still unwilling to engage him out of a sort of fear of what the result would be if we were wrong. The bad press, etc.

And so as I sat there watching this man more than the movie, I did what most guys do when daydreaming, and I began running through all those fun little scenarios in my head of how I would take this man down. Immediately I discarded the more ridiculous ones, you know, where you bat the guys hand away and then do a palm-heel strike to the nose in the hope of jamming that cartilage back into his brain and killing him (lots of military fiction LOVES that move, though apparently there’s not much evidence to substantiate it works). I started working through the more plausible ones, where I ran at him and tried to get inside the swing of his arm so I could grab it and force his aim down at the floor, what I would do if my friend got there first (mostly just start beating the s**t out of his face). And after another few moments of this I eventually realized that my two best options (grab the arm, or strike the head) were decided and any more thought ran the risk of distracting me when the moment came.

Then the moment came and he started turning left, my friend and I gripped our armrests, ready to lunge forward, me having settled on the arm-grab given this arrangement, both of his hands entered view and….were empty. He just turned towards the exit and walked right out of there calm as you please. As we settled down from this, I ran over what happened in my head. Had we jumped to conclusions? Was he a worker for the theater and there was a panel of some sort in the wall that I couldn’t see in the dark? I didn’t know, but for the rest of that movie I kept looking back towards that exit just in case he came back. Later, the movie ended, and my friend and I walked up to the spot the guy had been standing, but no matter where we looked it was just unbroken carpet over cement.

To this day, I still have no idea what went on there. I don’t have nightmares or anything about it, but recounting the story is enough to get my heart racing and some tears in my eyes (only later did I think about how my parents and family would have found out I’d been shot and how they’d have reacted). And completely not trying to sound like I’m inflating my badassery or anything stupid like that, it is comforting in a strange sort of way to KNOW, to really know for sure, that if that moment ever comes again, I’m apparently the sort to step up and protect complete strangers.

#69

I stopped at a gas station at the request of a friend, and got worried that something was not right when he didn’t come back out for a while. I went to check on him and noticed about a dozen highway patrol officers standing at the pumps. He was acting kind of weird and looking at women’s purses and asked if I thought his wife would like them. I said i don’t know and bought a mello yello and went back out to the car.

Ten minutes later I see the officers go in and they lead him out in handcuffs. They then went and asked me for my ID and that’s when I got arrested for a warrant that I didn’t know was out for my arrest.

#70

Long post ahead. I was desperate to move out of my parents’ house that I moved in with this insane person.

Hell, even just talking to her for one minute, I could tell she was f*****g crazy. Bulging eyes. Looked like a plastic surgery lawsuit waiting to happen. Crazy smile. Called me “pookie.” But, she had a room for a good price in the best part of town. I knew it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway.

Well, three days after moving in, she starts talking about how she needs to go to Spain (where she’s from). She starts talking about it, and she’s pretending to think out loud, even though I can clearly tell she isn’t, because she said something like

> But it’s *Spain* so… everybody knows that if you go to *Spain* you have to be there for…. AT LEAST a month.

Then she asked me.

> How would you feel if I rented your room out while I went to Spain? You could just move all your stuff to my room, and I’ll have someone rent your room?

I told her I had just moved in and I would *really* have to think about that.

> Oh, it’s okay, pookie!! I’m just thinking out loud. No worries.

A few days later, I come home early from work. I see her lighting candles around the apartment, it’s suspiciously clean, and she tells me oh! Guess what! Someone’s coming by to look at your room.

I’m shocked. Someone’s about to go parading around my bedroom? 5 minutes later the guy shows up and I’m just sitting there in the kitchen, speechless. At one point I locked eyes with the dude… trust me, I could tell he knew something was way, way off. He barely said anything to her and left promptly after.

She thought the whole thing went so well. She skipped around the apartment, blowing out the candles and then said

> Oh, don’t worry! I’m not actually renting the room. I’m just doing some showings so that I can get clients.

I told her I was really uncomfortable with that and I’m a very private person, and she said she wouldn’t do it again.

Weeks later, I noticed weird things around my room. Doors were open that I never really leave open. Or, I would notice something was moved. I put little “traps” around my door (toothpick trick, “the hair trick,” all sorts of things). Every single trap was broken, on a near daily basis. So I bought a camera, and I also installed a motion sense app for my phone that would also load onto my old apple devices so I would have multiple cameras around the room

Sure enough I caught her going into my room, but she wasn’t taking anything. She was inspecting things. Going to my bedroom, bathroom, looking in my trash can. Going into my closet. It was quite obvious that she was looking for something, but who knows what? All of these videos were usually about 5-10 minutes after I left for work in the morning.

But the first video is what got me the most – because she did something exceptionally bizarre: inspecting my towels. I had a bunch of towels hanging up on some hooks. The first video I got of her, you see her open the door and go right for my towels. It wasn’t like she just opened the door, skipped around and discovered my towels – no, she made a literal beeline for my used towels. Looking at each one. Inspecting them. Looking at the tags.

My first instinct was to f**k with her. The next morning before work, I took my towels and I hid them at the bottom of my laundry basket. What resulted was the funniest video I ended up getting of her, because you see her again – bursting the door open and making the beeline for my towels, and then you see her walk up to the towel hook and she just… short circuits. Her head just looks around in 4-5 directions all ????. I honestly wish I still had this video – because it was genuinely hilarious.

It didn’t take long for her behavior to get weirder and weirder, and I realized this wasn’t funny anymore and I had to get out of there. I made up an excuse (“I have to take care of family” or some b******t) and she was clearly unhappy “but I *understaaaand*. But the morning after that, she made a rampage through my bedroom and discovered my cameras. She even went into my Ipad, deleted emails that I was receiving from the apps of her walking around my bedroom. I actually saw her doing this from my work desk, and I locked my Ipad with the “Find my Iphone” app and I wrote a threatening message on it, while she was still holding it. She then put the Ipad down, put her head in her hands like she was soooo embarrassed, and I saw her actually run out of the house.

I actually messaged the app (I think it was called Presence) to re-send the videos and they could only get me the thumbnails. I ended up taking her to mediation, and needed those images, because what ended up happening later that day was I had to have a police officer help me move my stuff out of the apartment. She refused to give me back my deposit

She threatened to sue me for video voyeurism because she felt that me putting cameras in my bedroom “made me feel VERY violated,” citing that she was wearing booty shorts and a sportsbra in one of those videos. She made an a*s of herself and kept trying to argue with the mediator about how awful I am and how much I destroyed the apartment (she claimed that I kicked holes in the wall with “my pointy shoes” which she could not prove – and honestly, that would hurt me a lot more than it would hurt a wall).

**TL;DR I moved in with a crazy lady who kept showing my room to randos on craigslist, and I installed cameras and found her rifling through my s**t**.

#71

In some days in high school, my friend Tyler and I stayed after classes for robotics club, and typically we would get dinner from a fast food place. The problem was that we were lazy sophomores and didn’t like to walk, so anytime somebody offered to drive us we’d accept. In comes this guy who knows Tyler, they talk for a bit, I introduce myself, and he offers to drive us to Taco-Bell. We happily accept and follow him out to his car. Turns out he’s got a brand new white Mustang, and says to us “looks good huh? sucks that I totaled the old one”.

At this point, as I was buckling into a backseat, I had a few thoughts running through my head. One was “wait, how did he total his car?” and the other was “what parents buy their son the same exact car after they total it?”

I soon learned the answer as this kid drives through the parking lot at terrifying speeds I have never seen before. Nearly 50 mph through a cramped parking lot, sailing wildly over speed bumps. Then we get onto the main road, and ignoring the stop sign, we fly at about 80 mph on a 30 mph road for a minute. At this point, Tyler looks back at me from the passenger seat with horror on his face. Most drivers prefer to gradually slow down before approaching a stop light, but the kid loved to just slam on the brakes right before he’s about to rear-end a car. The only thing preventing him from going 150 mph were the other cars in the area.

We pull into Taco-bell and he curbs the car pretty badly, but he doesn’t even seem to react. While eating I really didn’t want to get back into the car with him, but instead Tyler and I decided to see if we could get him to drive like a normal human on the way back. It didn’t work. There was a lull in the traffic, so we found ourselves eclipsing 100 mph for a few seconds, once again on a 30 mph residential road near a school. Made it back alright, but we pledged never again to ride with this kid.

A year later, after he graduated, we found out he died in a drunk driving incident. He skid off the road into a tree, pulverizing his entire body and the car. Tragic, but not surprising in the slightest.

#72

I was waiting for the bus in a not great part of town. I was 18, dude who walked up was at least twice that. He started trying to flirt, and my gut just started screaming that I needed to get out, but the bus was my only way. I was silently cursing the bus for being late, but my gut also said to play along until it finally came. A few minutes later, some other dude comes up, buys h****n. I see a gun in the flirting dude’s waistband; I don’t say s**t. Thankfully the bus came about a minute later. A couple months later, I saw dude’s mugshot on the news after he shot someone in a deal gone bad.

#73

I don’t know if this counts, but my husband and I were driving down to the Outer Banks for vacation last year, and I started to get really, really anxious about the trip.

I do have a generalized anxiety disorder, so this wasn’t crazy unusual, but it lasted longer than usual, and I just couldn’t shake it the whole drive down. My sisters were both bringing all their kids, and I was dead convinced something awful would happen to one of them in the ocean.

Well, it didn’t. We were there for a week, and the kids were all safe as houses; most of them went home on day 6, leaving only the non-swimming infant at the house for the last day of vacation. I kept a really close eye on all of them when they were near the water, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the only one left to watch wasn’t going to be swimming.

I babysat the little guy in the morning while my sis went to the beach and got nice and buzzed. She came back and said my husband and I HAD to go get in the water, because after a week of calm seas, the waves were FINALLY awesome enough for jumping and bodysurfing and whatnot.

So we suit up and go down, and the waves are rough, which makes it fun, but I was really glad all the kids old enough to wade were gone because we’d have had to keep a sharp eye on them.

After about an hour, I look at my husband, and he’s chest-deep in the choppy water and he looks stricken. Like he saw a ghost. I swim over to him, and he’s completely stiff and non-responsive. I had to drag him out of the water and onto the beach, getting pummeled and knocked down by waves the whole time, and trying to scream my head off for help.

Next thing I know, he’s snapped back and is saying he’s fine, he’s fine, but he doesn’t know what just happened. A nice woman did stop on the beach and called my brother-in-law to help me get my husband back up the house, and she told her daughter to call 911, despite my husband’s protestations.

Good thing she did, because my husband suddenly says, “Nope, I’m going back down,” and passes out.

Due to luck I will be thanking every god for until the day I die, the paramedics were actually just a little ways up the beach for another call, and they arrived just as my husband passes out and starts turning blue.

Long story slightly less long, my husband had a heart attack in the ocean and had to be helicoptered to a hospital in Virginia. Our “vacation” was extended by a week while he had two stent surgeries, recovered from his CPR wounds, and then had another surgery for a defibrillating implant.

Anyway, I later felt like I had a premonition about someone drowning, and it very nearly came true. Hindsight being what it is, I was probably reacting subconsciously to my husband’s pre-heart-attack symptoms, but projecting that worry onto the kids since he was really too young for a heart attack.

#74

Ended up with a Bachelor’s degree.

#75

I’m 16 and I work construction with my cousin(he owns his own company) and we had been working on this house for a week or so because it needed a remodel. When we first got in there the first day the owner had said the house was haunted, us thinking he was messing with us we laughed it off and just kinda got to work. About 2-3 hours in we were doing the crown molding in the living room and we heard something run across the 2nd floor, we both stopped and new something was up, we were both too scared to go check what was going on so we just kept working.

Through out the rest of that day the basement door kept swinging open and we kept hearing bangs and footsteps around the house. For pretty much the rest of the week we didn’t here much but maybe that was cause there was typically a lot more people in there than just me and my boss but one day I had to go down in the basement to clean stuff up and for most of it I didn’t hear anything unusual but at one point near the end of the day most people had left and my boss had gone to do a few errands so I was left alone. All of a sudden the basement door slammed and I blacked out, i woke up in the hospital a few days later with a broken leg and my arm had been fractured, needless to say I quit later that day.

#76

Me and my buddy Jayson would always try to find new stuff to do. One time when we were like 15 we found the entrance to the drain thing that the rainwater drains into off the streets, like some real It movie come play Georgie type s**t, so naturally we decided to go into it as far as we could with no light of any kind except the entrance.

We ended up walking until you couldn’t see the light at the entrance anymore and had went around a couple turns in the pitch black, we went so far the bats living in there had faded in the distance like 20 minutes ago. Then it felt cold real suddenly and I wanted leave right then but we were already this far so why not keep going. This is where it got terrifying even to this day it scares me.

We walked for about 5 more minutes when we started to hear what sounded like rocks dropping to the ground. Important to know that there was about 2 maybe 3 inches of water in the tunnel. We froze and it got real quiet suddenly, we started whispering about whether we should go back or not when all the sudden it sounded like something started running straight at us.

It sounded big like at least human sized just slap slap slap slapping fast as hell towards us. We turned around and each sprinted for a solid ten minutes in a tunnel so dark you literally couldn’t see you hand in front of you, around the turns non stop until we could finally see a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel all the while whatever was behind had slowly sounded like it was getting louder and closer.

About 100 yards from the entrance it stopped but we didn’t even slow down until we got out. Once we were out we turned around to see what it was and listen for sounds but we couldn’t hear anything except the bats we ran back under and I can’t be sure but at the edge of the shadows I’d almost swear I saw something move away, deeper, back into the depths of the tunnel.

We talked about going back with super high powered lights and a gun bit neither of us were brave enough, not even if we went together with all that extra stuff. I’ll never go back there again no matter what precautions I take, I’m not certain I’d survive.

#77

I was in Guatemala once. A bus dropped me off at a bus depot in the middle of the night. I was the only foreigner there. Half the people were homeless the other half we’re staring at me like I didn’t belong. I had no time table for when my next bus was suppose to show up. They just drop you off and say this is your stop lol. I waited hours and as time kept passing i kept thinking im not in the right place, i have all this s**t with me, im going to at best get robbed lol. I stuck it out though because I was in the middle of Guatemala city which is a high crime area so its not like i would have faired better outside. Anyways probably 5-6 hours past, at no time was I not being starred at lol but finally my bus came. I was sure i wasn’t going to make it out of there untouched but I did! Lol.

#78

Not me but someone I was acquainted with.
I was a bartender for 10 years. Over the course of the job you hear a lot of stories, many of which are pretty similar. But this one gave me chills the moment I heard it. So the acquaintance worked next door as a server and would generally come in before or after her shift for a drink or two. During these times she’d tell me stories of how she was in an unhappy marriage with someone because they got married young and she felt it was the right thing to do. Well at this point they’ve been married 7 years and she tells me she wants to leave but is afraid he will k**l himself because I guess he threatens too. She says she still cares about him and doesn’t want him to hurt himself so she stays. This goes on for a few months and eventually she stopped coming in. I didn’t think much of it because she didn’t stop in every day. Well about a week and a half after I last saw her I get woken up by a phone call from my manager telling me about this news story of a murder s*****e it was her and her husband. He killed her. My manager called me because he recognized her. They weren’t found for a week. I felt so s****y for a while because I knew what was happening in her life and due to that I felt partially at fault. Moral of the story, if you feel like you want out of a relationship get the f**k out. You don’t owe anyone else your happiness.

#79

I was hitchhiking solo to California. I had just been dropped off in southern Oregon near the junction where I wanted to get off I-5 s and take the highway that goes southwest through the redwoods to meet the 101 on the coast of California. It was still in the afternoon, and I wasn’t as far along as I was hoping to get that day, but there was a great creek that looked like a nice place to camp for the night. I was convincing myself to just stop for the day, but had made a deal to cross the bridge over the creek on foot, and when I got to the other side without a ride then I would quit. I got picked up before made it across.

It was a guy in a pickup with a canopy. I didn’t get great vibes from him, but no red flags at that point. I told him I was trying to get to the 101 and he agreed and I hopped in.

I am not a big talker, but in these situations you gotta make small talk for at least awhile to feel each other out and feel settled. This dude gave me one word answers, I was prying words out his mouth, but at some point he mentioned he had to stop at a friend’s house to smoke and get some food. If you’ve not been to not-Portland Oregon, the rural parts are incredibly pretty and the people that live out in the woods are a often a toss-up between neo-Nazis and back-to-the-land hippies. More often than not they’re some weird synthesis of the two. And so we stopped at a house in the woods, just one turn off the highway not even a quarter mile down the road. A bearded, flanneled old man came out of a ramshackle wooden house to meet us. He was more or less fine (he wasn’t flying any flags, which is a good sign. If it’s a USA and POW MIA you probably don’t have anything to worry about, but anything else and you should probably start worrying). But this is where I started getting anxious. We stayed there for hours, to the point it was starting to get dark. I was getting shifty and pressing to leave, but my new driver insisted we had plenty of time and he was going to get me there and there was nothing to worry about.

We eventually left at dusk, which is when he explained to me he had one more stop to make because he was selling his truck. We pulled out, turned back towards the highway, but before we got back onto the main road he said “wait, I think I know a short cut” and he flipped a b***h and we took off down a rapidly darkening back road, surrounded by trees.

So this dude was selling his truck. The one I was currently riding in. He assured me I’d make it to California before the actual sale. Eventually we did make it out from the cathedral of black trees, back onto some sort of two lane highway, and pulled into a gas station. This is where I had to get out so this guy potentially buying the truck could test drive it. My bag was in the back, and externally I was staying very calm, but I betrayed my panic just a little when I insisted I get my bag out of the back before dude and rando took off for their test drive. They pulled out, and I was left in the night, at least with my stuff, but with no idea where I actually was.

That moment, and the moment where he u-turned to take me deeper into the dark and lonely woods, were my “oh f**k” moments. So I had to decide if I run off and find a place to sleep and figure it out in the morning, or if I stay. I decided to stay. Or at least, they came back before I decided to leave.

Dude did take me to the coast. Despite how scary it felt it never did quite push into the territory where I thought he might potentially try and hurt me, I just thought he was a dim man living on the fringe of society. And in that moment that’s how I’d describe myself as well. He dropped me off in front of a liquor store and then asked me for “gas money.” I gave him ten dollars and walked a little bit and found some bushes where I could pitch my tent out of view of the road, and I fell asleep to the sound of the ocean.

Tl;Dr I got a ride while hitchhiking and the guy giving me a ride took me on two detours into the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. But ultimately I was fine.

#80

I dropped by a friend’s apartment unannounced. When she opened the door, she was crying and her ex was in the apartment. I realized something was very wrong and I said I would just go. She begged me not to leave so I stayed. It turned out he was breaking up with her and had already found another girlfriend. My friend and I later went out to dinner and talked about her breakup. I think having me around to talk to made her feel better.

#81

I was living with a psychopath who was a high-level d**g dealer. I didn’t have a problem with the d***s but something felt super off. His charm and wit kept me in the situation but my gut knew something was really wrong. I lost 30lbs and couldn’t sleep at night.

It came out that he had plotted the death of someone above him in the gang for 4 years. He ended up killing them by hiring some hoodlums to shoot him on the street. He stole his passwords, keys, contacts, d**g money, etc.

I got the f**k out right after it happened and never looked back. I’m a better person for learning to trust my gut in those situations.

#82

Got mugged and beaten by 3 guys right outside a metro station when I was 22.

One of them tried to trip me while I was walking behind them to take the stairs down, just after the girl that we took a taxi together passed them. I stumbled on his foot but kept my balance. I turned slightly and said “hey, watch it”, without actually trying to be intimidating or anything. I didn’t want to get in a fight with 3 guys, especially while escorting a girl. I don’t carry any concealed weapons on me anyway.

Next thing I know, as I’m getting around to go down the stairs, one of the three is charging at me, knocking me to the ground. They start kicking me while I’m trying to protect my head. Luckily they didn’t do any damage other than bruising my legs and sides. I felt one of them searching my pockets, they quickly took my mobile phone I had recently gotten and my wallet (basically empty and no credit cards, just my university pass, a video club card, and sadly, my id. Last one was a pain to get back…) This also taught me that if you go out at night with little company, you shouldn’t take your credit/debit cards with you. Only some cash, and best hide it in your socks or so…

The funny thing is nobody saw, it was 1 am but the metro was still open ffs.

The even funnier thing is, the girl I was escorting didn’t even see I got assaulted. I immediately got back on my feet when the 3 left running, angered beyond belief at those cowards, adrenaline still pumping. I rushed down the stairs, found the girl on the platform and proceeded to inform her what happened and she couldn’t believe it.

In her defense, we had only just met at a mutual friends’ house gathering and she wasn’t into me at all. We just took a taxi together because we were following a similar route.

She then called our friends and they picked me up and had me sleep over at their place for the night, we also went back to the crime scene to look for my stuff in case they threw my pass or id away, but we couldn’t find anything. I wish we had met them then with my buddies, they’d get a taste of their own medicine.

The even more funny thing is, stripped of all my possessions, I walked all the way home, covering a distance of 6-7 km on foot, but nobody tried to mug me again. I felt so free, carrying nothing of value. Lol

Well the thing is, I couldn’t help but feel that I wanted to go the other way around to the entrance when I saw those guys, but the girl decided to go right by them and I followed. Everything happened too fast.

#83

I was young (15) and stupid. Met up with someone (19) I was talking to online to drink with. He brought the alcohol, he drugged the alcohol. I ended up ditching my friends to go back to his place. He had condoms all over the floor, a very suggestive layout all in all. I felt the need to leave right at that moment but he kept making up excuses for me to stay and I was out of it so I stayed but kept rejecting his advances. His housemate ended up coming home and I don’t remember much but a “what the f**k are you doing” her kicking me out of the room while they talk, loudly, and then me stumbling out of the house after awhile. He was looking for me and yelling my name, I hid in a giant bush until I felt like the threat was over. I didn’t do anything about it because I was young and felt like nothing would come out of it as nothing technically happened but I don’t really drink anymore.

#84

For me, usually nothing.
I have really bad anxiety that comes and goes. I’ll often suddenly feel the need to leave or hide.
I think the only time it was actually legit was when my appt flooded. I got a bad feeling and went to check the room it was happening on a whim.

#85

I was groped.

#86

5 of us broken into an old abandoned house on Halloween… With one flashlight. I was the one holding it. The house was known as the Elliot Farm house and its dilapidated swimming pool was actually used in a Sound Garden music video. Because the house was boarded up, the only way into the house was under the back deck thru a window into the basement. Surprisingly, much of the stuff was still in the house, like the classic sheets over furniture and several things were strange for example the furnace was the size of a VW bus while the stairs were much narrower than any modern house. There were rats that scurried so within 10 seconds of being in everyone was on edge.

As we preceded, again with one flashlight, up three stories we were freaking ourselves out. that was the point. It was three girls and me and my friend Jude. Jude was like a male version of Snow White innocent and kind, but also kind of dumb.

Along the way a few windows were only partially board shut so some light found its way in. The moon was not full. As made our way up there was a “shine of light here” or “I cant see what is this.” As the light bearer, I’d make my way between the objects and we explore this or that. We found a dead owl in a large antique bird cage. I remember that It was hardly decayed gross still. Jude hated seeing this… He loved animals. I that is when some said that the Elliot Farm was actually a slaughter house. Its the small things that build up to creepy you… Like dead owls in 100 year old houses.

So, at the top of the stairs in what would be a master bedroom room things shifted down. The door was locked. Jude tried to kick it down and cut he foot pretty bad. Probably a nail, something slashed thru his Chuck Taylor shoes in to the soft part of his ankle. Straight away he was bleeding a lot. But Jude was calm, “there is over a gallon of blood in a human body.”

The door opened while we were checking out his hurt foot. The door opened by itself. And, we went in. Because why wouldn’t we. This room from what I could tell with the only flashlight was like all the rest. Furniture still there but dated and covered in sheets, there was a window which was partially boarded. You could see small lights of the cars driving by, but never enough to see in the room with any detailed.

This was eerie moment. As we made over way to boarded up window a light came on from behind us. Not a light from the street we were all looking at it. Not a light from one of the other four because I had to be in the back of the group to shine the light forward for the rest. The light was behind me… And it was brighter than our light. Two of the girls saw something and screamed. Jude grabbed my arm like a vise. I wheeled around and the light went out.

We had to go in the direction of the light in the house to get out of jump out the high window. One of the girls that scream tried to pull the board off to out the window we stopped her.

Eventually we went to the light, past it, down 3 levels to the basement. No one spoke of the oddities; we went out with efficiency. As the light bearer I guided the way. There was noise now from inside the house. It was just behind us the whole time. I was last in line again to light the way. To this very moment, I can picture Jude’s bloody foot print in the old dust on the narrow stairs.

We travel as best we could with a hands together until we got to the basement but here one by one we had to climb thru a narrow window. We got out and circled the house to find the window of the master bedroom from the outside. Through the window someone stared down at us. I only caught a glimpse but yeah all the other screamed again.

Jude needed stitches. We suffered thru that. After that four of us went to a diner to discuss. Outside of the diner was an angry owl, and hooting right in front of the window to our booth. This goes on for 10 minutes, the waitress comments on it. Other customers come by to look at through our window. A manager goes outside and shoed it away with a broom, but it comes back to our window when he came inside. So, remember Jude is like Snow White. Animals love this guy, all animals, so he limps outside and talks with it. It flys off.

That was 30 years ago. I run into Jude from time to time, always on Halloween as we take our kids trick and treating in the same candy rich neighborhood. He always surprised when I see him despite it happening the last 5 or 6 years. But, I have seen the owl too.

#87

I got that feeling for someone else, told them to leave a relationship not long after they got married, I could see things were going bad and even got a*****e. I was begging and crying for them to leave this person before they got them pregnant or something and they decided to stay. Exactly what I thought was going to happen happened. Now they’re stuck in a toxic relationship that they can’t get out of because they had a kid with this person and don’t want to leave their kid/go through a custody battle and get screwed out of everything they own.

#88

I remember a time when I was like in the 8-10 years range I think.
I was downtown on my lonesome, and had to take the bus back home.
When I arrived at the bus stop, I decided that waiting for the bus took too long, and I might as well walk. (~15-25 minutes)
Then suddenly there was this guy around the bus stop and he offered to walk with me.
Being very timid, I said no thanks, but he kept insisting.
I had a horrible knot in my stomach the entire walk home.
He offered me a sip from his coke at some point, that I didn’t take, because I was scared as hell.

I’m not sure what his actual intentions were. He was just talking the whole way. Casual stuff.
Nothing happened, I was just glad I was home and he was gone.
Looking back, I am more inclined to think he was just a kind guy looking out for a kid alone, but that might just be naivete and my inability to pick up on social cues. lol.

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