22 People On The Horrible Gut Feeling They Couldn’t Shake (That Turned Out To Be Right)

These stories from Ask Reddit will remind you to follow your gut.

Guy with a horrible gut feeling
Unsplash / Andrew Dong

1. He cracked open his skull and died instantly

“Went for a weekend away with a group from my local Scouting area, back in the 80’s. I didn’t know them all, went to make up the numbers and get some climbing / canoeing / caving done.

We stayed in a rented house in the Peak District (UK). One evening, a few guys went out to try ‘bouldering’ – climbing boulders 10-15 meters high. I got there, took one look and said no, we have no climbing gear, that’s high enough to die falling from.

I got the mickey taken, ‘chicken’, etc, so I left them to it and walked back. An hour later one guy fell 10 meters and split his skull open on the rocks below, killed instantly.” — Stooby2

2. My grandmother turned a serial killer away from her house

“We had a serial killer in SC a couple years ago. No one knew what he looked like yet but he had already killed 3 people at this point. Well, my granny has lived alone since my pawpaw passed about 15 years ago. She lives at the end of a long dirt road with about 10 other families but the closest one was about a 1/4 mile up the road. One afternoon some random guy comes knocking on the front door of her house. My granny is a practical woman, she has never been to school because she grew up on a farm and was expected to pull her weight, but she is a smart woman. She goes to the door but doesn’t open it (glass door). The 40ish year old man is there asking if he can use the phone since his car broke down, granny doesn’t like the look of this guy. If he doesn’t live here there is no reason for him to be on this road and if he was visiting someone their house or anyone else’s house would have been closer since she lives on a dead end. Anyways, she tells him that no he can’t use the phone and needs to leave. She backs up and picks up my pawpaw’s 410 as she goes. Once he sees the shotgun he hightails it out of there. About a week later the cops finally catch the serial killer and low and behold if it isn’t the same damn man.” — arcamdies

3. My uncle murdered my aunt and cousin

“A guy came to the door one day, looking for my mom. I was probably 13 at the time. Immediately, I had most of my body behind the door, ready to shut it. I just had this awful feeling about him. He said he hadn’t seen her in a long time, and that he was just coming from church and was in the neighborhood. Ok, so this guy is trying to communicate that he’s a good person, and that and his weird smile just made me trust him less. I told him my mom was napping. She wasn’t. She was at work. So, he left a note for her with his name and number on it. I took it and closed and locked the door. Then I looked at the note and immediately recognized the name. It was my uncle. I hadn’t seen him since I was 5, when he went to jail for murdering my aunt and cousin.” — phridoo

4. We survived the bombings in London

“My mum was supposed to take me and my sister to the Natural History Museum in 2005 since we lived just outside London and it was only a short tube ride.

However on the day she had a horrible feeling so we stayed home and watched movies instead. That was the day of the 7/7 bombings.” — QueenGeraldina

5. My appendix burst and I came close to dying

“I had terrible pain in my stomach for a couple of days. At first I wrote it off as the flu, which was odd because I hadn’t thrown up at all. On day 3 I woke up in horrific pain that almost immediately disappeared. Turns out my appendix had burst and if I had waited another day I could have died.” — tallandlanky

6. The bar we visited was shot up

“I was at a bar in October of 13 or 14 if I recall. Anywho I lived in a particularly rough neighborhood at the time, and I was enjoying a few drinks and such a day before Halloween night.

I had this horrible feeling of uneasiness looming in the back of my mind, so I told my buddies I’m turning in for the night. They called me the next morning and informed me that the bar had gotten shot up and like 3 people were injured.

It was about 2 hours after I left if I recall.” — saberaltersan

7. The woman my mother married abused us

“My father started publicly dating a woman shortly after my mother died (I later learned she’s likely the woman he’d been having an affair with before she died). I liked her. One evening my father took me to one side and and asked how I’d feel about him asking her to marry him. I got an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach and felt nauseated. I told my father I didn’t want him to and he asked why as he thought I liked her. I explained that he did like her but had a bad feeling and he said “that’s just a feeling, they don’t mean anything”. He already had the ring and proposed straight away. I got really excited about the engagement), the wedding, moving house, and my impending little sister.

After the wedding she changed. After my half-sister was born she went batshit. She abused myself, my full sister (my mother’s child), and later my half sister (her own child). He only left her when my doctor told him something was clearly going on with her that was affecting my health (she was putting a substance that I’m intolerant to in my food and my father wouldn’t believe me and would force me to eat whatever she made however I couldn’t get a doctor alone without her to tell them) and my maternal grandmother told him if he didn’t leave her she’d go for custody that he finally left her. He accused me of lying for the entire time leading up to that and has never asked me about any of my attempts to get help since.” — PhDOH

8. They found a dead body near our campsite

“Not mine but my grandma’s.

We went camping at this one spot in the woods by a small creek every summer. One summer she gets this bad feeling and make a us pack up and we leave. Couple days later they end up finding a dead body right near our then campsite.” — ihatemakingthese69

9. A college kid was stabbed during a party

“I was at a party when I was in college when two older dudes showed up. The place was packed and most people were drunk. I noticed something was a off about them. They never smiled and weren’t really talking to anyone. Finally someone accused them of feeling around in their back pocket and it turned out they were lifting wallets from drunk college kids. Once confronted, one of the guys stabbed the kid in the stomach with a smallish knife. They left slowly and were never caught. It was pretty surreal. The kid who got stabbed turned out fine.” — Z_witha_ZED

10. I could have potentially stopped someone who committed suicide

“2 years ago, I was on my way back home on my bike. I had to go over a bridge and on one side of the bridge, there was a girl, crying. On the bridge, two 14 year olds (one pretty tall, one pretty small), head to head, seemingly about to get into a fight. When I went by, they stood back. I thoutht something was off, but I told myself fighting among 14 year olds over what I thought was a girlfriend, is normal and not dangerous, right?

Turns out, the taller one of the boys jumped off the bridge to commit suicide only minutes after I passed, the smaller one couldn’t physically hold him back.

Had I stopped, listened to my gut feeling, I might have been able to help and talk him out of it.” — KIMD0TC0M

11. I almost died brutally in a car wreck

“Not so much something very wrong here but a bunch of my friends wanted to go to this party when I was like 20. I was just sort of like ‘idk I really don’t wanna go to this place with these people.’ Turns out 2 of my friends got into an argument with people who lived there, got kicked out, were super hammered and drove home angry. Car flipped 3 or 4 times wrecked about another 4 cars. My one friend leaves with a small concussion the other leaves with like 8 broken bones and walking therapy for about 2 years. Best part is the emergency responders said if anyone was in the back seat they would be dead. That’s where I would have been sitting.” — nudg3

12. The pastor was physically abusing little boys

“I used to be a lifeguard in a very small gated community with a lot of wealthy people. I also used to sing at the local church services. I met the pastor in that context and something about him just seemed… off. It wasn’t anything I’d be able to articulate. I just didn’t like him. He just made my gut drop.

Later, I noticed that the local pastor was spending a lot of time at the pool watching the little kids swim — one little boy in particular. He would have a towel ready for him, he’d have the kid sit on his lap to dry off. As far as I knew, he wasn’t babysitting him…. he was just there, watching and touching. It made my hackles rise.

I told his parents that the way the pastor was interacting with their son made me uncomfortable. They investigated and it turns out the pastor was going to their home when they weren’t there and ‘spending time’ with that little boy in his bedroom. They didn’t give me any more details than that but it was implied that something sexual had been going on.

I don’t know what happened to him after that but he was obviously removed as pastor from the church. It’s so important to trust your gut on these things.” — why_renaissance

13. Someone attempted to kidnap the two of us

“This happened almost 30 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was probably 8 or 9 at the time and had been at the store buying candy for the weekend with the girl from next door, she was one year younger than me. A car stopped and the man inside opened the passenger door and asked me and my friend to get in the car. He was picking us up for our parents, he told us.

I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong and remember thinking “this is what my parents were talking about!”. I grabbed my friends hand, said that we lived in that house “right over there” and pulled my friend with me. Went to their door, rang the bell, went straight in and told the people living there what had happened.

Turned out I was right, we were about to be kidnapped.” — bipbopbipbopbap 

14. They narrowly avoided a deadly car accident

“My grandparents were driving up a steep mountain road behind a logging truck, when my grandmother started having a mild panic attack.

She just kept saying ‘somethings not right, pull over. We need to pull over’ so my grandpa did and settled her down.

After a few minutes she was fine and they kept driving.

A mile or two up the road the load of trees had come loose and spilled off the truck.” — MicMcKee 

15. I found the dead body of a loved one

“Found somebody I knew dead. You never really expect that, but the feeling of something feeling very wrong was definitely there. Not a good experience at all.” — 24rubikscube

16. I hit a deer with my car

“Leaving a family camping trip. Something felt wrong before I left. I ignored it. Still, it was bugging me, and it was dark, so I drove slower than normal.

Turn a curve, and there’s this deer standing in the road. Just…fucking standing there, staring at a huge-ass field of soy beans.

Even driving slower, I didn’t have time to stop. Wrecked my hood, busted my radiator, and cracked my windshield.

This buck was huge. Like fat-huge. If I’d been driving faster it could have done more damage or even injured or killed me.” — desireewhitehall

17. I became pregnant and then miscarried

“When I got pregnant. I was constantly worried because I didn’t feel right and couldn’t let myself get excited. Ended in a miscarriage at 6 weeks.” — Jinjit23

18. He assaulted underage children and raped a parole officer

“We used to live in an apartment block where there was this old guy who was super friendly. He befriended my roomie, and pretty much a whole bunch of other people. He kind of brought us all together with bbqs in the parking lot (he was on the ground floor, and had a little garden area).

I didn’t like him. I didn’t know why, but the way he talked sometimes, just… the way he looked.

I pushed past it, tried to tell myself I was judging a book by the cover.

Well anyway, he turned out to be abusing his partner. Roomie got involved, he assaulted her and tried to strangle her. And then we found out the name he went by wasn’t his real name (we shared the same doctors office, we had an appointment at similar times and I heard his name called).

Looked him up, several news articles about him and a page on a website identifying known pedophiles. Apparently he assaulted several 14~ y/os, raped his parole officer, and described a nine year old girl in court as ‘sexually mature’ because she was developing.” — lavenderRope

19. She died from breast cancer

“When my husband phoned me to say my SIL’s breast cancer was back. The first time she was diagnosed I was calm and positive. She got treatment and went into remission. After the second phone call 3 years later I had my first full scale panic attack. Everyone else in the family stayed positive, but she died just a year later.” — NauntyNienel

20. I inadvertently saved a friend from a car crash

“My friend asked me for a ride home. I told him I wasn’t going his way and he was like ‘okay, I’ll catch a ride with those people.’ I wasn’t a huge fan of the people he was going to go home with, so I said fuck it and gave him a ride.

Turns out the kids who were going to take him home decided to speed down a windy, wooded road near his house at 80MPH. They hit something and flipped the car multiple times. They all lived, but barely. The EMTs said that if they were bigger kids (they were all scrawny and under 5’10”) they would’ve been crushed.

My friend who almost went with them is 6’2. He absolutely would’ve died that day.” — fwooby_pwow

21. Her friend overdosed and suffered from a heart attack

“Not me, but my coworker. She got a call last week that her sister in law didn’t show up for work and didn’t call or anything. She’s been working three jobs recently and was complaining she needed a good night’s sleep. Coworker said she probably slept through the alarm clock, but her husband insisted that she go home and check on her because it wasn’t like the SIL to just not show up for work. Coworker was annoyed, but did it since her house was only 20 mins away.

Coworker gets there and it turns out she had overdosed on some sort of opioid, and then had a heart attack. Oxygen levels were extremely low, and paramedics said that if coworker hadn’t gotten home when she did, SIL would have been dead within minutes. Thank god her husband had felt that something was wrong. Always go with your gut.” — juliet17

22. A car nearly killed me on my motorcycle

“It was 130am, raining, I was riding my motorcycle down a 4 lane road(2 lanes each direction with a middle turn lane). I saw a car approach a stop sign, perpendicular to me, in the parking lot of a bar and though to myself “he’s going to turn left in front of me”. I was going 45mph, let off the throttle and about 200-250ft from him, he did exactly what I thought he was going to do. Grabbed my front and rear brakes, back tire locked up and kicked out to the left. I had maybe 40-50 feet in which I would either high-side in front of the car and likely be ran over, slam into the driver door or rear driver door or jump off to the right in a tuck and roll fashion. I jumped and my motorcycle slammed into the rear driver side of his car. I had a couple scratches, bruises and a sore tailbone. But I wasn’t ran over or hanging out in his back seat via glass window.

Thank God for spidey senses.” — ReallyNotRoot Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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