50+ Creepy ‘Gut Feelings’ That Turned Out To Be Something Extremely Sinister

***

“I used to pick up hitchhikers in the 80s & early 90s. I was into Jesus and wanted to do good deeds.

One day I saw two women who looked rough hitchhiking on the side of I-295 in Jacksonville, FL. Based on their appearance, I thought they were leaving an abusive situation or something. I pulled over to pick them up.

As they walked up to my van, they exchanged creepy looks – sort of a “are we gonna do this?” expression. I got bad vibes and drove off right as they were reaching for my door. I felt bad later and beat myself up for it. What if they really needed help?

A few days later, I saw sketches of them on the news. It was Aileen Wuornos (the serial killer from the movie Monster) and her girlfriend. The guy who picked them up after I drove off was murdered and dumped in a swamp.

Trust your gut!”

***

“When I was 19 I was walking home at midnight from a tram stop and I got the feeling I should pretend I was on the phone. A minute after doing so a car pulls up next to me on the empty road.

It’s four guys all leering at me, the one in the passenger side starts saying things like, ‘how about we take you for a good time’ and his tone is predatory.

I try to keep it cool because I didn’t want to look frightened to encourage them that I am prey and start telling my ‘friend’ there’s a group of guys in a car harassing me and describing the car. I hear the driver say to his mate something about my conversation on the phone and then they take off. I ran home with my phone ready should they change their mind and come back.

A couple of months later I hear on the news that in my area there was a group picking up girls and gang raping them. The description matched the car and the guys in it that followed me that night.

I had the sense after my encounter to tell my work what happened and refuse to do night shift any more unless they paid for my taxi home. I shudder to think what may have happened if I hadn’t pretended to be on the phone that night.”

***

“Aunt married her second husband and he just gave me the creeps. She came into the marriage with a daughter who was about 8 at the time. These were family we would only see maybe a couple times per year and every time something about him gave me the heebies, even as a 14-year-old boy. Something felt really wrong. Fast forward 6-8 years later and we learn he molested my female cousin pretty much from the day he became her step-dad. Years of it. Aunt divorced him but he’s still around because they had additional kids together. I see him comment on FB posts of the cousin he molested. I’d love for him to die a slow and painful death, the sooner the better.”

***

“I was like 6 years old and in the backyard of my best friend/neighbor swimming in a 3ft play pool thing. She went inside to ask for something and right as she left, a guy on a motorcycle drove down the alley and stopped. The fence was a small chain link fence, so he definitely saw me and stopped. And I could see him clearly, like 20 years later it’s still so vivid.

He pulled out some gloves and put them on which is the last thing I saw him doing as I got out and ran through their garage out the front, and inside my house next door terrified. He drove around the front down the street slowly and about 10 minutes later shot 2 kids at the park at the end of my street.”

***

“When I was 15, I hung out with some friends after school and got a ride home that night. No one had been home all day, so there were no lights on inside or out. The friend that drove me home didn’t stick around to see if I made it in, so as I’m starting to make my way up the walkway to the front door, I sense someone waiting to meet me there. I calmly stop after taking a couple steps and say “Nope!” loud enough for the potential criminal to hear me, then briskly turn around and walk swiftly down the street, cut through a neighbor’s backyard to get to the next street over, make my way to the nearest pay phone, dial the police and tell them I think there’s someone trying to rob the house. I get back when a police officer arrives and he shines his flashlight around the door and sees footprints in the snow leading from around the house. He follows those and sees they are around the entire house. There was in fact, someone waiting for me to open the door that night. I laugh at the thought of their surprise to have some teenage girl acknowledge them from a distance and tell them not today.”

***

“My siblings and I were swimming at a neighbors house with their kid, but the adults were inside. Randomly a thought came into my head of “Wheres my sister at?”. She easily couldve gone inside or have walked across the street and be home but i felt like I needed to find her ASAP. I got all of us kids to search when we noticed she was at the bottom of the pool, completely blue.

She made a complete recovery and is one of the best parts of my life.”

***

“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 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 I 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 me, 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. 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.”

***

“I had a co worker who used to go to parties In high school. Several of the parties in her senior year were at some guys farm. She went to one and bailed right away saying it felt weird. The guy who owned the farm was Robert Pickton.”

***

“I’m a member of a local Facebook group to help moms find babysitters. One of the admins was a mid 20s man who babysat for tons of kids in the area, and specialized in caring for nonverbal and autistic children. His posts always gave me (and some other members) a weird vibe but he was loved by this group as a whole. He was just arrested for molesting 2 children and possession of child porn. Bail is set at 2 million. It’s estimated that he sat for over 500 children in our area. Who knows how many he abused.”

***

“Before my husband and I were married with good jobs we were young and poor and didn’t care where we lived.. we rented out a shitty little house behind the landlords house that was clearly a shed poorly transformed into a small studio space. At the time I worked late nights and my husband worked mornings so I would sleep till around 12 and work all night. The landlord, Greg, was this bald old man with a heavy Russian accent. He was kind of odd but seemed nice. So was his wife. He’d made odd comments and invite me into his house to FaceTime (at the time it was a different program I can’t remember what the OG online face chat was) with his friends in Russia. One time I complained the chipmunks were crawling into the roof, asked to patch it up better and he said “Baah no need, I take care” and I swear to god he would snatch them up with his bare hands and break their necks. I wish I was making that up. Weird, he made me feel uneasy but seemed kind to us.

When we first moved in I kept waking up feeling uneasy when I should’ve been exhausted. I’d feel nervous and get up check the doors, check closets ect.

One week my husband went away to visit his father and I was alone and literally felt like I was constantly being watched. The bedroom window was back in the yard and it was heavily wooded, I’d hear crunching of leaves and foot steps all the time. My husband said I was being paranoid because I was alone and I thought so too.

But then that same week my husband was away I offered to watch my friends dog. So I get home from work around 2am and get to sleep around 3-4am. I wake up around 8-9am to the dog barking and growling like a made man. Now, because the space was similar to a studio we had no doors on anything besides the bathroom. I spring up, and see Greg the landlord literally in the living room, hand on the front door just frozen. He was caught off guard by the dog and I yelled “what the hell are you doing?!” I thought the house was on fire or something, and I know the front door was locked. I always locked it. He quickly apologized and walked out. When I shook from my sleepy daze I realized maybe this wasn’t a one time thing, I took a shower, dressed and walked up to their house. Greg’s car wasn’t in the driveway but his wife was home. I told her what happened and asked why Greg would use his keys to go in the house without giving me notice. She was nonchalant about it and replied “it’s his house he can do what he want. He like to check on things from time to time”

I flipped out on her. Clearly this was happening often and the eerie feeling I was getting im 10000% sure was Greg literally coming in the house, watching me sleep completely invading my privacy when he knew I was alone and asleep. We noped the fuck out of there as soon as we could. He actually tried to take us to small claims court for breaking the lease but I had already reported him to the police and found out the space we were renting wasn’t even up to code or on the books to be rented.”

***

“The first friend that reached out to me in high school invited me to a sleepover that became a weekly occurrence.

Met her stepdad, and instantly my stomach was unsettled. He was weird, tried to hard to seem cool/strong/useful, and stuck around us when we set up the sleeping bags in the living room and hung out. I kind of understood why he lingered the first night, but the lingering continued throughout the couple of years I stayed over. I told my mum I thought he was weird and suspicious and she told me never judge a book by its cover.

One day I found out that she had been continuously molested by him for years and had told her to bring friends over so he didn’t molest her (her mother admitted it was so he could groom the friends). He was physically aggressive with me one day and I never went back. Took a month or so but I couldn’t take it and gathered as much evidence that I could (things that used to mean nothing were suddenly glaringly obvious that something was wrong) and went to police.

I was something I never really wanted to be true, but it had happened before (same sort of ‘something is very wrong here’ situation has happened to me a few other times with similar or same results) and I just knew that I couldn’t be wrong but I did question myself along the way.”

***

“This happened a couple of years ago at the church I attend. One day this young lady in her mid-20’s started attending our services. She was very polite and friendly and seemed eager to be a part of our congregation. After several weeks she started bringing her brother, who I’ll call Brody, along with her. He was slightly younger than her and seemed nice enough. The more time I spent around him, however, I began to realize how different he was. He was very socially awkward with odd mannerisms and speech patterns, but I just assumed he was autistic or something, so that wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t become alarmed until I noticed how fixated Brody was becoming on our pastor and his wife. He constantly followed them around like a puppy, begging for their attention, and growing upset when they associated with anyone besides him. Once while walking beside our pastor, I looked across the parking lot to see Brody giving me the most hateful stare you can imagine. I was instantly creeped out. From that moment I knew something was dangerously wrong with this man, but no one else seemed to notice it. Fast forward to several weeks later. I walk into church for the Wednesday night service to find our pastor alone, without his wife or children. He tells me he’s sent his family away to a safe place for a few days. Apparently Brody had called the pastor’s wife and had threatened to rape and murder her. Luckily he couldn’t find a car to borrow, or he very likely would have carried out his threats. After the police came and placed him in custody, it was revealed that Brody had done this exact thing several times before to other women. It was all such a surreal experience. I’ve wondered if perhaps I should have spoken up about my early suspicions, but part of me thinks I would’ve just been laughed off or dismissed.”

***

“When I was about 12-14 I babysat for a couple with two kids and the dad gave me the creeps. 15 years later my mom called me and said he was going to prison for raping the daughter over a long period of time. I wonder if it had started yet when I was babysitting them… just so sad to think about that poor cute little girl I babysat.”

***

“4 students of mine won the 1st prize for a project they did and we all got a free trip to London.

We had spent the day sightseeing and were exhausted so we got an ice-cream and sat on a bench in a park to relax. A couple of minutes later I notice this couple walk by slowly, staring at us. My spidey-senses go mental. I do not like these people for some reason. She walks by and sits on the bench next to ours and he sits on the bench across from hers. They arent talking, just looking at each other. And that is when I notice her reaching into her pockets. I jump up, grab my students and run out of the park.
My poor students are confused AF and wondering wtf is wrong with me, when all of a sudden we hear screaming. Turns out she stabbed a couple walking through the park, trying to rob them.

It scares the ever loving fuck out of me knowing had I not gotten my students out of there, we would have been stabbed and robbed.”

***

“I woke up one morning and saw that I was late for school. I got up and on the way I’m debating if I should take a short cut to get there earlier and decided against it. Now as I’m walking along there was a man who sitting on a chair near the sidewalk. He stopped me and asked if I was late for school and he essentially started a conversation with me. Now, I was close to school so I figured killing a few minutes before my next class started wouldn’t be a big deal. As this man keeps talking, he starts suggesting that I enter his house because he’s got an Xbox One and a PS4 in there and that he wanted to split screen with someone else. I rejected the offer and he kept trying to persuade me to enter his house. This guy then gets in front me, essentially blocking off the sidewalk and starts asking why I don’t want to enter his house. I gave him a BS reason and said I needed to get going. At this point I’m thinking I have to get out of there cause this guy is giving me the creeps and I don’t know what he’s capable of. I tried walking past him, but this fucker put his hand on my shoulder and I decided to just run off right then and there. At the end of the school day I’m walking past the same place with a group of friends and outside of this guy’s house are bunch of police officers and him sitting on the curb with his wrists cuffed. I feel like I dodged a bullet that day.”

***

“There is such a thing as a feeling of “impending doom” when your body is like – “yo, you are about to die” – it is a real thing.

I had not been feeling well, and all of a sudden I sat up and had a distinct feeling of you are going to die soon if you don’t do something. I drove myself to the ER and on the way was getting chest pains. I went in, told them and they took me to the back. After some tests there were a lit of people around me injecting me with a lot of different stuff.

Turns out I had a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in my lung) which at any second could have gone to my brain and killed me then and there. The doctors said if I had left it any longer I would have been dead.”

***

“I had a student in an adult course I was teaching. She was bright, responsible, and quiet in class. Then every week I’d get these incredibly personal, long love letters from her about how she just knew I was checking her out, and how thrilled she was, because her marriage was in shambles and she needed love. I had never once spoken to her, and she was obviously not seeing reality. I tried multiple times to bring her back to the real world and shut her down. The semester ended, I reported her, but nothing happened and I never heard from her again. YEARS later, the same month I moved to a different neighborhood, a woman just a block away from my new house killed her husband and herself. Guess who it was…”

***

“I was at my grandparents for a gathering and me and some of the other older kids were playing catch or tag in the front yard, I can’t exactly remember, doesn’t matter. The younger kids were playing in the backyard, doing whatever the hell kids do. While playing, I could SWEAR I heard a crying/wailing/screaming sound, but it was very quiet and distant. It was one of the most horrific screams I’ve ever heard, but I asked the others and they didn’t hear a thing, and all insisted it was nothing. I don’t know why but felt absolutely dreadful and terrified, yet everything was fine, so I decided to go check it out. I run into the backyard and it turns out my little sister (4-5 yrs at the time) was bleeding severely, she was covered in blood and trying to crawl towards the house, I swear it was out of a damn horror movie, looking back I can’t believe this actually happened. Long story short my little cousin (7-8 yrs at the time) decided it was a good Idea to play “catch” with some broken glass he found in the backyard, and ended up cutting her jaw very deeply. Kids are dumb.”

***

“”Family friend” from my uncle’s church was on vacation with us when I was around 11 or 12. I wanted to go for a walk in the woods, my mom said no, he jumped in and insisted he would go with me. She says yes. As we’re walking I’m getting this weird vibe from the guy. He keeps insisting on taking pictures of me, I keep getting more creeped out. Eventually he’s got my cornered and my mind just goes into total fight or flight, he’s got his hands on my thighs and there’s nowhere I can go so I’m plotting in my head how I’ll launch myself at him and gouge his eyes out. Just as I’m about to make my move a relative who knew he was a pedo and was worried about what would happen makes his presence known. A few years later the family friend went to prison for raping a bunch of kids, including most of my cousins. I’m pretty sure I was almost raped that day.”

***

“One day, about two weeks ago, I woke up and didn’t feel pregnant anymore. Just found out today that the baby has no heart beat.”

***

“So back when I was like 9 years old my dad used to go treasure hunting some WW2 relics, he was a collector.

Now he had a bunch of friends he’d do it with and had quite a bit of connections.

Now he was introduced to a guy, let’s call him Ivan for now. They quickly became friends but my mother never liked him. She always had a bad feeling about Ivan. She tried telling this to my dad but he would just shrug it off.

One day my dad decided to on an expedition. My mother begged him not to go because she felt a sense of dread over him going.

A day later my father is missing. The police was called and a investigation was started, my mom asked around of his friend’s group and after couple of days found out that he was last seen with Ivan and that they went somewhere near the dam.

A search party was organised one of them was lead by Ivan himself because he was near the dam with him a couple of days ago before he disappeared. My mother being skeptical of him organised a second search group with his previous old friends and family.

Hours later a body has been discovered by the second search group. Hastily buried beneath a thin layer of leafs and wet dirt lied the body of my father. He had to been there for days because the body was in a very bad shape and the rain didn’t help. The face was almost unrecognisable.

That night my mother decided to change the locks on the door because his body was looted and the keys with them.

Good thing she did that because the next night she heard keys clinging and scratching against the lock. She called the police but by the time they got there he was gone.

What really happened: “Ivan” and my dad went alone to go looking for some WW2 relics and when the opportunity came Ivan shot my father with an old double barreled in the back, took his belongings with the plan to rob us and possibly kill us during the night if not for my mother that changed the lock that night. He also purposefully lead the investigation as far as possible from the real place the body was hidden.

Good thing that the bastard is rotting behind bars now.”

***

“A few years ago I was out drinking for a friend’s Bachelorette party. I knew I was too drunk to drive, so I called my then-boyfriend for a ride. As I was hanging up the phone, I thought to myself that I should ask him to drive his car instead of his motorcycle, but I didn’t say anything.

On the way home, we were side swiped by a drunk driver in a suburban. The front wheel of the motorcycle got caught in the wheel well and she dragged us down the street for about a block and a half. The only reason she stopped was because a cop pulled her over. She was so drunk she didn’t even notice that she ran us over.

To add to the “trust your gut” thing, my boyfriend only had one helmet, and I tried to get him to wear it, but he insisted that we weren’t going anywhere until I was wearing it. My head hit the pavement pretty hard, but his didn’t. If I hadn’t been wearing the helmet things would have gone much differently that night.”

***

“When I was 13, my mom started dating a guy named…Ted. Ted was a therapist who lost custody of his own daughter a few years earlier for some unknown reason. Ted also had issues with the law for illegal gun possession. I did not like Ted. But my mom did. She liked him so much, she let him behave as if he were my father. He helped me transfer schools, drove me to class every morning, and even gave me swimming lessons…and this is where the story turns.

While teaching me how to float on my back one afternoon, Ted touched my ass. Not a supportive lift to prevent me from sinking, but a full on, jerk me by my bikini bottom, GRAB that exposed me underwater. It felt wrong, but I didn’t have the words at the time to explain why. What also felt wrong was how often Ted talked about sex. How much he enjoyed it, how much his clients were having it, and what deviant things they were into. During these early morning car rides, Ted would also ask me sometimes how much I knew about sex, and where I was in my own physical development. Like I remember him asking about my periods a lot.

Then one day, Ted disappeared. My mom didn’t say why, just that it was over. Ok. Cool. Fast forward about 10 years. Bored in my apartment, I suddenly feel like googling Ted, and Hole. E. Shit.

I found a cease and desist letter from the state dated a few years back that told him to shut down his business. Turns out Ted wasn’t a therapist at all. He was a pervert who created his own private practice so he could prey on vulnerable women. In fact, he was in a dom/sub relationship with several of his “patients” at the same time he was courting my mom and nudging his way into our church community.

Told my mom about it – she had no idea. Told a family friend about it, he said, “I KNEW I didn’t like that guy!” Then they both told me Ted had tried to get in touch with them recently! Both declined to meet him, of course, but my protective instincts kicked in. I said, if this fool has the balls to pop up again, you direct him to me. I will confront him and call the cops on him myself if he dares to come near my family.”

***

“When my mother started dating her 2nd husband. The moment I saw him, I knew something wasn’t right, but being a kid I had no idea what.

Fast forward to their wedding. From the moment they were married, he turned in to a physically and emotionally abusive piece of shit. Luckily after a while, my mother got up the courage to kick him out, get a restraining order and get a divorce.

I only realised a few years ago that there was something else up with him as well.

He would come in to my room at least once every day (as far as I know, only when I was awake). Sit on my bed and try to talk to me with a creepy smile on his face. His hand would be on my leg, and he’d get closer and closer to me as his hand got higher and higher. Then he’d get to about my knee, suddenly stand up and walk out.

I only told my family about that a few years ago, and I’ll never forget the horror on their faces.

As far as I’m aware, he didn’t do anything to me other than what I said above. But fuck knows.

A year or so after my mother kicked him out, he beat a guy half to death with a pool cue. Never saw the inside of a cell.”

***

“I used to clean vacant houses for a living. One day I was working at a house near the end of a dead end street and there was maybe 6 or 7 houses on the one side of the street before an intersection with a stoplight so it was a pretty heavy traffic area. I was cleaning out the property just fine when my Spidey-Sense went off the charts. I was inside the house but I pretty much dropped everything, got in my car and started to drive outta there. On the corner I saw a weird looking guy that had a nasty feeling about him. When I got home it was all over the news, that guy was now known for being a cop killer, making the start of his career right on that street corner about 15 minutes after I hoofed it. Told my boss that I wasn’t going to go back to that property. He understood.”

***

“I had a dream that my brother died the night before he did (dream Friday night, found dead of an overdose Saturday), but the dream was so real that I thought it had actually happened for years. My parents didn’t tell us he’d died until Sunday but I knew he was dead the whole weekend and was confused as to why they were acting like I didn’t know (acting like I hadn’t seen what I’d “seen”).

I don’t really believe in premonitions or anything but that’s something I’ll never be able to explain. Still wonder how different life would be if the dream had woken me up and I went and said something to him. It was probably the defining event of my life when including everything that followed.”

***

“Came back to work after a week off for Christmas vacation and immediately noticed something was off with my friend. I had no clue what it was but I just knew was something was wrong with him but I couldn’t explain what it was. I kept asking him if he was alright but he kept saying everything was fine.

On the second day he came up to me and asked me how to do something that I know he knew how to do, I had trained him on how to do it. I became very concerned at this point. The 3rd day was new years eve so we only had a half day and he was working on a spreadsheet. End of the day came around and I took one look at it and I could have printed it out and called it modern art, that’s how horrifying it looked. I called the boss over and he pulled him off of it which caused my friend to break down and start crying because he couldn’t understand that he had done anything wrong. I was moving to a new place over our day and a half off so I simply told him that something was wrong with him and he needed to get some help.

We came back in for one day on Friday and my friend wasn’t there. I learned that he was in the hospital because of a heart attack. Later on we learned that during the days leading up he was suffering from mini strokes and that all of my constant nagging about if he was alright ultimately led to him thinking that maybe there is something wrong with him and so he called a taxi to take him to the ER on new years eve where they immediately recognized that he was having a heart attack. A doctor later told him that if he had not gone to the ER when he did he would not have woken up if he had gone to sleep that night.

Because of this my friend says that I saved his life through the power of our friendship.”

***

“About 15 years ago i left work early, like really early, for no real reason. I got home and all these kids were standing near my door (apartment complex next to a pond) and they were all staring at me and not saying anything. I went inside and dropped my bag and it wouldnt stop weighing on me how weird it was so i went back outside. I spoke to them asking what was going on and one kid meekly asked if I could help his friend. A kid I didn’t see was sitting on a curb surrounded by all the rest. They had all jumped the fence next to the pond, except he slipped and impaled the flesh of his inner thigh and got stuck, the kids helped pick him up off of it, but he was just sitting there bleeding everywhere with a bunch of meat hanging out. I got him treated and ambulance on the way, he came back a few weeks later with his family to thank me, said I saved his leg.”

***

“About 6 years ago, my sister and her family were visiting. Her daughter – 4 months old at the time – was napping in the house while the adults were hanging outside. I went into the house to grab something, and glanced over at my neice. She was limp and strange looking, like spaced out. It really freaked me out so I picked her up, panicking a bit, and handed her to my BIL. By this time she was back to normal, so we shrugged it off. I said something like Oh I forgot how babies look when they sleep.

Within 1-2 day, my niece started having 10 seizures a day. What I had witnessed was a seizure. That was the beginning of a multi-year nightmare of seizures, hospital visits, neurological testing, and many different types of anti-seizure meds. She was diagnosed with a seizure disorder. Thankfully, the docs found meds that worked, her seizures went away, and she was eventually weened off her medication.

She has been seizure free for 4 years! Now she is a healthy, beautiful and happy little lady!”

***

“One night during finals my junior year at university I received a text from my father at 1:30am.

“I love you.”

My heart sunk. My family is not affectionate. My family doesn’t say “I love you”. My father does not text me. For some reason I woke up 3 mins after receiving the text while my phone was on silent. I called to see if he was okay. No answer.

I immediately got in the my car and tore off to my dad’s place. I let myself in and found him in bed with a handful of pills and a loaded pistol on his nightstand. He immediately broke down in tears and I held him for what seemed like an hour.

I saved my father’s life that night and have always checked in on him since. He’s in a much better place now.”

***

“I met some guys in a large game of D&D that a mutual acquaintance had invited us to. Once the campaign was over some of us started a smaller group with a good friend of mine, and another’s former room mate/friend. I just thought that the former room mate was a bit of a harmless burn out, forgot names and was a tad spacey at times. Even caught a couple movies with him at the theater, during one such outing he got a call at the restaurant we were having beers at pre-show and told someone to ‘hold me one until I get out of this movie’.

He said it was his meth dealer, I laughed thinking he was cracking one of his odd ball jokes. I asked the friend that introduced us and he said he knew he dabbled in drugs but thought he mostly just smoked or ate edibles. Turns out this guy was taking meth on the weekends and staying up for most of it before crashing enough to go to work on Monday mornings. I think at some point he stopped waiting for it to be the weekend.

We had a board game/card night planned and ended up playing a really fun card game called ‘Smash-Up’, we got started learning the rules waiting for old room mate to get over. He comes walking in and immediately I know something is very wrong. He suddenly has a very bad bleached dye job on his hair and his appearance is very rumpled and overall he looks strung out as fuck. We welcome him in and we explain the rules and start playing, the cards you plan on playing may change radically depending on what the person ahead of you plays, so each person usually takes a couple of minutes before playing what will get them the maximum score.

Old room mate guy is getting more and more impatient, and we’re joking around and he looks at the guy directly across from him and says if he doesn’t play his hand, he’ll fucking kill him. Everyone else nervous laughs but I can tell that this is no joke. Just then, he slams his cards down, gets up with such force that he knocks his chair over backwards and charges around the table trying to get swings in while I am holding and shoving him back. He finally stops and just grabs his shit and storms out the front door before ominously saying that, “He’ll be seeing us around real soon.”

By the time we all calmed down, he had blocked all our phone numbers and all of us on social media. The guy he tried to attack was looking over his shoulder for weeks. This was over a year ago and nobody has seen or heard of him since.”

***

“Years ago I was staying the night at someone else’s house, maybe an hour from where I lived. That night I was so tired but I couldn’t get to sleep – I was super anxious all night, which was very unusual for me, and I just couldn’t relax. I came so close several times to just grabbing my things and driving home in the middle of the night but I convinced myself not to.

Turns out I should have. If I’d gone home that night I would have had the chance to say goodbye to my dad before he passed away that next morning.

I still regret that to this day, and I promised myself that the next time I get a feeling like that I’ll listen to it.”

***

“It was a long weekend and I got invited to the beach with a few friends from Thursday to Monday. My girlfriend decided to chill at home for it, as she had some work she needed to do. On Friday night I had a stupid argument one of my friends about some game we were playing, so I went for a walk to cool off. I’m not usually the kind of person with a strong temper, but this friend can really get under my skin. I called my girlfriend to chat and talk about a few things. I don’t know why, but I got a really sinking feeling when I started to talk to her. The best way I can describe it is I could just feel the world slow down as something in my gut said “Hey, this isn’t right”. I tried to explain it to her, and she said it was probably because of my argument with my friend, but I knew it was different. Anyway, I get over myself and go back and apologise to my friends and continue having a good time at the beach, but I still couldn’t shake that sinking feeling; it just lingered in the back of my mind for the rest of the trip.

When I get home on Monday my girlfriend said that one of her friends has been kicked of out his house and asked if he could stay at our place for a few nights. I said sure, cause if I was in situation I would really want a place to sleep that isn’t on the streets. It worked out well because one of our flatmates had just moved out so we had a spare room, and our replacement flatmate wouldn’t move in til next week, so he could sleep in his room, albeit on just a mattress on the floor, but it’s better than sleeping rough. Anyway, the replacement flatmate comes over that night to sign some paperwork for the tenancy agreement. Everyone who is currently on the agreement needs to sign it to confirm the change, so new flatmate, old flatmate, my girlfriend, 2 other flatmates and I meet up that night. My other flatmates have somewhat busy schedules, so we had to make an effort to all be there. While this is happening my girlfriend’s friends shows up and she shows him to his temporary room. I make an offhand comment about how I had been away for the whole weekend, because I usually don’t go away for long. My flatmate says “Really?” and I explain how I was at the beach. The look my flatmate gave wasn’t right, I got that sinking “not-right” feeling again almost instantly. I quickly change subjects and finish up the paperwork.

Later that night, the same flatmate knocked on my door, while my girlfriend was the in the shower. She said “Were you serious about about what you said?”. Again, that feeling just comes right back, and I respond sheepishly “Yeah”. She chokes up for a minute and explains to me that while I was away my girlfriend had a friend over on Friday night, the same one who is now staying here. I start thinking about how maybe he was kicked out earlier, but maybe went back for a bit or something, until my flatmate then explains that she tough she heard my girlfriend and I having really loud sex on Friday, as she had to knock on my door and tell us to keep it down. This is when I start putting all the pieces together and that sinking feeling just comes back in full force.

I’ll cut the rest of the story short because it doesn’t relate to the “not-right” feeling that the question asked about. I confronted my girlfriend about it. She denied it, the I mentioned what my flatmate said and she broke down. I kick the guy out, but he had found another place, so just as well. I break up with my girlfriend after a week or arguing and fighting trying to work something out. About a month or so later, they get engaged. It turns out she had been cheating on me with him for about 6 months. She had also forgotten about other times she had cheated on me, so I dodged a major bullet, although it was more of a crawling away while wounded.

In conclusion, I should have payed a lot more attention to that not right feeling I had, and I now know what the feeling means and that I need to follow it.

To anyone who spent time out of their day to read this, thank you and stay safe.”

***

“My mom and dad were at some sort of festival when my dad felt some sort of change in the air, like something bad was going to happen. He and my mom got out of there quickly, wouldn’t you know it, some drunk dude with a gun started firing at the crowd.”

***

“Had a man come into the fast food restaurant where I used to work several years ago. It was just before closing, there were two of us up front, a manager a few yards away on a personal phone call, and someone in the back doing dishes. This man is a big, rough looking, blue collar kind of guy (this is relevant in a second). He orders a 3-piece meal, and my friend rings him up while I pack his food. My friend goes “you’re total is $x.xx” and then I hear the register open and I hear the guy say “You have very soft hands, do you moisturize?”.

Instant alarm bells going off in my brain- this guy looks like a man’s man, not the kind of person who would ever chat about skin care regimens. My friend is an idiot though, and starts prattling about lotions and what not. I don’t do anything though- what am I going to call him out on- being too girly? But the next thing I hear is “oh, looks like you gave me the wrong change- you gave me a $20 and four $5s instead of a $5 and four $20’s. Bam. We got ourselves a flimflammer. My friend is still oblivious at this point- the guy is literally showing her the $20 and four $5’s, how can she argue? I’m still a little green myself and not sure what to do. I don’t have proof of anything.

Then he hits her again- asks for change for another large bill, distracts her with random chatter, then oh, look at that, she messed up his change again. By that time I had gone to my manager and tried to make him get off the phone. It took him a second to understand what I was saying. By the time he got to the front the charade was coming to an end- the guy saw us staring at him, grabbed his food and left. Our manager counted the drawer. He ended up getting just over $200 out of my idiot friend. She had to pay it all back (none of it would have happened if she followed store policy of counting change back into the customer’s hand). Never really looked into the legality of that, and it’s too far in the past now to do anything about it.”

***

“A few years ago, I was just getting into our local arts community. There’s a guy who owns a beautiful gallery space as well as the entirety of the remainder of the multiple story building. He does intricate stained glass work, and he has breathtaking glass installations in various sections of the building. The space is really dreamy.

It was my first time checking out the space and meeting him, and he waved a friend of his over, who happened to be a construction worker that had been helping him remodel the building. He invited his friend to give me a tour of the place. I was excited over the warm welcome and to check out the rest of the building, so I followed the guy without a second thought.

We walked around for maybe ten minutes when we arrived at a somewhat isolated section of the third floor where there weren’t any working lights in the next room we were heading towards. The guy made a comment to me about the view from the windows being amazing. He waved me over and was like “come on, come check it out.”

I felt really vaguely weird at the time, and I was like “No, it’s cool, I’ll stay out here, I don’t want to trip on anything.”

He tried to put his hand on my arm to guide me into the room with him. I said no again and took my hand back. The look on his face shifted, and his grip tightened as he tried to pull me into the room with him. Cue panic mode. Another girl happened to be walking up the stairs around the same time that this happened, and I pulled my hand away again and said that I was going to follow her back downstairs.

I told the gallery owner about it, but he brushed it off saying that I misunderstood and that the other guy has “problems” and that it’s “hard for him to communicate with people sometimes.” I still see him around that town every once in a while, and he’s always surrounded by drugged out girls that are clearly unable to function. Him having his arms draped around them just disgusts me on so many levels. He’s an absolute creep. I’ve told everyone I’ve met that he’s a predator and to avoid him.”

***

“I (F) was just 20, in London on my own, on my OE. I met a guy (I can’t remember how) and we went to a pub for a drink. I took a photo of him with my camera and then he asked for the camera and took some photos of me, and looked through them. We left the pub and he was trying to get me to go somewhere in particular while I just wanted to stay public and go to another pub. I felt like something was off, and he seemed to get angry that I wasn’t willing to go with him, so I basically sprint walked away from him. Later I was looking through the photos on my camera and realised that he had deleted the photo I took of him. I’m certain he had a bad plan for me and I learnt a really valuable lesson that day.

Edit: OE = overseas experience. Sorry, I’m Australian and the abbreviation is so common here I forgot to be clear. It’s very common for Australians and Kiwis to head over to London or Europe for a time, before settling down into our careers/family. Also, this was about 15 years ago so it wasn’t on my phone, it was a basic camera. It happened at the start of my 4 month trip around Europe and I was so much more careful after that!

Edit 2: A lot of Australians are commenting about not being familiar with the OE term. It must be something I’ve picked up more from spending time in NZ (I have lived in NZ before), and time with Kiwis (New Zealanders) living in Australia. I didn’t realise it wasn’t so well known here!”

***

“Friend of mine was renting a room from someone. I was 18, he was 24 but we both looked really young at the time. I came over one day to visit, and the guy he was renting from gave off this super creepy vibe like he was undressing us with his eyes. I can’t even describe the look, it made me feel so skeeved out. My friend told me the guy would have random visitors come over with kids and they would go to the shed, stay in there for about an hour and then leave. We suspected something was very off and that drugs were probably involved so one night when he was gone we broke into the shed. Found a large mirror, dirty matress, a video camera and a bunch of tapes. We called cps, the police and moved all his stuff out that night. We found out the guy was a convicted sex offender for molesting his son and he was giving junkies free drugs in return for raping their children and making child porn.

Edit: we also found out he had previously been renting out the spare room to run away/drug addicted tens and give them free rent if they let him have sex with them.

Edit: this blew up very fast. We didn’t actuelly find out what was going on in the shed for certain, i should have worded that differently but we just assumed that is what was happening when we saw inside the shed and with all the other details compiled together. I never knew what happened in the end because the phone calls were anonymous tips. The only name i had to go off (i can’t remember the guy’s full name) was the guy’s middle name which he went by “frank”. I found the trailer park this occurred at and searched for convicted sex offenders in the area. I was able to find frank, the vehicle listed matched his car at the time and his previous address is listed as the trailer park. His sex offender conviction was for molesting of a minor and procession of child pornography. This whole story happened in 2005. His arrest records show he was arrested after the annoynous tips where made in 2005 for unlawful taking-movable property and was convicted. Spent 2 years in jail. His current where abouts are unknown and his Megan’s law page says noncompliance and absconded.”

***

“I lived in the Middle East for about 9 years. One night I was out with 3 friends of mine and we were hanging out having a smoke out on the street.

Two cars pulled up and about 6-7 grown men stepped out of the car rather aggressively right in front of us. As soon as that happened one of the guys I was with very quickly took off and another guy leaned in grabbed my shoulder and said “Your name is Ahmed and you’re muslim!” Thats when I thought to myself “Something is very wrong here.”

Turned out this was a group of Muslim extremist and they stood really close to us and started telling us about their brotherhood. The one guy I was with who was Muslim did most of the talking until a military truck pulled up, guns drawn, and told them to fuck off. They then said that they were just chatting and causing no problems, Military asked us if we were fine and told us to stay out of this area late at night.

I still have the shit stains in my pants even though this happened 10 years ago.”

***

“When I first started driving I got the old family car. After a couple of months, I noticed it had this weird shake whenever I was in Park. I told my parents and they ignored me, as I probably would have if my brand-new-to-driving child complained to me about the car feeling weird. At one point my mom got annoyed with me asking and told me to ignore it because “car aren’t meant to sit in Park”.

Turns out three out of the four engine mounts had completely eroded away. Suck on that mom.”

***

“I was suddenly going to the bathroom constantly and had a lot of blood and I was convinced I had a really serious issue. I went to the doctor, did some tests, they shrugged me off because they were negative. Another doctor, same thing. Finally went to the ER one night because the pain was so bad. They found a cyst on my ovary that was the size of a housecat. I had emergency surgery to get it and my right ovary removed and they said everything would get better. My issues were still there a month post-op and I was having a really hard recovery. I knew something else was going on. Told my surgeon and he literally said, “take pepto” after I had been dealing with these issues for months. I insisted something was still wrong. Finally after begging he sent me to a GI specialist and guess what?? I was diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis AND a rare liver disease. But no one took it seriously for 7 months. 🤷🏻‍♀️”

***

“Was at a park in a rough area, shooting hoops. See some transients (homeless) sitting on a nearby bench, talking, looking at me. I think I’m being paranoid and keep shooting around with my earbuds in but turn off the sound so I can hear; I’m by myself and its like 5pm, no way anything will happen, right?

One walks over, past me, to a bench that is facing behind me. I felt like something was weird when another guy showed up and took up a spot to my right on another bench. So, like a triangle, was surrounded. I got spooked and acted like I was done and walked off briskly to my car and they watched me the whole way. Driving away I felt like maybe I was being prejudiced or racist, as one was black and another hispanic, and was actually feeling a bit guilty.

Later that day two of those dudes were arrested for robbing some guy at the courts at knife point (wanted his phone), so I definitely feel like I dodged a bullet there.”

***

“I had this regarding a girl the year below me at school. A really lovely girl, very clever and friendly to everyone. I spoke to her on my last day at school, talking about where I’d decided to go for university.

She told me that she really wanted to apply to Cambridge University and she was working really hard to get the grades. I dont know why, but I suddenly felt really uneasy and sad for her, particularly because she was so chipper and optimistic about it. At the time, I put this down to the fact that getting past the interview stage for Cambridge is really tough.

About 18 months later, I’m at university and I bump into another different girl who was from my school but also in the year below. She was really quite upset, and as the university term was only 3 weeks in to her first year, I was concerned that she was feeling down. It turned out that she had just received the news that the lovely girl who wanted to go to Cambridge had died two nights ago.

She did get in to Cambridge to study Philosophy. She had just started her lectures after Freshers Week when she contracted bacterial meningitis. She was feeling under the weather, putting it down to ‘Fresher’s Flu’ and went to bed early one night, and didnt wake up the next day. She was 18.”

***

“Last month, i work in Domino’s and the deilvery driver was out on two different deliveries which can take a while, but i started feeling anxious, felt like something is off even though he only left 5 minutes before that. Called him and he didn’t pick up, my boss called half an hour later and told me that the driver had a serious accident and i will have no driver for at least 2 hours, he was in the hospital for a week but i was so stressed because he had a heart attack a month vefore that and he wasn’t supposed to be working, he’s fine now”

***

“Years ago..

I’m working one morning and my fiancée is off. She texts me around 10 or 11 and she says she had gone out to breakfast with her family and they bought her flowers and she was having a good morning.. blah blah.. I was glad to hear that because she didn’t really get along well with her family. The more the day went along, the more it all didn’t sound right.

Later that evening, she was acting unusual and she wouldn’t tell me what was going on.. so I checked the cell phone account activity and learned not only had she been texting and calling this random guy constantly but she had been repeatedly lying to me about what she was doing or why she’d go do this and that or get off the phone with me (like to get back to work).. there were so many instances where she hung up with me and immediately called him and had lengthy conversations. I then pointed at the flowers that were sitting on my table in my apartment (really nice flowers, vase with marbles.. probably cost $60 easily). I asked if they were from him. They were.

That relationship ended right then and there.”

***

“I was at the laundry mat with my bf one day. He gave me coins to put in the dryers across from us, and I noticed an older man standing by those dryers. He had this strange look on his face and immediately my intuition was screaming at me. Something in my body froze up and everything felt heavy. I told my bf I wasn’t going over there, frustrated he took the coins and started the dryers himself. We went to the market down the street to kill time before our clothes were finished drying. As we pulled up to the laundromat there were four police cars out front. When we walked in there was a mother and daughter hysterically talking to the police. That skeevy man had molested a 14 year old girl and hit the mom. Definitely a reminder to always listen to those signals and cues your body”

***

“I was in college, got back to my apartment one night, and realized i had left my backpack at the theater after rehearsal. I drive back over to the theater and as im pulling in i notice a guy walking behind a girl. From where i was, i couldn’t make out a lot of details.

I park and get out of my car. I notice no one is around me. They were walking towards the small parking lot at the back of the theater. They should have been somewhere in my vicinity, but they weren’t. I can’t shake the feeling something is wrong. So i start walking towards the alley. I look down and don’t see anything. Still, i can’t shake the fact that i clearly saw two people in the alley just as i pulled in. I start walking down the alley. About halfway down i turn and see a guy in a ski mask pushing the girl against wall pulling her hair back. Everything goes red and i charge after the guy, pull him off. He pushes me back and takes off running. I run as far as my out of shape ass can run before i stop and go back to see if the girl’s OK. She is shaken up but ok.

The Police come and take a report. The EMT checks out the girl. Later on i find out that a guy in a ski mask had been sexually assaulting women on campus for a year or so.”

***

“Worked in social work right out of college. I was young and didn’t have the life experience to be making the choices I was asked to make. Had a client who was living with foster parents of 35+ yrs. They were everyone’s favorite foster parents in the organization. The guy had something to him that bothered me from the beginning but i thought I was wrong because of how much everyone loved the family. I had a young boy there for a year before someone made an allegation of abuse on him and it turned out to be true. It made me, and still does, feel sick to my stomach thinking about it. If I would have done the work on my own or not immediately just gone ” well if everyone likes him…” I might have caught warning signs earlier than that and not added to this childs long list of traumas.”

***

“This happened not to me, but to my mum and her brother. We live in a block of flats and that day mum was visiting a friend of hers. My grandfather (her dad) was at our flat that day, too. When she came home, she suddenly got the feeling that something was very wrong and left to spend time at our neighbour’s flat until my dad came back. Some time later my dad came home along with my uncle. Dad invited him to stay over for dinner, but he declined and kept saying that he should be going home, which was unusual behaviour. Then they heard a strange noise coming from the pantry. My uncle assumed it was my grandfather trying to scare them, since he had a knack for pranking people like that. Well, when they opened the door, they found his body. My grandfather had hung himself in the pantry only minutes ago.”

***

“My dad had a friend that just had such a bad vibe to him. Like even if he tried to be nice it always came off as creepy. For fear of being predjudice I decide to give him a chance and stop thinking of as a creepy individual; I start talking to him as a neighbor would and mind you I am a 12 year old girl.

He invites me into his house one day while my parents were out and I just get a sense of uneasiness. Like death was right around the corner. I decline the offer and he says alright. I forget about it u til years later I revisit the neighborhood and don’t see him around. My neighbors all get wierd about it. No one tells me anything until and old friend pulls me aside and tells me one of the most obvious yet unnoticed thing about him.

He was a child molestor.”