They say you should always listen to not only that little voice in the back of your head, but the signals from your body that tell you when something just isn’t right.
These 14 people did, and honestly, being tuned in just might have saved their lives.
14. Uber danger.
Driving Uber one night a couple years back. I picked up four guys from a club, listening to them talk I realized that two guys (one of them ordered the ride) had met the other two at the club and were on the way to get c**e from one of their cousins.
There was an odd vibe, some of the conversation didn’t seem the most linear, and I was hyper aware that these drunk dumbasses were heading with two strangers to a d**g deal. And I was the one driving them. I did not want d**gs in my car, and I was very aware that we might be on the way to an ambush. If we’d been heading anywhere remote or sketchy I had to figure out how to end the ride.
The two wannabe dealers kept trying to get in touch with their cousin via cellphone, went to an apartment just off a main street, and after both had gone into the building I just said “should be leave?” to the guys and we did. I still don’t know if it was just a ploy for a free ride, guys too drunk or dumb to pull off a basic c**e deal, or something nefarious that didn’t finish.
13. That took a turn.
I’m a criminal defense investigator. I had a m***er case involving two brothers. The one accused of the m***ers was very autistic, and his brother was a schizophrenic. The schizophrenic brother lived in a potato shack in the middle of the desert. I needed to talk to him several times throughout the course of the investigation, and since he didn’t have a phone or electricity, I had to drive several hours out to his house and yell his name from the fence line until he came out of the shack.
This investigation lasted for several years, and over time I developed a rapport with schizophrenic brother, and I kind of got to like him. He would talk your ear off about the aliens with golden eyes and the underground tunnels that connect all the Walmarts in the country, but he was pretty entertaining, and part of me wonders how much of it was a “show”.
Schizophrenic brother eventually gets a girlfriend; she’s a tweaker who has mistaken his schizophrenia for meth induced psychosis. I talked to her a few times in jail when she was sober, and she was surprisingly charming and insightful.
The last time I go to see schizophrenic brother, it’s a dark winter night and tweaker girlfriend is there; she’s lurking in the shadows and staring daggers at me the entire time I’m talking to him. I cut off his conversation about the speakers in his fillings and walk back to my truck to leave.
A minute later, the brother comes running out and tells me that he wants to show me something in his shack. He’s never invited me inside before, and I’m not thrilled by the prospect. The whole thing feels off to me, so I tell him I have to get going, and start the truck.
The look of relief on his face when I declined to go inside convinced me that tweaker girlfriend was waiting behind the door with a hammer or something. A few months later I learned that she shot him in his sleep and stashed his body in an old refrigerator. She has since plead guilty to his m***er.
12. The cows are on their own.
Was helping check cows on my family’s ranch. Get out there in my non-4×4 car just a little before dusk, the cows were all kinda scattered so I decided to just walk in so I don’t stir them up too much and can get a better look (I was checking for any baby calves).
So I’m well into the field. Like a solid 5 min walk from my car at least. Looking around at all the cows, checking the ones that were looking kinda close on calving. I see some of the cows furthest away from me kinda stir so I look and see something dark and large-cat-shaped crouched low to the ground slowly stalking some of the cows.
Now, I live in West Texas so jaguars aren’t really a thing but there had been rumors for YEARS about this jaguar that stalked up and down the creek… that went right by our ranch. It probably was just a dark colored mountain lion, but either way it was definitely not something I wanted to mess with, in the dark, a ways from a vehicle, with no gun.
I am not ashamed to say I left the cows to defend themselves and ran as fast as I could through the field back to my car.
I did check the next day and all cows were safe and accounted for.
11. Time to go.
A friend and I were exploring an abandoned factory in North Philadelphia about 8 years ago, and when we got to about the third floor…I discovered a booby trap in the stairwell.
Basically it was a trip wire that swung an axe down from the ceiling.
Right as that fully set in, we heard someone from up above shout “YO!”
Time to go.
I’ve never covered that much ground so fast. I think we were two or three blocks away before we realized we were riding each other’s bikes.
10. Kitty was hungry.
In very early 2020, I was in Lumbini, Nepal.
It’s a small town built around this complex of ruins that was once the palatial home of Siddhartha Gautama, the Bodi tree is located there.
I was staying in a cheap hotel along a muddy road leading out of the city and was the only guest in the building.
Many stray dogs roamed the streets of that quarter at night and you’d often hear them barking or getting into fights.
This one night was particularly bad, a low fog had settled on the road and the dogs were out in force, howling & barking.
Out of nowhere came this bellowing roar, one so loud & sonorous, I felt it in my chest.
Then, a vacuum of complete silence, all I could think of were ways to keep whatever had made that sound outside.
The next day, I heard that a tiger had wandered over from the nearby reserve along the lake and eaten a few of those stray dogs.
9. Your blood will run cold.
My wife and I were on a search mission for some missing fern pickers. We were volunteers with the local search and rescue (SAR) team. We decided to stay in the search area that night and had built a pretty nice fire. We were sitting there and it was about 0200, hoping this dude would wander into camp.
I had heard animals around us throughout the night. No surprise, we’re in the middle of the woods, I’m used to animals stalking around outside my camp. I knew there were two animals, one one each side of us. It was at about that point when we heard a bird chirp. It came from about the place I figured one of the animals were. Then another, from the opposite side.
I immediately realized we were being watched and stalked by at least two cougars. We very quickly climbed into the back of my truck. It’s got a camper shell and is outfitted for truck camping.
8. Not technically scary.
Grew up in Hawaii, spent most of my teen years in the water. I was out surfing one evening with a good buddy, it was just the two of us and the sun was setting. We decided to stay out as long as possible because the waves were really good. There was also a carnival going on on the shore so there was some light.
This surf spot is a big reef that is maybe 5-6 feet deep and all around the reef it drops down to hundreds of feet deep. Basically you sit at the edge of the reef and the waves come and suck up water and it makes it easy to catch them.
We’re sitting there, it’s dark, kinda eerie, and about 20’ in front of us we see something for a moment, we both stopped talking and just kept looking for it. Turns out it was a humpback whale frolicking it’s giant 10-15’ fin around just off the reef in front of us.
I know they’re not dangerous but being out there, with something the size of a school bus swimming around just a few feet from you in the darkness is hair raising. We both turned around and caught a wave straight in. I was freaked out for a while after that.
7. He actually teleported.
We were tearing down an old outbuilding/office on my in-laws farm. We wanted to save as much of the lumber as we could to reuse in a chicken coop. So, we pulled a large piece of plywood off one of the walls and the insulation was crawling with hundreds of snakes. Said snakes immediately started exiting the wall towards us in a writhing horde. There are rattlesnakes on the property, we’ve seen them.
I have never in my life noped like I noped at that moment. I pretty much teleported into the back of my fil’s pickup, one minute I standing in the way of hundreds of agitated snakes the next I’m considering if I can fit through the little rear window of a Ford F150.
6. A very good friend.
Exploring a abandoned high rise, out of the blue my friend grabbed me by my collar from behind, I was about to step into a elevator shaft.
After swearing at him “what the f**k” he said “look” and I saw the drop of like 20 floors to a concrete bottom with broken metal rods sticking out.
We went home. He saved my life 100%
5. Without a trace.
When I was on a safari holiday in Botswana many years ago, one of the guides told me about a time when he used to lead camping safaris in Namibia where there are a lot of desert lions. The group pitched their tents in a different place every night. They were told very strictly never to leave their tents at night.
One morning, one of the tents was empty. The couple who should have been inside it had decided that it would be romantic to go out and gaze at the stars. No trace of them was ever found.
4. This is it.
Was walking with my son and dog along a trail and ventured into a narrow tunnel that allows water to pass under a highway.
My son stopped and said what was that?
At first in the dim light I thought is was the silhouette of a bolder but then my dog started to growl.
Then I thought it was a dog because it moved and I saw what looked like a head turning.
As it turned, I saw the unmistakable round end to a mountain lion’s tail.
I knew running could trigger its prey instinct but I wanted my kid and dog out of there so I told my son to grab the dog by the collar and to move away as quickly as he could.
As my kid was pulling the dog away it took a step towards me and I thought “this is it”.
I squared my shoulders to it and started backing away and hitting the sides of the tunnel and yelling at it.
It seemed undecided on what to do stepping back and forth, sometimes moving forward, but then I was out of the tunnel and getting the hell out of there.
3. Probably nothing good.
When I was 16 I had a pickup truck and my parents asked me to pick up some new furniture on the way home. As I’m driving home it starts pissing rain and I was worried the furniture would get destroyed, so I pulled over on the side of the road under an overpass to wait it out.
As I’m waiting, another car pulls up behind me. An overweight bald man steps out and begins walking towards my car. I tell him I’m waiting for the rain to stop so I don’t ruin the furniture for my parents. He was acting very odd and telling me he would help me out as he was fingering his belly button. I was creeped the f**k out.
He says one minute he has to grab something to help and leans into his car window. All of my alarm bells are going off so I figured f**k it and just sped off furniture be damned.
So glad I did, who knows what would have happened
2. Go away from the light.
Im a trucker so i have to find creative ways to park sometimes.
I was some random back road in the middle of nowhere Texas and had found what i call a make-a-spot area. I was all by myself except for my dog, so we parked for a 30min break.
I get my dog out to use the bathroom and she starts acting all crazy….growling and snarling n s**t. Off in the field next to my truck there’s a red light about 6 to 8ft in the air and it’s slowly moving around.
It’s dead silent except for my dog until the light got closer. My dog started to go nuts so i decided screw this and went back to the truck (we were only half way down the trailer, maybe 20ft).
About the time i hit the drive tires on my tractor, there was some really large crashing in the brush, so of course my dog becomes even more difficult to control and my adrenaline is like, run!
Opened the passenger door, tossed my dog into the truck, climbed in right then and there and slammed the door shut just in time for something to crash into my truck.
I have no idea what it was, i just know the whole thing rocked side to side. I drove away, without my seat belt, door locked for about 30 miles to a tiny town with a tiny gas station to finish my 30 min break.
Few days later i was walking up to my truck and realized that the entire side of the sleeper of the truck was bent inwards a little. You could only see it when the sun hit the side just right, but the bend was there.
1. Bone-chilling.
July 27, 2002 Sknyliv air show disaster. I turned 5 years old the day before. It’s one of my most vivid memories from childhood; how the pilot landed 10 meters away from me and my dad. He was on his knees, his parachute dangling in the wind and I remember him repeating “what have I done?” over and over. I didn’t understand much of what happened. My dad only said “close you eyes, we have to go”.
My dad told me years after that we would have gone farther into the crowd but I refused to go because my shoelace was untied. Him kneeling to tie my shoes is the only thing that saved us.
It wasn’t bone-chilling at the time but when I imagine what my dad witnessed that day I get goosebumps.
It’s surprising how many people mention wanting to vomit in moments like these.
One more signal to add to the list.
