Sometimes, it’s really best to listen to your gut.

There’s some kind of switch that just turns in your body when you know you’re in a potentially dangerous situation that could get really ugly, really fast.

I’m sure most of us have been in that position at least a few times, and it’s always a dilemma to figure out if you should flee or stay.

Let’s check out these stories from AskReddit users who decided to stay in situations that felt super sketchy to them.

1. Join us.

“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.”

2. Good thing you cranked up the metal.

“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.”

3. This is terrible.

“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 drugs 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 drugs and she was an addict 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, drugging and r*ping 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.”

4. A good story!

“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, don’t 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 one side 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.”

5. A weird feeling.

“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.”

6. A bad relationship.

“Ended up in an emotionally, mentally, and nearly physically abusive 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 abusive and constantly treated him like complete sh*t. He then told me that this girl lied to the police about him physically abusing 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.”

7. Not a good idea.

“I was at an illegal squat rave – was tripping hard on acid sitting at a desk in this abandoned office.

Some dude came up to me and I could tell maybe from tripping that he wasn’t at all a good person.I stayed anyway and he robbed me and my girlfriend of all our possessions.”

8. Don’t sit there.

“The company I worked for had a nice custom of beer party on Friday afternoons on the 5th floor patio.

The patio had a low (sitting height) wall at the edge. Some people thought it was cool to sit there. It made me very nervous. I asked them not to sit there.

I went home. It just made me too nervous, and those people didn’t want to listen to me.

Next morning, in the parking lot outside, one of my coworkers told me that one of the guys fell off. He died.

There were no Friday beer parties after that.”

9. Waiting for the bus.

“I was waiting for the bus in a not great part of town.

I was 18, the 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*roin. I see a gun in the flirting dude’s waistband; I don’t say sh*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.”

10. This is crazy.

“My dad used to be into some pretty shady sh*t when I was a kid. He had a pretty bad drug/alcohol habit and my mom left because of it, but she wouldn’t take me with her so I was stuck.

During the summer he made me go everywhere with him because he thought I would call the cops if he left me alone but usually it was nothing dangerous, besides the occasional drunk driving. I’d called the cops a few times before when he hit my mom but when he got out of jail I knew I’d get a beating for it so I gave up on the idea anyway.

One time in particular he drags me to this drug house in rural Michigan, a pretty notorious spot for people cooking methamphetamine. Immediately I wanted to leave, because even 12 year old me knew this was sketch.

I’d been to drug houses before and honestly everyone was always nice to me, they would feed me if they had food and some of them would even try to empathize with what I was going through, but they didn’t have the balls to kick out a paying customer.

This house was different though, there were guns on the tables and people were looking at me suspiciously like I was somehow a tiny DEA agent. My dad was pretty sh*tfaced at this time though so it didn’t really matter what I said.

He’s talking with some of the people and this woman starts joking around with him, he’s joking back and trying to flirt but she’s making it pretty clear she’s only into women.

Eventually he takes it too far with a comment, and she stabs him in the chest with a knife. He stumbles back a few feet, says “F*ck! You stabbed me?” And then he proceeds to beat the hell out of her with a knife in his chest. At this point, everyone else is laughing.

My dad falls down, and one guy helps me drag him into the bathroom (I didn’t really help I was mostly making it harder) where I pour the rest of his pint of whiskey on his chest. I don’t think this actually helped but I’d seen it in action movies and I thought alcohol was like Neosporin.

The guy who dragged my dad into the bathroom told me to stay quiet and he’d make sure I was ok. I hear the other people in the room talking about dumping him outside and driving me somewhere to drop me off. I find my dad’s cell phone in his pocket and call the cops.

Luckily, an officer was already close to the house because they had probably been watching it due to drug activity. Once the sirens come on, almost everyone leaves.

Once all was said and done, my dad survived with no permanent damage, the woman who stabbed him had a broken jaw, fractured ribs, and a broken pelvis. She was charged with attempted murder but I think she was released not too long ago.”

11. Acid isn’t for everyone.

“My college roommate had slapped his girlfriend twice before.

One night, around 2 am maybe, they came back from a party. I was still up (I had done LSD earlier in the day and wasn’t really sleepy yet) but I could tell that something was off anyway.

There was a tension between them and, sure enough, they started fighting. Since it was also my room, I had nowhere else to go. Eventually he slapped her, and tried to do more, but I was alert enough to get between them and separate them.

The door was open and the RA turned up with campus police. I had to give a statement at the station and everything.

Haven’t done acid since.”

12. That doesn’t sound right.

“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 permanently disabled.

That turned out to be a rough day.”

13. You live and learn.

“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 abused, 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 abuser.

I finally got out, but had to do it alone. With narcissistic abusers, 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.”

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