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Sometimes, life can be a game of inches…or even centimeters.
And it often comes down to decisions that we make at various forks in the road where we can take one of two paths.
And if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that you gotta listen to your gut. ALWAYS.
When did your gut feeling turn out to be right?
AskReddit users shared their stories.
1. That’s history right there.
“When I was a kid, I was doing my first ever deep clean of my bedroom getting rid of old clothes and toys and such.
While cleaning out my closet, I found an old picture cut out from the local newspaper of Lyndon Johnson visiting my parent’s home town. The picture was taken outside with some locals in the background. I was going to throw the picture away, but suddenly got the strongest feeling not to do it, so I set it aside. Later I showed it to my mom and asked her about it. She freaked out and showed my grandma, who also freaked out.
Turns out one of the locals in the background of the picture was my grandpa. He d**d when my mom was 12. That picture was one of only a handful we had of him. I had never seen a picture of him before this. I was so glad I didn’t throw that clipping away.”
2. On the road.
“Driving in Pittsburgh.
I stop at a red light. Hill goes up on my left, downhill on my right. Poor visibility to the left.
The light turns green, but my brain tells me “Hey bud wait a sec.”
I think this is a little weird, but I don’t go yet.
A millisecond later, a massive navy blue F-350 comes barreling downhill through the intersection from my left, blowing past the red light at about 45, then trundles down the hill.
If I’d have gone, I would have been destroyed by 3 tons of Ford truck, for sure. Instead I trusted the Spider-sense.”
3. Creepers.
“I stopped at Home Depot to pick up an item so I knew it was going to be a quick trip. I’m in the store and notice I’m pretty much the only girl in there besides employees. I couldn’t find what I was looking for and had to ask multiple employees before I found it.
I check out and as I’m heading out to my car I notice a shady dude standing against a tree on one side of my car. On the other side of my car is another shady guy sticking his arm outside of his car window. When I walked out they both turned and stared at me.
My heart dropped, I started to feel queasy, and my mind instantly knew to turn around and go inside. I stood there shaking at the front of the store until I could get the courage to ask an employee to walk me to my car.
As soon as they saw me walking out with an employee, the guy standing by the tree walked around my car and into the drivers side of the car parked next to me. To this day I swear I was a short walk away from being kidnapped.”
4. Overwhelming dread.
“Used to work in the ER. Had a man come in with ripping chest pain that started not but 30 minutes prior after he moved something heavy at his office. I knew he was going to d** just by looking at him. Massive overwhelming dread just seemed to engulf me.
I did his EKG and I hoped something would be wrong with it so we could get him a bed. His EKG was perfect. Not 5 minutes later he went into cardiac arrest on our waiting room floor. After running the code for 45 minutes, he didn’t make it. He had a massive aortic dissection. There wasn’t much hope.
This was almost 3 years ago and I’ve seen more s**t since then, but the memory is still burned in my mind, and it hurts knowing I was the last person to speak to him.”
5. Sketchy.
“I was 18 and and I was walking home from a friend’s house at 2 am in the middle of the summer. He only lived 6 blocks away.
I was about halfway home when a pickup truck drives by with 2 guys in the cab and 2 in the bed. I immediately felt like I was in danger. I saw the truck turn the corner, and I dove over some hedges in the closest yard I could find. I hid under them.
I saw the truck come back around the corner and slowly drive down the street. When it got to where I was hiding, I heard one of the guys say, “Where did he go?” and another respond that he didn’t know. They kept driving, and I didn’t see them again.
I stayed hidden for a good 15 minutes before getting up and running the rest of the way home.
I’m certain they would have jumped me if they found me.”
6. Glad you interfered.
“I had been living and working in Korea, and one day I was coming up out of a subway station and saw a man talking to another foreign woman.
She had that polite, frozen smile on her face – the why-is-this-guy-talking-to-me smile. I walked up to her, linked my arm with hers, and said “Hey, Sarah! There you are! Are you ready to go?” And just started walking. The guy followed us, but I sped up, and made an abrupt turn into a coffee shop. We hid, and I saw him walk past, still looking for her.
We ended up getting coffee and chatting for a bit, and I found out that he had followed her off the train, and had been getting increasingly aggressive for the last ten minutes. I don’t know what might have happened, but I’m really glad I interfered!!”
7. Wow.
“Helped a victim of human trafficking get to a shelter.
I was a medical student at the time (now a resident) and the city my school was in is a hub for human trafficking. I noticed a patient in the ER who had a pretty bad injury to her face was with a sketchy looking guy who was not related to her.
She wasn’t my patient, but I brought my gut feeling up to her doctor who then made up some excuse to talk to the patient alone and got her to help. I never talked to her myself, but I couldn’t shake the vibe I got from looking at her and the man she was with.”
8. Settling the score.
“There are a bunch of bars right next to my university here where I live. At the start and the end of the semester everybody, thousands of students, start gathering around the street where most bars are located and just parties all night.
On one of these occasions, in 2019, it was the end of the semester. I had just got there a bit late because I was working on the lab at the uni and the moment I got there something just didn’t feel right. The people there, how they were acting, how they were moving, how they were talking. Something felt different in the air.
We were crossing through the giant group of people since we were looking for my girlfriend at the time and the people who we were expecting to meet there. I froze in place and, I can’t really explain why to this day, but I just felt something really bad was about to happen and my friend noticed how I was too atentive and kind of in panic. He snapped me out of it and I told him that we needed to find everyone and leave that place.
For my surprise he just agreed. I think he noticed something was wrong with me and probably just went for it so I could calm down.
My girlfriend and our friends didn’t take long to find and they were confused because I was acting so erratic and I was kind of having a panic attack. But they eventually followed me out of the crowd and right as we were out of the “bar area” we started hearing a bunch of g**shots and people started screaming. Shortly after the police was rushing into the area.
What happened was that some gang members decided to use the party to settle some score, probably hoping the crowd would help them get out unoticed. 5 people were ki**ed and 3 injured that day. The police apparently caught them but I’m not sure about that part. After that those periodical parties at this street were never the same. Way less people and now they don’t even close the streets anymore because its not that big of a crowd. Who would have thought.
To this day my friends like telling this story about how I “saved their lives” and, on rare occasions, someone asks me if I knew about the gang fight that was going to happen or something like that.
I honestly don’t know what triggered me that day. But myself and the people with me are really glad it did. I think I might have caught view of a g** while crossing the crowd and didn’t conciously notice it but kicked some sense of danger on me.”
9. Scary.
“When I was pregnant for the first time, something just felt off. I knew from the very beginning it wasn’t going to end well.
A few weeks later, I started cramping and spotting, which can be normal in early pregnancy. I ended up going to the ER. They couldn’t find any evidence of a pregnancy in my uterus and decided it was a missed miscarriage, and wanted to send me home. But, that gut feeling that something was very wrong was still there, and ai listened to it.
I demanded that I be seen by my OB who was head of obstetrics at that hospital and wouldn’t leave until he saw me. He had me in emergency surgery 4 hours after he came to examine me to remove my ruptured fallopian tube and stop the internal bleeding. Had I not listened to my gut, I’d be d**d.”
10. Bad driver.
“Was driving, got an odd feeling about this car behind me.
No telltale signs, the lady wasn’t texting or anything. So I moved lanes and got a car ahead of her.
Rear ended that car promptly at the next light.”
11. Looking for you.
“I had this random friend I’d just met kind of a weird dude, no real family so once he met my group of friends he just kind of followed us everywhere. He was one of those people who just had a bullseye for bullies on him.
I was living in the hood in LA, we’re walking over an overpass and a car full of cholos slowly passes us, eyes on us. As soon as the car passes my friend was like let’s hide under this bridge, we book it hide in the dark under the bridge and just a few seconds later the car full of cholos slowly drives down where they assumed we were going to be walking.
We can see them looking everywhere cruising slowly, wondering where we were. As soon as they left the street we booked it back to my house staying in the shadows until we were safe.”
12. A set up.
“Twice, while delivering pizza to shady neighborhoods. Things didn’t look right, I trusted my instincts and booked.
Both times, no one ever called back to ask about their food never arriving. That’s all the proof I need.”
13. GTFO.
“Last time I was hired for a job. Had it during the final interview with my soon-to-be boss.
My gut told me to GTFO even though everything about that job seemed great. To be fair, in the first few days is was, but then the reality of how poorly organized everything is came crashing down on me and my enthusiasm for working in a toxic environment that was being fueled by boss’s incompetence was gone.
Ended up quitting after two months.”
14. Ouch.
“A few years back I was dating a girl who went camping with “a friend” for a couple weeks, I didn’t mind cause I trusted her.
But I started to get a gut feeling she was cheating on me while she was gone. Shortly before she was supposed to come back into town she called and dumped me over the phone.
Bonus points since I had literally just had brain surgery that she didn’t bother to come back into town for.”
15. Scam.
“I was about to go to ITT Tech. I spoke to a bunch of teachers there. NONE of them seemed to know anything about basic computer stuff. Part of me was thinking these people don’t know what they’re talking about….but maybe I’m just crazy.
A month or two later, they shut down all the schools. When i decided not to go, my family berated me and called me lazy. I explained that school could not offer me any kind of education that would help me.
None of them are computer literate and they they though they could tell ME what I needed/wanted. pfft. When the news came out, and i showed them, they just shrugged it off like they never tried to convince me and berate into going to a scam school.”
16. OMG.
“I’m 14 and was all alone in a dirt path in India and some guy was just sitting on a rock in the middle of the forest.
I didn’t make eye contact but I could see he was crying I wanted to help but my gut told me not to.
3 days later was caught for m**dering his wife and 5 year old daughter.”
17. Close call.
“15 years ago.
My wife and I were leaving the house to drive several hours to go see her brother. We both looked at each other and admitted that something felt…off. No real reason, it just did. Weird, right?
2 ½ hours later, doing 70 odd mph eastbound on I-80 and a tire & wheel landed square in the middle of the hood of our brand new car.”
18. Unhinged.
“My cousin introduced me to her “friend” and I told her idk I dont really like him he seemed nice but he gives off a really weird vibe.
I think I even avoided shaking his hand, I coughed into it and said sorry I need to wash my hands.
Later found out she was dating him and he was abusive and threatened to k**l her and was unhinged.”
19. Horrible.
“Worked with an older guy, he was quiet/skittish, and polite. He strived to be helpful as the work was very group/teamwork oriented.
I couldn’t stand him. I loathed working with him, I even felt the whisper of an urge to fight the d**n guy – and I’m an average-small chick. Very out of character for me, I am absurdly non-confrontational.
My feelings and reaction to the guy puzzled both my husband and I. He would often tell me the dude has never done or said anything to me off color, and he’s right. I still couldn’t like the guy.
One day the coworker doesn’t show up, which is unusual since he almost never called out or was ever late. Later we catch sight of him on the news, busted for an extensive child p**n ring.
Guess my gut knew. On the plus side, I get to gleefully hate any one I want without reason and my husband can’t argue against it.”
20. The accident.
“When I was 14 in the summer before high school, my family lived on the outskirts of town. One night I heard sirens, and naturally as a Midwesterner, I went onto the porch to see what I could see.
It was ambulances, fire trucks and police cars, speeding past my house farther out of town. I had a horrible feeling I’d never had before, gut wrenching.
It turned out to be correct. I learned the next morning that my friend had d**d after being ejected through the windshield onto a fence post.”
21. Scary incident.
“Living in Seattle, running to catch a bus. Just about to catch it and suddenly I thought STOP AND my body just stopped. I let the bus go. I was pi**ed that I missed the bus.
2 stops after mine a guy got on the bus and shot the driver. The bus went off a bridge and landed on an apartment building. Ki**ed a couple people.”
22. Summer camp.
“Was the first day of a summer camp.
Something felt off and my stomach got queasy immediately after getting out of the car. I was told I’d be sleeping with about 14 other boys my age under an old, crusty, tent with no floor, or screen door to keep bugs out during the hottest and most humid month in recent years. I asked to go to the bathroom because I was feeling sick.
Then I told my dad who was with me that I had a stomachache and that I needed to go home. We packed our things and left. My dad told me as we got in the car “thank goodness you felt it was off there too and I didn’t feel comfortable with you in the crappy tent while I was in a cabin almost 2 miles away.”
A massive storm hit the campsite that night, possible tornadoes in the area too, after everything calmed down there the cabins and buildings were untouched while things like the tent I would’ve been asleep in wasn’t even on the camp grounds anymore.
Thanks gut feeling.”
23. Armed robbery.
“A few years back I was babysitting my niece and nephew while their parents went out for date night. It was later in the evening and everything was quiet outside, but I had this overwhelming feeling of dread and anxiety that something bad was going to happen.
I locked all the doors and windows and made sure the kids were safe while I paced the house waiting for the feeling to subside. Not 5 minutes later I get an emergency alert on my phone (we were bordering a college campus) that there had been an armed robbery not 2 blocks from my location. That event gave me more trust in my gut instinct than anything to this day.”
24. You knew.
“I was 26 (roughly 10 years ago) and went on a date with a very successful property developer. He held my hand so strongly it actually hurt and when we kissed goodnight I felt sick.
Didn’t go on another date with him and he was in the news recently for family v**lence/stalking and then st**bing his ex fiancée.”
25. Totally crazy.
“So me and my family were helping out my stepdad daughter (she’s 30 btw and has been on drugs for a while) and she had claimed shed been sober with her boyfriend, at first I payed no mind to them or her boyfriend at all because it wasn’t really my business anyway.
I started getting a bad vibe from her boyfriend after a while, come to find out he was actually wanted and was a hard career criminal and was robbing people behind our backs and,selling the stolen stuff, pretty crazy if u ask me.”
Have you ever trusted your gut and it turned out to be a good thing?
If so, tell us your stories in the comments.
Thanks a lot!