20 people share stories of a gut feeling saving them from danger.

Our bodies carry a knowledge our conscience brains sometimes don't. There are times when our guts sense danger long before we know why, and all the alarms go off internally at one time.While following your gut feeling can feel crazy at times, particularly when it means you leave a location with no clear reason, there are plenty of times when our fight or flight is kicking in early to save us or loved ones from a grim fate.All it takes is one anecdote where your gut steers you right to confirm the fact that temporary fear can be a gift and compass at times, steering us towards safety through a subconscious wisdom.In a recent Reddit thread, people shared times their gut helped save them or a loved one from danger, and it serves as a great reminder of how intelligent our bodies are.1. instinctivechopstick had a feeling about their body. I went to hospital with shortness of breath and my heart racing. They did a chest x-ray, blood test for blood clots, ecg, and a few other tests but all came back normal. After observing me overnight everything still looked good, oxygen saturation was perfect, my heart rate was still a bit elevated but nothing too crazy, and it seemed that it was likely leftover symptoms from a bad virus that I'd had a week or so earlier. The ER doctor asks me how I would feel if they sent me home and I just had a bad feeling about it all. I told him as such and that I had no real basis for it except that I just felt off about it. He said fair enough, let's try one more test and if that comes back negative then we'll send you up to General Medicine and see if they can track something down. That test was a VQ scan that found despite all other tests showing no results for blood clots, I actually had a whole bunch of them in both lungs. I ended up with a diagnosis of unprovoked bilateral pulmonary embolisms and am on blood thinners for life. Super grateful both for the bad feeling and the ER doctor who was willing to listen to it! 2. landronious hopes the children in the station wagon are okay. I was 15 years old and my mom dropped me off at McDonald’s to get breakfast while she went across the street to get Starbucks. It was a shopping mall in suburbia and we were on the way to pick up a new kitten a few hours away. Instead of walking the 100 yards to my mom I sat outside waiting for her to pick me up. Teenagers I guess. As I’m standing there a guy in an old station wagon with two kids in the back starts talking to me. He asks me where I’m going and I say whatever town it was. He says he’s going there too with his kids and asks if I want to come. I tell him no that my mom is across the street and he comes closer. My gut is saying something is off so I see a random woman walk out of Starbucks and I point to her and say that’s my mom right there. He freaked out and left really quick. I still remember those two kids in the backseat. They looked so off. I wonder to this day if they are okay. 3. kag94's dad saved his sister's life. My aunt told me a story about my dad, who greatly dislikes his sister and is an all around asshole 98% of the time, calling her out of the blue one night while she was in college. She answered, he said he didn't know why but he had this urge to call her, to make sure she was okay. She told him she was fine and thanked him for calling to check on her. She never told anyone else except me, and hopefully a therapist or two, but she was holding the bottle of pills she was planning to commit suicide with right when he called her. Twenty some years later and she's very happy with her decision to live. 4. kd5nrh literally dodged a bullet. Forgot one; about 10 years ago, working security at a site about 50 miles from home, got off shift at midnight, and didn't bother to change out of uniform because I was only going to stop for gas. Two stations in the town I was working in were open after midnight, but it slipped my mind as I drove past the first one. Pulled into the other, (same brand, same gas price, same sort of dump entirely) and just didn't like something about it. Nobody else around but he clerk that I could see, but I decided to go back to the other one. Topped off and headed back out of town, I get close to that station again. Three city cop cars, two deputies and a state trooper are outside blocking the road with guns drawn. Turns out a city cop walked in on a robbery. Dude put a bullet in his vest, and the store owner knocked the robber out cold with a bat before the cop could recover enough to get his gun out. That would have been me, in a uniform with a nice shiny badge, but no body armor. 5. bliddick22's mom saved grandpa's life. Not me, but my mother, saved my grandfathers life when he had a stroke in his chair in their living room. We had all started to walk around the the development, when my mother, after about 50-75 meters from the house said, "I am going to go back and check on Dad." I went with her, and I nearly witnessed my grandfather die. He was on the chair, conscious, but unable to move or talk... Just looking at my mother with bulging eyes. She called 911 once, then twice when she felt that they were running late. Ambulance came, got him on the stretcher, but it was too wide to fit out the door. We ended up tearing the door frame off to get him out. Because he was conscious, he actually remembers the ride to the hospital. He told us later that he heard the driver or someone say, there is not a chance that this guy lives. That was when I was around 5-6 years old. He is still alive to this day, more than a decade later. At my mothers funeral, part of his speech was about how, without my mother, he would not have been able to spend time with her during her final years of life. And for that, he is eternally grateful. 6. MissingInAction21 would've died in a tsunami were it not for their mother's intuition. In 2004, on Boxing Day. Not me but my mother. Family trip including all cousins and extended family on my dad's side to visit the coastal South of Sri Lanka on vacation, about 20 people in all. Well planned trip, last moment my mother didn't want to go. No reason at all. None of us could get her to explain why but she refused to go. So we went inland on a different trip to see some other relatives. Around midday, the entire extended family now on both sides were sitting shocked in front of the television watching the very same hotel we booked being washed away live by the tsunami. To date, she still can't explain what she felt. 7. absolutelyrightnow's boyfriend had a feeling that saved his sister. My boyfriend and I were visiting friends for a week in Phoenix. We girls were lounging at the pool while the guys were flexing their grilling skills. My boyfriend paused a moment, stood very still then told me to go get dressed, we had to go. Right now. I wanted to fuss but something told me not to. We drove straight through to San Antonio right to his parents very rural house. (before cell phones and they didn’t have a land line within a half mile) Seconds before we arrived his little sister had jumped off of a rain barrel and landed on a metal spike that went straight up through her foot and into her leg. His dad was at work so there was no car available there. She was bleeding like crazy and his mother had just walked out and found her. I don’t know what spoke to him in Phoenix, but it would have been all bad if we had not arrived exactly when we did. 8. UnconditionalMay noped out of the jungle. I was in the Amazon as the end to a 3 month solo trip around Latin America. Wanted to enjoy one last walk through the jungle before leaving so left my jungle lodge around 8am to walk down to a small river nearby. I stop and close my eyes to listen to the sounds as the jungle is super loud with crickets, birds, insects etc. Almost immediately I got a weird feeling and felt really uncomfortable - which was weird because up until then I'd only felt peaceful and happy. When I opened my eyes, I realized everything had gone completely quiet which was definitely NOT normal and not something I had experienced in other rain forests I'd been to. It was bizarre. I immediately felt that I had to leave and fast. After I dipped and got back to the jungle lodge, i told the tour guide what happened and he said it usually only gets quiet when there is a big predator close by - thanks but no thanks! 9. csr110977 didn't want a carpet THAT bad. A few years ago, when I was 19 and studying abroad in Europe, and my friend and I decided to go to Turkey. It was our first time really traveling on our own without a group and we decided to walk around the square outside of the Blue Mosque. We felt very safe during the day and decided to see the city at night with the lights. As we were in the square, we were hounded by typical store owner's trying to sell us something. Finally, most went away and as we were going back to our hotel, a younger guy approached us. He said he had a shop on the corner, which he pointed to with lots of souvenirs including carpets. I grew up with a lot of handmade, woven carpets from my parents travels to the middle east and Asia. I decided it would be a nice gift. So we follow him, when we get to what we thought was his shop, we stopped. We started to walk in and he said not that one, the one around the corner. We poke our head around and sure enough see a store, only selling carpets. I started to get a slightly strange feeling but nothing overwhelming, so we followed him as we could see the store. When we walked in, about 13-15 other men were in the shop. They were pointing out carpets and showing us around and I started to get really uncomfortable. My friend seemed completely at ease, so we followed the group around the bend to the other part of the store. In Turkey, it is common to be offered tea, so that part is not particularly odd, but the men, who were now circling us, were insistent that we have tea with them in the basement. I kept saying no but they were leading us towards steps, completely surround us. We got to the steps and my friend started walking down, my body began to sweat, my heart went crazy, and I never had such an overwhelming fear. I kept trying to think of how we could overpower these men. I grabbed my phone, stopped in my tracks, and gasped. "Friend's name, we need to go right now. My mom just texted me asking why we aren't back at the hotel yet cause the map shows we're at this store. We're supposed to facetime with them in 10 minutes." The men kind of look around and tell us we can have tea in less than that amount of time. I keep insisting that my parents are freaking out because they can tell were in the carpet store and not the hotel and that they will likely contact the embassy if we don't get going. They continued blocking the staircase. I told them that we would come for tea in the morning as I still really wanted a carpet and that we needed to get out of the store and back to facetime. It took a little persuading but they eventually opened a path for us to go to the door. One of them followed us back to the square insisting that we return/come back and see them. Of course, we didn't. I have no idea if they were completely harmless or not but I had never had such an overwhelming feeling. They easily could've drugged us, placed us in carpets, and taken us out. My parents didn't actually have our location as my phone was on airplane mode. So who actually knows, on the other hand, I might've been paranoid, but it wasn't a situation I ever wanted to be in again. Once we were back at the hotel, she told me she was really scared too but that she thought I was fine so she went with it. 10. Delanium prevented another woman from being raped. I was president of a club, and a guy who'd recently joined just set off my alarm bells, but he never did anything wrong. I still couldn't shake the feeling he was off. I asked my best friend, a pretty burly guy, to just keep an eye on him during a conference we went to. Most of the club (minus me) went to a party at the conference, my best friend kept an eye on the weird guy for most of the night, and ended up stopping him from raping a passed out drunk girl. I pretty much always trust my gut feelings now. Edit: it was a Model UN, I'm a girl, the conferences were actual conferences lmao 11. DanBonham saved their family from a fire. I smelled burning plastic early in the morning at my family cottage and almost went back to sleep (I was around 15), but got up to investigate. A socket on the outside of the building had caught fire and flames were shooting up the wall. The rest of my family was still sleeping and there wasn’t enough smoke for the alarms to go off. I ran and got the fire extinguisher, got my dad up, and put it in his hands and pointed him towards the fire. Stopped it and called the fire department. 12. MommaJess08 felt compelled to turn down a house and found out why later. We were looking at houses a while back, and found one that was great location, would have been perfect size for us, and didn't appear to need any work other than new carpet, and stuff I wanted to do like painting and switching the it over from oil burning furnace. I just had a nagging feeling about it, and my husband agreed. As much as we loved it something was off with it (I actually thought ghost or something silly like that 😂), and we ended up passing on it. I was still kicking myself about it until a few months later when it had a major electrical fire. The whole house and everything in it was a total loss, and the family that lived there barely got out alive. 13. laybytheoceans's tuition started in childhood. When I was young (around 8 or 9 probably), I lived 3 blocks from a convenience store. It was the early 90s. My best friend and I convinced our parents to let us walk to the store alone to get some snacks. Important to add that the two blocks closest to the store are connected but the 3rd block we lived on was it's own unconnected neighborhood. So anyway, as we are walking back from the store, we are coming up to the first street and a truck drives by and stops on the side of the road in between the first and second block on our side if the road. I stopped and told my friend that we should go down the first street and go through the neighborhood, come back out the second street and then head to our 3rd street to avoid the truck. She thought I was being stupid but I refused to keep walking on the main street so she followed me down the first road. We are now in the first neighborhood and about halfway between the first and second street when we see the truck slowly driving down the second street into the neighborhood. The driver sees us and immediately slams on the gas and turns his truck towards us on the street. We ran and hid in some bushes further into the neighborhood for about ten minutes. We heard the truck driving by back and forth for about the first five and then it was quiet so we started making our way out of the neighborhood towards the second street again. Suddenly. Here comes the truck again slowly, sees us and guns it towards us again. We jumped over a fence into a back yard and started pounding on the back door. By the way this is a tuesday. Middle of the day during summer vacation... most people are at work. But miraculously, a man and woman open the door and let us in. The woman had just had a baby like a week before so they were home on leave. They called the cops and my mom and the man went outside. He said the truck drove by and the man saw him standing outside and sped out of the neighborhood. Cops and my mom showed up minutes later and we gave a description and never heard anything about it again. Our parents just drove us to the convenience store from then on. My mom still talks about it to this day and how shocked she was that I had such a strong intuition at that age. 14. -toe-beans- caught a man with a roofie. A guy definitely roofie'd my drink at a bar. He was totally mild mannered and not creepy at all. Asked me how to sign up for karaoke and pick a song. Sat beside me and talked casually. Didn't touch me once. But then he pointed to something behind my head to distract me. I looked away and looked back at him and he was looking away from me into the crowd of people. Was a very stupid way to distract someone, to point and then act like you didn't do anything as opposed to pretending to have thought you saw something. Then, I saw him screwing one of those little canisters back shut on his keychain. I asked him what he kept in there to call him out. He was cold and expressionless as he began to slowly twist it back open and said there was nothing in there. I stopped drinking my drink and he performed his song. Then I sang and he took off immediately after. It was really f*cked up and I'm glad he wasn't very smooth or idk what could've happened. What always freaked me out was how normal he seemed (before he became suddenly cold and robotic when I called him out on that canister thing). But it made me realize, of course a rapist would seem normal - that's how they get close enough to you to attack you. 15. number1earner saved themselves from a mugging. I was going to meet up with someone from marketplace to buy a phone and the feeling hit me so I called the woman and a man answered trying to play off the fact he's a man and I passed by where we were meeting at and it was dark and I heard voices in the background on the phone call. I never stopped the car and kept going. Pretty sure I saved myself from at the very least a mugging but learned a good lesson, always meet in a public place. 16. beastin01 saved themselves from being murdered. I was walking to the barbershop, and for some reason, everything just felt off. I ignored the feeling but every step I took just made me feel like something wasn't right, so I decided to just go grab some food and come back. While I was eating I saw police cars and ambulances driving to around where I was before, it turns out there was a murder. Now I always listen to my gut feeling. 17. TennisBabel's mom knew something was up at the daycare. My mom dropped my 3 year old brother off at daycare before she had to work in the morning. When she got to work she had this terrible feeling something was wrong with him. She ended up leaving work and drove to the daycare. She found the daycare lady inside sleeping while the daycare kids (including my brother) were running around the pool. My brother never went back to that daycare again. 18. GladPen hopes their former classmate is okay. I was an unpopular kid, and I always wanted to go on sleepovers but it rarely happened. In 6th or 7th grade I get invited to this girls house for a birthday party. I am friendly with her but not close. I go to her house and I feel weird right away. Her mom and stepdad were sitting in the living room smoking, but being perfectly friendly. The whole night, I couldn't shake this feeling of oppressiveness, despair, and danger. I spent the evening keeping my guard up and keeping an eye out for the entire family, without any idea why. At night the girl begs me to spend the night. Even though it hurt to say no when I could tell she was desperate, I lied and told her my parents wouldn't let me, when they said over the phone they would. A couple of months later, a student told me she had left the school and moved because her stepfather would molest her at night in her bed. I think of her often, and hope she wasn't hurt that night, and hope shes doing better - but Im glad I got out. *my apostrophe key isn't working. Edited to add: No, I didn't understand what was going on. I would have told somebody. I was also being creeped out by her otherwise cute brother, which I just remembered. And there are multiple posts like this, not a repost..which is very sad. 19. kornfanja666 has cosmic timing. I went out with my best friend on new years last year and were having drinks with her friends when I realized I was out of cigarettes. I left for a few minutes to walk over and grab a pack and ended up talking to a homeless guy for a while, and when I went over to the entrance of the bar she was outside and said something mean to me for no reason and walked off. I was confused so I decided it would be good if I took a walk to let her cool off and then figure out what she was upset about. I was going to walk down the street for a bit but something told me to turn left, walking behind the bar and then turning to the side of the bar when I see a girl laying down on the sidewalk and people walking by her. As I'm walking over to help I realize its my friend and she's not very conscious. She was probably drugged while I was getting smokes and who knows what would've happened if I hadn't decided to go that way Scares the shit out of me. 20. volcanic-sass's dad saved their life. My dad had to go to court to settle a way overdue payment for the place he worked at. He was going to take me with him so I can be more exposed to the adult world so to speak. However that meant he would have to leave the office back door unlocked so the rest of the staff could clock in. He suddenly didn't feel right about it and decided to have me man the office instead. He got T-boned outside the courthouse on the passenger side of the car that day. The car was totaled and I would have gotten severely hurt if I was there. Edit1: wow didn't expect people to love this story so much. To help clear some things up we both first traveled together to his office to unlock the door. He got out of the car, unlocked the back door and When he came back to the car that's when he decided to tell me to stay at his office. It literally "delayed" him by only the few seconds it took for me to get out of said car.