“One day when my daughter was 4 years old we were leaving the post office and she starts sobbing uncontrollably and begging me not to die. Crying and crying that she wasn’t ready for me to die. It took me over an hour to calm her down. For the rest of the day I felt dread in my stomach and worried something was going to happen. My dad died that night. It was like she knew something was coming, she just had the wrong person.”

“I was 16 and lifeguarding at a water park. An attractive girl in a bikini was flirting with me hard. When I finished my shift, she says she wants to make out in my truck. Maybe twenty seconds in, she wants to have sex, and I say I don’t have a condom. “I don’t care,” she said. What the heck? Red flag goes off, and I dropped her back off at the park. School starts that fall and she transferred to my school. She’s pregnant- turns out she was trying to pin the pregnancy on me.”

“I was almost kidnapped. When I was 13, my mom and I were in a tourist shop in the small town we lived in. I noticed this woman eyeing me, but didn’t think anything of it. My mom called me over to look at something saying, “Miranda, come look at this dress.” I noticed the woman leave the shop. I looked at the dress and went back to looking around. I lost track of my mom. Then, the woman came back through the door, and asked me if my name was Miranda. I said yes. She told me to come with her because my mom was in the next shop, and sent her to get me. I didn’t believe her, because my mom is the kind of mom who would have told me if she was going to the next shop. I just told the woman I would go find her when I was done in this shop, and that my mom wouldn’t send a stranger to come get me. The woman looked really surprised and said something like, “Well, okay then.” and left. I was pretty shaken. A few minutes later, my mom came out of the back of the shop. I asked her if she has asked the woman to come get me, even though I knew almost for sure she didn’t. My mom of course said no. I waited a very long time before I told my mom what happened.”

“Once I had to get up really early in the morning to go on a trip for my job. It was about 3:30 in the morning and I had forgotten to go and get gas for my car the night before. I stopped at a gas station about a mile away from my house because it was well-lit and it was in a nicer area. Anyways, I was pumping gas and then I got the weirdest feeling that I needed to move. I moved behind my car and then away from it. Then I noticed this huge guy hiding in front of my car. He was sneaking towards me when I got the urge to get away from my car. I was completely alone and I’m just a small girl. I almost always have mace or something with me if I am by myself. This time I had a knife and pulled it out and started screaming bloody murder for him to get the heck away from me. Then he started moving closer around my car to me. I screamed even louder and an attendant came out who called the cops. Definitely one of the scariest moments of my life.”

“Woke up in the middle of the night and was oddly 100% alert (no grogginess). I sensed something was off and instantly smelled gas. My bedroom in this house had two doors with one of them leading to the kitchen, so I hop out of bed and fling that door open. That’s when the gas smell became almost unbearable but I ran to the gas oven and flung it open to see a black disc closely resembling what was once a frozen pizza. I turned off the oven and peered into the living room and that’s where I saw my drunkenly passed out and naked roommate. After opening all the windows and kitchen door, I tried to wake his snoring self up but no success. The living room didn’t smell at all so I figured he’d be safe for the night and just went back to bed. I still find odd comfort with how quick I reacted to what could have been a very bad situation.”

“I was on a road trip with my son, who was about 12 at the time. It’s about 2am and he needs to pee. We are past all rest stops, the city we are driving through has very few 24 hour stores, and I don’t want to stop on the side of the road at that hour. I pull into a very well lit car wash. Hey, it made sense at the time. Anyway, we are in a stall and he is peeing down the drain, and another car pulls into the car wash and begins to “cruise us” for lack of a better term. I use my, “Get in the car now because I said so,” voice and we leave. I hear the next day on the news that a drug bust at that car wash turned violent. Apparently, that car wash was known for drug activity.”

“When I was a teenager, I pulled up to a gas station and saw a 15 or 16-year-old girl get into a gold colored Oldsmobile with two middle aged men. She got in willingly but the scene made me really uncomfortable so I memorized the license plate. Later that day, I went back to the same place and saw a brand new “missing” persons poster with her picture. I called the police with the info I had. The car was pulled over two states away and she was reunited with her parents less than 24 hours after the ordeal began. I still remember that license plate after over 20 years.”

“My mom woke up screaming on the morning of 9/11. My dad was up as usual getting ready to go to work – he worked on Wall Street. My mom told him he needed to call in sick because she had a really bad feeling that something was going to happen if he went in. I think we all thought that just meant he was going to get fired or something, and my dad and I are both ultra-rational and tend to scoff at stuff like this, so my dad kept getting ready and eating breakfast as usual to catch his usual train out. My brother managed to oversleep, meaning someone had to drive him. My mom leaped at the opportunity to make my dad drive him to school, meaning he’d have to catch the next train out. He watched the towers fall from Hoboken, right across the water. If he had taken the earlier train, like he wanted to, he would have been in the building as it came crashing down. I asked my brother about it years later, whether he remembered oversleeping that morning. He told me that he had almost forgotten how pissed he was that morning at my mom. While my dad and I were eating breakfast, she had gone to my brother’s room and told him to sleep in. Didn’t stop her from screaming her head off at him when she finally did go wake him up. My mom continues to declare that my brother must have dreamed that she told him that or made it up, but I believe my brother.”

“A couple of friends and I met a cute guy at an anime convention in Chicago that we attend every year. Nothing too crazy became of the friendship, but my friend and he flirted a bit and hung out one-on-one a couple times. I’m not sure how seriously she considered pursuing him. But one year when we saw him there he was acting funny. He pretended he didn’t know us, straight up lied and said he didn’t know our names. But he also kind of smirked when he said it. I knew he was messing with us. I can’t describe it, but I got this really bad feeling about him because he was acting JUST like a guy I knew in high school who was a bit of a sociopath, who’d lie and mess with people just to see the reaction. He (guy from high school) also tried to kill his guinea pigs when he didn’t feel like putting them up for adoption. He was just a scumbag, but he was a scumbag with a very particular way of talking and acting…. and this convention dude was just like him in some of those ways. So, as it turns out, my feelings of distrust and caution were totally right. A few months later the dude was arrested for kidnapping his girlfriend and torturing her in his apartment for two months. He was caught and charged with attempted murder.”

“I had that “Im being watched look” whenever I would shower, and tried to tell myself it was my imagination. A couple times I would stare at the window thinking “there’s no one out there, you’re imagining it” but then Im hangin out with the neighbour (families knew each other for decades) and we are scrolling through home videos on a digital camera. And there are candids of me in, getting into, and getting out of the shower.”

“So it’s June 2009, one of my best buddy from school is getting married in Rio de Janeiro and and bunch of the old gang have planned to all go together. It’s perfect, we’ve rented a fantastic condo up on the hills of Copacabana with a jacuzzi with a view on the bay. It’s going to be so much fun. Except that the backward Brazilian authorities require a visa for me and there’s is no consulate where I live so I plan around a trip to Paris for work to go there, extend the trip and wait the 3 days necessary to get the visa. but when I get there the delay is now 6 days and I can’t get the visa. I should have been really angry at this or I could have found a way to get the visa but somehow my wife and me figured out it must have been for a reason and we cancelled the trip, lost our money on the tickets and condo reservation but we were not angry or anything. If you knew us you’d know that’s weird. But it just felt right. If we had gone to Brazil, we would have died in the Air France plane crash on the way back from Rio. When we saw the news and heard the flight number, it sent a chill down my spine, I still feel it when I think back. Thank you slow Brazilian consulate!”

“I was a bank teller when I was in my early 20s. In NYC (and I assume other big cities) the tellers are behind “glass” walls and completely separated from the lobby. It was a normal day, and as I glanced over at the queue one guy caught my eye. He wasn’t a regular customer, he was dressed normally, but there was something about him that got my attention. I remember thinking he was probably a bank robber, so I took a mental note of his clothing and I tried to stall the customer at my window because I didn’t want to help the robber. Naturally, my customer walked away and the robber came to me. He passed me a note and a paper bag. The note said, “Give me all the 50s and 100s and no tricks or I will shoot” but didn’t show a gun. Now, the way it worked in my bank was that the “glass” (plastic, really) started about mid-chest height, maybe 4 feet off the ground, so that if someone really had a gun they would have to raise it up over the counter for the teller (and everyone else) to see it and couldn’t intimidate us with the ol’ finger-gun in the pocket move. The rule was that if they had a visible gun then to just hand them the cash and nobody gets hurt (the cash in that situation would also include a packet of exploding red dye that would detonate once it passed through the door to outside. Don’t rob banks, guys, you won’t get away with it). If there was no visible gun we were supposed to say a code word and then duck down under the counter and press the silent alarm. The dummy I sat next to started laughing and asking why in the world I was on the floor, and all I could do was say the code word and mash the alarm. The robber got spooked and ran out empty-handed. I don’t know what exactly it was about the guy that told me he was a robber. He was obviously giving off subtle clues, possibly body language, but I saw him for just a couple of seconds and I knew what he was up to.”

“I had a friend in college who was sexually assaulted by her boyfriend. Just before it happened she stopped by my room and introduced us. Immediately got a bad feeling. I didn’t want to look at him, meet his eyes, I just wanted him away. I felt really bad after I said goodbye, as I probably seemed rude for no apparent reason. A couple hours later she showed up at my door. Worst feeling ever is knowing if I had acted slightly differently, I could have prevented it, but because I didn’t want to seem ridiculous, disliking a guy for no reason, my friend was violated.”

“When I was about 13, I was on vacation with a friend and her parents. We stayed at a motel overnight en route to our destination. The parents went out for dinner/drinks, and me and my friend stayed in the room and watched a movie. There was a knock at the door, and we could see a man through the peephole, but he was standing off to the side. He said he was a maintenance worker, who was sent to fix the AC. My friend said it was working fine, but he told us to let him in so he could check. There was something that seemed off about the way he was talking, so we called the front desk to verify. Sure enough, they said that no maintenance worker had been sent to the room.”

“I was playing a game in my room, and I felt a bit weird, so I went to the window and looked outside. Nothing. So I went to the front door, and, lo and behold, my front yard is completely on fire. I live behind my neighbors, and they have a pretty large backyard, about 200 yards across and 100 yards deep. The entire thing is on fire. Turns out my neighbor had walked away and wind picked up, catching the dry grass on fire. They had already put out a good bit, but they were both wheezing loudly and about to pass out, they’re both not in the best shape. I go and get my dog that was outside, bring him inside and stick him in a cage. I then run to our workshop, grab a hoe and an old Carhartt jacket and get to work putting out fire with two other people. We put out the entire yard by hitting it with a jacket and then knocking it completely out with our shoes and a hoe. Slam jacket down, beat out with hoe, over and over, for about an hour. I got it out before it spread to the thick brush around their yard. Should it have caught fire, it would have demolished the woods near my house, and possibly catching fire to my home. It was about 4 feet from hitting the brush, if it would have caught fire, our day would have been much much worse. If I wouldn’t have been there, the chances of them putting it out were slim-to-none.”

“It was my birthday. I was turning 13 or 14 if I remember correctly. My parents are divorced and had been for several years when this happened, so my mom got me for an hour on my birthday night. A few months ago I decided I wanted to live with my dad and hadn’t seen her in awhile because I was scared of her. Anyways, I got into the car. My mom looked happy to see me, but she seemed a little… off. We got to the end of the street when she started flipping out and screaming while vigorously banging her head on the steering wheel while continuing to drive. I was really scared and feared for my own safety (I feared for her own too, but I couldn’t save her from herself), so I tried to get out of the car, but she grabbed my hood on my jacket and yanked me back in the car. She yelled at me to put my seatbelt on and started driving really fast, so I couldn’t get out. I have never been so terrified in my life. We drove around town at high speeds while she accused me of moving to my dad’s house for the money, and offered to take me to expensive restaurants so she could “buy me back.” I refused every offer. We spent the entire hour with her driving crazily around the area. I was so scared that I had 911 type out on my cell phone (in my jacket pocket) just in case. When I got home, my mom drove off without saying a word. My stepmom and father asked me how it went. I burst into tears. Hands down worst birthday ever. Overall, I should have trusted my gut feeling and not gotten in the car.”

“One night I woke up and my house was completely quiet. But I just had this weird feeling so I went down stairs to my front door. That’s when I saw a Drugged out man staring through the front door. At the time I didn’t have any firearms so I grabbed my phone and called the police. The guy stared banging on the door trying to get in. I told him to stop and explained to him if he came in it would be nice for him. Turns out he was so drugged out he didn’t know where he was and couldn’t even see me. The police took him and didnt even talk to me. It was really creepy though.”

“We were 15 years old. A friend and I went to shoot hoops near this massive church, that had a park. We are happily playing around on the court. I remember shooting the ball, missing and the sound of it bouncing away. My friend and I looked at each other, we both felt it. This sudden sinking/nervous feeling. It was very quiet. No one was around. This car comes cruising into the car park next to the court and just sits there. We can see two men in the car. We try to ignore them and keep playing. After maybe 5 mins, passenger side door opens and this guy stands up and calls out, “Come here for a second.” My friend looks at me and I look at him. We know this isn’t good, something was wrong. He picks up the ball and starts walking away. The guy in the car yells, “Hey! Come here! I’ve got something that you might like!” We walk faster, heading past the church. He gets back in the car and it continues to cruise toward us, this time faster. Just as we drop the ball and run, the side door of the church swings open and about 2o to 25 middle aged blokes come walking out. All laughing and chatting away. The car slams on the breaks. One of these guys looks at us and looks at the car and says, “You boys ok?” The car calmly turns around and cruises away. The men who came out of the church were a men’s choir who had been practicing for some competition. At first I thought the guys in the car were just going to bash us or rob us. But when I was older and telling a friend he said, “Pretty sure you avoided being kidnapped mate.” Chill down my spine.”