Kinda sorta copy/pasted question from Reddit. But wanted to see what your answers are like on here!
In our local pub in Scotland, they had a DJ in the back room on a Friday / Saturday night. One night some guy bumped into me and I felt something hit the floor by my feet, I looked down and it was a 12 inch serrated kitchen knife with tape on the handle, i looked up and it was some wee wideo ned. So I went over to my mate old him to finish his drink quickly as possible because we’re getting the fuck out of there tonight.
The place is a tiny local town and art preserve. We all felt like we were going to get axe murdered. We left, no Ax# murder. 👉👉
I kinda had the opposite happen.
I was working for a charity doing some reconstruction in an ex war zone. That weekend was a major festival. I’m not of the area nor the religion so I volunteered to keep an eye on our camp instead that weekend.
I finished my breakfast in the canteen and was about to walk the perimeter and do my checks when, inexplicably, I decided to stall and have a second coffee. Something I never did.
As I went to sit down a massive explosion happened outside, shattering the entire area me and my clipboard should have been in. I wouldn’t have stood a chance. The canteen we were in was made out of shipping containers and probably saved our lives.
Was about to get robbed
Being an american around 11 or so years ago. Hasn’t gone away.
during a rainy night at a campus, a dude was doing that ‘muslim prayer’ right in the sidewalk on campus. and started trying to get me to haggle me , i quickly walked away, as most of the campus was extremely dark at night, almost pitch black. towards one of the buildings the student center or bookstore it was an extremely dark area, noped out of there quickly away from that person. he was also fidgeting something in his pocket excessively too.
Was BBQing in backyard at my old house and a strong wind knocked the grill over starting a fire. I tried putting it out, but it spread super fast and eventually got so hot, I had to escape it going through a window because the way back through the back door was totally engulfed. Shit started singing my hair and I was still a good 10 feet away from the fire when I finally said I need to get out of the backyard and hope the FD shows up before it set the house on fire.
Bushfire
I trust my spidey sense. When the hairs on the back of my neck go up and i get that feeling in my chest, i listen to it.
Its gotten me out of an armed store robbery, 2 ither street level robberies, 2 houses that just didnt feel right, multiple encounters with dangerous animals ( gators and 1 panther).
My wife just thinks im paranoid.
We get that feeling for a very good reason. It’s our intuition telling us something our instincts already know. Many people don’t get it and are conditioned into telling themselves “it’s probably nothing” because they don’t want to look silly in public. It can lead to paranoia, if you’ve been in enough hairy situations, but most of the time you’ll want to listen to that intuition and do something about it as soon as you get that feeling.
Three hours down a very remote hike with no phone service, a schizophrenic guy asks what we’d do if someone tried to kill us right now
I’d laugh maniacally and kill them with my man eating machete.
And then?!
Wished him good luck on his journey, hauled ass out of there and picked up a really nice pointy skull crushing rock for companionship. The hike back was a lot less scenic and we nailed it in half the advised time. Made a police report when back in phone reception.
We later worked out he just wanted advice because he thought HE was being chased
We later worked out he just wanted advice because he thought HE was being chased
I feel bad for laughing at this. I can just imagine the guy being scared out of his wits and then the guy he asked for advice running away.
Like two sides of the story both going home to post it on LetsNotMeet 😂
About 2 weeks ago, packing a few belongings and my cats into a car to evacuate from an impending flood. Didn’t know when I would be back home or what condition it would be in when I did.
Did your place end up flooding? Glad you took your lil homies with you
was doing a building search of a flooding (from water leak) multi story building and as i was looking around the living room, i felt “time to move to next room” and yeah glad i did. ceiling fell in the living room as i rounded the corner.
these kinds of incidents are always so fascinating.
studies were done on people who had their brain hemispheres separated and it was found that the brains continued to communicate through alternative methods, often providing context to one half of the brain that was unaware of context the other was aware of.
it only proved that our brains are complex machines that are constantly working to ensure our survival. so when you get the nagging feeling you’re in danger, take it seriously because your subconscious has noticed something your consciousness has not.
my little brother was really sick so i wanted to run some soup to him. he was staying with his girlfriends family out in an extremely rural area. it was after dark and i didnt know which house to go to, so i had to pull in to someones driveway to call him. the guy who lived there came out and stared us down until we pulled out, the vibe was incredibly hostile. i was afraid of getting shot or worse, being very queer and having my fiance with me. didnt do that again.
To be fair, you probably scared the crap out of them. I live in a pretty rural area and if someone pulled into my driveway at night that I wasn’t expecting, I would do the same thing.
When I was around 11 I was at the McDonald’s down the street from my house with a couple of friends. It was just three 11/12 year old girls chilling eating in the back of the restaurant. It was dark out but not late, probably 7 or 8 at night. After a bit my friend leaned over to me and said the guy at the table next to us “looks like (her abusive stepfather)”. Realistically it could not have been her abusive stepfather and she was across the other side of the country.
However, he was creepy and sitting alone and watching us VERY closely. We started getting nervous and at some point I said loudly enough for him to hear “okay, my dad is coming to get us”. He wasn’t, but I was hoping that would make the man leave us alone. He immediately got up and went to go stand just outside of the back door into the parking lot.
We panicked even more and walked to the front entrance of the McDonald’s, called my dad from a payphone. I remember how panicked we must have looked because a random person who was in line came over and asked if we were okay. Thankfully my dad was home and came to get us from the front entrance and we left together.
Another time I was on the last train home from work, I was around 18. A man had gotten on the train near my stop, first sat on a further seat and then moved closer as the trip went on. From my stop, I had to walk about 50 meters to a not-very-well lit taxi pickup area. This man got off at my stop, and as I approached the well-lit exit of the train station I could feel him following me. I almost went outside and then thought better of it. Turned back and thankfully found a transit worker on the platform. I asked him if he could walk me to the taxis and he did. As my taxi was driving away I saw the man who had been following me walk back further into the train station. As I mentioned, it was the last train of the night so he had no reason to have gotten off at the stop if it wasn’t his stop. There were no businesses or anything else around. Anyway my favourite part of this story (not favourite) is that when the transit worker was walking me over to the taxis he said something along the lines of “oh you’re just too cute thats why that man is following you”. No thank you.
Always trust your gut, kids.
I absolutely agree. Better safe than sorry.
Nevertheless, I want to tell a quick story of where someones gut feeling was wrong.
More than 20 years so I used to go to an evening school (don’t know the English name for, maybe college or something like that). One day I was done, it was very late and dark outside (around 10 in the evening) and I was tried and not in the best mood and I just wanted home. To get there, I had to catch the last train of the evening and the train station was a few minutes walking away.
Since I’m a pretty tall guy with long legs, I can walk pretty fast. I was walking down the narrow sidewalk towards the train station when another pedestrian appeared on front of me. This pedestrian, a young lady, was slower than me and since I was in a hurry I tried to overtake her (get in front in of her so she wouldn’t slow me down and could walk at her own pace). However, when I started my maneuver she got a little faster, but I still wanted to finish my maneuver and walked a little faster myself and she got a bit faster again… after a short while of this, it ended with her running away to a street on the other side of the road while screaming in fear.
This way quite confusing for me since I had no bad intentions at all. However, from her perspective it was probably super scary with a tall grumpy looking guy “following” her and then getting into snatching range. So I think she did the right thing and from that point I tried to avoid accidentally scaring other people.
Yeah I’ve had a similar experience, when I was in my early 20s, and have since chosen to accept missing the train or whatever is the reason I’d need to hurry, so as not to scare someone that bad. Jesus it’s awkward and it’s entirely understandable, but man does it get me questioning whether I look scary or weird or do I seem suspicious and has been a constant source of anxiety ever since. But I’ve realized it’s my job in that situation to clearly signal I’m not a threat, and I’ve chosen to do it just by slowing down myself so the distance grows and I become no threat to them (feels so bad to think of one’s self this way by the way, fuck me, but what can you do?) or alternatively if there’s a detour I could take to still catch the train as in your example, I’d rather go to another block and jog if nobody’s there and not miss the train. Either way, if I’m perceived a threat, there’s nothing in the moment that can be done about that other than no longer be perceived one, i.e stall or reroute away.
This only ever happens in dark, at night, and them likely drunk or tired, so it’s entirely understandable. I’d be fucking anxious too if someone bigger than me started speeding up on me. I have the privilege not to be scared this way due to my physique, so I also have to respect it the other way around too.
It’s so easy to go with the gut reaction of “this is disrespectful” without considering the scenario from a third person you know? I think this is where most end up in and start thinking “you can’t do or say anything anymore” and become either incels or too fucking loud magas or equivalents, because it is kind of hard on self confidence to be in that situation. But it’s always going to be worse for the other, they might fear for their life, and rightly so, so there’s no comparison there once you actually start thinking and exercising your empathy. So if you manage to get past the initial feeling of disrespect, frustration and self-doubt, then this is a real non-issue. And something very small to avoid and handle properly in the moment.
But if you don’t get past it, or lack the empathy to see it from others’ pov, well, you end up a shithead basically, coping unhealthily with that and it might even grow as large to be the whole identity ultimately.
Just rambling here I suppose, sorry to hog all the space, felt like I needed to let that out. I’ve had some friends go with the disrespect and self image and confidence shattering effect that I’ve helped get past it and see it objectively, and I just can’t help but think of everyone who doesnt have the help nor the inner capability, and stray from the sensible and humane path due to something so small as this.
I usually do my best to just take an extra wide berth to get by. It’s usually only going to happen late at night or so when it’s super quiet, so in that case I will just cross the street myself.
Kinda just signalling, don’t worry I want nothing to do with you. It helps lull them into a sense of security.
I feel like if I were ever in that situation I’d just straight-up yell something to the effect of “hey lady, I’m not trying to chase you; I’m just in a hurry” and try to get her to cross the street or something so I could get by. I have no idea if it would actually help or not, but if it’s awkward anyway I’m the kind of jerk to be willing to make it more so.
In none of your stories anything really happened, though. Of course, it might have, but it might also just been coincidence or whatever.
When we’re talking personal safety, you want to play it safe, surprisingly. I mean, maybe you’d rather be the one who says to themselves “ah, it’s probably nothing” and then gets murderaped, but most of us wouldn’t.
The people to whom something did happen aren’t here to tell their stories.
Ignored the Tornado warning, shouldn’t have.
If there’s one thing that’ll get the Lizard Brain going… it’s the only time I’ve ever felt like something deeper was telling my brain that we had to get the fuck out of here.
Very much had this a couple years ago in KY. I was totally planning on driving through and hoping that the storm wasn’t gonna roll through where I was working, but when I got back to the car and saw just how fucking green the sky was, something inside me said “hey how about we listen to the nice security guard who’s offering shelter in the plant”.
Tornado didn’t even come close to me (about 20 miles south), but it was a wild as fuck storm.
Mine was a bit farther back… would be measured in decades ago, I may turn to dust shortly, but maybe same area. It’s crazy how much the strength of tornadoes ramps up on the western half of the state.
I live close enough to Jarrell to have made some friends who grew up nearby and went to help clean up. Jarrell stories help sober the perspective whenever I’m weighing what chances are worth taking.
Dude… Tell the whole story. It sounds interesting.
There’s an odd greenish haze in the sky that I’ve never seen a camera properly capture and you don’t just hear the sound of the tornado with your ears, you can feel it in your bones first. All of those tiny hairs all across your body, it’s almost like they have an electric charge. When it gets close, the air gets odd and it starts to feel like there’s suddenly not enough of it.
Rationally, it’s a lot of contributing factors getting amped up by the biggest adrenaline rush you’ve ever had. It was my first season after moving a bit farther west than I’d ever been and I felt like I opened the front door to find myself within 100 feet of the thing, but it is hard to trust yourself to look back on something like that with a scientific mind. The feeling I got didn’t even feel like fear, it was just a feeling of ‘have to go’ and I’ve never felt it again. For the actual situation, everything my body was telling me was worthless and nothing I could have done would have done any good if my luck had failed me, but the Tornado was just passing by on it’s way to somewhere else.
