30 People Share Horrifying But Eye-Opening Stories About The Times Where Trusting Their Gut Feelings Quite Literally Saved Their Lives

These stories are really terrifying but still worth reading

Maryjane

• Published in Interesting
• April 14, 2023

You know that proverb that says that you should "trust your gut?" It means to believe in these instinctual instincts, frequently as a method to stay true to yourself.

You will undoubtedly find the ideal path for you if you trust your instincts. However, you could question whether you should place such a high value on a gut sense or sensation that you are unable to articulate.

But then, making judgments based on logic and reason would certainly benefit you. Or wait, you don't think so? 

Well, science says there are times when intuition can be a useful tool. Yes, it appears that such instincts do matter, and they frequently guide you in making wise decisions.

So tell me, do you ever just "have a bad feeling," and you know you just have to heed to it? Has that decision to trust your gut got you out of harm's way?

Whatever we choose to name this unexplainable feeling—intuition, a sign from God, a gut instinct, or an angel reaching out—it has been able to save many lives. Recently, a curious Reddit user encouraged readers to be candid about instances in which following their instincts kept them alive, and they did not hold back.

Enjoy reading through these terrifying stories of people who narrowly escaped perilous circumstances below.

Here's the question

1. Smart Move

When I was 10, I was walking to my friends house. A van stopped me to ask for directions to the park. A man was driving and a woman was passenger and she's the one who spoke to me. We had been taught in school (and by my parents) that adults should never ask kids for directions. In school, they told us if anyone ever stops you, take a giant step back before running away (so they can't grab you).

So I take a step back and tell them I don't know where the park is. The lady said "I can't hear you, come closer" and I knew in my gut something was wrong. Out of fear, I almost listened to her but then the sliding door on the van started to open and I took off running faster than I've ever ran in my life. Ran all the way to my friends house.

I told her parents everything and they called my parents and the police. The police came to her house and talked to me and said that 2 other kids in our neighbourhood reported the same van stopping and trying to talk to them.

It was weird because before the van even stopped beside me, I had this sick feeling in my gut. As soon as it started rolling down the street, I knew something bad was about to happen. It was a couple of months before I had the guts to walk to my friends house again.

2. Woah

The story continues...

3. Symptoms

4. A storm

5. Baby and Mother

6. Christmas Shopping

7. Carbon monoxide leak

8. A gut save

9. Ditch help

When Ted Bundy asked me & my gal pal in 1975 to help him get his VW out of a ditch about mile down the road.

Seriously! He was early 30ish. This was at a rural county fair in WA State when we’re both 15-16 years old. It made no sense a well-dressed man of that age would ask young girls when male police officers & guys older than us were all over. We didn’t know who he was then. But that made no sense —so we told him to get lost & went to tell a police officer this guy was asking this of us of teenagers.

I later discovered who he was when at 21, I went to work for the same county’s Sheriff’s Dept & Bundy’s picture was posted everywhere. By then, they also know he tracked a local Nurse from the UW to her home town where this fair was located. Not a single doubt in my mind it was him! I see that clear as day every day in my mind’s eye memory.

I’m 64. I can only tell you, predators are everywhere! You must pay attention! Watch Dateline if you think it’s rare. It’s not. It’s an endemic! Pay f*****g attention young ones!

-signed Mim!

10. Gas leak

Back in 2012 I was living in Spain with my best friend whilst we studied spanish.

One evening, we were feeling sluggish and a bit off after eating dinner. We barely made it through half a movie before we looked at each other and discussed wether we were becoming sick, and should just call it an early evening and head to bed.

We quickly got ready for bed, feeling sickish, and I was turning off the lights in the living room when I had a lightbulb moment of checking out the gas, but we were using a gas stove where you had to turn the gas thingy on and off upon using the stove itself (we never use this in our home country so we were just getting used to it). Turns out the gas was still on after we turned the stove off after cooking, and it was leaking gas into the small appartment we lived in, the entire evening.

If we would have gone to sleep, we would have never woken up again.

11. ER

Well, not my life, but my husband's. It was after a long day about an hour from home Halloween night. It was late when we finally got home, I was exhausted, fell asleep immediately, a few hours later, my husband woke me up, having intense stomach pain. I ruled out food poisoning because we had eaten the same thing that day, so I took him to the hospital because I knew him, this wasn't something simple. We sat in ER for hours, the just kept us waiting. I kept going up to the desk and said please. My husband us doubled over in intense pain! Finally they took him back, ran tests, including ct scan. Found nothing said we should go home until it "passes" . I said NO! SOMETHING IS DESPERATELY WRONG! They rolled their eyes, I said call his primary, he knows my husband us not an alarmist. My husband's primary ordered a surgeon to go in and see the problem. They took him in, came out and said his gall bladder was gangrenous and it would have burst and he would have died from sepsis. The surgeon clamped it off and removed it, said he would not have seen the morning had I not insisted something be done. Needless to say, I scratched that hospital off my list to EVER step foot in again.

Gullible-Alarm-8871

12. Frisbee game

And the story continues...

13. Shark

14. Swimming hole

15. Offshore fishing

16. Patch of tall grass

17. Large steel plates

18. Standard transmission pickup truck

19. Gallbladder

20. Dropping mails

21. Red stilettos

My first boy friend ever and this was years back. We lived in a medium ish town in Midwest and I was a painfully shy girl. I was head over heels for him. He had a fetish for red stilettos and I wanted to impress and bought a pair. I was a gawky girl and didn’t have the dress sense to even match those stilettos lol. He loved them that I wore them to a lot of places. We used to have lots of picnics in woods and another place where we had to take a small boat across a river. This particular weekend, I just wasn’t feeling him at all and something felt really off. He was a bit older than me (think 15 and 19) but I literally worshipped the ground he walked on. Not that Friday though and the more he begged me to go to one of our picnics the more I refused. My stomach was in knots and finally I vomited on our porch (where we were arguing) and he left. Over the next week, people discovered a random red stiletto floating in the river and then a body was fished out. My bf had another girl on the side (or May be I was the side, lol), and he killed her sometime on that weekend. They apparently did the same “picnics” that we did. He was on drugs and not sure what else happened, but I could have been in that girl’s place.

23. Driving home

24. Crazy driver

25. Rocket engine powder

In high school, we had an unhealthy preoccupation with making small explosives from model rocket engine powder. In this case, we used a spent CO2 cartridge packed full of the powder, with a short mortar fuse, stuffed inside a crab trap buoy. A monument to terrible decisions.

I held the bomb as it was lit, intending to throw it, but the fuse burned out. “Maybe we should relight it?” My friend said.

“F**k it!” I yelled, as I threw it as hard and as far as I possibly could. The styrofoam buoy landed some distance away, bounced once, and exploded with what sounded like a shotgun blast. There wasn’t a piece of that buoy left larger than a crumb, and the blast radius was wide.

If I’d held on to that thing, best case scenario is that I wouldn’t have a right hand. Given the proximity to my face, it would likely have been much, much worse.

For anyone reading this, do not do this. This was a terrible idea and me and my friends are lucky to have survived to adults.

- Hewfe

26. Hurry up

27. Work friend

28. Creepy guy

29. Super speed

30. Collision

Whatever you choose to call it—a sixth sense, hunch, or gut feeling—the instantaneous flash of understanding from deep within can give you lots of faith. These people have shared their own stories and you just might have yours to share too.

Do drop your thoughts in the comments below, and we encourage you always to trust your gut instinct.

Maryjane