12 Times People Trusted Their Gut and Avoided a Tragedy

Sometimes, you just know something isn’t right. That uneasy feeling, that instinctive “nope” even when everything looks perfectly normal—it's more than just nerves. It’s your gut trying to protect you. These eerie stories reveal what can happen when people listen to that inner warning—and narrowly escape what could’ve been a real-life nightmare.

• 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 I listened to it. I demanded that I be seen by my OB. 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 dead. © kat4190 / Reddit
• I had to leave for an appointment, and for some reason I felt the urge to just sit in my car before leaving. I sat there just looking around for two minutes or so. Then the feeling went away, and I left. When I was on the highway, I saw a crash happen just minutes before I was supposed to be there. The truck blew a tire and hit other cars, which hit other cars as well.
  It was a mess. Two people died. A few others were heavily injured and taken to the hospital. I was in the traffic behind the scene for about two hours and was so glad I just sat in my car, staring around, before leaving. I still do that sometimes, thinking back to that moment.
  © ikbenerook / Reddit

• Back when I was about 10 or 11, I asked my mother if we could take my grandmother out to lunch. She was kind of against it, but I kept insisting that I really wanted to see my grandmother and that she would want to go to lunch that day.
  While we were out at the mall after getting lunch with my grandmother, she started slurring her speech and became extremely confused. She was having a stroke. Luckily, my mom noticed what was going on and got her to the hospital within 20 or 30 minutes. Doctors said they were able to stop the stroke, and she came out of it basically the same as she was before.
  A couple of days after the fact, my mom told me I had basically saved my grandmother's life by making sure we went out to lunch with her that day. © DargoSun92 / Reddit
• My 3-year-old was strapped in his car seat and suddenly started saying, “Lock doors, lock doors!” I pressed the button to keep him happy, and just a few seconds later a guy came from behind the car and tried to open the doors and get in. Ours were locked, but he went to the car in front and opened theirs and started punching the driver.
  The lights had just changed so that driver tore off, and I followed him, leaving the guy stumbling across the road. My son was tightly belted in to a chunky car seat; there's no way he could have seen behind us, and he was in the back, so couldn't see the side mirrors either.
  © anomalous_cowherd / Reddit

• When I was a teen, I'd make a few bucks helping a local farmer bale hay. The hay would be stacked on a trailer and towed by tractor to the barn. I usually sat on the front of the trailer on the way to the barn, but I suddenly felt like that wasn't a good place to be, and I moved to the back.
  As soon as I did, I heard a clang. The hitch had come loose from the tractor while heading down a steep hill. I climbed down the back and easily stepped off — moments before the trailer flipped over into a ravine. © p38-lightning / Reddit
• I was a 20-year-old student, alone in my apartment one evening. I was expecting the cable guy, so when I heard a knock at the door, I opened it. I saw an older man that definitely wasn't the cable guy, as he didn't have a uniform on. He said he was going around the apartments installing security alarms. I didn't trust him and told him that it was a bad time and that my roommate was on the phone long distance with her parents.
  She wasn't there, but I didn't want him to think I was alone. He said, “Where is she?” I just closed the door in his face and said, “Not a good time.” I called my landlord the next morning and asked her about installing security alarms, and she had no idea what I was talking about and didn't authorize it. © tess2020x / Reddit

• I was in the woods looking for critters, and I found this big piece of plywood that would’ve been perfect for reptiles and amphibians to hide under. So I go to lift it up, but I have this moment of “what if there’s something right where I’m gonna put my hands?” so I grab a stick to lift it up, and underneath was a copperhead.
  It wasn’t right where I was gonna grab it, so I'm not sure if it would’ve been able to bite me, but definitely a good cautionary tale. © futterguy1 / Reddit
• I was 18, living with my parents, and I was walking home from a friend's house at about 2:00 am. He only lived 5 or 6 blocks away. Usually I'd drive to his house because we'd been out with other friends, but this night we walked to his place. There's not typically a lot of traffic between our houses, but this night I was about halfway home when a pickup truck drove 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'm certain they would have jumped me if they found me. © rhyza99 / Reddit

• I was once driving down the road coming home from work. Normal like every other day, but for some random reason, I stopped at a green light. My music was loud; I was out of it because it was a long day and I just stopped for no reason.
  All of a sudden, a fire truck comes barrelling through the intersection at full speed. If I didn't stop, I would be dead. To this day, I still have no idea why I stopped at the green light. © Unknown author / Reddit
• I thought my son’s breathing was weird. He was 4 days old. I couldn’t even explain to his doctor what I thought was weird, I just knew it was weird. Took him into the pediatrician, and she did a basic look at him, watched him breathe, and said he was fine; I’m just “in anxious mommy mode.” The following day, I take him into the ER, telling them the same thing.
  “I don’t know what it is, but his breathing is just weird,” and boom, his oxygen was 72. He ended up staying on supplemental oxygen at home for 2 months. I was crying to one of the nurses, and he told me, “Mom instinct is real, and I’ve seen it save a lot of kids' lives.” © qween**mbo_/ Reddit

• I was in kindergarten, playing in the kitchen. My mom was in another room. I noticed frost on the window of the garage door, and decided to go draw on it with my finger. Turns out the window was not frosted up, what I saw was smoke coming from our flaming dryer that was in the garage.
  I alerted my mom, and we got out of a house fire. The only thing affected was my brother's load of laundry. © officialmamisalami / Reddit
• I was often dropped off at my Grandma's since she lived on a farm, and I loved animals.
  One weekend, I refused to go, and couldn't explain why, forcing mom to take a day off from work. Later, her boss called and told her that the ceiling of their office had collapsed due to a massive water leak in the pipes.
  A massive section of it had collapsed, over my mom's desk, and would surely have seriously injured her if she had been there. My mom thanks me for saving her life till date.

While these are stories about people avoiding danger by listening to their inner voice, here go some customer relation anecdotes that show how crazy an experience working in retail can be.