13 Unforeseen Situations Where People Trusted Their Sixth Sense

It’s very easy to confuse instincts with paranoia. This is probably why people often ignore their instincts — they don’t want to look weird in their own, or someone else’s, eyes. The people from today’s compilation relied on their instincts, and (spoiler alert) it was the right call.

When we at Bright Side were reading this thread, some of these stories literally gave us the chills. We think that after you read them, you will never doubt that a mysterious sixth sense totally exists.

• I used to never wear my seatbelt. One time I was sitting in the passenger seat of a car and had a gut feeling to put it on. Not even a minute later we were hit by someone driving about 60 mph. The cop said that if I didn’t have my seatbelt on, I would have gone through the windshield. I always wear my seatbelt now. © redmooncat15 / Reddit

• It was at the end of the ’90s and I was coming back home very late one night. I was just walking down an alley and then I felt that I wanted to run very fast. There were no people and it was pretty dark, so I decided to run. And then, I heard voices, “Stop!” and I heard people chasing me. But because I had started running before they did, I had an advantage and ran away. © kk0s0y / Pikabu

• I was with my first boyfriend for almost 2 years. About 6 months into the relationship I started to get stomach aches on a regular basis. This soon became constant, I could barely eat and the doctors had no explanation for it. After we broke up the pain completely disappeared almost immediately. I later discovered that he was cheating on me with several partners for almost the entire relationship. I guess that’s what you call a literal gut feeling. © Sabrina B. Salerno / Quora

• When I was around 18, I was on a back road with some friends and a girl I didn’t know was driving really fast. Now, I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie, and I have always enjoyed a calculated risk in the name of a good time, but on this occasion, I told her to either slow down or let me out. I literally had to start screaming at her before she listened and slowed down. A week later she crashed on that same stretch of road going 90 mph, killing her and the 3 passengers in her car. © Canadian_Neckbeard / Reddit

• Don’t know if it was a gut feeling or a lucky coincidence. Decided I should empty the trash on my way to class, which added maybe 10 seconds to my journey as the dumpster was about 10 ft from my front door. Began my walk to campus and roughly 10 seconds of walking in front of me, some idiot from the third floor flat threw a load of glass out his window, smashing it all over the path. © _helloalien / Reddit

• Lump in my right breast. 43 years old — clean mammogram 5 months earlier. I just knew. 4 different doctors told me it was nothing and to come back in a year. I did not and found a fifth. Yeah, I had to argue my way into being diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. On the bright side, today was my 5 years all-clear date! © Tajkaj / Reddit

• I smelled burning plastic early in the morning at my family cottage and almost went back to sleep (I was around 15), but instead, I 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, put it in his hands, and pointed him toward the fire. Stopped it and called the fire department. © DanBonham / Reddit

• I went to go catch the bus, saw the bus about to pull out from the stop, and I could have made it if I ran. Something told me not to catch it and just wait for the next one, so I did. Caught the next bus half an hour later. Now, I usually sit at the back of the bus on the driver’s side, so that’s where I sat. A little way into the journey, traffic was slowing, and we got to the cause of it. An 18-wheeler had crashed into the bus I had missed, right into the back on the driver’s side. Had I caught that bus, I wouldn’t be here. Still gives me chills after 6 years. © Cosmo_shaggy / Reddit

• My siblings and I were swimming at a neighbor’s house with their kid, but the adults were inside. Randomly a thought came into my head saying, “Where’s my sister at?” She easily could’ve gone inside or could have walked across the street to go home, but I felt like I needed to find her ASAP. I got all of us kids to search when we noticed she was at the bottom of the pool, completely blue. She made a complete recovery and is one of the best parts of my life. © intergalacticsnack / Reddit

• When I was about 15, I was hanging out with my dad at our family’s small business when he went to get the mail. Only a couple of steps from the mailbox, he dropped one of the pieces of mail. When he bent over to get it, a passing truck blew a tire, and the tire went flying through the air right over my dad’s head. The wind from its passing blew his hat off. The panic I felt is indescribable. If he hadn’t dropped that piece of mail, the tire would have easily taken his head off. © Lee_of_the_Stone / Reddit

• I woke up from a deep sleep at like 2 am during a winter storm, something wasn’t right... I immediately went looking for my senior dog and couldn’t find her anywhere in the house. My roommates had a tendency to let her outside and forget about her, closing the door. I ran to the front of the house and found her laying on the welcome mat, she was hardly breathing and covered in snow... She had been outside alone for at the very least 5 hours. I moved out shortly afterward. © Cafilkafish / Reddit

• I had an important meeting in another city. I fly a lot, but I had a nagging feeling about the 3-hour flight I needed to take to get to the meeting. 2 nights in a row before the flight, I dreamt that the right engine would catch fire, causing the plane to crash. In the morning, I dawdled enough that I missed my flight. The plane made it just fine and I got fired. Got a better job 2 weeks later so my gut feeling saved me. © AusCan531 / Reddit

• 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 could 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. © volcanic-sass / Reddit

How often do you trust your instincts?