14 People Who Were Lucky Enough to Prevent Something Awful From Happening

At times, our inner voice guides us to make choices we wouldn’t typically consider, such as calling off a trip or taking a different route to work out of the blue. Numerous individuals have experienced moments when these spontaneous alterations in plans spared them from a potentially dire situation or even saved their lives.

• I was like 8 or 9 when my parents took me and my younger brother to stay the night at my paternal grandparents’ house because they were in the middle of divorcing. They lived in a farmhouse that was connected to a barn (with machinery, gasoline tanks, and hay on the ground floor and furnished rooms on the floor above that) and the room we were supposed to stay in was in that barn.
  As soon as we went into the guest room, I was overwhelmed by panic and felt dizzy. I turned around and just said that we would not sleep in that room, and we spent the night on the couch in the living room instead.
  Later that night, a gas leak in the barn ignited and almost the entire barn, including the guest rooms on its top floor, exploded. Maybe I had that weird feeling because the gas had leaked into the room already, but no one else felt anything, and I’m sure I would have been dead if I hadn’t noticed it. © CichaelMlifford / Reddit

• My mom knew something was wrong with me when I was younger. Doctors didn’t want to see me for another 2 weeks, but my mom went into a blind rage over the phone telling them that she was taking me to get checked whether they liked it or not.
  We got to the general practitioner, and he put a stethoscope on my back and smelled my breath. Then says, «We need to get him to hospital NOW.»
  Turns out I have type 1 Diabetes and if I’d waited another day I would have died. © FracturedPixel / Reddit

• I used to never wear my seatbelt. This was before they were annoying if you didn’t put it on. 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 doing about 60mph. The cop said if I didn’t have on my seatbelt, I would have gone through the windshield. I always wear my seatbelt now. © redmooncat15 / Reddit

• I was in the Amazon at the end of a 3-month solo trip around Latin America. Wanted to enjoy one last walk through the jungle before leaving, so left my jungle lodge around 8 am to walk down to a small river nearby.
  I stop and close my eyes to listen to the sounds as the jungle is super loud with crickets, birds, insects, etc. Almost immediately I got a weird feeling and felt uncomfortable — which was weird because up until then I’d only felt peaceful and happy. When I opened my eyes, I realized everything had gone completely quiet, which was definitely NOT normal and not something I had experienced in other rainforests I’d been to. It was bizarre. I immediately felt that I had to leave, and fast.
  After I dipped and got back to the jungle lodge, I told the tour guide what happened, and he said it usually only gets quiet when there is a big predator close by. © UnconditionalMay / Reddit

• I had a cat who loved getting into things and hiding. Drawers, cupboards, the fridge, anything that was small and dark, she loved it. One day I was doing laundry and I tossed everything in the dryer. Shut the dryer door and pressed the button (it was one of those that takes a minute to start). Something didn’t feel right, I thought maybe I forgot to add dryer sheets or something. I turn off the dryer, open the door, and my cat jumps out. Totally oblivious to what was about to happen. Ever since then I always double-check before turning on an appliance. © fairyboi_ / Reddit

• A pain in the lungs when I inhaled. I’ve never been stabbed, don’t know what it’s like, but the pain should have been equal to it, if not worse. It had happened before, years ago. Some hot water was in the shower and the pain was gone. My wife (then girlfriend) insisted on going to the ER. I insisted on hot water.
  «I feel like we should go and see a doctor,» she had said. I was diagnosed with pulmonary embolism in both lungs. The doctor said, «1 or 2 more hours, and you were gone». So yeah, I owe my wife one. © verpin_zal / Reddit

• It wasn’t mine but my boss’ gut feeling. It was an old day at work, it was about to be dinner rush, and I was tired. As usual, I was going to go to the dollar store to get some Red Bull. I asked my manager if he wanted to split it because they were 2 for $5. He said no, but as soon as I reached the door he said to wait.
  I asked him what was wrong, and he said I should go later, he didn’t give me a reason, and we were pretty relaxed, so I told him to stop it and as soon as I pushed the door outwards I heard a sound I can’t even describe aside from just BREAKING. Whatever it was, it was broken, that’s all I knew.
  Turns out, an SUV drove straight into that dollar store’s front door and their RedBull fridge. My manager has annoyed me a million times, but I’ll never forget the time he saved my life. © Unknown user / Reddit

• My mom dropped my 3-year-old brother off at daycare before she had to work in the morning. When she got to work she had this terrible feeling something was wrong with him. She ended up leaving work and drove to the daycare. She found the daycare lady inside sleeping while the daycare kids (including my brother) were running around the pool. My brother never went back to that daycare again. © Unknown user / Reddit

• 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, but 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 sit.
  A little way into the journey, traffic was slowing, and we got to the cause of it. A lorry 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. It still gives me chills after 6 years. © Cosmo_shaggy / Reddit

• A few weeks ago, I had just left my apartment complex and was heading to a friend. I pulled out of my driveway and up to the traffic light and stopped, as the light was red. It was late out and there weren’t many people on the road. I watched as the light went yellow, and then red for through traffic. My turn! Light goes green, and I have an arrow blinking for me to turn left, I looked both ways and there was no one around, so I just didn’t go.
  I cannot explain what happened other than something inside me just said DON’T GO, so I sat there staring at the green light. A couple of seconds later a car came screaming through the red light, through the intersection, probably doing about 100km/hr, in the lane I would have been turning into. They were going so fast, that their vehicle bounced to it. If I had turned, my car would have been destroyed, and me along with it.
  I sat there through the whole next light cycle and then turned, pulled over, and called my sister. It was a ghostly feeling. I am a light jumper, I look both ways, but I am impatient, and I can not explain what stopped me from going the second that light went green, but I’m glad it did. © BowlingForPennies / Reddit

• In 2004, on Boxing Day, not me, but my mother. Family trip including all cousins and extended family on my dad’s side to visit the coastal South of Sri Lanka on vacation, about 20 people in all.
  Well-planned trip, but at the last moment my mother didn’t want to go. No reason at all.
  None of us could get her to explain why, but she refused to go. So we went inland on a different trip to see some other relatives.
  Around midday, the entire extended family now on both sides were sitting shocked in front of the television watching the very same hotel we booked being washed away live by the tsunami.
  To date, she still can’t explain what she felt. © MissingInAction21 / Reddit

• I was roughly 7-8 years old and had just moved to Florida. I started school immediately due to being in the middle of the school year. The first day I had to ride the bus home but I didn’t know my address. The bus driver (fired) told me to get on anyway and to get off with the other kids when they got off. So there I was, 7-8 years old, in the middle of Florida by myself, trying to find my way home. Usually, if I have a choice between going left or right, I go left. This just so happened to be the right way and after wondering for more than an hour, I found my way home. I can only imagine what would have happened if, in that instance, I decided to go right instead. © xGermango / Reddit

• I was staying at a friend’s house out in the country. He was asleep in another room, I was dozing off with his huge Pitbull Izzy Bell, sweet girl. In the middle of the night I am awoken by sounds outside, like scrabbling, Izzy leaps up too, looks at me then the back door, and growls. My friend at the time had a young daughter, 4 or 5, so I immediately thought of her.
  I grab the nearest thing I could defend myself with which is a fire poker and go to open the door as Izzy is beside me seemingly ready for a fight. But it didn’t feel right. I instead bar the door the best I can and creep to a window looking out. Outside is a gigantic bear, and it has a few cubs in tow. I watch as it ambles off.
  I am pretty sure that if I had charged out of that door as I originally intended, Izzy and I would not be here today. © fake_fakington / Reddit

• I went to hospital with shortness of breath and my heart racing. They did a chest x-ray, blood test for blood clots, ECG, and a few other tests, but all came back normal. After observing me overnight everything still looked good, oxygen saturation was perfect, my heart rate was still a bit elevated but nothing too crazy, and it seemed that it was likely leftover symptoms from a bad virus that I’d had a week or so earlier.
  The ER doctor asked me how I would feel if they sent me home, and I just had a bad feeling about it all. I told him as such and that I had no real basis for it except that I just felt off about it. He said, «Fair enough, let’s try one more test and if that comes back negative, then we’ll send you up to General Medicine and see if they can track something down.»
  That test was a VQ scan that found, despite all other tests showing no results for blood clots, I had a whole bunch of them in both lungs. I ended up with a diagnosis of unprovoked bilateral pulmonary embolisms and am on blood thinners for life.
  I’m super grateful both for the bad feeling and the ER doctor who was willing to listen to it! © instinctivechopstick / Reddit

Some people have experiences so extraordinary that they seem straight out of fiction, yet they’re real. Discover a collection of 12 eerie stories shared by people online, highlighting how some of the most chilling experiences defy rational explanation.