15 People Who Got a Bad Feeling and It Turned Out to Be True

Have you ever had that weird, sinking feeling in your stomach, like something was off, even when everything looked fine? Turns out, sometimes your gut knows what your eyes don’t. Whether it’s an inexplicable urge to take a different route home or a sudden chill when meeting someone new, listening to that inner voice can make all the difference.

We found stories from the internet where people did follow their instincts, and it ended up saving lives, avoiding disasters, or revealing shocking truths. These aren’t just lucky guesses, they’re real-life moments when intuition was the loudest (and smartest) voice in the room.

• When I was a kid, we were visiting family in Brazil over Christmas break. One of the things they do in Rio for New Year’s is take party boats out into the bay to watch the fireworks show they shoot off from the beach. My great-aunt and -uncle bought us tickets for one of the boats.
  When we arrived, she took one look at the boat and refused to board. She ended up eating the cost of the tickets and buying us last-minute tickets for another boat. It cost her a small fortune, and we all thought she was crazy.
  The boat we were supposed to be on ended up overloaded with passengers, but it wasn’t like that when we arrived. The water was choppy that night, and the boat capsized at around 11:45.
  At 6 a.m., the phone at my great-aunt’s apartment started ringing with calls from people who had heard the news and wanted to make sure we weren’t on that boat. We had no idea what had happened until we received that first phone call. After she hung up, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. © drainbead78 / Reddit
• I went to the ER because I felt like I had the worst flu ever. I had chills, a high fever, and abdominal pain. Morphine took the edge off, but I still felt terrible. The ER doctor sent me home, saying that I had a kidney and urinary tract infection, and telling me to see a urologist within two days.
  Before we left, my husband noticed that the nurse treating me had written “risk of sepsis” across my file. Two days later, my symptoms had worsened considerably. A nurse from the same hospital called me and said they wanted to run more blood tests. I was admitted to the cardiology ICU a few hours later. © Nuicakes / Reddit
• I almost drove my dirt bike through a big patch of tall grass just for fun, but I hit the brakes and turned around at the last second. I didn’t know why.
  The next time I went there, I found out that there’s a 75-foot cliff over a river right behind it. I would have flown off it at top speed. Because of the scenery, you couldn’t tell at all when looking at it head on. I still don’t know what made me stop back then. © Quiet_Stranger_5622 / Reddit

• I’m a firefighter. We were called out to a tree fire caused by fallen power lines. As we pull up in the truck, I trust that my driver and crew leader are doing their jobs and have good situational awareness.
  We got out of the truck, which was parked next to an intact set of power lines. It was a very windy night, and I could see the lines swinging, so I voiced my concerns to my crew leader, who said it would be fine. We got the hose out, as the risk of the tree fire spreading to a house outweighed the potential risk of arcing, plus the line had disconnected when it fell.
  I was on a branch, ready to start putting out the fire with two others near me, when I got a chill. I looked up, saw the lines swinging violently, and yelled, “Everyone, move!” As the three of us sprinted and dived out of the way, we heard a thwip and a crack.
  Sure enough, the line we were under had come loose but was still connected to the power pole. If I hadn’t gotten that chill, chances are we would have had three fried firefighters. © DYESMOD / Reddit
• My husband became very ill during the night and was in excruciating pain. I called an ambulance, but the operator said it wasn’t an emergency and told me to wait until morning to take him to his regular doctor. However, I knew something was wrong, so I took him to the hospital myself. It was the most harrowing drive of my life.
  It turned out that he had a life-threatening condition and a resulting infection. He went septic within an hour of arriving at the hospital. Waiting eight hours to see a doctor the next morning would have ended him. I will never doubt my instincts again. © -aLonelyImpulse / Reddit
• My daughter was a year and a half old at the time. She had a cold, but bedtime went smoothly.
  However, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling really uncomfortable and anxious. Something was off, but I couldn’t figure out what. I got up, had a midnight snack, and tried to calm down. Before trying to go back to sleep, I decided to check on my kids, who shared a room.
  When I got in there, I immediately heard a light wheezing sound coming from her crib. It was so quiet that there was no way to hear it outside the room. I picked her up and noticed that she was breathing fast and labored.
  I took her to the hospital, where she ended up staying overnight and receiving oxygen and nebulizer treatments because her oxygen level had dipped. She was diagnosed with reactive airway disease due to the cold, which triggered the asthma attack. © Thr33wolfmoon / Reddit

• When I was ten years old, my dad was burning leaves on our elevated driveway. I had an upset stomach all day, but I knew I wasn’t actually sick.
  Shortly after, we left for a birthday party at the YMCA, and I had panic attacks the whole time. I kept telling my little sister that something was wrong at home. Every time I said something about it, my dad got angrier. I couldn’t play or eat cake; I couldn’t do anything.
  At the end of the party, we received a call that our house was engulfed in flames. We lived in the Ozarks, and you could see our house burning on top of a hill as you drove down the highway to get to our neighborhood.
  My dad laughed and said, “My house is on fire again” (there had been three previous incidents: one caused by lightning, one by a field fire that spread to our neighbor’s porch, and one caused by me knocking over a candle. Obviously, they were all put out fairly quickly).
  The house was a total loss. Luckily, my parents were divorced, so most of our stuff was at my mom’s house. However, all of our childhood photos and memories were at the house that burned down. © reineluxe / Reddit
• I worked in the sales office of an engineering company. One day, I was asked to record the serial numbers of a stack of large steel plates on the shop floor.
  I needed someone with crane operating experience to lift the top plate so that I could read the one underneath. The man lifted it directly upward about six feet. Just as I was about to lean under the plate, a little voice in my head said, “Don’t do that, mate. Get him to move the overhead plate to the side.”
  As soon as I had that thought, the clamp holding the plate failed, and the plate fell to the ground just in front of me. It must have weighed about a ton. © dineramallama / Reddit
• One of my brothers was dating a girl who everyone else had met several times before I did, since I was away at college. The first time I met her, she showed up at our house and just walked right in. She didn’t knock or let anyone know she was there. She just walked in and sat on the couch.
  When I came down the hallway into the living room, she had this super vapid smile on her face. I had a weird gut feeling that she was hiding something from everyone and would fight to the death to keep it hidden. I told my mom she gave me a weird vibe, but I was told to stop being jealous.
  Long story short, she ended up having another whole life and relationship with a guy three hours away. © NC_DE336 / Reddit

• In July, I was in an airport at the top of an escalator when I saw a woman trying to manage her luggage, a stroller with a baby in it, and a toddler. Her toddler slipped just before they got on the escalator, and she instinctively reached for him. In doing so, she let go of the stroller, which was halfway onto the top step of the escalator.
  The stroller started to tilt downward. When I realized it was about to tip over completely, I dropped my luggage, grabbed the stroller, and pulled it back up to the landing. I have no idea if I actually saved the child’s life, but the escalator was empty, so I imagine the stroller would have fallen all the way down. © synaesthetist / Reddit
• When I was eight years old, we had a “special” quiz at school. It counted for a small percentage of our grade, but we only received points if we took the quiz home, showed it to our parents, had them sign it, and returned it the next day. It was the ’80s, and I’m now 99% sure the purpose was to lower my grades because I aced everything but had severe ADHD.
  Anyway, we lived 40 minutes from school, and about halfway there, I started having a panic attack, but I didn’t know why. We were stuck between two semi trucks: a gasoline tanker and a cement truck. My mom pulled over so we could talk it out, and then I remembered my quiz! Since we were going to be there early, we sped home, grabbed the quiz, and headed back to school.
  About two miles past where my mom had pulled over, we saw that the cement truck had rear-ended the gasoline tanker, which then exploded. The charred remains of both trucks, dozens of emergency vehicles of all kinds, and a huge swath of melted asphalt and burnt grass around the road told the story.
  Our little 1984 subcompact would have been sandwiched right in the middle. My mom turned to me and said, “You should trust your panic attacks,” which turned into a lifelong anxiety disorder. But hey, it saved me once. © hiyabankranger / Reddit
• One regular morning in North Florida, my partner and I were getting ready for work. I was running late, so I texted my manager. My partner received an alert on his phone warning of bad weather ahead, but we didn’t think much of it; bad thunderstorms are normal in Florida. I had a sick, uneasy feeling, though.
  I wanted to grab a foam mattress topper from the bed and hang out in the hallway. My partner thought differently; he let the dog out. As I saw the stillness outside, followed by lightning getting closer, my partner got the dog inside. Not even ten seconds after closing the back door for the dog, two tornadoes merged and hit us directly.
  I remember a wall of dark rain and our huge oak tree coming toward the house as we jumped into the hallway. We were safe, but our neighborhood was wrecked, and many homes were lost. This area hadn’t experienced a direct tornado hit in 300 years, so the whole town was shocked by how quickly and randomly the storm turned into a tornado. © bobsbuddbarn22 / Reddit

• I had a friend and coworker who would walk around the office sniffing and asking if anyone else could smell anything. When we asked her to describe the smell, she couldn’t. When we asked if the smell was pleasant or unpleasant, she said she didn’t know. This went on for months, maybe even a year.
  One day, she called in sick, saying it was really weird: Her poop was black and tarry, and she was really sleepy. I immediately knew that her life was in grave danger. I told her, “You’re bleeding internally, and you need to go to the ER now.”
  She wanted to go back to sleep. I told her that she could either call an ambulance or get a ride, or I would call an ambulance for her. She had her sister come get her.
  The next day, she thanked me profusely for saving her life and asked how I knew. I knew because one day, I gave my mom a ride to a blood draw, took her home, and then I got a call from her saying her doctor called and told her to get to the hospital immediately. She had no idea why.
  I drove her there, and she seemed fine. They didn’t make her wait. Instead of taking her to an ER room, they took her to one of the trauma bays. They told me to wait in the waiting room and said they would take me back when they had her situated.
  When I arrived, she was unresponsive but breathing. They were giving her blood transfusions, shaking her, and yelling at her to wake up. When she did, they asked her where she was bleeding from. She said she wasn’t.
  They insisted that the blood had to be coming out in her stool, urine, vomit, etc. They asked if she had vomited “coffee grounds” or had black, tarry stools, and she said no. My mom had a bleeding ulcer; the cause is unclear. My friend and coworker was also bleeding internally. © Heather C. / Quora
• One night, I was driving on the road when I saw a car in the middle of the road with two people lying on the ground. My gut told me something was suspicious, so I drove past the car and the two people. I stopped to take out my phone and call the police. When I looked in my rearview mirror, I saw the two people stand up, and five other people came out of the bushes. © Naweezy / Reddit
• I had my gallbladder removed, but afterwards, it didn’t feel quite right. At the hospital, I was told that I was overreacting to normal pain, but I was still uneasy.
  Against my surgeon’s recommendation, I went to another hospital, where I was told that I had an extra bile duct that wasn’t closed and was emptying into my abdomen. I was admitted for a while, while they fixed it, and then I had to deal with pancreatic issues that arose from the damage. © 29noodles / Reddit

These stories are a powerful reminder that sometimes the best decision you’ll make is the one you can’t explain. So the next time your gut tells you to pause, turn around, or just check in on someone, listen. You never know what it might be trying to protect you from.

Loved these kinds of real-life moments? You’ll definitely want to check out this collection of unexpected confessions that turned lives upside down. They’re just as wild, and just as true.