30 People Describe A Random Rush Of Fear That Made Them Leave Their Situation Immediately 

1. My car was stolen the very night I moved into my new house in a very good neighborhood. The neighbors had warned us that the neighborhood was being targeted at the time. They mentioned a woman around the corner that opened the door for knockers in the middle of the night and they attacked her and robbed her and almost killed her.

We had reported the car stolen and did the police reports when it happened. Well, 2 nights later in the middle of the night I hear a knock on the door and they said open up, it’s the police. Well, since I had heard the story about the other lady, I was suspicious and did not answer. I grabbed my kids and put them in my daughter’s room because it had access to the roof from the window. I called the police to say that two men claiming to be police are pounding on my door. They said there was no police in the area and they’re sending a car. Turns out, these same guys stole the car and came back for seconds.

I did get my car back because they brought it with.

2. One night when I was very young and at a bar, I got quite drunk. Some guy propositioned me to go back to his place and I was up for it. I left my car, because he told me to just ride in since I had been drinking so much and we went riding down the road. It was quite a ways, and I started to question him where we were going. He said it was just up the road on the river.

He pulls over to the side of US1 and points to a two-story house on the river. It was very dark and the only light was of the Moon. We walk down the dock to get to the front door. He gets in front of me and is playing with the doorknob and as he pushes is it open he turns to me and says, please don’t make me turn the light on and let you see how dirty my place looks. So of course drunk and stupid, I said no problem. And probably giggled.

He guides me by the hand up a set of stairs. We get to the top and he says, I just have a mattress on the floor I hope you don’t mind. And again drunk and stupid me just sits down on the mattress not thinking about anything. As I sit there in the dark I start to get my vision becoming clearer. Everything looks off. The mattress has no sheet on it and I hear a whisper in my ear, Get Out!

I jumped up. I ran down the stairs. I ran out of the door and down the dock. I ran across u.s. 1, and up to a house that was across the street. I ran up to the door and started beating on the door and screaming for help. I turn and look and the guy is running across u.s. 1 at me chasing me. I start screaming more and more as now I’m afraid this house is abandoned. Right as the guy gets up about ten feet away, the porch light turns on. The guy stops, turns around, and went back to his truck.

Poor guy whose door I was beating on came out and saw me crumbled, crying on his porch. The sweet man got in his car and drove me back to the bar 20 miles away so that I could get my car. I never saw him again. I never even knew his name. But he saved my life. I know he did.

3. A couple years ago I snuck into an abandoned orphanage with a couple buddies. Dumb I know, but drunk college kids find dumb. Step down through a basement window onto a barrel, easy. We get down and walk through a hallway when we notice a drop of blood by our feet. After close examination of ourselves we notice none of us are bleeding. We shined our flashlight further ahead and notice the blood continues into the darkness. Noped the fuck out as fast as possible. Trespassing with someone/something else injured in the basement of this building? No thanks.

4. I used to drive for Lyft. Last year, I picked up a young couple from a bar at about 1:30 am. They were fairly chill and I figured it would be my last ride of the night. The dude asked me to stop at a corner store on the way to their destination so that he could get cigarettes. I didn’t see any harm in waiting so I stopped, and had a nice chat with the young woman while he was in the store. He ended up being about 5 minutes since everyone was trying to get their pre-2 am beer.

When he came out, he asked me to take him to a location that was in the opposite direction of their destination, but was only about a mile away. He said he wanted to meet some friends real quick and grab some beer. Since I figured it would be my last ride of the night, I said ‘fuck it, why not’ and drove him over there.

Now, I know the town we live in fairly well, but the direction that we were coming from was not a way I was used to going when I would go to this location. So when I turned onto the destination street, I missed the turn into the complex parking lot. I just came to a complete stop since the roads were empty and asked them if they just wanted me to park on the street or pull into the complex. This is when the two of them started arguing, as he suddenly wanted to go in and hang out for a few minutes while she didn’t want to go in at all; she just wanted him to do his thing and get out of there so they could go home.

And then something hit my car.

The sound is unmistakable to me, so I immediately started to look around to figure out what it was. But there were no other cars on the road, so that couldn’t have been it. Then I moved to the next thing on my mental checklist: of something didn’t hit me, then what did I hit? But that didn’t make any sense either as I’d been in park and couldn’t have hit anything. It’s at this point that the young lady’s attitude completely changed. She just kinda looked around, and then said, ‘Can we just get out of here? It hurts and I want to go home.’

This was odd to me as she’d been sitting in my car for about 10 minutes at this point and hadn’t said a word about any kind of pain. She followed this up with ‘It hurts and I can’t move,’ put her had to her back, and pulled it out covered in blood.

What. The. Fuck.

So the guy starts freaking out, thinking that something in my trunk had exploded, but it was empty. As he reached over to tend to her I noticed something white sticking out of the seat. This hadn’t been there at the beginning of the night, so I asked him what it was. He pulled on it; it was a piece of the filler fuzz from my seat. It came out of the hole that had been made in the seat.

Because she’d been shot.

As soon he grabbed that fuzz we both had the same realization. He slammed shut his door and I drove them straight to the hospital, which was only a couple of miles away. That realization, and the follow up realization of ‘oh, someone could still shoot you while you’re sitting here’ was one of the most terrifying things I’d ever experienced.

5. In high school my buddy and I were riding our dirt bikes on the trails that ran around the logging roads in SW WA. Thousands and thousands of acres of undeveloped land with just gravel logging roads and trails.

We were on our way back to the truck when we stopped at an intersection to figure out which way to turn. Three dudes in overalls, no shirts and full face helmets rode out of the woods on quads. They rode a few slow circles around us then took off back into the woods. We booked the fuck out of there.

Turns out all that undeveloped land is also good for growing, cooking, and dumping.

6. My dad was into heavy drugs (heroin, mescaline, coke) and would binge drink. During these times, he would beat my mom senseless and threaten our lives if we cried or tried to get help. My sister and I witnessed this stuff at least twice a year until we were around 13. One night, I woke up to my dad screaming and my sister crying. He had my mom’s head under his foot with a shotgun in her mouth. I was paralyzed and thought for sure I was about to see my mom die. He yelled for us to run into the woods behind our house because after he killed my mom, he was going to come out and hunt us next. I grabbed my sister and bolted out the back door of our single wide and ran to the neighbor’s house. They hid us there for 3 days and never called the police. Nobody ever called the police. And my mom stayed with him until I was 18. I still have nightmares and can smell the old blood.

7. I was at a party my freshman year of college and some seedy people were present. The night was getting very tense, but no fights or anything happened. As the night went on it became very clear to me something was going to happen. I told my friend it was time to leave. No more than 5 minutes after we left someone was stabbed and the stabber was shot.

8. I was at a national park on vacation. The layout was kinda like a crater with a rim you can walk under almost all the way around. Had this major gut feeling of yeah, not going down there. Later that day a lady was killed from kids throwing large rocks/tree branches into the opening.

9. I was at a house party and the people hosting were aggressively telling people to have a good time and go to the basement. Like with a scary tone and a smile. Most of my friends left right away, and the one person who wanted to stay ended up getting mugged.

10. I was a 13 year old girl, camping with my best friend and her mom by a lake.

My friend’s mom was not the world’s best mother, and allowed my friend to get drunk. I had one drink, so I was a little tipsy, but still had my wits about me.

It was about 11 at night, and my very drunk friend randomly decided to go swimming, so I chased after her to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn’t hurt herself.

And god, I’m so glad I did.

Two men followed us out to the lake. We didn’t notice until my friend and I had swam a few dozen yards into the water. The men were very drunk, stumbling with their beer bottles in hand. They were catcalling us as they waded into the water, getting closer and closer.

My friend was so drunk, and wanting so badly to seem cool to these grown up men. Drunk 13 year olds aren’t the most rational thinkers. At first, she tried to respond to their questions. But I knew something very bad would happen if we didn’t get away, so I repeatedly whispered to her, “They’re going to rape us. They’re going to rape us. We need to leave. Now!”

I think that finally knocked some sense in her inebriated brain, and she agreed to swim towards the shore with me (away from the men).

They called after us, asking where we were going, and my friend yelled, “AWAY FROM YOU!!”

Back then, I second-guessed myself and wondered if maybe I had been a little dramatic. But now, as an adult, I realize just how much danger we were in, and I’m so thankful that 13 year old me knew to trust her gut.

11. When I was a preteen a strange man stopped and asked me for directions that didn’t make sense. As I’m trying to help him a van rolls up and the side door opens. I just booked it and never looked back.

12. Years ago my BF owned a truck tire repair company. He stopped by a customer’s house unannounced one day to try to get a check, as they owed a lot of money. When he came out of the house he was pretty shaken up. He explained the man’s numerous other brothers were there (unusual), everyone was very jittery but they cut him a check and then rushed him out. He had a scary feeling that day. Two days later that customer and his brothers were arrested for a murder, that they had committed the night before we stopped by.

13. I was walking in my old local park with my sister, we entered the it at about 3 pm and were hanging around until at about 9-9:30 we saw three people all wearing somewhat similar outfits all the way on the other side of the park. I immediately noticed but didn’t think much of it. We walked for about 2 more minutes and I noticed one of them stopped and was staring at us. I immediately had a bad feeling and told my sister we should leave, she noticed and obliged. Later that night there was word of a stabbing in the park and the suspects were all the people we saw in the group of three.

14. My first and last college party. Me and 3 of my best friends arrived late at a packed frat house and the instant we walked in a group of guys gave us the most unsettling and angry stare. My friends discarded it as an intimidation thing but my body instantly went to fight or flight mode. It took my friends some convincing and I’m sure I looked like a lunatic trying to get them to leave with me but they eventually agreed.

We would later find out that 3 women were raped that same night at that same party. Forever ruined college parties for me.

15. This was by far the creepiest thing to ever happen to me. It’s a bit long but bear with me.

For context, I live only a few streets away from my workplace. This guy came to my floor one day for a team meeting. Ever since then he made a point to pass my desk when walking to the kitchen which doesn’t make sense logistically as the elevator basically opens right onto the kitchen.  Keep in mind, this guy is a complete stranger, nobody had ever seen him on our floor so my work friends KNEW he purposely came to our floor just to see me. He would make excuses to be near me whenever I am in the kitchen, eg to get a glass of water whilst I am washing my dishes. He was always alone, never spoke to anyone, only watched me. This happened for about 3 months.

One day he happened to be downstairs at the time I finish work. He then knew EXACTLY what time I finish and waited downstairs for me everyday. He just sat there watching, waited for us to leave, then went back up. One day I walked out with a friend. We saw him sitting downstairs, quickly walked out of the building and parted ways assuming he would go back up now that we’d left.

Boy was I wrong. My friend walked off in the opposite direction leaving me alone. I had crossed the road and was just about to turn to the direction of my apartment, when some higher power compelled me to turn around. The feeling that rushed over me just then, I had never felt it before. It was like a mix of all the most negative emotions in the world all swirling into one massive super-cloud of fear. When people talk about the flight or fight response, THIS was literally the epitome of that. To this day I still cannot understand what made me turn around when I generally never do that.

I was smart enough to go in a completely different direction so he wouldn’t know where I live. He walked a short distance behind, crossed the road and checked to see where I was walking home to! Another male colleague happened to finish work at the same time this went down, followed him and waited to see what he was doing (stalking the stalker?). He confirmed that he absolutely followed to see which direction I was going, and then went back into the building once I had walked too far ahead. He would’ve only need to follow me a short distance to see where I lived.

This happened a few more times before I finally reported his ass and got him banned from entering all buildings associated with my company. Turns out he didn’t even actually work for my company (external contractor) and shouldn’t have even been in my building in the first place.

16. Was having lunch in a restaurant with my mom and something just felt wrong. Told my mom we should hurry and get home and as soon as we reached the parking lot a car smashed into the window and crushed the booth we were sitting in. Still think about that a lot.

17. While babysitting, I heard the sound of glass being scraped with something metal and immediately hid the children in a walk in closet. I called the police and very nearly escaped being robbed or worse.

18. I was throwing a football with a friend in my driveway when suddenly I got a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I hear him say, “Did you just get a horrible feeling?”

We both felt it from the woods across the street. It felt like despair and fear. The closer we got, the worse it was. We noped out real quick.

Later that night we both had nightmares of being kidnapped.

19. When me and two of my cousins went camping with our family (probably about 8-9 years old) we stayed in a campground that had a playground near our spot. We would often go, just the three of us, to play and go back to our camper when it started to get dark because it wasn’t too far. But one day we were playing and we weren’t the only kids there but this man (40s) came up to us with a dog and started talking to my cousins and they were very trusting. He kept asking them if they wanted hotdogs or cookies and where they were from and telling us that his camper was just over there if we wanted snacks. This guy gave me a super weird vibe immediately so I looked at my cousins after being quiet the whole time and said, “I think I hear grandma yelling for us, dinner is probably ready,” and they argued and were confused but after I gave them the ‘look’ they just shrugged and listened to me. That guy gave me the heebie jeebies and we never saw him again after that day.

20. Drinking at a bar with some mates (in Sydney); two young guys walked past, and I happened to make eye contact. He flashed a gun at me, and nodded towards the door. I didn’t make him ask twice.

21. Definitely when my town got hit with the worst firestorm we’ve ever had in 2017. (Thomas fire)

We knew there was a fire somewhere. Maybe another town? We weren’t too worried. The power is beginning to go spotty, and the winds are howling outside. Then my roommate gets a call from a friend on the other side of town: “My house is on fire! You guys need to pack a bag!” after the call was over the power went out and stayed out.

So we packed our bags, and I start to hear little plinks against the roof, almost like rain. But it isn’t rain. It’s just ash.

Not 15 minutes had gone by, and I look outside. We lived by a large hill only two blocks away, and it was burning. It got there so fast. I got back inside and tell my roommates we have to leave right away. This is when our neighbors started wigging out too. We had to then capture our 3 very scared and confused cats. It was so crazy to drive away and see only blackness ahead of you, but in your rearview mirror only flames.

Our neighborhood/home ended up being spared, however many of my friends who lived closer to the mountains were not so lucky.

22. While in college, I was at a house party. I had gotten pretty drunk and was passed out on the couch. My buddies ran in to wake me and get me out of the house in a hurry. One of the other guys at the party got into a fight with someone, them ran to his car and got a shotgun from the trunk. He started running after the guy who had fought him.

I didn’t see any of this. But that was the fastest we ever left anywhere.

23. That would be when my mother convinced me it was a good idea to go see a house for sale in the middle of nowhere.

Guy showed us the house and then led us to the door of the basement, insisting we absolutely had to see it. From the top of the stairs I could see a bed and what looked like a semi furnished room.

He insisted we go down first and in that moment I got this strong feeling of unease and just excused myself, turned on my heels and left, headed for the road.

My mom said the guy got really upset, started to swear and sweat, and cut the visit short, so maybe my instincts were on point.

24. I was camping with a friend in a backwoods camping area, not very many sites and they were all super spaced out. We had already been there one night, had the site fully set up, we had been hiking all day, the works. We drove into town to get some food, and when we were driving back to our secluded campsite we passed a man walking out of the only road to our site. We both locked eyes with him and I got a super creeped out feeling. He stared at us like he knew us and hated us, but we had never seen him in our lives. When we got to our tent we went inside and everything we had in there was tossed. Our bags were dumped out and our clothes were thrown everywhere. We quickly realized both our hunting knives were gone, along with a bunch of our clothes. We also realized it had to be that guy we saw, there were no other sites or hiking paths he could’ve been walking from besides ours. We jumped in the car and drove back towards where we had seen him, he was gone. We drove a bit further and found a common area where other campers were gathered. We sprinted down and asked, “Have any of you seen this guy…” and described him. The people at the gathering just stared at us and didn’t speak, giving us an even more creeped out feeling. It was at that point that I told my friend, “We need to leave this place right now.” Walking back to our car we looked over the edge of a guardrail and saw all our stolen clothes in the woods. We gathered them up but didn’t find either of our knives. Knowing this guy was still out there with those knives and that no one around us cared freaked us out so much, we packed the car up and ended our camping trip early. No way were we staying out in those woods one more night!

25. I was walking by a long stretch of road with no houses. There was a cemetery. A van with two guys in it stopped to ask me if I needed a ride. This was in the late 90s, so it’s not like hitchhiking was legal. I’m all, “No thanks, I’m nearly home.” They wouldn’t budge. They kept following me with the windows down, kept saying, “C’mon, just get in…”

At some point they just stop, and they start getting out. I was just a teen, and they were clearly 20-something. I just took off running. I must have sprinted half a mile to get to an alley, and hid by the nearest building near the road. I waited about 15 minutes before moving on to make sure they had given up, so they wouldn’t follow me home.

26. Was at a rest stop in upstate New York near Troy around midnight. This was before cell phones and gps and we stopped to use the pay phone to find a hotel for the night. On the way back to the car, a couple of random guys approached us from behind asking for directions, I told my wife to get in the car when I noticed two other guys coming towards the car from the opposite direction. I hopped in the car and drove away before anything else happened. Might’ve just been me being overly cautious, but I swear I avoided a mugging or worse by the skin of my teeth.

27. My mom and I were walking our dog on a semi secluded dried up river bed (for context I was probably 7 or 8). A couple approached us, and instantly something in my gut told me that they weren’t safe. The man asked some weird question like, “Is it just you and your daughter here?”‘ and then proceeded to say that he took pictures of kids for a living and that he would love to have me model for him. I didn’t wait to hear the rest of the conversation because after that I took off, and I’m ashamed to admit, left my mom and dog behind with the creepy guy. My mom was livid saying how rude I was and how worried she was because she didn’t know where I went, but the intense “leave now!” feeling that came over me totally clouded any sort of reasoning.

28. Went to a movie on Halloween when I was in high school with my boyfriend at the time. It was a huge theatre where there was a staircase all the way to the top row that opened in the middle of the row so you could sit on either side of the opening. My boyfriend and I sat in the back row on one side of the opening. We were watching the movie and around 30-40 minutes after the movie started, a guy walked in by himself wearing a big sweater and sat on the other side of the opening. He didn’t really DO anything at first but he gave me a bad feeling and I felt uncomfortable but I continued watching the movie. I noticed the guy seemed really nervous and wasn’t paying ANY attention to the movie. I really couldn’t figure out why but he was stressing me out big time and I just felt like we had to get the fuck out of there. I told my boyfriend that I was probably being silly but I wanted to leave. As we were leaving we informed the staff about the guy just in case.

Turns out they had been looking for him as people had reported seeing a guy of that description behaving strangely in the parking lot earlier. The police came and he apparently had quite a few large hunting knives hidden under his sweatshirt.

29. At a summer camp a buddy of mine and I climbed out onto a tin roof of a big hall that was built on the side of a steep hill. On one side you could climb out, right onto the roof, on the other side it was a 3 story fall onto concrete. Being teenage idiots, we climbed from the low side over the peak of the sloped metal roof and were inching down towards the edge of the high side. We had sneakers on, and had pretty solid footing, so it wasn’t outrageously dangerous.

Then, out of absolute nowhere, raindrops started falling. We both look at each and realize this is really bad and try to start backing up, but wherever there is even the slightest dampness, the metal is now completely slick. There is nothing to hold onto, the grip of the rubber shoes on dry metal was all we had. I look at him and see the panic in his eyes that I’m feeling, too. We are trying to move up this roof as fast as we can, and the raindrops are falling harder every second. I see him break completely free and start sliding down with his eyes frozen in terror. Somehow, miraculously, he stops sliding. I made it to the top scrambled down grabbed a branch and leaned back over the top, trying to give him something to grab. He eventually makes it high enough to grab the branch and I pull him up and over.

I have never felt panic like that. We were *so* lucky to make it out of there.

30. One of the times I ran away from my abusive mother, I was hiding out at an internet cafe. For context I was 12. I’d been there for a few days and the guy running the show overnight knew me and knew what was going on at home because I’d laid it on him a few months earlier when he was like, “Hey it’s 2am don’t you need to go home?” He didn’t care about me especially, but he didn’t care enough to kick me out either so long as I wasn’t causing any trouble. He’d let me sleep under one of the desks at the back etc since it was always quiet overnight.

Anyway this night I was just hanging out the back of the cafe bored with nothing to do and my brain was like, “GO TO THE BATHROOM” but I didn’t need to pee or anything so I was like uh. And then my brain was more urgent, “GO TO THE BATHROOM NOW” so I was like ok and did. Went into a stall and just kinda stood there for a few minutes confused then went back out. The guy on the front desk comes over and was like, “Dude someone just came in asking if I’d seen you, said it was your mother.”

After a cycle of running away, getting caught, running away again I finally got away from her and had CPS take my allegations seriously 2 years later, and moved to different city but moved back about 5 years ago. I’m not really a believer in psychic links etc, but since I’ve been back I’ve sometimes had this… feeling in myself like a deep dread, and then I look around and see my mother walking down the road across the street or driving past me or something. I was getting a coffee about 6 months back and got that feeling so looked around, just in time to see her walking into the store.