71 Shocking Moments When Trusting Their Gut Literally Saved Lives—You Won’t Believe #37
On a 13,000+ foot ridge in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in Sequoia National Park. Light puffy clouds in the morning quickly built up to thunderstorms as we crossed the pass to get to the camp for that night. We could actually feel and smell the static electricity in the air as lightning began to strike. Again, descended as fast as humanly possible.
Was in Chicago, got off a train station and a homeless guy came up to myself and my friend. He said he was really depressed, wanted to k**l himself and wanted a hug. Had no idea what to do, but then he put his arms around our necks and put us all into a hug.
I couldn’t get out of the hug. I tried to leave. His arm was wrapped around my neck tightly. Eventually he asked us to come with him to the shops, I asked him if he wanted us to buy him something. He said no, he had the money.
We walk with him towards the shop, so uncomfortable. He had a duffel bag and said he’d pay, but he just wanted us to go with him to the shop.
Once we were outside the shop, I told my friend let’s get out of here. He started going into his bag and that’s when we legged it. I had no idea what he was going to grab, he could have been harmless but the fact that we couldn’t leave his hug earlier remains with me.
I can still feel his arm around my neck.
At a big college party. Talking to a guy. He leaned in and whispered, “things are about to get r**e-y.” I laughed to defuse the situation. Then I politely excused myself, found my friend and we immediately left.
I was on a tour at the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North Korea and South Korea, back in 2010.
We were about to enter the Joint Security Area (JSA), where the actual border is. If you’ve seen newscasts showing light blue houses separating the two Koreas, that’s the JSA.
Our last stop before entering the JSA was a gift shop. As we shuffled off the tour bus, a bunch of US military personnel came out of nowhere, holding their weapons, and ordered us to get back on the bus as quickly as possible.
Our tour bus made a bee-line out of the DMZ. It was clear that we won’t be going closer to the border.
After a brief stop at another point of interest (in a safer area), our tour bus high-tailed it back to Seoul. We left so quickly that we still had our UN-issued “visitor” badges with us. We returned them to the tour guide, who exchanged them for our waiver forms – they were never submitted to the US military because of what happened.
I still have that form today. It basically says “we’re not responsible if you get shot by the North Koreans or the Chinese People’s Liberation Army” (it hadn’t been updated for a while).
So… what happened?
2 months before our tour, there was a South Korean naval ship that was mysteriously torpedoed near the inter-Korean maritime border.
South Korea wanted to blame North Korea, who denied involvement. So an investigation was launched. On the day of our tour, South Korea called a press conference to formally accuse North Korea of the sinking. Nobody seemed to know that was going to happen.
That press conference happened at the same time that we were at the DMZ. So we were immediately ordered away to avoid possible retaliation by the North Koreans – a tour group would be easy pickings.
I don’t know what the odds are for something like this. But I will forever have that story to tell – and can claim to have been ordered off a military base by soldiers near North Korea.
Went to see a friend out of town and had never been to her place. Had another friend who said he knew which apt. it was so we followed him up. We get to “our friends” place and walk in. I immediately notice the decor isn’t matching up (my friend being in her 20s at the time wouldn’t have a dusty place with obviously old furniture) and then it hit me. The smell, it punched my senses and I immediately said it smelled like a decomposing body (No I had not smelled one before but the smell was so sour and bad that was just my best verbal description). My friends notice the smell and agree we fd up and went into the wrong apartment. Our friend laughed when we got to her apartment. A week later she messaged me, they were removing the body of a person who died and was smelling up the building a few floors down, the exact one we wandered into.
Back when I was in North Korea, we went to a wrong floor of our hotel. The lights were off and it was eerily silent. Suddenly, we heard footsteps approaching our elevator. Everyone screamed in panic and we all slammed on the buttons to close the doors.
We made it our alive but I still don’t know who it was.
Once while my brother, myself and some friends were at a bar in a town that I’m not very familiar with I got really bad vibes from two guys that were drunk and getting loud with each other. I don’t know why but I got that gut feeling that we needed to leave, so I got up, went and told these guys that we were leaving and so we did. Well the next day I hear from someone else that I know and he said that he showed up at the exact same bar awhile after we left and that the place was swarming with cops, emergency vehicles etc… And what he basically said was that when he asked someone what was going on they told him that two guys were fighting in the parking lot and that one pulled a knife out and stabbed the other one. That’s all he said, but I have no doubt in my mind that it was the same two guys that I had noticed earlier. I often wonder what happened, if the one that got stabbed died and so on. But yeah anyway that was one time where I knew I had to GTFO!!!!!
I was at the zoo with my husband and daughter, who was about 2 at the time. We were in front of the elephants, and one of the elephants was apparently really pissed off, and started throwing baseball/softball sized rocks toward the people standing there. I was like, “s**t, we gotta move!”, and we moved far away from the area. Other people were like “haha, look at the elephant throwing rocks”, and then someone’s kid got hit with a rock. The dude was so pissed off, he started throwing rocks back at the elephants, until a trainer came and got the elephant. I really hate zoos now (for lots of reasons, not just this specific incident). They make me depressed.
I was driving home from my shift as a bartender and needed to stop for gas. I’m filling up and I notice there’s a sedan parked over at the diesel pumps. Lights off, but clearly two guys sitting in the car. When my car finished filling up I went into the store, hoping these guys would leave.
I asked the guy behind the counter how long they’d been there, and he hadn’t even noticed them. I stayed until another guy pulled up to the pumps and walked in, but they were still there when I left.
