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Gut Feelings That Actually Saved Someone's Life

Reddit user guywhousesreddit09: 'What was the “Gut Feeling” that you listened too that saved your life?'

We've all heard of intuition or premonitions or "seeing the future," and a lot of us have laughed at it at some point.

It's easy to disregard these images or feelings as a symptom of anxiety about something coming up.

But for some people, by listening to a gut feeling they had, they were able to save someone's life, possibly even their own.

Redditor guywhousesreddit09 asked:

"What was the 'gut feeling' that you listened to that saved your life?"

The Kiddie Pool

"My mom and grandpa were putting out a kiddie pool for my siblings and me in our backyard when we were little."

"My grandpa had set it up, and my mom kept insisting that for some reason, she felt like they should move it to a different spot."

"Thankfully they did, because while we were all playing in the pool, a huge branch from a tree in our yard snapped and came crashing down exactly where the pool had originally been."

- WaitWut7

A Questionable Passer-by

​"When I was around 13, I was walking to the bus stop in the morning. A car was going through my neighborhood very slowly, which made alarm bells go off in my head."

"When it passed me, I glanced over my shoulder to keep an eye on it and saw it was doing an immediate U-turn."

"I noped right out and dove through the bushes, crossed a bunch of driveways, and found a neighbor who was washing his car."

"I looked back to where I had been standing. The strange car had stopped, a seriously scary-looking dude had gotten out, and was looking in the bushes."

"I don't know if I would've died exactly, but I would not have had a good time."

- Symnestra

'Final Destination,' Who?

"I was driving uphill behind a flatbed truck carrying I-beams and I envisioned them sliding off the truck and hitting my windshield."

"I changed lanes so I wasn’t behind the truck and two seconds later, the I-beams were sliding off onto the road where my car would’ve been, sparking and gouging the pavement. Terrifying."

"To this day, I won’t stay behind a truck with anything that’s 'strapped down.'"

- Infj-kc

Thank Goodness for That Lock

"In middle school, I was up late one night. My mom and my brother were asleep, and my dad had gone on business. I had let the dog out, and when I went to go get him, I got a bad feeling like someone was out there."

"There wasn't really a reason to feel this way, it was just dark, and I got spooked, so I put the chain lock up on the back door when we got back inside. Back then, we never locked our doors."

"A few minutes later, the dog is drinking by the back door, and he suddenly stops and starts growling (like a low grumble) at the door."

"I was sitting where I could see the dog but not the door. Then I hear the door pull open and the chain lock catch."

"The dog started barking like crazy and I ran upstairs to wake my brother up. He went out and looked around, but no one was there."

"I think the dog's barking scared them away, but I don't know who it was or what would have happened if I hadn't locked the door."

- monaforever

A Mom's Close Encounters

"My grandmother accidentally saved my mom's life by not allowing her to go to a sleepover when she was young. During the night, the father murdered his entire family and would likely have killed my mother had she been there."

"Another amazing coincidence that I'm alive, is when my mother was in high school, she and her best friend were arguing over who was going to take a ride on the back of their guy friends' new motorcycle."

"My mom lost the argument and her friend got on the back of the motorcycle and rode away. She never saw them again because her friend and the guy were both killed in an accident during that ride."

- ekyrt

Wait a Second

"It was very late driving and there were minimal cars on the road, I came up to a red light, and as it turned green, something inside me said, 'Don’t go yet,' and a van blew through their red light."

- imbribecca

"Similar situation, but there were four of us in the car. My friend was driving and our friend in the back yelled to stop the car immediately even though we had a green light we were coming up on. A semi blew through a red light. He later said he felt like it wasn’t even him saying it and he had no idea why he yelled it other than a bad feeling."

- harlow2088

Mother Knows Best

"Not my life but my son's. I was 33 weeks pregnant and I noticed my son wasn't moving as much as usual. I waited a day and nothing changed."

"Despite advice by doctors and family saying I should just stay home and he wasn't moving as much because he was just running out of room to move, I went into the ER and had my son that night due to fetal distress."

"He had his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck eight times and weighed just three pounds. He spent 30 days in the NICU and now is a happy two-year-old."

- Goatintree

An Insistent Friend

"A friend's feeling saved me from my gut."

"I had just finished hosting a meeting (I swear it was productive) and a friend said, 'You don't look so good.'"

"I had just come off a weekend boat diving in the Red Sea and figured I was just tired. My friend said, 'Nah man, I'm taking you to the doctor.'"

"The doctor at our clinic poked me a few times and said, 'Take him to the ER and tell them it's his appendix.'"

"I was in surgery less than 90 minutes later. My surgeon said I was two to three hours from it blowing up. I lived alone and no one would have missed me until the next day."

- ksuwildkat

A Night Walk

"About two years ago, my dad and I loved going on night walks, It was something we’ve always done more or less every night."

"One night, however, as we were about halfway through our daily route, we got to an alleyway. Now normally, I’ve never thought anything of it, but something this night just told me not to walk through, I had a really bad feeling and I urged my dad to just go back home."

"He kept brushing it off and saying I was just scared of the dark and nothing was going to happen. After a couple of minutes of arguing, we finally turned back and walked home."

"Turns out about 20 minutes after we left, there was a completely random attack in that exact alleyway that left a poor young girl stabbed, thankfully not to death, but with life-changing injuries. I still dread to think what would have happened if we didn’t walk back."

- No_Project6675

Definitely Not a Black Bear

"Up in Northern Pennsylvania, I had a gut feeling I needed to turn around and walk out of the woods I was hiking."

"That turned out to be a good idea because I saw the big cat that was tracking me on my way back out."

"I was hiking a stream up around Emlenton, PA, checking it out to see if it's wadeable for fishing. I didn't know y'all had any wild cats around there; I was just worried about black bears."

- abspencer22

Protecting Her Own

"Years ago, I went into my garden at night, after my husband had left for a road trip minutes before, and saw a pair of sneakers in the dark, in the gap between the fence and our house."

"I didn’t think, I just said very loudly, 'What are you doing there?' When he didn’t reply, I shouted, 'GET OUT OF MY GARDEN!'"

"He muttered, 'Yes, ma’am,' and scuttled off. Also not thinking, I picked up a BBQ knife that happened to be right there, went through the house to the front windows, and saw him crouched by my car in the driveway."

"I called the cops, they arrived, and we discovered that someone, probably the same dude, had just broken into our neighbor’s house and stolen a gun."

"The cops gave me a condescending talking-to about the ‘risks’ of confronting a criminal, but I am convinced to this day that my instincts saved me from a life-altering and horrible experience. We humans are animals and one animal knows when another will fight like h**l."

"We got an alarm system after that. And the guy came back several weeks later. I looked up to see him on our porch, about twenty feet from the sidewalk. Called the cops again. They sent a SWAT team this time. And a helicopter."

"They got the guy."

- Fair_Leadership76

Medicinal Negligence

"I was pregnant in the very early weeks (five or six weeks), and started getting these intense pains on the right side of my abdomen. Like so extremely painful that I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t make noise or move."

"I went to my doctor the next day, and he said I was being hysterical and it’s completely normal to be in pain when you’re pregnant. He refused to get me to an OB-GYN, and said I could go private if it was such a big deal."

"I went to a private scan, and my pregnancy was ectopic (stuck in my fallopian tube), and my tube had ruptured and I was bleeding internally. I was rushed to the hospital and had surgery to remove my tube that night."

"If I hadn’t booked that scan, I would have died in my sleep that night due to internal bleeding."

""I reported him for negligence."

- Murky_Conclusion4210

Potential Robbery

"A guy asked me for help with bus fare and offered to take me to an ATM. I got a bad feeling and dipped. Then I saw him on the news a week later for robbing somebody at gunpoint."

- BurghFinsFan

A Chillingly Close Call

"My wife was going to go on a road trip with friends down to a bigger city for a concert. She had done this several times before."

"Friends were close friends of ours but for some reason, I felt off about it that one day. I said to her, 'Babe, I don’t know why and you can ignore me if you’d like, but I don’t think you should go. I don’t know why, but I feel like something is going to happen.'"

"She knows I’d never tell her not to do anything she wanted. It was out of the blue and out of character for me. So she decided to stay home and watch movies with me."

"About two hours later after the rest of the crew left, we got a phone call that they had gotten into a severe accident. Two friends were in the hospital and someone from the other vehicle died on the scene. Had she gone along, she would have been sitting in the seat where they had been hit by the other driver and most likely killed."

"Someone, somewhere, somehow was warning me. And I’m glad we both listened to it."

- Sperryxd

Always Stop to Look at the Rainbow

"I was driving along a rough mountain road heading home from work. The mountain pass ends at a lake, and you drive around the lake to meet up with the main road."

"I got to the bottom of the mountain and started down the lake road, and saw this stunning bright rainbow over the lake."

"I had this weird gut feeling and urge to stop and look at it, with the way the sun was shining, it didn’t make sense that there would be a rainbow, but it was mesmerizing. So I stopped and stared at it in awe."

"A couple of seconds later, as soon as I looked back at the road, a massive boulder came barreling down off the cliff above about 20 meters in front of me, hit the road, and smoked all of the concrete barriers as it went into the lake. I 100% would have been killed if I hadn’t stopped."

- Epantz

These accounts gave us absolute chills as we read about other people's close calls.

We never know when our time will be up, so we absolutely have to be careful with the time that we have.

Why do humans doubt the inner voice?

Or that sickening feeling in the pit of our stomachs.

That's our intuition at play.

Some are more in tune than others, though.

And most of us just act like it's not there.

But when we do listen, when we do take that feeling seriously, it can save lives.

The gut knows.

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You've probably heard intuition described in a number of different ways.

It can be likened to a "gut feeling" or "a little voice in your head" and you've likely been told to listen to it when it speaks.

Why?

Because it can get you out of trouble, most likely.

Intuition has been defined as the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning, and it's saved people more than once.

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People Explain How A Gut Feeling Actually Saved Their Life
Raúl Nájera/Unsplash

Sixth sense, hunch, spidey senses tingling, or gut feeling: no matter what you call it, we all have had that feeling at one point or another. Not everyone is as in tune with that feeling as some, but when we have that feeling it's important to listen to it. It could be life or death.

Science tells us that there's actual physical feelings associated with the gut feeling due to our gut-brain connection. Signals from our brain can actually cause intestinal signals to bubble up. It can come in a moments notice. Sometimes feeling a little like anxiety or even "hearing" a voice in your head telling you something might be off.

Healthline says:

"Research links these flashes of intuition to certain brain processes, such as evaluating and decoding emotional and other nonverbal cues."


We might need to listen to our gut specifically to protect ourselves. It's that intuitive knowledge that keeps humanity alive for centuries.

Antonia Hock, global head of The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center said:

"Instinct is a powerful data point that can be a treasure trove of untapped generational knowledge in decision making."

Redditors shared their life-saving moments when they listened to their gut and trusted it.

Redditor TheGaySussyBaka asked:

"What's a gut feeling that saved yours or someone else's life?"

Intuition could save a life. Let's read some true stories about gut feelings that made all the difference.

It was worth being late to the party.

"Years ago, my wife and I were driving on the expressway that was under major construction. Traffic had slowed quite a bit and I saw a plume of smoke ahead. As we drew closer, I could see it was the beginning of a Carbeque, but the driver was still in the vehicle."

"I did a death defying move to cross multiple lanes of traffic to pull over, despite my wife's protests about being late to the event we were headed to."

"I approached the car, which was just starting to produce visible fire from the wheel wells and opened the door to the car. The guy was conscious, but in obvious shock and was unresponsive. I had to reach in to unbuckle him and pull him out of the car. Within seconds of me getting him out, the driver's compartment was completely engulfed in flames."

- TheSpatulaOfLove

"In that moment, that's what your wife was thinking about?"

- Nooseents

"I don't think she had malicious intent. She's just nuts about being everywhere 5 minutes early. She assumed the guy would get out of the car and all would be fine. I didn't get that feeling."

- TheSpatulaOfLove

"Tipsy" driving is still drunk driving.

"Do not get into a car with someone who says 'they are just a little tipsy.'"

"The guy who was trying to convince us that he 'was totally fine to drive' didn't die that night but he did have to spend a two years learning to walk again."

- fruit_cats

"My story isn't as bad as that but I'm pretty sure I saved a friend from getting arrested for drunk driving. She'd been hanging out at my fraternity and had at least a couple drinks. She said she was going to drive to the bar, but I told her I wasn't going to let her and would find someone to drive her. But everybody else had been drinking. I hadn't, but I also didn't have a driver's license at the time (not for nefarious reasons, I just didn't get one until I graduated college)."

"Refusing to let her drive, I told her I would. She got in next to me and even though I hadn't driven in awhile, I drove slowly to the bar. After I pulled in to the spot, I finally noticed that there had been a cop right behind us. Luckily he drove off. But the cops in our college town were notorious jerks and even if she had been below the legal limit, she probably would have been arrested. But she was fine and I drove her back to her apartment after we were done."

"Also later found out that the car I was driving wasn't even hers - it belonged to her sorority sister. So there's a good chance I prevented her a) from getting arrested, b) getting into a bad accident, c) damaging her sorority sister's car or d) all of the above."

- PAKMan1988

"You're really burying the good part."

"You prevented her from possible troubles by driving a stolen car without a license right in front of a cop."

- yourmomlurks

Listen to your parental gut feeling.

"My son has leukemia and is on chemotherapy. He was just...off. Looked paler than usual and something just felt odd. Turns out chemo had obliterated his blood so much it might as well have been water and he would have died within days. Two blood transfusions, five days hospital and two weeks off chemotherapy and he was on the mend."

"I went into traumatic shock and the one thing that pulled me out was a debrief with my doctor, who told me I had just saved my child's life with my maternal instinct and never doubt it. Fast forward a few months and he got an infection and that same odd feeling woke me up. He spent a week in hospital that time."

"Parental instinct is there for a reason. Don't doubt it. When you feel it, it's not like feeling a concern or worry that something might be wrong... it's a deep primal knowing."

- belltrina

"My wife had the same thing happen with our 3rd kid. 3 days old. Something was off for her. She had a feeling, called the pediatrician and tested his blood sugar with her kit since she was a gestational diabetic. It was in the basement. Like the oh f**k basement. Verge of coma basement. Doc had us call 9-11 and they would have life-flighted him to a bigger hospital had the weather not sucked a**. Spent 9 days in the NICU. Now he's a wild 5-year-old boy. She 100% saved his life."

- Fleadip

"When I worked in peds, this was the mantra among the nursing staff. If mom (or dad) thinks something is wrong, something is wrong! You know your kid better than anyone else in the world."

- vanillabeanlover

"This is so true! When I had appendicitis, my doctor tried to send me home saying it was the flu. If my mom hadn't insisted something was seriously wrong, I might be dead. It was hours from rupturing when they removed it."

- hotairballoons

People Share The Most Selfless Thing They've Ever Secretly Done | George Takei’s Oh Myyy

A near miss.

"Scenario- driving myself and 2 coworkers back from lunch. Didn't immediately go when my light was green as I got this weird knot in my stomach like something was gonna go down. Car next to me went forward and got slammed into a brick building and post by a speeding car that went thru his red. Some debris rained on my car but basically was left unscathed. Shook but unscathed."

- tokoloshe_noms_toes

"My friends make fun of me for this, bc the 'light is green lol' but I've been involved in that type of accident, and am only alive because my dad, who was driving saw it in time to slam the gas and make them only hit the bed of the truck."

- marshal231

The man in the truck.

"This is before cell phones (think beepers). I went out one night and was meeting my bestie half way between my house and hers. I noticed this truck drive by me and he slowed down to a crawl. Another car was coming so he kept going. My spidey senses were triggered though. I saw my best friend and I grabbed her and pulled her into an old shed at an abandoned house. I shut the door quick and told her to be quiet. There was a space so we were able to see this truck coming."

"She is whispering rapidly to me asking what is happening. I told her that I had seen that guy a few minutes before and he made me nervous. He slowly crept down the street, pulled over and got out with a flashlight. That's when we saw the gun. The most terrifying thing, it was only moments, but felt like hours. He finally took off, but I was hesitant to leave yet. We stayed there for about 15-20 minutes and he came back 4 or 5 times."

"Finally we heard our names being called, her older brother and his best friend had come looking because it typically takes 10 minutes to get from my house to hers. I am convinced that she and I would both be dead if it wasn't for that shed and me trusting my spidey senses."

- Right-Mind2723

Caught it just in time.

"Was hanging out with my brother who was visiting from a few hours away. We went to one of his highschool friends house to shoot the sh*t."

"My brother's friend had a kid who was literally bouncing off the walls. After one bounce I heard a little scrape behind me. I looked behind me to see the 8 point deer head mounted to the wall just in time for another bounce."

"I snatched that head out of the air just about 3 inches from giving the kid 4 stab wounds to the skull."

- piratecheese13

"I was at a party my house was hosting back in the day. We had a back area that had a door leading to the backyard, the door swung inwards. Someone was bent over putting their shoe on and I heard someone coming up the stairs to come in. As soon as the handle started turning, I put my hand over the door to stop it coming in. The person putting on their shoe was so shocked because no one else noticed the door opening and their head was right near the handle. Maybe not exactly saving a life, but a solid concussion at least."

- Subject37

"Peacefully riding my motorcycle."

"'I don't think that guy is going to stop for that stop sign. I'll slow down just a little bit so he'd miss me if he didnt.'"

"Guy flys through intersection at 100km/h."

"'God wanted me to live this day, I see.'"

- shrapnullvxvsa

Don't cross just yet.

"This happened like a year ago but I still remember it clearly. I was walking to school and there was one of these roads where there's a little place in the middle for pedestrians to stop for a moment."

"I was waiting not at the pedestrian stop but at the edge of the road. This guy in a car gestured at me to cross the road but my gut started screaming loudly at me to not go. He didn't even have time to roll down his window before the guy behind him crashed right into the back of the first guy's car sending two cars skidding right across the road and over the pedestrian stop thing. Avoided something big there."

- chxaki

"Where I live it's called 'wave someone to their grave.'"

- BecciButton

"Right of way is important. It's not 'polite' to give it to someone else, you want to be as predictable as possible in a car. In situations where someone stops and tries to give me right of way, I'll flat out refuse. They usually get frustrated with me because they stopped in the middle of the road for nothing, but that's their fault. I could've just waited the 2 seconds for the car to go by."

- Euphorix126

"If it's a pedestrian crosswalk it's required by law (I assume in most states) to yield to pedestrians. Even if you in particular would rather wait, many people will stop out of fear of getting a ticket."

- DoritoDawg

"Sounds like it was just a regular road with a pedestrian island. People who give way randomly and trying to be kind, but often cause frustration and delays that would have been avoided if everyone had just followed the rules. The only exception would be politely allowing merging in bumper to bumper traffic."

- RuncibleMountainWren

Maybe not instinct, but good timing.

"Not much intuition but lucky instincts haha."

'I was in the car with my sister (7 and 5 years old, I'm the oldest) while our mom was buying something at the drugstore (we were parked in front of the shop, she usually took like 5 min, take the meds and back). She closed the car but we could still open from the inside."

'So I get a major urge to PEE. Urgent like now. I decide to go to the shop and ask to use the bathroom (we lived in a small town and the people of that shop know me, and in the end I was a 7 yo asking to pee. And It was like a few steps away from the car)."

"Well, so I take my sister, open the door, and when we are like a few steps away, a drunk driver crashed into our car. Destroying it totally. The people from the shop came to see and our mom was in shock, but calmed down when she saw me and my sister in one piece."

"You can imagine, all tears and relief. That much that I wet myself."

- Freyjann

Checking on a friend.

"I felt like I really needed to check on an old lady i sometimes give company to. She was having a heart attack in her house."

- AnonymousNeko2828

"How'd you get in? Were you able to see her from a window or something?"

- IHeartDana

"She left her front door opened. Like just wide open which she never does."

- AnonymousNeko2828

Decided to stay home.

"In 2015 there was a fire in the Colectiv club in Bucharest, Romania during a rock concert. It was free entry and me and my friend were supposed to go but at the last minute i decided not to. I just don't know why. I called my 2 friends and boyfriend saying I'm not going anymore and decided to meet at my place instead. 27 people died that night. The total number was 64. We lost 3 people we knew very well, it was a disaster."

- Lonely_Cycle_1059

"So sorry to read that."

- Imaginary_Reveal7884

"Wow. That's just wow...."

- TheGaySussyBaka

Toddler tantrum.

"Might not have been deadly and might have been a coincidence, but judge for yourself: when I was a kid I loved to go on walks around town with my aunt. One day I absolutely refused to cross the street to pick up some drinks at our usual corner store. Apparently there was a 'cat demon' inside the corner store who would kill us (in my defense I was about eight years old an obsessed with a fairytale/ story where a cat demon sets out to kill a hunter)."

"While we were standing on the sidewalk arguing about corner store demons, a driver lost control of their car and crashed next to the store. Nobody got hurt, but my aunt and I might well have been if we'd just crossed the street without me making a fuss."

- PrinceCharlot

"The only time toddler tantrums helped."

- TheGaySussyBaka

A fish almost started a fire.

"I'm not sure if this counts, but when I was younger I had this white betta fish named Dovey, one night I had an extremely vivid dream about waking up the next morning and finding her dead, as well as a very VERY strong urge to wake up! I woke up and went down the hall to check on her. She was lying on the ELECTRICAL SOCKET near the tank!"

"We always kept the tank a few feet to the side of the sockets and never directly in front of them in case some water splashed out, but I guess she jumped out and landed on one of them! I'm not sure if the small amount of water on her would have been enough to start an electrical fire if it got into the socket but safe to say I'm glad I woke up when I did! Also she was alive and had only a minor injury to her side where she landed on the socket."

- Mom_of_pets

"OK just wow on that one!!! I've never heard of that kind of connection with a fish before. Glad everyone was okay."

- theory_until

"You heard her commit seppuku in your sleep and your unconscious mind knew she was in danger and woke you up. Also you had probably, consciously or not, observed over days behavior suggesting she was thinking about taking the death leap."

- NotMyHersheyBar

"I don't know honestly, fish usually Leap out of the tank as a desperate attempt to find cleaner waters but since this was a live planted 10 gallon tank I don't think that was the case, I think she may have been startled by a small earthquake or my mom's dog."

- Mom_of_pets

Bad Tinder date vibes.

"I had befriended a very troubled girl when I was 18, she was two years younger and had horrible parents, horrible friends, and horrible judgement. She was on tinder (pretending to be 18), and showed me some conversations with a guy in his early 20s that she was planning on meeting. I told her I could not pinpoint why, but he gave me bad vibes. There was no red flags in the convo, but I had a horrible sense of dread about it (beyond the anxiety of her pretending to be an adult on tinder). Her nasty lil friends ended up convincing her I was jealous, so she went on the date anyway, but took some pepper spray I gave her."

"I was 100% correct, he followed her to her car after she cut short the very bad and creepy date, grabbed her, and she pepper sprayed his a**, and drove away. We aren't friends anymore (had to realize at a certain point that I am not a therapist), but I hope she's made better choices since then."

- sweetiepotpie

There are a few things you'll need to do to learn how to trust your gut. Part of it is recognizing when your gut is trying to send you signals. Body awareness, emotional awareness and cognitive processing is something that can happen intuitively, but we have to know how to recognize it.

Pay attention to when it is intrinsically emotional or when it might be clouded by bias. Know the difference so you can make choices that make the most sense for the situation.

And practice! Find ways to listen to your body and emotions and put the skills to the test.

Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.

My number one rule in life has always been "trust your gut". Your body and brain know you better than anyone, and are able to warn you when something just isn't right. Your gut is there to warn you- listen to it. Here are a few examples, courtesy of the kind people over at Reddit.

u/IChronoI asked: Hey Reddit, when did your "something's not right here" gut feeling ever save you?

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