73 Moments In Which People Realized They Had To Leave Immediately Or Else Something Bad Would Happen

I was about 13 years old and my mom and I were on a road trip. We had our dog with us and we pulled into a rest stop. There was only a semi our car and a van.

My mom went into the bathroom left me to walk the dog around then we would switch. The dog was going nuts just barking and barking and barking and it was kind of unlike her she usually didn’t pay attention to her surroundings and just sniffed dirt.

Mom came out and I told her I had a weird feeling she was annoyed because we were running behind schedule so told me to go to the bathroom and hurry up.

I walk into the bathroom do my thing still have such an eerie feeling.

I go to walk out of the bathroom and a man comes walking in tells me to be quiet and not scream. I can also still hear my dog going insane.

2 seconds later a cleaning lady comes in and says THERES NOT GOING TO BE ANY PROBLEMS TODAY RIGHT?? the man takes off running towards the semi. My dog and mom come running into the bathroom because my mom said the dog was going to break her neck trying to get to me.

So anyways moral of the story TRUST YOUR GUT AND YOUR DOG.

Hiking in a a slot canyon and noticing a trickle of water running down the floor of the canyon.

I told my friend to gtho and hurry back the way we came. Within an hour the canyon was half full of raging water.

Met up with someone whom we shared mutual friends with many years ago before a party. He made drinks for us and at one point kept tipping my cup back and encouraging me to drink. I said I had to go to the bathroom. I ran out of the house and called a friend to pick me up. I don't remember the rest of the night because I was spiked.

February in NYC as COVID really got underway. I was an ICU RN at the time. Walked into that unit that day and several other RNs were there as patients, intubated, etc. the manager looked at us all hopelessly after saying the mask you have is the only mask you’ll get. The hospital was out of them. I did that shift and when I got home I told my wife and we need to leave now.

Luckily was able to work as an ICU RN in another state & hospital that had adequate supplies. My wife has a congenital heart condition. So while I felt bad leaving, I didn’t want to get her fatally sick. Never been that scared in my life.

When I was a kid in the 80s my Mom took me to the local drug store. Our area was pretty sketch back then.

I was spacing out looking at Star Wars action figures when she abruptly guides me out and says, “let’s go.”

I was really confused until as we were walking out I saw a dude with a gun holding up the checker.

We got in our car as the guy ran out and down the street. Mom had a bit of crime watch lady to her so we sneakily followed behind him in our car as he was walking blocks away.

We somehow found a pay phone (remember 80s), called 911 and told them where he was walking — and they got him!

We crimestopped him!

When Putin got elected. Again. 10/10 best decision of my life.
When results were announced I distinctly remember I turned to my wife and said "There's no future here".

Paramedic on scene of a call of a man who had an injury to the head in his home. He didn’t know who it was or where the guy went. I kept begging my work partner to leave the scene with me and patient because I had a bad feeling. Cops ended up not searching the place until I decided to take the family and go outside. The attacker was in the closet with a loaded gun the whole time not 15 feet from us. Wound on patients head was a gunshot.

My family is from a small town in northern Mexico. We used to visit every summer and winter. Everyone in the town knows each other/is related. Some cousins and I were walking from an aunt’s house to the corner store for snacks one evening. We were all teenage girls.

We noticed this old beige car driving our way. It was full of men. I didn’t recognize the car or the men, and I instantly felt that hot panicky feeling all over my body. We all grabbed each others hands and ran back as fast as we could. We didn’t have to tell each other a word, we just knew we would be taken if we kept walking. I turned back to see if they were following us and saw the barrel of a large gun sticking out from the window.

This was the year that cartel activity escalated. Several kidnappings happened in those areas after that incident. We were so, so lucky.

My worst was a school trip to Tokyo. Two of us were grad students, and the rest were like 19/20 year old kids. Our professor said we could go out, but put myself and the other grad student "in charge."

Stumbling around Tokyo near Shinjuku at about 2:30 AM trying to get back to the hotel and we very obviously turned down the wrong street into a back alley. From the left and right of the alley, 4 absolutely well dressed men in suits and neck tattoos barely peeking out just kind of appeared. Myself and the other grad student were in the front of the pack and stopped d**d in our tracks. The younger kids didn't notice anything. The 4 guys kind of stood still and basically squared off with us, staring me and the other grad in the eyes, then did kinda a tongue click thing and nodded back in the direction we came.

IMMEDIATELY. It's time to go. We will be leaving now. I bowed, and immediately started turning the kids around.

I was out hunting on my family's chunk of land. I heard my mom say my name like she was right next to me, while I was alone in the middle of the woods...mind you she passed two years prior. It freaked me out. I had a horrible feeling something bad was happening or going to happen. I headed home, to find my dad on the floor having a dangerous low sugar level being diabetic. 911 called, panicking trying to get him to take his glucose tablet. I'm just glad I went home in time to save him.

Walked out of a bar with two friends many years ago. They were hammered and oblivious to any and everything around them. I was more tipsy and still aware of my surroundings. Just as we exit the bar, two very large men pass us going the opposite way on the sidewalk. I get a very odd feeling about it for reasons i am still not sure of to this day. I turn around, and they’ve both stopped and are watching us intently. I immediately call out to my friends and make up a lie about leaving something in the bar. We go back in and I convince them to just hang out there for a few more minutes.

The next morning, a story comes out about a guy who was stabbed nearly 50 times and robbed in the parking lot of a bar just down the road. I saw those two large men again in the posted mugshot.

Woolsey Fire 2018. I packed our valuables into our SUV by 5:30pm. By 7:30pm the air was thick smoke and the wind was blowing like a giant fan was aimed right toward us. We evacuated at 7:45pm.

Formal evacuation order came at 2am. People frantically packing and getting in their cars, only to be stuck in gridlock traffic, with fire literally everywhere.

We were safe in a hotel 27 miles away. My phone was lit up all night. Scariest night of our lives, but we spared our young kids the trauma of the evacuation most everyone else was caught up in.

I was in college, about to turn 21. The date was 9/16/11… I was over at my buddies’ “studying” which really meant I took an Adderall and was just hanging out chain smoking cigs. I didn’t talk to my mom all that often - ever since my parents had divorced 4 years earlier and my mom had remarried.

But I was struck with an overwhelming gut feeling that I needed to call my mom. It was unlike a feeling I’d ever felt. So I picked up the phone and dialed her. When she picked up, there was a lot of loud noises in the background, and I told her I couldn’t hear her. She walked away from the crowd she was standing in, towards some parking lots. We chatted for a few minutes, she told me she was at the Reno Air Races because her husband was running ATC for it.

After we got off the phone, she calls me back not even a minute later, freaking out and sobbing. While walking back to the crowd, a P-51 Mustang had a rudder hardover, lost control and slammed into the crowd pretty near to where my mom had been standing prior to my call. 11 people were k****d in this accident.

That one always stuck with me - was weird having this info a good 15 minutes before it hit the news wire. Grateful I listened to my gut, can’t be certain she would’ve been k****d, but she was initially within ~100 ft of where the plane hit.

Riding the bus and got a really bad vibe off a guy a few seats behind me. He didn’t look at me or anything, just a really bad gut feeling. I got off the bus a few stops early and raced into the vet’s office I took my cat to and called my mother to come pick me up. When I looked out the window he was across the street staring at me through the office window. Took off when my mother showed up and we drove off.

This one was eerie, to us at least

I climbed out the bathroom window of a gutted out party house because I could feel the crowd turn bad. I could just feel it. I needed to leave sooner than we could reach the exit so we went out the nearest window. I was so thankful because it was like a reverse horror movie, where everyone was like yeah, seems logical, time to go. Got on the same page and took off back to our car.


A huge fight broke out, cops were called, emergency services came because the fight got really bad and a bunch of people jumped in. Not to mention all the minors that got busted. I could just feel the anger in the air and I had to get out. There was some really heavy music playing and you could feel people on edge, you could literally smell it. So glad I bailed.

Guy in minivan insisting that he knew my mom and would drive me to school, i had no idea who he was, my mom had not mentioned anyone agreeing to let someone drive me to school. And i repeat he drove a nice and spacious minivan *with no windows*

I dont *know* if he was a kidnapper (we live in a small town) but he sure as hell felt like one, even to kid me, the scariest part is that if i had been a little more trusting of a person i would totally have gone in since i could not poke a hole in his story outside of calling my mom and making it a huge deal.

I just felt... off at the offer, and, just in case i said something along the lines of "oh no thats okay, i can walk, its not that far and i like to walk" which was the absolute truth but, still.

Rest stop in the middle of nowhere in Texas. It was a much-needed break in a long cross-country road trip, on one of those roads that you're happy you have enough gas because there's nothing for miles. There were some storms moving in, but nothing alarming. We were all running around, happy to use our legs after hours in the car.

Then the air shifted. Not sure how to describe it, it just felt suddenly oppressive in a very uneasy way. My ex waved across the grass field we were playing in, signaling us to get in the car. I felt it too, so I stayed calm but gathered everyone up as quickly as possible.

Moments after we started driving, our littlest daughter turns around and points out the back window to show me the "interesting thing" behind us. I looked in the rear view mirror and a tornado was spinning up right next to the rest stop we were just at. We watched it cross the highway behind us as we sped off. If we hadn't left when we did, we would have been right in the path after it formed.

On a bike camping trip with my buddy, we were getting close to the site. The foliage near this particular backwoods area gets extremely dense and the only way with mountain bikes for a bit is the designated trail.

We're biking along and I see the biggest pile of bear scat right in the middle of the path and we stop. I'm like "Man, I don't know. If there's a bear there's literally nothing we can do except turn around, shout, and bearspray." My buddy urges me to keep going.

Sure enough, another hundred metres and a corner, and there's a huge brown bear sitting like an adorable doofus on the trail. We start slowly going backwards and it matches our pace for a long while. Very stressful. Couldn't make it to the site that night, that's for sure.

We booked an Airbnb last minute in rural Alabama after kayaking all day rather than making the drive back to the city. It looked nice enough, just some old house, but one slightly weird thing was that one room was locked and you could see a sliver of light under the door. My husband found a switch that turned that light off in the kitchen and we went to sleep, exhausted, figuring the locked space was just the laundry room or something - I’ve definitely stayed in Airbnbs where that’s the case.

But in the middle of the night, he woke up, and the light was not only back on, the previously locked door was hanging open. The room had a window in it, but not much else. We ran to the car and floored it before we could put any more of those puzzle pieces together and drove straight back to Atlanta at 3am.

I was a Mormon missionary and while teaching someone who let us in while knocking there was this unbearable smell. I realized it was rotting decomp.

My companion wanted to stay but I got him the F outta there. Turns out he was living with the corpse of his mother collecting social security checks and the freezer had broke.