43 Fascinating Stories When Gut Instinct Turned Out Spot On

I knew, KNEW, that I had cancer. I am also pregnant and the outward symptoms were so similar, it would have been so easy to ignore me. Luckily, everyone took me seriously enough to rush me for tests (even as they were reassuring me I was wrong). When the consultant phoned me to tell me I had a mass in my chest he was audibly shocked.

Started chemo this week - me and my baby are gonna get through this!

Went out dancing with my gf at the time to an area that has a bunch of clubs and is generally safe, so long as you stick to the main streets and well lit areas. We were walking back to the car and had just left the main street to walk to the parking lot when I just got this sudden panic feeling and stopped dead in my tracks and started looking around. My gf was like "What? What's wrong?" I said, "I don't know, but I feel like we need to go back for a few minutes until more people are around." So we went back and waited for more people who were walking our direction, but actually a cop car that patrolled the area showed up and I walked over asked him "Can you watch us walk to my car, it's just right over there, I just feel like there's someone waiting for us to be alone." We walked to the car and man with a hoodie and a gun jumped out and demanded our valuables...the cop immediately turned on his lights and siren and his tires started squealing as he sped over, the dude of course immediately bolted. The cops chased after him, I have no idea if they caught him, but had I not had that unexplainable fear and instinct, we would have been robbed, maybe even shot. I still can't explain how I knew because I didn't see anyone, I just felt in danger.

Years ago as a resident in the end of a 12 hour shift I walked into an exam room in the ER to see my umpteenth patient that night with cold symptoms. Even though her exam revealed only the cold symptoms I just knew looking at this 4 year old that it was much more than that. I got labs. Picked up leukemia in an early stage.

Not me, but my great aunt's gut instinct and it's the reason I'm still here to tell this story.

We were visiting family in Brazil over Christmas break when I was a kid. One of the things they do in Rio for New Year's is taking party boats out in the bay and watching the fireworks show that they shoot off from the beach. My great aunt and uncle bought us all tickets for one of the boats. When we got there, she took one look at the boat and refused to get on it. Ended up eating the cost of the tickets and buying us tickets last minute for another boat. It cost her a small fortune and we all thought she was nuts.

The boat we were supposed to be on eventually ended up overloaded with passengers, but it wasn't like that when we got there. The water was choppy that night and it capsized at about 11:45. Dozens of people on it drowned, including a famous Brazilian actress and most of the children on the boat. The phone at my great aunt's apartment started ringing at 6 AM from people who heard the news and were making sure we weren't on that boat. We had no idea what had happened until that first phone call. After she got off the phone, which had woken us all up, she looked like she'd seen a ghost.

December 1987. I had two weeks leave,and I went to Milwaukee to spend Christmas with a friend that had been discharged from the military that year. 


During my visit, my friend came out to me as being gay. He was awkward and funny; l told him that l had figured it out on my own, that as long as he was OK with me being straight, l was OK with him being gay.


We had a great time, including doing a lot of bar hopping. In one particular bar , we were approached by a nice looking blonde guy. My buddy and l did what had become a routine, both of us saying "straight" while he pointed at me and both of us laughed. The guy took it well, laughed with us, sat down and started talking to my friend. 


I got a weird vibe from the guy,  even though he was nice and polite. I took my friend aside and asked to leave. My buddy was not exactly happy with me,  but we left. 


We had a long and somewhat tense discussion when we got back to my friend's apartment. I had no response except that the blonde guy just gave me bad vibes. I went back to my duty station after extracting a promise from my friend that, if he saw the blonde guy again, that he would leave the bar.


That blonde guy was Jeffrey Dahmer.

My brother has epilepsy caused by cranial angioma tumors. One day, I was at home with my 3 young kids and out of nowhere my stomach just dropped and my whole body tingled. My heart skipped around a few beats, and I started breathing fast. I had this absolutely horrid feeling that I had to find my brother NOW. There was something WRONG and I had to find him. I practically flew to my father's house in my car to find my 17 year old brother spread eagle on my dad's kitchen floor with my other siblings attempting CPR. He had a grand mal (tonic clonic) seizure and his heart stopped. I was the only one who actually knew CPR (OR scrub tech) and got him to come around after about 30 seconds. I rushed him to the hospital and they performed an emergency craniotomy to remove a bleeding angioma. He made a full recovery. That was 15 years ago and he is perfectly normal now (on anti convulsants). No one told me he was at my dad's. He didn't even spend a lot of time there, I just absolutely KNEW that's where he was. There was no question. I just knew he was there and he NEEDED me. I do not ignore my gut. I don't think anyone would have believed me if I hadn't had witnesses. I literally showed up and saved the day, and his life! I was always closer to him than my other siblings. Intuition exists for a reason!

My boyfriend at the time and I were house sitting for his uncle. My boyfriend was at work and I was bathing our son before bed. I had the bathroom window (facing the backyard) very slightly cracked, and heard a cough from outside. This house was in a residential neighborhood so it could have been a neighbor, but I suddenly felt anxious and scared and something told me to go make sure the back door was locked. I left my two year old son alone in a towel in the bathroom and ran to the back door. As i placed my hand on the doorknob locking it, I came face to face with someone through the glass, who had his hand on the outside doorknob. He started pounding on the door and jiggling the doorknob saying he was looking for someone and i just told him no, they're not here. he kept jiggling the doorknob and i ran to my son and grabbed my cell phone to call for help. Remember Im house sitting tho, and this was in 2004/2005 when they had those flip open phones, not a smart phone where you can just look at a map. So i had no idea what the address was, or where the house phone was. Anyways, i call 911 from the bathroom on my cell, while hearing loud pounding on the back door. The dispatchers tells me to find a house phone, piece of mail anything with address. I locate the house phone and call 911 from that. so have no idea how police got there so quickly, but just as I hear the back door glass break, the guy on the phone tells me to cover my sons head with a blanket and run out the front door into the backseat of the police car . I ran out the front door and saw 6 or more police cars all with guns drawn and straight into the waiting cruiser.

After they arrested the guy, they ask me if the machete on the back porch belonged to the owners of the house. The guy had a machete and had I not trusted my gut that the cough sounded a little to close, and to check the back door, he would've walked right into an unlocked house to a 19 year old female and her young son alone.

Turns out he had been robbing houses and had a backpack full of stolen things, and was high on m**h.

Anyways, super glad so followed my gut on that one.

My husband became incredibly unwell in the night and was in excruciating pain. I called an ambulance and the operator advised me that it wasn't an ambulance problem and that I should wait until the next morning and bring him in to see his regular doctor. I just absolutely knew that something was wrong and took him to hospital myself in what was the most harrowing drive of my life.


It turned out he had a life-threatening condition and a resultant infection. He went septic within an hour of arrival at the hospital. Waiting a minimum of eight hours to see the doctor in the morning would have k**led him. I will never doubt my gut ever again.

I used to own a motorcycle when I was younger. A series of choices led to me selling it and moving states. Fast forward a few years, and I am married with kids, and my wife doesn't want me to get a new bike. She has never ridden on one and fou d them scary. I have a friend who rides and convinced her to go on a ride with him to try something new. They went out around the block a few times and came back. We were hanging for a bit more and having a few drinks. My friend decides he wants to go downtown and get a drink at a party bar. The wife asked to ride along, and I said sure. They got ready to go, and I had the strongest gut feeling it was a bad idea. Then, I talked her out of going. She was disappointed, but it happens. My friend laid down his bike on the drive to the bar. He broke his arm and got all messed up. Now, she is 100% against me getting a bike. I can live without the bike, but not her.

Kind of a different one - after our first was born, I couldn't have more kids, and we started the adoption process. I wanted a little girl, but one day a little boy with down syndrome popped up on my computer screen and I thought, "Oh, there's my son." I kept scrolling for a minute then thought "Wait, what??" and went back to his little face. That was now 14 years ago and he is an absolutely amazing kid! 


Similarly, we had a foster baby that the workers thought was going to adoption. 2-3 days after she arrived, I was laying her in her crib and I just KNEW that she wasn't going to be my child. She was reunited with her mom about 5 months later and we supported them for many years afterwards! 💕.

I used to deliver dairy and deli product in a 26ft box truck.

At one store, I had to back up the width of the building, turn 90 degrees and back up the length of it. No camera in that truck. I had a new employee with me and she was always baffled at how I could drive in reverse with just mirrors.

This was our second to last stop of 15 stores or so, and I got to the corner of the building and just stopped. I turned to her and said "I don't like it. Can you please check to see if I'm going to hit something."

Confused, she got right out and walked back to check for me. Expecting her to pop into mirror view, I waited a full minute before I started wondering if she misunderstood me.

I was about to get out when she hopped back into the truck and said there were four kids playing on the loading dock, but she got them inside and with their mother.

I sat there for a good 5 minutes processing that I'd avoided possible disaster based on a gut feeling alone.

* I forgot to iterate this was a route, so I'd done this maneuver 100s of times without pausing. I'll never know why I stopped but I'm glad I did.

My 2 friends and I were typical dumb teenage boys, so when we found an abandoned giant wooden spool at a construction site, our first reaction was "let's take it to the skate park and roll it down the quarter pipes!" After a while, my friend had the bright ideas to climb inside the spool and have my other friend push him down a ramp while I filmed it. I got such a bad feeling about it and was like "dude, you're gonna get hurt" but he was adamant that he would be fine. When he started rolling down the ramp, the weight distribution of him being inside caused the spool to veer off course right towards a grind rail that protruded out from the supports (imagine it like a pi symbol). I dropped my phone and started sprinting towards the spool to jump in front to try and stop him. The spool totally wrecked me and I fell over and hurt my wrist, but I did slow the spool down significantly before it hit the rail. That metal rail tore straight through the wood and hit my friend in the stomach with enough force to leave a bruise. If I hadn't jumped in front of the spool to slow it down and it hit that rail at full speed, my friend would have 100% been impaled. So yeah...Nick, if you're reading this... you owe me your life and I hope my sons aren't as dumb as we were when they're teenagers.

I was supposed to go to school one day in 9th grade and woke up and just had this really strong urge to stay home. That was a weird urge because school was much better than home and my mom was mad I refused to go but went to work and said she wasn't gonna argue with me.

A couple hours later the house phone rings and I'm home alone so I go grab it and it's my grandmother who lives about 5 hours away. She was so upset on the phone, thankful I answered, she had seen my school bus made the national news that morning. Fog caused an accident and the bus flipped off the side of the highway and k**led 2 students and the bus driver. At that point they didn't know how many were injured or dead yet so she fully expected the phone to just ring.

Not quite as intriguing as some of these, but when I was 18 I used to deliver pizzas for a local pizza shop. One year, I was working New Year’s Eve for a few hours before I was supposed to go to a party at my girlfriend’s house. This was in the late 80s and back then, I never wore a seatbelt when I drove. This was the case for the first few deliveries I made that night as well. Then, before one delivery, I stopped to get some gas and when I got in to leave, something made me put on my seatbelt. As I was driving the order to the house, something ran in front of me on the road - I swerved to miss it, hit a patch of ice and ended up crashed head on into a telephone pole. Car was totaled, but I walked away with just a bruised knee. I have worn my seatbelt ever since.

My dad knocked on my bedroom door one Sunday morning about ten years ago. Told me he wasn’t feeling so great and my uncle was going to come over to check on him. I took one look at him and said hell no, picked up the phone to call an ambulance and when the paramedics arrived he was in the middle of a massive heart attack. That was a very traumatic ambulance ride let me tell you.

When I was 12, my godmother and I talked about going on a trip to Egypt. For literal years we discussed it and had it planned out for when I was 16.

I turned 16 and I remember just having a horrible feeling. I called her and asked if we could go to Italy instead. I was taking Italian in school and she was absolutely down to change our plans.

I remember getting into the hotel room in Rome, turning on the TV. It was the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. I don't know enough about the revolution to comment on it, I can only say s**t was pretty chaotic. It would not have been very safe for a 16 year old and her 65 year old godmother.

I have no idea what compelled me to change my mind, but I've never had such a strong gut feeling before or since.

Felt like the car behind me was going to hit me so I moved over to the next lane and he hit the car that was originally in front of me.

We were playing at a popular low water bridge at a stream crossing. Several families playing with children in a clear running stream. I told my daughter, 9, to put on her life jacket. A few minutes later she was sucked into the vortex of a drainage culvert that ran under the road. She came out the other side bruised and battered, but alive. There was no indication, such as swirling water, that this hazard existed.Without the life jacket she might have drowned, and was certainly more padded against the rough walls. She was fine after a visit to the emergency room.

I was taking a uber home after a long trip. I've probably seen three deer in 2 years of living there on my street. Somehow I had the instinct to tell the uber driver "Hey there are a lot of deer here be careful."

10 seconds later a deer ran directly in front of his car and he was able to stop short.

Not me, but my buddy . He was surveying a pipeline ROW in the bush, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. After about half an hour of stopping to look around out of paranoia every few minutes, he noticed something behind a big poplar tree. All he could see was the eye, end of a tail, and one ear of a cougar peeking from behind the tree, watching him intently. His coworker was a ways away from him, so he kept facing the cougar and took 2 inch steps backwards as to not initiate a chase instinct in the cat. It took him half an hour to get back , whereas it would have taken 5 or so minutes walking regularly. Him and his coworker went back later to check the tracks and it had been following him all morning, mirroring his steps , stopping when he stopped etc. Glad he had the gut feeling that day.