Every once in a while, you end up with a gut feeling that could very well save your life, or the life of someone around you. When you get that feeling, you should act on it as quickly as you can.
The people of Reddit who answered the question — ” When did your ‘Something is very wrong here’ feeling turned out to be true? ” — showed why trusting your gut is so important.
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Content warning: The stories in this list deal with heavy subject matter, such as domestic and child abuse, and suicide. Please read on with caution.
1. “Came back to work after a week off for Christmas vacation and immediately noticed something was off with my friend.” – Asirr
“I had no clue what it was but I just knew was something was wrong with him but I couldn’t explain what it was. I kept asking him if he was alright but he kept saying everything was fine.”
I think it’s pretty easy for most of us to tell when something’s going on with a friend, so listen to that feeling!
“On the second day he came up to me and asked me how to do something that I know he knew how to do, I had trained him on how to do it. I became very concerned at this point.”
OP then goes on to talk about how he kept making mistakes, but since OP was moving over New Years, they just told him to get help and didn’t see him for a few days.
“We came back in for one day on Friday and my friend wasn’t there. I learned that he was in the hospital because of a heart attack.”
“Later on we learned that during the days leading up he was suffering from mini strokes and that all of my constant nagging about if he was alright ultimately led to him thinking that maybe there is something wrong with him…
“A doctor later told him that if he had not gone to the ER when he did he would not have woken up if he had gone to sleep that night.”
2. “When I was 15, I hung out with some friends after school and got a ride home that night.” – spengebeb
“No one had been home all day, so there were no lights on inside or out… as I’m starting to make my way up the walkway to the front door, I sense someone waiting to meet me there.”
Someone, as in an intruder. Scary how it could literally happen to anyone in any neighborhood.
“I calmly stop after taking a couple steps and say ‘Nope!’ loud enough for the potential criminal to hear me…”
“…then briskly turn around and walk swiftly down the street… make my way to the nearest pay phone, dial the police and tell them I think there’s someone trying to rob the house.”
“I get back when a police officer arrives and he shines his flashlight around the door and sees footprints in the snow leading from around the house.”
“He follows those and sees they are around the entire house. There was in fact, someone waiting for me to open the door that night.”
OP was smart to listen to their gut. Who knows what could’ve happened if they went into the house and saw the intruder?
3. “I used to work in a big city as a medical emergency responder/dispatcher.” – TrueFakeMusic
“One night I arrive to my shift , and like one hour later I get this call. A man calling for his wife who was choking on food, and who suddenly started to ‘feel better’ whilst the call, which made him change his mind and say he didn’t need an ambulance anymore.”
“I could’ve stopped the call there, cancel or rank it as a low priority. But I had this feeling, and when the man asked me if I wanted to speak to her I said yes.”
“‘Ma’am this is the emergency services, are you sure that you don’t need help of any kind?’
No answer.
Everything already seemed pretty suspicious, but the fact that she didn’t answer to that question makes it seem like her situation may be dire.
“‘Would need the services of the police ?'”
“‘Maybe.’
“So I ask: ‘Is the guy beside you dangerous?’
“‘Yes.'”
“Man, the rush of adrenaline I got.”
“I made her go to safety and then she told me all about how he had been beating her for a long time, how she had no way to get out of this, that she was chocking while eating because of the stress of being beside him…”
“I worked with the police and they went on the scene, probably preventing the woman from being beaten up again.”
To think, if OP hadn’t made the decision to stay on the line and talk to the woman, she could’ve stayed in that abusive relationship for a long time. Thankfully, she had somebody looking out for her.
4. “My father started publicly dating a woman shortly after my mother died (I later learned she’s likely the woman he’d been having an affair with before she died).” – PhDOH
“One evening my father took me to one side and asked how I’d feel about him asking her to marry him. I got an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach and felt nauseated.”
“I told my father I didn’t want him to and he asked why as he thought I liked her. I explained that I did like her but had a bad feeling…”
“…and he said ‘that’s just a feeling, they don’t mean anything.’ He already had the ring and proposed straight away.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if a child is uneasy about someone joining their family, their parent should probably listen.
“After the wedding she changed.”
“She abused me, my full sister (my mother’s child), and later my half sister (her own child).”
“He only left her when my doctor told him something was clearly going on with her that was affecting my health.”
“(She was putting a substance that I’m intolerant to in my food and my father wouldn’t believe me and would force me to eat whatever she made, however I couldn’t get a doctor alone without her to tell them).”
That in itself is so awful! I hate that they had to go through something like this.
“…my maternal grandmother told him if he didn’t leave her she’d go for custody.”
“He accused me of lying for the entire time leading up to that and has never asked me about any of my attempts to get help since.”
I wish this story had a happier ending, but I’m glad OP and their sisters were able to get out of that horrible situation.
5. “Have a friend that would essentially answer a text message during sex, he was that attached to his phone.” – [deleted]
“He didn’t get back to me one day and I noticed his FB hadn’t been updated yet. I tried hitting him up a few more times, something didn’t feel right.”
I feel like we all have that one friend. It’s good to check on them when they go dark for a while.
“Told a few friends, most wrote it off as nothing, because this guy always seems happy.”
“He lives like an hour away, finally I get someone to go with me to hang out with him, worst case, we’d say we were gonna be in the neighborhood that’s why we were hitting him up.”
“Had we not done that, he was going to kill himself that night.”
“We showed up and he just started crying immediately and saying that he needed help. We outright intervened in a friends suicide. He was always so active on social media as a way to hide his depression.”
See, that in itself is so distressing. People act differently on social media than they do in real life, so you never truly know what they’re dealing with.
“He’s actually quite good now. He struggles still but will talk about it and allows us a bit more into his life so that we can help.”
“He’s got issues that I myself have, but would never mention it before, so now we can talk about a lot more things. But overall, he got the help he needed and lives pretty well these days.”
It’s always important to check on your friends. Sometimes they might seem okay, but that doesn’t mean they are. I’m so glad it worked out for OP and their friend!
