Ever been in a situation where something feels like it's about to go horribly wrong? Unfortunately, these situations happen every day. But what matters the most is if people act on those feelings. Sometimes, it can be the difference between life and death.
People on Reddit share their "We need to leave now!" moments. Content has been edited for clarity.
“Was Completely Panicking”
“Was bow hunting up in NE Washington a few years ago, in the evening. I had set up a small campsite about 45 minutes up the mountains from the road I was on and was kneeling behind a pile of logs/bushes, waiting for a deer to come close. Well, finally had my opportunity and nailed a small whitetail buck. Clean shot through and the deer ran off a couple of meters and died right next to a clearing. It was starting to get late, but I figured I could dress the deer before all the light was gone. Dropped my pack and went to work. I started to get this really weird feeling that someone was watching me. Several times I stopped and just listened, and tried to see into the forest but couldn’t see anything. The feeling wouldn’t go away, so I finally turned around and saw two small flashes of light in the trees.
My heart stopped because I just knew it had to be a cougar. I slowly drew my .44 and tried to aim, but was completely panicking. I ended up firing two rounds where I thought the cougar was, hoping to send it running into the next county, and grabbed my bow and pack, and started to hoof it out of there.
I ended up turning on my headlamp and flashlight and walked out kinda doing this 360-degree dance, just frantically looking at all the bushes and trees. Went straight past my tent and kept going to the truck to spend the night.
Went back up in the morning and the deer was gone, and it looked like the organs had been kicked around. Sure, enough there were very distinctive tracks all around the clearing. Well, that was all I needed to see, so I grabbed my tent and big pack on the way back down and just left.”
Bad Vibes Indeed
“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.
I checked the news the next morning and there was a robbery at a gas station nearby around the time I was going home. I don’t know if it was those same guys trying to take down another place, but they were giving me bad vibes.”
“The Vibe Changed”
“We got free tickets to a soccer match, so took our then 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. The first half was fine and we enjoyed the game. However, midway through the second half, the vibe in the stadium changed. It started to feel really hostile. A few of the surrounding men appeared to be really trashed, and were yelling a lot.
Since it was quite late, and we all felt the change, we decided to leave. On the way out, there were some mounted police but we didn’t think much of it.
The following night we were at my uncle’s house and the news was on. Apparently, there was an eruption of violence, some explosives were let out by fans, lots of fighting and then they left the stadium and trashed a nearby suburb.
I’m so glad my kids didn’t see any of that. They love soccer and it was horrible what happened.”
They All Had The Same Feeling
“I took a field ecology class where we went to a semi-remote area to do some fieldwork. It was approaching midnight, and I was in a car with my instructor and two classmates and we were heading down the highway back to our base camp. At some point, my instructor realized she took a wrong turn so we kept driving, waiting for an exit to show up.
We spotted this little gravel road to the right (still on the highway, weird but okay) and thought it would lead to a street or exit, so we turned into it and entered this super shady, forested area. Rather than taking us to a street, the road took us to a broken down wooden cabin, with broken but boarded-up windows and a bunch of white vans and cars, all parked in really odd angles.
The scene was way too weird to process coherently. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and the voice in my head screamed ‘GET OUT.’
We didn’t see anyone but there was definitely something (or someone) present, watching us. I said out loud, ‘Is anyone else getting the feeling that we need to get out of here?’
My instructor and classmates all went ‘Yep.’
I’ve never seen anyone make a U-turn faster than my instructor did that night.”
“Jumped Out Of My Skin”
“We lived out in the country in backwoods Missouri. We had very few neighbors and they weren’t within walking distance, nor was it walking distance from town. Our rental house was an old historic farmhouse.
I was home alone and was showering upstairs. The stairs led directly into the master suite and were old, hardwood, and creaky. The bathroom itself was directly over the front door and you could hear the front door open and close while in the shower.
So, I’m in there doing my shower thing, and I hear the front door open. My husband is a cop and sometimes stops home for lunch while he’s out patrolling. I assume this is him coming home. I hear someone walking up the stairs and it sounds off. My husband is 6’ tall and weighs about 250 pounds. He has huge feet. He’s just a huge man. His arms are the size of my legs and he’s not fat. These footsteps do not sound like a huge man ambling up a set of stairs. Still, I write it off as maybe him trying to sneak in and surprise me.
I hear the footsteps stop at the top of the staircase. I wait for them to proceed into the bathroom where I will feign surprise that my husband has come home from work early. I continue to wait for another thirty seconds or so. The footsteps continue but seem to walk opposite the bathroom door and farther into the bedroom. Then, the footsteps approach the bathroom door. There’s a pause and I hear someone say:
‘Hello?’
AND IT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT MY HUSBANDS VOICE.
This is not the voice of an older, pack a day, grizzled, former marine, police officer that is built like a brick house. This is a younger voice. This is a STRANGER IN MY HOUSE.
I jumped out of my skin. I immediately put my hand on the shower controls to turn the water off and then think better of it. I leave the shower running, hoping that the person on the other side of the door might think I didn’t hear them over the noise of the running water. I very gently, as quietly as I can, open the shower door and tiptoe to the bathroom door. I reached out and as quickly as I can and turn the lock on the doorknob. Seconds later, I see the doorknob give a few quick shakes. As I stand on my side of the bathroom door, barely breathing, afraid to move, I hear footsteps walking away from the door; they move down the stairs, and towards the back bedroom of the house. I ran out of the bathroom, slammed the bedroom door shut, grabbed my husbands loaded weapon from the nightstand, snatched my cellphone off the dresser, and fled the house out of the second-story balcony. There I took the (thank god it was there) staircase to our backyard, ran across the driveway and into our detached garage where I locked myself in and called my husband to tell him that someone was in our house.
He arrived a few minutes later, cleared the house, and yelled at me for not locking the front door.”
What Was In The Bag?
“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 kill 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.”
“To This Day, I Have No Idea”
“Back in my early 20’s, I was cruising home at night on the freeway from a friend’s house when I realized I was being potentially followed – same headlights, keeping distance, matching my lane changes. There was an exit coming up, so I glanced right to make sure it was clear and dove across three lanes onto that exit hoping to lose him or at least confirm that maybe I was being paranoid. Nope, the headlights did the same thing, but at least his sudden twist to the right to follow me onto the ramp let me see the vehicle, an old tan Ford van of some sort with blacked-out panels.
I began taking every corner as aggressively as possible to give him the slip. Somehow, someway, this guy kept catching up to me on the straights, and clearly wasn’t giving up. The signals weren’t in my favor, either – every time I’d hit the very end of a yellow and see it turn red, I’d burn through the signal figuring he wouldn’t risk running it, but nope, he kept on coming.
At this point, I knew I should have called the police. I was so focused on my driving and keeping the oversteer under control, that I just kept running and hoping a cop would see me blazing along with this weird van in pursuit.
Eventually, I made a mistake by turning into what I thought was some residential neighborhood, figuring I’d just lay on my horn to get the attention of anyone in hopes they’d call the cops. It turned out to be a large cul-de-sac that was a gated entrance into a private community. I kicked the clutch and whipped the car around so I was facing him, flipped on my brights, and waited, fully illuminating the van. The driver door popped open, and a man stepped out. He started to run toward me, and I took that opportunity to perform the best launch I ever had, swerving right past him, taking a few side streets and bee-lined toward a nearby university where I knew there’d be campus police. I never saw him again, but they called the sheriffs department and had me make a statement in case they saw a van matching the description.
To this day, I still have no idea why he was chasing me. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, just cruising along the freeway around 75mph, minding my own business. The freeway was pretty quiet so there was no way I’d cut anyone off. I also still have no idea how he’d catch up to me in the straights. Like, what was under the hood of that thing?”
She Called It From The Beginning
“This happened a few years ago now. My husband loved to fish at that time and night fishing for him was the best. One night, I decided to go out of boredom and not wanting to be home alone. My husband gathers his friends (changed names) Mallory and Kevin. Mallory is an older woman who just chills with younger people. Kevin, we met through Mallory and we had hung out with him a lot by this point, but we never met his girlfriend until this night. We will call her Tracy.
Well, Kevin comes from money and has a family house on the water about 45 minutes out in the middle of nowhere. This is where we decide to go and we all go in his truck. Now on the way, there its already dark and I’m not usually creeped out easily as a huge fan of horror. Well, I get this creeped out feeling, and it’s so bad that I start just randomly joking that it feels like we are in a horror movie and that we need to leave now and go home.
We get out to the spot and start fishing and its already late, close to midnight. Tracy is restless and keeps walking around and texting on her phone. She and Kevin bicker a bit and I figure she just doesn’t want to be there. Finally, she says she needs to use the bathroom. Kevin realizes he forgot the house keys at home and tells Tracy she would need to take his truck down to the gas station. She’s cool with that and starts to leave, but my husband and Kevin both tell her to take me too despite me saying I was fine.
In the end, I go with her and she starts out. The gas station should be at least 15 minutes out but 30 minutes pass and I ask her what’s going on. She says she is lost. Her phone is dead and mine is close but it doesn’t have a signal and I tell her that. At this point, I do need to pee and keep hoping she will find the gas station but to no avail… An hour passes and I send a text to my husband saying I’m getting worried and a bit scared. It doesn’t go through right away, and I know it will be iffy to catch a signal. I didn’t know this girl and we were in the middle of nowhere.
That’s when I see the state sign saying we are no longer in the state and are entering a different one. I point it out and she ignores me. I start to freak out mentally. I tell her my phone is dead but start sending messages in my purse to my husband. They take forever to go through. Another hour and a half pass, and we stop in a park of some sort. Its 3 am and there are three guys I’ve never seen there. She tells them to get in and they are obviously on substance of some sort. In fact, once the doors shut they start rolling it out to do all together. They are talking about where to go next and Tracy tells them to just ignore me and she will figure something out.
I realize at this point that this girl has stolen her boyfriend’s truck and kidnapped me, and we are still in the middle of nowhere now with two very high and crazy acting strange men that only she knows. I am terrified.
I get messages to my husband about what’s going on, and Kevin (who’s a police officer) calls up for roadblocks as I direct them to where we are. Finally, I get one last message from my husband telling me that any minute we would be at a roadblock and that as soon as the truck stopped, I needed to get out of the truck and take off to my right until I found Mallory.
We come to the roadblock and she starts getting crazy mad. I get the door unlocked and jump out and run to Mallory. The police take her and all is well… but as soon as the noise died down I looked at all of them and reminded them of what I had said about us being in a horror movie and how we should have just gone home.”
“Like A Loud Shot”
“In 10th grade, the principal would have a regular inspection of how my teacher handles her classes. So this usually means we and the teacher would have to do something out of the ordinary unlike simply in the classroom and have discussions on the lessons. This is Science so, we had to have a lesson with chemicals. To the lab we go.
Like the usual at first, safety and everything. The lesson starts. This is where I had the We need to leave now! moment: she brought some chemicals in.. Sulfuric acid and a base which I forgot. These were the things that bothered me;
As she put in the base on the beaker it reacted slowly at first, but I notice it to start making smoke FIVE minutes in.. note that she also put a bit more of it than she should. There was no water near her. I remembered that some acid / base combinations react violently on some specifications. She had forgotten to wear her googles on her eyes and left it on her head as there was an introduction to the lesson at first. She put the sulfuric acid first in the beaker.. a lot of it. The only other beaker aside from the one holding sulfuric acid.
While everyone was amazed at the sudden pop of colorful smoke or something, I was watching the beaker closely and gut instinct said that I had to leave the room no matter what. I cannot say that I have to go to the bathroom to leave, and I cannot disturb her while she discusses what’s going on in front of her boss. So, I just ran out of the lab. Ten seconds in and then. BOOM! Like a loud shot.
They had to leave the lab, and some of those in front had to wash off the sulfuric acid with water in the restrooms and at the back of the lab with clean running water. The teacher suffered some damage to her eyes.. luckily enough none of the sulfuric acids went to her eyes, but some glass shards did. she was sent to the hospital after she was washed.
I got famous tho.. the guy who runs.”
But What About His Friends?
“During high school gym class, I had a run-in with a much bigger guy who was basically the class bully. He was bossing me around and I snapped back at him, causing him to go after me, ultimately choking me against a tree while the teacher was away.
Skip forward to the following summer break. I’d since apologized to the guy in person as he was not the kind of enemy I needed. One day, I was on my bike heading to a local field to hang out with my friends, when I ran into the very same guy also on his bike heading the opposite way. We briefly stopped and had an awkward greeting. He asked where I was headed and (naively) I told him. He seemed friendly enough at the time so I was thinking we’d buried the hatchet.
An hour or so later I was hanging out at this field with my friends and in the distance, I saw a group of about 20 other kids coming onto the field, all on bikes. I saw that leading them was the guy. Instantly my stomach dropped as I realized he was going to jump me (that happened a lot at the time with that group of people).
Luckily I was a distance off and amongst some trees so I very quickly got on my bike, said bye to my friends and booked it home. Can’t be sure, but I’m 90% sure I avoided getting the snot kicked out of me that day.”
“You Need To Run Now”
“About three years ago, I was picking up my stepbrother from the airport and was driving in circles around the terminals to avoid having to pay for parking while I waited for him to get his bags. Ft. Lauderdale International is laid out in a one-way oval, with terminals on all sides and parking garages in the middle that connect the two sides. My brother’s terminal was at the entrance to the oval. I was nearing the opposite side of the oval while on the phone with him to coordinate our meet-up when I saw a little of hubbub stirring—people moving hurriedly and a woman having a panic attack just outside the terminal.
My brother was starting to walk from terminal 1 to terminal 2 because that’s where we arranged to meet up when I told him ‘Nope, you need to run across the street NOW and get away from the terminals.’
While I tried to get into the central garage, cops were diving over the hood of my car to get to the terminal my brother had been heading for. I paid for parking and everything, told my brother to sprint to my car, and we cut across the garage to the exit of the oval on the other side. For as horribly confusing as the airport is for me, that was the quickest thinking I’d ever done.
The terminal my brother was headed for was getting shot up—five people had been killed—and not a minute after we escaped the airport, they had shut it down so that no traffic was coming in or out. We would have been trapped for hours.”
They Put The Pedal To The Medal
“When I was fourteen, myself and maybe ten friends had bought some hash. We stopped and sat down on some rocks to put our purchase to use. Three guys our age cycled up to us and started a conversation.
I thought it was strange because our group was so much larger than theirs, and we weren’t in the safest area. A lady jogged by and one of the guys took a chain out of his pocket and swung it out in front of her.
I was on edge after that.
My other friend and I had our bikes and one of them said to him, ‘Can I steal your bike?’
That was when I was ready to take off but I stuck around because my friends weren’t moving.
My other friend pulled me aside and we walked a few meters away from everyone, and he whispered to me that one of the guys had a chisel in his pocket, and the other had the handle of a knife sticking out of his pants.
We made some excuse like we had to go home for dinner, and I can tell you I’ve never cycled so fast. We went back to my friend with the bike house and called the others. The guys had followed them when they left for a few kilometers, but when they got to a more populous area they left off.”