Do you ever get a strange feeling about someone ( or something?)

[Trixiefirecracker]

I recently met someone, just a friend of a friend, and had a really visceral gut feeling about her and not in a good way. It made me feel so uncomfortable and I felt really awkward around her, like she might know what I was thinking. I have no idea why this happened and has never happened before, there was no obvious reason for it. She was perfect polite. However It felt like all the hairs stood up on the back of my neck and something about her really rattled me.Has anyone else ever had this experience and were they ‘right’ about their gut feeling?

Yes, some people have a certain “energy” for want of a better word about them. for 10s of thousands of years we trusted this. People always seek to find an explanation that fits in with their own world view.

But it doesn’t matter what the reason is, trust your reaction, we have evolved these kinds of reaction for a reason

I was an abused child by narcissistic parents. Outwardly huge manor and private school. Inside I was bullied. Then abusive relationships. I call it my eggshell brain. And yes I feel it with people and swerve them big time. Trust your instincts they are there to protect you. I got sick of people telling me people I had this reaction to were fine and it was my issue or childhood abuse.

I can remember once I had a very very physical reaction to a pastor at a church. Just set everything tingling. Everyone told me how lovely he and his wife were - nope just nope.

He was caught with child images of abuse.

I trust it 💯

I don’t think that is the same thing so wouldn’t worry about it. People are in tune with energy for want of a better word. Often it’s because something is “missing”

Yes to the dead body having something missing - you can tell immediately that their essence is gone

I was reminded on the first page of my sister. She was often alone in the house as her husband travelled abroad for business. She's a capable woman and oversaw various works that needed doing around the house. She had two young sons, and would pop out to the shop leaving them in care of the tradesmen. But not one, who she hadn't chosen, but was subcontracted by her usual builder. For him, she made them come with her as he made her uneasy. The builders had no idea, they just thought he was at the extreme end of looking at porn. That they owned to when his name started appearing in the papers. Fred West.

I work in the community and I can usually pick vibes up very quickly . I have been very unsettled at times and it’s an awful feeling .

Interesting that you think that as I worked in a shelter for animals and some of the dogs would just bark at us for no reason, does that mean I am a serial killer? 😂

The book 'Blink' is good on this. It explains how 'gut instinct' is often influenced by other factors and that automatic feelings/opinions can be coloured by past experiences, small movements, tiny visual clues that tap into earlier memories, etc. Only once you've discounted those as influencing factors are you left with a genuine response.
I have a distant relative of DH's and I strongly distrusted him from first meeting. Everyone else loved him. A few years later, he was involved in a public fraud case. DH came to me then and said I'd been right about him.
But I've also met a serial killer - at a point when they'd already murdered people and went on afterwards to murder again - and I did not get any feelings or vibes from them at all. Admittedly it was a fleeting meeting but I didn't have any automatic reaction to them.

Yes but not everyone feels the same about a person do they? So, apart from everyone’s stories about Fred West and Jimmy Salville, there are clearly some people who illicit a fight or flight response in some people and not others. No one else seems to find this woman alarming except me.

Yes, I've not yet been proved right or wrong, but neither person is in my life which I am relieved about.

Both were good looking and able to charm. One was very sly. I couldn't bear to be anywhere near them.

My dad was moody and stressed when we were kids - he's mellowed a lot since. Growing up walking on eggshells has definitely helped when dealing with similar personalities in the workplace.

Being able to perceive a slight change in mood and adapt quickly is a useful skill. It's not the visceral needing to get away, more an 'I've seen this shit before, I know how to handle you' feeling.

I know what you mean, I often have this feeling when I can’t believe that this person is genuinely nice towards me so I can’t trust them. So the other party is nice and polite and friendly whereas I’m polite but reserved and cautious. It’s in the eyes for me and the way of smiling. I remember an appointment with specialist at CAMHs , she was so professionally nice but I knew straight away that she didn’t like me and my daughter.

I had this feeling with a previous nextdoor neighbour (attached semi). First time we met him (we had just moved in) he just gave us an odd vibe. It was probably the combination of the very subtle smirk he gave us, plus the fact the opening sentence was in regard to moaning about another set of neighbours (not the usual "welcome to the area"). The rest of the convo was more normal topics and ended with pleasantries, but the whole exchange felt so so off. So much so that when me and DH went inside our house we said how bloody weirded out we were. I was actually physically shaking with adrenaline. I spoke to my DM about it in the days afterwards and she said "keep away from him". He gave off a vibe of someone who could turn really really nasty and "flip" in a violent way.

Anyway about 3 months after that he started making our lives hell. He commenced noisy building works which dragged on and on for 3 years (no word of warning or communication with us). He just acted like we didn't exist or require any thought or consideration about the years of noise he was subjecting us to. Hypocritically he also took to complaining about any little normal living noise we made, like closing a bedroom window or walking up the stairs. Anytime he saw us he had a look of barely concealed disgust on his face and we actively avoided him. If we heard him go out, we would wait before he had driven off before we left the house.

I researched his open social media and found he had a lot of dodgy mates and dodgy family members (local petty criminals). Also overheard a conversation where he was loudly boasting to someone on the phone about his time in prison. Never found out more about that, but I google his name every so often to see if he has been arrested or something. The relief when we moved away was unreal.

This I find really interesting, my
mother was a really tricky woman who blew very hot and cold all the time. You never knew where you were with her so constantly walking on egg shells and ‘reading the room’ . I definitely think I do this as a matter of course now but have never had an instant dislike of anybody.

I have a very strong gut feeling about men in particular. It isn't scientific and therefore I can't say for sure whether theybare right or wrong, although in many instances I rather be safe than sorry.

In the instances I walls right it would have been awful consequences had I ignore my instinct, so I am quite happy to take that into account when putting myself in certain situations.

I was waiting for radiotherapy once, in a crowded waiting area, & I was crocheting because wait times could be very long. A man opposite me stopped talking to someone & started loooking at me. I had a general impression that he was a bit of a bore & didn't make eye contact because I didn't want to talk to him. He kept very obvously wanting to talk, & finally he asked me something about my crochet which I had to respond to out of politeness.

Once he'd got me to say something, however, he dropped any pretence at an interest in anything other than himself & started telling me things from his life; & though I can't remember what they were, each one was something unpleasant & the combination of these events being recounted and something about the man himself was so 'off' that I got a feeling of intense literal darkness & evil - something I wanted to get away from. I was so glad when they called me in for radiotherapy & I was so unnerved by it that I told the rads person that someone had insisted on telling me his life story. That was all I felt I could say about it, & she misunderstood & said, "Well, some people are lonely," & I said, "But it was all horrible."

When I came out, I got my confirmation that it wasn't just me. He'd moved across the waiting room to talk to another woman (she was on a trolley & couldn't get away from him), & the look on her face told me that she was reacting to him exactly as I had, & she would've done anything to get away from him.

There are people who come onto threads like this & say, 'Evil doesn't exist & that's that.' But of course evil deeds exist, evil behaviour which causes harm to others. If I had to conjecture, I'd say this man had done those things in his life & his mind was filled with those things. It emanated off him in waves. It poured out of him. It's the bizarrest thing I've ever encountered.

Have you considered getting someone else in to do the rest of the work?

And maybe her “energy” clashes with yours for a reason. Sometimes it might be that you’re more sensitive- but as this is your only experience of the phenomena then prob not.

A few years ago just before the first lockdown a new student past me in the corridor of the uni I work at and I instantly felt dread and like she was in danger (never ever had a feeling like it) I've looked around campus for her since and I've never seen her again. Not sure if anything's happened to her.

I spent a few hours with a complete Narcissist, he was an extended family member, we were in a small group for dinner, I felt really 'off kilter' for a couple of days after

It's happened before over the years with a couple of people

Travelling back from Uni in the car in the early 2000s we were stuck on Saddleworth in a traffic jam. It was the bit with brown hills and near a sign. I felt horrendously sick. I've always wondered if Keith Bennett's body is near that brown hills and sign going back to Lancashire. His poor Mum.

I had something a little bit similar once. My huband and I were going to a small theatre production in London and were waiting for the bus. I noticed a man at the bus stop looking at me, and it really looked like he hated me! I looked away and then took another glance and he was still looking at me that way. I think I would have felt uneasy on my own, but I felt perfectly safe with my husband and all the other people there so it was weirdly quite funny! I quietly told my husband and told him to have a subtle look - he did, thinking I was imagining it, but agreed that the man really looked like he hated me! It was so bizarre! Never seen him in my life before. We decided maybe I looked like someone he knew (i have one of those faces) and thought I was cheating or maybe the person he thought I was was horrible... who knows. But it was very odd!

@Hoppyhops I've an extremely bad feeling about the person you mentioned and their motives.

Are you expecting?

A woman I briefly met went round telling people I was a wrong un. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Could it be that something unpleasant may happen to her in the future? A bad crash or a murder.

I disliked a managing colleague at my old job (and suspect it may have been mutual). I was always careful to treat her politely but I couldn’t help but feel hypervigilant around her. One time, she made an extremely personal comment to me, dressed up as ‘concern’ and after this, I didn’t trust her an inch.

She was not universally liked - she had a strange air of strategic vagueness and incompetence about her, coupled with a tendency to interfere and tinker with frontline processes, and move goalposts. This alone didn’t make her someone to be wary of - irritated, yes. But the above comment put me on guard, and when ‘concerns’ started filtering in to my manager about my work (all mindbogglingly petty stuff, some gathered from dubious sources like exit interviews) I realised who was behind them and decided to leave. I couldn’t be in the same room with her after that.