AIBU to trust my intuition sometimes, and is there a logical explanation for what happened this morning?

[MidnightSun77]

(N/C for this as I'm a MN regular).

We live in a first floor flat in a small gated complex.

This morning, about 10mins after DH left for work, someone buzzed our intercom. For no apparent reason I felt a sudden surge of fear. I asked who it was over intercom, couldn't hear anything but this often happens as there's a fault with it. Usually I buzz people in anyway even if I'm alone (I know I probably shouldn't but it usually turns out to be a delivery or my neighbour forgetting his key-fob).
However, this morning I felt strongly that I should NOT buzz them in or even go downstairs to check who it was. They buzzed again, I answered but couldn't hear much, faintly heard a man's voice but couldn't make out any words. I still had a very strong sense I shouldn't buzz him in so I ignored it. Why would I suddenly feel like this? Do you think there's any truth in 'intuition' or sensing danger or is it something else? Would you have listened to this feeling, or let him in as usual? I could have gone down to communal front door and looked through glass, but even that felt like really bad idea.

Im not usually superstitious or nervous. The only time something similar happened was years ago. I was in uni halls and used to take my laundry to campus laundrette at 2am as this was only time it was quiet. I'd done this regularly for 6months. One night I got my laundry ready as usual but felt jumpy and kept delaying. Eventually I carried it down the 4 flights of stairs to the side-door (laundrette was a 5-min walk away to a different part of campus, isolated from main buildings). It was a warm moonlit night. When I opened the door I noticed a dead glassy-eyed rabbit on the path, which made me jump. Suddenly the nerves turned into full-blown fear. I shut door and hurried back to my room. I felt really silly about this and almost made myself go out anyway as had no clean clothes left! Then next day we had visit from police... a girl had been sexually assaulted on campus by an unknown attacker (who wasn't caught) at 3am close to the laundrette I'd been about to go to. I was really shaken up.
Do you think this was a 'sixth sense' warning me against going out that night, or a complete coincidence? I was already uneasy before I saw the dead rabbit but would probably have gone to laundrette anyway had the rabbit not been there. On a different night I might have not been fazed by dead rabbit at all.

Anyone else had any experiences like this? Do you listen to your intuition or dismiss it?

I remember reading a story after the Kings Cross underground fire years ago about a girl who had had a dream the night before that she was on a tube sat opposite a man eating a sandwich or something and the next day on the tube a man started eating a sandwich, for reason unknown to her she felt she had to get off, and did and her tube was going onto Kings Cross where the fire was and she would have got caught up in that....

I don't know if there is anything in it, if it is happy coincidence but I do think generally you should trust your instincts.

I do think that people unconsciously pick up on things that are going on around them and that can influence what they do or how they react.

Small things that your brain puts together, giving you a sense of intuition that something bad is about to happen, or make you feel uneasy around someone.

I think listening to intuition is a good plan most of the time.

Intuition is probably, in my view, your brain subconsciously putting all the pieces of information it has together to raise an alarm for your conscious brain (that works at a different level).

So, always best to listen to it.

I love this thread!

Around a year ago, my boyfriend was driving us home from a dinner with his nan. To get to mine from the nearest A road you can go the proper way ( well lit, dual carriageways) or down a shortcut country type lane (which we do all the time). There are a couple of houses down it so it isn't completely dead but its also very dark and surrounded by trees.

This night, I had a really odd feeling about that road so leant forward to press the door lock button. As I was leaning forward my boyfriend said " Do you mind if we don't go down so-and-so lane tonight? I just really don't want to, I don't know why..."

I thought it was odd that we both thought it - I checked the news etc in the days following but never heard of anything.

Completely agree you should always trust your instinct and intuition, the more you do the better it becomes! It's really hard in this day and age where a lot of your thoughts are controlled, we are told how we should think and feel!

Always listen to your gut. It's nothing spooky or supernatural, it's your subconscious mind processing subtle signals/inputs.

Sometimes you'll be wrong, but the consequences for not listening are usually worse than looking a bit over cautious.

As many pps have said, the book "blink" is a good explanation of this (as is, "thinking, fast and slow.")

I was once walking in broad daylight down a path and as soon as I saw this young man walking towards me, every nerve in my body was screaming at me "predator!" He was an averagely sized, chubby young thing, I honestly couldn't say why I was scared. He passed me, then turned around and followed me. I confronted him (nowhere to run to) and he slunk off. I was SO unnerved I reported to the police. I said something like, "you'll think I'm barmy, he didn't touch me, he didn't try anything, I just felt like he was going to do something very very bad. I know it's not an assault but I felt compelled to report."

I described him, they showed me e-fits. I picked one out that was identical to him. Annnnnd....

Same guy was wanted for some very very nasty assaults on young women in the same area, same MO . And the worst thing was they were all petite redheads, like me.

The policewoman who noted it down told me always trust your gut.

I also think we should trust our instinct, I think our subconscious notices things more than we realise.

I think that just because you don't hear about something happening afterwards doesn't necessarily mean something wouldn't have happened if you hadnt changed your mind about going a certain way etc.

A few things have happened to me

Once me and my sister were getting a train, and there were delays so we were about to go into the subway, when I noticed a man loitering at the other end. Normally I wouldn't think anything of it, especially as there was 2 of us.

Something made me feel very uneasy, so I said to my sister lets just walk very fast, and pass him as quickly as we can, while being on our guard. (He wouldn't have heard us)

He let us pass then turned round and followed us into the waiting room, which I think had one other person in. I still felt uneasy so we went into the main station hall and told a member of staff. He had followed us again, but when he saw us talking to a member of staff ran off out of the station.

I don't know if he was just winding us up, but something made me uncomfortable.

I have some more but don't want a huge post so will post later!

I wish I had listened to my intuition the first time my nasty abusive ex blew up over something trivial, instead of accepting his apology and accepting his tired/stressed/it'll never happen again bollocks.

See I had something happen to me that was the opposite, so my intuition told me that a person was good and trying to help me rather than evil.

I was in a city I didn't know well for something to do with a course I was on. As I came out of the college building, I got completely lost and ended up walking round and round in circles. This was in the days before smart phones so couldn't just look it up and I knew I was quite a distance away from the train station so would be a fairly long walk. A man in a car approached me, said he'd come out of the college as well and had seen me walking around for a while. This was broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon. He offered me a lift to the station. For whatever reason, I decided that he was okay and it was safe to go with him, so I got in the car. When I look back now I think I must have been absolutely mental and I wouldn't advocate anyone going off with a strange man because they think he seems okay. But luckily for me, it worked out fine. He was the perfect gentleman, didn't lay a finger on me and happily chatted to me about our courses and dropped me off at the station as he promised. Restored my faith in human nature a bit.

When I was 13 I was on the top back of a double decker bus, alone. Quite usual as it was a quiet route. A man walked up the stairs and sat at the front. As I watched the back of his head something told me to go downstairs and I became fearful. O ignored it and moments later he walked to the back and sat on the seat in front of me, just watching me. He positioned his face close to mine and said "have you got a kiss for me darling? " Overcome with terror, I replied "sorry?" He then changed it to "have you got the time for me darling?" I ran downstairs and off the bus at the earliest opportunity. This experience shook me up for many months and thereafter I hated going out alone for some time.

I do believe in intuition and listening to it. I remember reading about some hikers who got attacked by bear, apparently just before bear appeared they all experienced a feeling of dread and fear, some wanted to turn back but they pushed on. The bear came at them soon after, it had been gaurding a deer carcass nearby. Experts said the hikers would have been able to smell the dead deer but probably very faintly, but this very faint smell of blood/decaying flesh would have triggered a primitive 'danger' response even if they didn't consciously acknowledge it.

When I was in my early twenties I was working in a pub, two of the regulars became friendly with the manager and would often have drinks with the staff after hours. One such evening I finished my drink and was about to leave when these men said they were going, something told me not to leave with them so I stayed for a while longer before heading home. A few months later one of them was arrested and later found guilty of murdering his ex girlfriend, also when the police had searched his computer they had found he was a member of a online pro rape gang! I had always thought they both seemed like nice guys but something told me that evening not to leave with them and thankfully I listened.

When I was in Uni I worked in a bar. I remember a quiet Tuesday night when this perfectly average guy came up to the bar. He ordered a drink, asked how my night was, a bit of polite chit chat - the hairs on my arms were standing up, my shoulders were sore they were so tense, heart racing. I've never felt fear like it and the guy said/did nothing unusual.

Second Gavin de Becker's book

I have this quite often. A man I used to have to serve in a bar I worked in gave me the absolute creeps. He utterly disgusted me...I had to wash my hands after collecting his glasses. He was it turned out a policeman who was into ALL kinds of awful things.

I travelled by myself in Europe, middle east etc and my instinct served me well many times, both on whether to trust people or whether to run...

Why aren't you all supporting the OP just a few threads down on "to not trust this 'helpful' stranger in the mountains?" Thread who is being told over and over that she's ridicilous for trusting her instinct?

So odd how intuition is shot down on that thread and OP is being ridiculed instead.

Oh ffs, why can't I spell tonite?

AliaMairns - I've had similar with a friend, but not in the UK. We were travelling in Indonesia and had been given a map of the island we were on, by the car hire people, telling us where we could go safely, where we could go but not park and leave the car safely, and where it just wasn't safe to go.

We were driving between 2 places, both of which were safe, and decided to take a mountain route, which had no adverse markings on it. But halfway up this road, we both suddenly had that "feeling" that it would be a very bad idea to continue. Friend was driving and said "Um, I don't think we should continue this way, I'm not comfortable" and I agreed, so we turned the car round and went the long way round.

Could have been nothing; but there had been tourist abductions in Indonesia, and there could have been bandits in the mountains. So probably "prior knowledge" informed our instinct - but I'm still glad we followed it!

I know someone who had a "funny feeling" and decided to break with a habit of 20+ years and not go to the Arndale centre in Manchester one morning - turned out to be the day the IRA set off a bomb there

Heyduggie, I've posted twice on that thread now supporting her trusting her instincts. She's had such a flaming though.

I think you need to trust your instincts. I was phoning round arranging for people to come to my house to give quotes for building work. It was all fine, until I rang one man. He absolutely terrified me, and I couldn't have told you why. I didn't even tell him where I lived, just quickly made an excuse and rang off. He just scared me so much and yet what he actually said was very normal.

I do this quite often. I also have dreams. I never remember my dreams unless it seems they are important. (yeah yeah woo I know)
anyway I remember once having a very vivid dream about going to the Chinese with my older brother on a Thursday, this wasnt unusual but in my dream we were approached by a man and my older brother tried to fight him off while I ran. anyways tells my mum she told me I was being silly but I refused to go to the Chinese on a Thursday after that dream. about 3 week's later on a Thursday my mum asked us to go I still refused so my brother said it was fine he would go on his own. he was approached by a man matching the description of the one in my dream. but because he didn't have me there he felt able to run without the worry he would leave me behind. he had a bruise on the side of his head from where the man had hit him though