To get an overwhelming sense of danger from a stranger?

[ThisIsCheese]

The weirdest thing just happened. I’m in the supermarket and as I’m stood selected and bagging vegetables I suddenly feel very uncomfortable.
There is a man about 50 something stood with his elderly mother a few feet away to the side of me and I felt very sick and uncomfortable when I looked at him.
Absolutely no reason for it but it was overwhelming, like a sense of fear he was not a good man.

Completely clueless why I felt that way I moved along quickly but I crossed paths with him again in another aisle and knew he was there before I saw him because the sick / anxious feeling returned.

Anyone else ever had this? I don’t have anxiety or anything but this feeling was so odd, like I could sense he wasn’t a good person.

Never met him before, he could be perfectly lovely but my physical reaction to him was so strong

I've had this with a place quite recently. I work out and about and am normally looking for pubic toilets, I was in a very rural area so I went to a large park, ran by wetlands trust or something, you had to walk quite a distance from the carpark to the toilets and I have never felt so creeped out, other than I was desperate I would have ran off. As it was I ran back to the car.
The next week a girl was raped there.

'However is that just a British UK thing?. Is this the same in other parts of the world in other cultures, or is it just here that most all seem to find that unsettling or do others find it the same or is it OK to do that elsewhere?'

A friend of mine was travelling in Eastern Europe and found himself in a bar full of soldiers - I think Russian - who kept raising their glasses looking him in the eye. He was freaked out and wondered what he had done to offend them because in this country staring at a strange man in that context would be a sign of aggression. Eventually he realised they were just doing the thing they do in some northern European countries where you make eye contact as you drink a toast!
That's one example of eye contact being culturally specific...

There's a local bus driver who makes me feel like this. He drives two routes - one through several smaller towns to get to My Town, and one which goes through the rural parts of the county to get to My Town.

If I need to take the rural route, and the bus pulls up with him driving it (usually empty - it's not a well used route), I don't get on the bus. I've made myself three hours late doing this but I don't care. He makes me very uneasy, he's very menacing. He's extremely aggressive when driving through the Town Route too, which doesn't help.

I am obviously totally without any ability to sense threats.

This happened when I was about 8. There were 5 of us in the local park, all Primary school age. Decimalisation had just happened, which gives away my age, there was a man sat near where we were playing who offered us 2p each to go away with him.

We declined because we thought he was a cheapskate...if he'd offered us 10p each it would be a different story!

We all totally understood that offering us enticements to go with him made him a 'bad man'...we'd had talks in school to be wary of men offering to take you to see his puppies... so we decided to spend the rest of the day following him round the park making notes about everything he did.

One of my friends mentioned to her mum about the man that evening and her mum, understandably phoned the Police. The Police duly came round and asked what the man had been doing, her big sister brought out our notebook and gave chapter and verse as to what he'd been doing!

I never found out if anything else happened but I know the Police didn't feel we'd been in any danger and probably felt sorry for the man having a group of children tailing him all day.

We never bothered telling our parents we only declined his offer because he was so cheap....even as children we know that piece of information wouldn't go down well.

Happened to me just once. DH and I were on holiday with our 2 dds, a caravan park in the UK.
Anyway they had an onsight restaurant and we’d go there probably once a day mostly for lunch. There was a couple who always seemed to be there when we were - not unusual, we went at meal times.
I don’t know why but as soon as I saw them I felt this uncontrollable urge to move my girls away from them. I had this sinking feeling in my stomach and it was though my body was telling me ‘grab the girls and leave’.
They did nothing at all to suggest they were dangerous, I’m not sure they even looked over at us once but that feeling wouldn’t shift and I spent the entire week watching them out of the corner of my eye. So odd.
Felt bad for feeling that way, I can’t explain it.

I feel this way about my dad's brother. I never met him for the first 30 years of my life as he lives abroad. Met him for the first time when he came over for a funeral. He creeps me out.
But Mumsnet suggested IWBU for not wanting to visit with him 'for the sake of my dad'.

If finding someone creepy is more than me being a bitch, please tell me this is an excuse to avoid him forever now... shudders

I would always listen to instincts with things like this. My mum got a terrible feeling about a tradesperson working on the house years ago. She couldn’t put her finger on why but she made sure she and I (as a small child) were never left alone with him. A couple of years later she saw on the news that he had murdered a woman (random woman he didn’t know) around the same time she had met him. Terrifying. I guess instincts like that are there for a reason.

Weirdly I've just had a conversation with my friend and a particular man's name came up and I told her the disgusting things I knew about him.
She confirmed same as me there was always something creepy about him.
I also find a certain celeb creepy I thought it might of been his character but no he's plain creepy in everything.

oh remembered one I was 8 on a coach trip to a big park in Barcelona with family, there'd been some fireworks it was dark, a tiny boy either toddler or v. small child came out of a pitch dark maze on a tricycle. the adults immediately were alarmed, asking him in Spanish where, who, how etc and he pointed inside the maze where you could just see a shadowy figure too dark to see face properly, who, on requests to come out just shook his head and then walked off back inthe maze the boy the soon followed into the darkness, I was a sheltered child knew nothing of pedophiles but I felt a sense of dread and something wrong I couldn't articulate.

I did a course at work many years ago where we had to form two circles, so we were paired facing each other and then walk towards each other and stop when we felt we were at our limits.
Then going back to starting points.
We swapped people, one circle stood still and the other not. repeating the walking fowards again.
There was only one bloke who I was happy to bump into and most were at arms length, a few a bit closer.
Just interesting exercise to do with complete strangers at the start of a workshop. We were all starting work at the same time and no one knew each other.

Some people will give off a bad aura, others are warm and inviting.

Really important to trust you intuition and instincts even when they do not appear to make sense- we are much closer to animals and our early humans than we like to believe. Intuition is the highest form of intelligence, as quoted by DeepakChopra on one of his courses from my own book Trusting your Intuition lol . It really is important not to doubt those instincts - it is often life or death more than we realise it

Haven't got time to read the full thread but 'gut instinct' used to be part of the Sainsbury Mental Health Risk Assessment. I think it was dropped as it was hard to quantify in court. According to Michael Moseley, we have the same amount of brain tissue in our guts as a cat has in its head so listen to your cat!!

There is a nature trail near us that is actually an old disused railway line, it is very secluded in that it has high trees lining it either side and is quite deep set, we used to walk it a lot as its really lovely but one day me and dh were walking along and a man was walking toward us, I just felt a really strong feeling of fear and dread, the dog had been behind us and as he ran to catch us up he spotted this man and his hackles went up and he started growling, I honestly wanted out of there asap it was really odd! No idea who he was or if the feeling was right though. We haven't been since because it put me off!

Hello, I read in an article that humans can instinctually sense when someone is a psychopath. That psychopaths are predators to people with normal levels of empathy etc. And therefore humans sense this in the same way they sense danger and that it creates a sick feeling in your stomach. The woman that chose Ted Bundy on the blind date show he was on actually refused a date with him because she had a sick feeling when meeting him he seriously spooked her.

Measuring someone up when I first meet them is something I have always done.
Years ago we met a friends new flatmate and my husband lectured me in the car for being judgemental as I told him what thought she was really like. My husband couldn't see it and thought she was lovely, as did everyone else. She turned out to be a whole heap of trouble and a massive bunny boiler.
I work with people in a very specific setting and sometimes I meet someone who I know has done heinous things but looks like the boy next door- like Ted Bundy.

It is either good instincts or he has reminded you (even subconsciously) if someone who you have been scared of in your past. I have had this really strongly before - felt very clear that a man I met was not a good person. I even went as far as to confide in someone that I thought there was something wrong with him. I saw him again about ten years later. This time he was clean shaven, had lost weight, had stopped smoking (so didn’t smell strongly of cigarettes) and it didn’t feel the same at all. On reflection there was something about him that reminded me of my abusive father.

I’m trying to find the article I mentioned but cannot, I will keep looking after Dd’s bedtime and when/ if I do I will post it. It was a scientific article it was part of something I was studying as I do forensic Psych. Anyway in brief, trust your gut

@Famalamaringwrong how could anyone not get dodgy feelings from him, jeez

When I was about 16/17 I used to walk to work through a housing estate. There used to be a man who would sit outside in the summer ( sometimes with his wife) and you could feel him staring at you in a pervy way, he would look at all young girls .
Then one day when I walked pass there was a policeman at the door and it was a taped off.
Turned out he had been murdered by his daughter's boyfriend when she admitted the father had been raping her from a young age.

Those who say Taxi Drivers are rarely as dodgy as people think. I'm sorry, I deal with Taxi Drivers, both Private Hire and Hackney Carriage all the time, and while the majority are brilliant, the bad minority are terrible. If you ever feel threatened in a Taxi of whatever sort, get out and call another one.

@callywalls My Grandmother saw Myra Hindley a few times buying shoes, clothes etc. on Holloway Road with just one person with her so can definitely see minimal security with her in hospital.

We picked up so much subconsciously that we don’t register

But there are people that give something off they can leave a feeling in a room (this also happens with therapy) it can’t be explained but if you are working with people who are known to be violent and have certain conditions these gut feelings should never be ignored - some people pick up on them others it’s passes them by

We have a guy at work he sits there looking at this phone a few of us feel we can’t not talk to him others don’t feel this - he is very very paranoid that is what some of us are picking up on

I had similar sinister gut feeling about a mild looking 60+ yr old man who lived in my small town. We would pass each other in the street or happen to be in the same shop and I would get a sense of a 'bad smell' come off him even though there was no odour coming from him. I did tell my daughter and step daughter how I felt and made them promise to always cross the road if he were approaching. I had no real valid reason for doing this, purely my gut feeling.
One early evening I was standing further back in the queue behind him and a sweet looking elderly lady friend. He appeared to be squabbling with the lady friend and then he suddenly brandished a large bottle in his friend's face threatening to smash it. Then he started hurling vile abuse at the cashier and was eventually removed, kicking and screaming by security. My daughter and stepdaughter both witnessed this and they made damn sure to steer well clear after that. Gut feeling, absolutely no harm in following your instinct.

Only had this once with a tradesperson who turned up to give a quote. I was terrified of him and just wanted him out of the house. Never felt that before or since.

I used to get similar with a lad I went to school with he murdered someone about 2 years ago and I wasn’t at all surprised I sat next to him in English for a year and couldn’t focus properly when he was around! (name changed as quite outing!)

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/whitley-bay-guest-house-murder-13444751.amp