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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To get an overwhelming sense of danger from a stranger?

676 replies

ThisIsCheese · 07/05/2019 09:57

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 Confused

OP posts:
ifIwerenotanandroid · 11/05/2019 18:42

BTW, this was a repeated appointment & I never had any problem with anyone else in that waiting room. Some people & I ignored each other; others struck up normal, pleasant conversations. There was the occasional bore or idiot in someone else's group - but nothing like this old man & the feeling I got off him.

justasking111 · 11/05/2019 18:45

I am with trusting your instinct, better safe than dead brigade.

Off topic but some posters put an image in my mind of a bulldog sucking on a lemon...

NottonightJosepheen · 11/05/2019 18:47

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

BertrandRussell · 11/05/2019 18:53

“Women do not need evidence that a man they wish to avoid is actually a 'bad' man. ”

Of course. But I worry that too much emphasis on instinct will mean people relax when they don’t get a creepy feeling.....
And some stories on here make me uneasy because they look very much like unfounded gossip- the vicar who was a “creepy little boy” for example......

ferntwist · 11/05/2019 18:53

Brilliant post Nottonight

GreigLaidlawsbarofsoap · 11/05/2019 19:05

Great post @NottonightJosepheen. I agree - I refuse to be told I "need evidence" or "proof" to keep away, or keep my family away, from someone my gut dislikes. That's just another form of misogynistic socialisation - telling women they are "hysterical" and "emotional" and the menz know better than us and we should just let them talk at us, or make friends with our kids, or wheedle their way into our homes because we need to be "sensible" and judge that the odds are low they are actually rapists or murderers.
Fuck that. I will protect myself and my DC and sod social niceties. If a man is offended, he can get over it. If I'm dead or my kids abused, there's no getting away from that.

DointItForTheKids · 11/05/2019 19:52

I think the upshot is that both things are right.

We shouldn't ignore if we have the feeling - I'm VERY much in the camp of not giving a fuck if I offend someone - If I don't like the look of you or sound of you, you can go do one. I don't care if you're upset.

But we also shouldn't solely rely on that creepy feeling because you can be attacked by someone who you never get those signals off or who never gives those signals but rapes you whilst you're passed out drunk.

And what we also shouldn't do is forget about advance planning and thinking about situations and the potential risk points which are at the heart of self defence and personal safety - this is done in advance and continued through the day/night/rest of the event until you're back home safe.

BagelandEggs · 11/05/2019 21:47

One of the weirdest experiences I had like this was when I was locking my car and a really tall man came out of nowhere along the middle of the empty road towards me but he didn't seem to have any awareness of what was around him. His eyes didn't seem to be seeing and I was filled with absolute terror and the certainty that he was going to attack me but would have no feeling or knowledge of what he was doing! He walked past, luckily, but it was an instant animal instinct I had and it was terrifying. It still scares me to think of it now!

marvellousnightforamooncup · 11/05/2019 22:37

dollydee doesn't it sound like your colleague 'Mary' had an hallucination - auditory and visual?

Absolutely this. In fact your whole post DevilInaTwinset. I wanted to post something similar last night but deleted it by accident and couldn't be arsed retyping. If the options are normal friendly guy turns into a creepy horned devil in a shaft of sunlight (colleague in same room doesn't even notice) or tired nurse has temporary hallucination, I know which one I'd put my money on.

LonelyTiredandLow · 11/05/2019 22:43

I think my post to dolly straight after her story about Mary must have been too subtle! Grin

marvellousnightforamooncup · 11/05/2019 22:47

Sorry Lonely, I'll have to read back. 😀

OneStepSideways · 12/05/2019 07:45

doesn't it sound like your colleague 'Mary' had an hallucination - auditory and visual?

I thought this too. When on nights, sleep deprived, I used to hallucinate! I'd see 'faces' in pictures on the walls and moving shadows in my peripheral vision. Many times I went to answer a buzzer only to find the patient fast asleep and the buzzer inactivated! I think my brain must have slipped from waking into R.E.M. sleep for a few seconds. I used to start falling asleep while moving around and get that jerking awake sensation!

My friend has epilepsy with a type of seizure that is more like a 5 minute absence, no twitching or outward signs. Her warning sign is a feeling of impending doom and a particular smell. I can see how someone might get 'bad vibes' about certain places or people if they have undiagnosed epilepsy.

sawyersfishbiscuits · 12/05/2019 08:44

My DD and I have had this feeling about my best friends DP for a long time. They have a child the same age as DD. Even when she was 2.5-3 years old she'd say (in front of him!) "I don't like 'Freddie's' Daddy" at the time it was so embarrassing but also a bit worrying.

My DF just won't leave him despite him being so controlling and manipulative of the children.

I'm sad to think that one day something awful will happen and it will all come out.

itssquidstella · 12/05/2019 19:11

I've had that visceral response to someone once, years ago when I was studying in Paris. I was standing with some friends at the top of the stairs to the Metro when a small group of men walked past us and down the stairs. As they went, one of them called out to me "do you speak English.". On autopilot, I said 'oui' and turned round to find him staring up at me from the bottom of the stairs with the most revolting leer on his face. It absolutely turned my stomach: he looked as though he wanted to scare me and was enjoying the power that having produced an involuntary response from me had given him.

It wasn't a sixth sense, though - he was clearly a horrible creep.

bookbuddy · 12/05/2019 20:33

Feelings are real justified or not, you can’t see them but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You may have the feeling for any number of reasons no evidence is necessary to keep yourself safe. Why do the evidence based/ need to see it to believe it pp’s keep coming onto these sort of threads, You can’t get proof from a forum so what is it your seeking? Confused

BethMaddison · 12/05/2019 20:40

Our old window cleaner used to make me feel like this. I’m the end we had to say we didn’t need him any more as he was just making me anxious.
Came home late one night and he was standing staring at our house ! We just drove round again till his car had gone !

I definitely think people can pick up on things like this and other things. Even babies, last week I was at a group with my son. I’ve not had a great time lately and wasn’t sure whether to go or not and was struggling a bit. Been going ages and the babies are all totally occupied by the activities/bubbles etc but on that occasion 3 of the babies kept coming over to me, smiling, beaming, one wanted to hold my hands and stand up it’s like they knew and they were only little but they were trying to catch my gaze and just beaming at me and I couldn’t stay unhappy

MotherOfDragonite · 12/05/2019 20:57

What is it about window cleaners?! I'm fascinated by how many times they've cropped up on this thread...

Devilinatwinset · 12/05/2019 22:15

Voyeurism

Meggie2008 · 12/05/2019 22:58

I remember very distinctly a man that lived in the same street as my papa giving me the absolute heebie jeebies as a child. Everything about the way he looked made me feel physically sick and as if I needed to run away immediately. My papa used to talk about how we walked past his flat one day when the man was out in the garden, and I dragged my papa across the road so that we didn't have to walk past him. I must only have been about 3 or 4 years old.
Turns out it was William Beggs. No bloody wonder he gave me the creeps.

Sasstal67 · 12/05/2019 23:51

It's interesting that several people have mentioned Christopher Jefferies....

I had just filled up at a petrol station in Bath, a while before the case was reported on. A guy ran between the traffic from a business opposite, then crossed the exit from the petrol station where I sat waiting to pull out.

There was nothing extraordinary about the way he looked or dressed, but when he turned his head as he passed and looked me dead in the eye, I had the most awful, overwhelming feeling of dread and fear. It really threw me and I quickly broke eye contact, I felt like locking the car doors but also felt thoroughly stupid. He walked on and I drove off still feeling deeply unsettled.

When his image popped up on our local news as the person suspected of killing Joanna, I nearly fell off my seat. I still didn't tell anyone, who would believe such nonsense and I figured I must just be mistaken, after all so many people look like someone else.

A couple of years later I was lending a hand with a courier business for a day, and had to pop into the same building the guy had come from, opposite the petrol station. It was the architecture firm named on the news as the workplace of Vincent Tabak, the murderer of Jo Yeates.

Justaboy · 13/05/2019 00:41

tired nurse has temporary hallucination, I know which one I'd put my money on.

Very odd this case now earlier in the thread someone said that mentaly ill people can do this lets call it face pulling for wont of a better discription?

Not trying to make an answer fit the question as such but how would you expain away the alleged comment that Walter rmade;

"I know what you are seeing" ?

That, if true, is really lets say interesting!

Oliversmumsarmy · 13/05/2019 06:41

tired nurse has temporary hallucination, I know which one I'd put my money on

Wasn’t this woman an office worker at the time not a nurse

JamieVardysHavingAParty · 13/05/2019 07:19

Justaboy The other poster suggested that it might have been a visual and auditory hallucination.

Devilinatwinset · 13/05/2019 07:52

justaboy Google auditory hallucination

PropagandaMachine · 13/05/2019 08:00

Not trying to make an answer fit the question as such but how would you expain away the alleged comment that Walter rmade;

"I know what you are seeing" ?

She misheard and/or misremembered. Memory is a terribly inaccurate thing. The man knew she’d been dazzled, probably said “I don’t think you can see me” or something.
Can’t believe that people are arguing that he must have temporarily morphed into a monster Confused