Intuition.. people who made you go cold

[hollybollyy]

Right so I'll preface this with it's my night off I can't sleep so I thought I would listen to 'let's not meet' do not listen to this podcast when alone at night! and god the stories have creeped me the fuck out.

My own story is that I once met a coworker on his first day. Something about him just made my blood run cold, I didn't want to be around him and I absolutely didn't want to work late alone with him.

6 years later he was in the news for being a serial rapist.

Mega creep.

Share your 'no this person is bad I cannot be near them' stories

Also my dog is an amazing judge of character if he doesn't like something or someone there's a reason

Not as severe as the stories here
But met a dad of a child in sons class who gave me heeby jeebies

I thought I was having some kind of bias and felt guilty

Anyway turns out he was very verbally abusive to another woman we know when she rightly reported him to SS

So I was right , not biased

When I was 16 I had a friend a year older who had started seeing this older guy. Her mum didn’t like him and said she wasn’t allowed to see him, so she moved out of home and her and the bf rented a grim bedsit.

This guy was creepy as hell. He had a psychotic look in his eyes and something about him just made my skin crawl. I used to go around to see them most days as I was worried about my friend, I could see he was really controlling and I wanted to know she was safe. I’d spend a couple of hours there most evenings, we’d all sit around getting stoned.

She finally saw the light when he became violent and managed to get away from him and move back with her mum. It transpired that he had only recently got out of prison when she met him for murdering his last girlfriend 😲.

Changed a few details as potentially outing. Some years back a friend introduced me to her new boyfriend. I took an immediate dislike to him, there was just something about him that made me uneasy. At friends Christmas party some months later, I had a bit too much to drink and fell asleep in her spare room, only to wake up to friends bf in the process of raping me. Later on down the line I found out he also attempted to do the same thing to another girl who thankfully woke up just before he got into her bed and scared him off shouting at him.

I had the same uneasy vibes about a coworker a couple of years ago. One day some men came and just took him away. Turned out they were plain clothed policemen and he was eventually sent to prison for child porn images.

Another time there was a regular customer that used to come into my work. Again I felt very uneasy about him but he was pleasant enough so I stayed professional. One day a man I knew but hadn’t seen for many years came into my work, to warn me. Turns out he was my regular customers support worker and the customer had become obsessed with me, talking a lot about ‘what he would like to do to me’. He had form for stalking women. After that my work always ensured I didn’t work on my own anymore and gradually he stopped coming into my work place.

The book 'The Gift of Fear' by Gavin deBecker is about trusting this kind of intuition implicitly, and talks about examples and different signs to look out for.

Someone mentioned earlier about their dog being able to sense things about people, I found it really interesting in the book when he says that it's not the dog's ability, the dog is picking up on unconscious signals from you in response to the person (whether you recognise it is a different matter).

It's such an eye opening book about situations where we come across people who set off our alarm bells, or if they don't set them off, gives you the signs to look for.

when you think of the weird shit dogs can seemingly pick up, that makes sense. My mates said his dogs new when his parents were about 5 minutes from home in the car every single time.

@Hushabyelullaby

That's really interesting. However, I am the least observant person ever - always have been! - and it was definitely my dog picking up on this stuff. Often without me even realising anyone was there.
Have been feeling nostalgic since posting. God, what an absolute legend of a dog our Staffie was. She made our childhood.

When I was a child maybe 8? Myself and my friend were walking to the shop round the corner from our house about 4:30pm . It was winter so dark and to get to the shop you had to walk through the lane at the back of the houses.
An older teenage boy on a bike stopped us and I immediately felt cold and had an intense urge to get away from him.
He asked us if we could help him find his wallet.
I said no and went to walk away but my friend went to help him look.
He then asked her if she knew what I meant to get 'laid' she obv said no and asked what it meant as at 8 we had no idea.
I kept on at her to hurry up and that we should go but she wasn't for leaving.
He then said he couldn't tell her and would have to show her and grabbed her trying to assault her.
Thankfully my older sisters friends were just outside the lane and I ran and got help before anything serious happened.
Definitely a situation where my instincts were absolutely spot on and probably saved me the same fate as my friend.

On the way home after a dreadful shift in icu, it was late. I asked security to walk me to my car as I was scared. They said they were too busy. Fine I went myself. As I got to my car another car parked up and manoeuvred so I wouldn't be able to get out of my space without a million point turn. Then the man in the other car got out and asked me for directions. I really didn't want to speak to him so I didn't get out my car but wound the window down and he leaned so far into my car he honestly was practically on top
Of me.

I just knew I needed to get away but couldn't see how until security turned up as I had pleaded with them to come with me to my car and I think he felt bad for saying no. He turned up in his hospital security car and ive never seen someone run as fast. The man half in my car leapt into his and drove off at speed. I've never felt so scared in my life. The security bloke called the police and then eventually decided he would drive me home . I quit the next day

This thread is brilliant, creepy, but brilliant

Back in the day this man asked me out several times. We were both volunteers at a church group. I was dating someone else so turned him down but tbh he seemed pleasant enough- just maybe a bit desperate for a girlfriend www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-35724038

I did a course for work a few years back that was supposed to be cutting edge and innovative. Was a load of shite. The course director was very charismatic, seemingly super woke and in touch with his feelings but man I got the fear around him. There was something just so off about him. I made sure I was never alone with him. Nothing has come to light about him but I could t stand to be in his presence, every nerve end just screamed at me to get away.

As a child we had family friends, an older couple who used to have shared care of their granddaughter as her mum was a bit unreliable. The man made me feel so uncomfortable. He used to ‘tickle’ us and it creeped me out so I would sit in a chair and kick if he came close. He once remarked that he was off to see his ‘little girlfriends’ before going for a walk one day. He had a rule that the granddaughter couldn’t cry at their house or she would be sent back to her mums which I just knew at eight years old wasn’t right.
He is in prison, serving a very long sentence for molesting the granddaughter, her cousins and the neighbours children.

Years ago, walking across a supermarket car park late summer evening which was fairly empty my back suddenly started tingling. I turned round, and as I turned round I heard a woman cough. Behind me there was a very suspicious looking guy who immediately made me feel sick. He veered off to the left, jumped into car with blacked out windows and sped off. I turned to look at the woman who coughed and she said she’d seen him following me and he’d started to speed up behind me and looked like he was up to no good. She’d coughed so he knew she was there watching him. Still feel sick about that one.

I've only had bad vibes like this once, not as visceral as some other posters. A few years ago a family moved in on the street where I used to live, perfectly normal couple, 3 kids, the wife was lovely but I got such bad vibes off the guy for no particular reason.
One day I was struggling to get on the bus with my ds in his pushchair and the guy happened to be on the bus, he jumped up immediately and help me fold the buggy, really nice and nothing untoward but I got just an awful vibe from the guy I couldn't explain.
Not long after it transpired that he had been in prison for raping a disabled teenager in the town he'd lived in previously.

You've got me wondering now, @Cissyandflora; he wasn't a Mr J with a strange little goatee beard who taught at PC grammar school was he?

It's just that we had one uncannily similar ...

I work in a building that has a series of clinics, over multiple stories, connected to a hospital over a walkway. Go get to the staff car park, which is below the clinics, it’s easiest to take the lift as the stairs don’t go down far enough. You can get there by walking but it’s circuitous.

Anyway, one evening I was walking back over the walkway to the lifts when I saw a perfectly nice looking ordinary man waiting as well. He was probably late 30s, tall, blonde hair and quite smiley. I wasn’t paying him a lot of attention in that it was about 6pm and I was thinking about food and seeing the children and DH but some of part of me screamed internally that, “No, I was NOT getting into a lift with HIM”.

Even though I knew I was being irrational I didn’t, went down the stairs and went to the staff car park the long way. I still wonder if I overreacted but it was such a visceral reaction to him, I figured it must be coming from somewhere.

Years ago when my kids were little my dd went to a sleepover at her friend's house. I don't know why - she'd been on, and went to go on numerous sleepovers over the years - but I got a growing feeling of unease about it as the evening progressed. It got stronger until I could think of nothing else. So I went and got her. Which didn't make me very popular! But I had to.

I have no evidence either way - it could of course have been entirely something to do with me somehow leaking out an unrelated fear subconsciously. No way of knowing. But I knew I couldn't leave her there and had to get her.

Nothing like it had happened before or since.

@Puzzledandpissedoff no it wasn’t but I did wonder as I wrote it whether others would recognise him because it’s pretty specific. It was Mr P if anyone else is wondering. Sorry you had similar. Absolutely awful. I’m in my 50s now and I remember how petrified I was in his classes. I dreaded school.

Cissy worrying, isn't it, to realise just how many there are

Mine was an all girls school too, and he was teaching RE ...

@puzzled yes really worrying. I have since spoken to someone who was part of a group of boys he was grooming in his private office and it is shocking that this all went on under the noses of the other staff and pupils. Ours was a mixed school but he abused boys. He was inappropriate and frightening to me and seemed to be untouchable and powerful. When I saw this thread title I thought of him straight away because as much as I felt terrorised and afraid, none of my friends ever mentioned it or seemed afraid. I knew and when I told my mother she was furious- but shut down and told off.

@Puzzledandpissedoff I am a woman- just to be clear- but I sensed it straight away from him. It’s only in recent years I have spoken to someone who was groomed by him. And it was about 30 years ago that I heard he was in prison.

Cissy pleazse tell me you meant your mum was "shut down and told off" by the school, rather than you by your mum?

Not that it would make it much better of course, but I'd hate to think you weren't believe (even though that's too often how things were)

@puzzled yes sorry- my mother took me very seriously because I was only 12/13 and he was asking us to go up to the chalkboard and write sexual terms. All linked to Mary Magdalene supposedly! I knew what he was up to and that it was wrong. I told my mum. She was furious. In fact I remember exactly where I was when I told her- exactly where we were crossing the road! Anyway she was a teacher herself- different school- and she expected her complaint to be taken seriously. The school wrote back to her saying Mr P is not only an RE teacher but is the head of RE and a very respected teacher. Then they must have told him because when I went into class he said ‘where’s ‘cissy’ the one who got her mother to write to the school about me’. Hideous.
Then it was about 10 years after that when it became known that he was in prison for abusing some boys. That was outside school and unrelated as far as I know.

Quite a relief to hear that at least your lovely mum believed you, Cissy; it should be a given of course, but isn't always

As you say, the bit about "where's the one who got her mother to write" is hideous, but sadly not surprising. He should have been quaking over being discovered, but these individuals thought - and often still DO think - they're untouchable

As a 1970s five year old, wearing my best Holly Hobby summer dress, my Dad went in to a local newsagents to replenish his Benson & Hedges. For some reason I hung back and stayed outside on the pavement, skipping around and generally feeling like everything in the world was good. The sun was shining, I had my new dress on, sent me by my granny. Then a green Mini Cooper drew up next to the pavement. Two young men in it. The passenger opens his door and calls me over. I go trusting and walk immediately in between his open car door and the car. He says smiling "You are such a pretty girl and I love your dress!"

I remember my heart beginning to thump fast, but I was polite because they were grown ups. "Thank you, my grandma sent it me for my 5th birthday."

"Would you like to come for a little ride with us in our car?"

Next thing I know, my father races out of the shop swoops on me, yanks me back hard out of the reach of car and men, swearing and sweating. Green Mini Cooper zooms off. I collapsed into the car with my father. I remember the absolute visceral terror at my father's terror and shock! I clung to my mother all evening and told her that I thought they were going to take me and chop me up in a cellar. It took me years to be able to go near a green Mini Cooper. Just writing this out has made my heart beat rise. So many of these experiences are about women/girls being prey.