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

A neighbour of a family member made my blood run cold, for no apparent reason, and I felt guilty for this, as he was disabled, seemingly vulnerable. After he died it transpired that he’d bribed a child to perform sexual acts on him. Vile, vile man.

Threads like this are always amusing because you always get the same two tropes:

1. There's always someone who had a 90 second encounter with some complete stranger yet somehow they always recognise them on the TV/front page of a newspaper 10 years later - the classic one here is almost getting into Fred West's car as a kid.

2. Someone always finds out their "wrong 'un" is indeed a wrong 'un because of someone, usually in authority and most often a police officer, letting something slip (often cryptically or in a way most guaranteed to make the imagination run riot) when in reality that information just would not be passed on to the public.

Am I the only one who never liked some of the personalities now in prison for various offences against females. Some are still on the outside.

When I was a child we never needed telling who to avoid. There seemed to be a jungle telegraph warning us about them. We didn’t know what they did or said but we stayed well away.

OnlytheLang openly outing themselves as one to avoid 😦

sarcastic post by a perpetrator? 🤔

I think sometimes what people pick up is someone sizing you up as prey. That is why sometimes you might pick it up and your DH does not, he is not the prey. Or your child might pick it up but you don't.

I have only had this once. An electrician who had called round for a quote. Seemed perfectly polite, but I was absolutely terrified. Nothing happened, but I have never ever felt that sense of sheer terror before in my life.

Wow! We could make a tv show about these creeps!😟

I work in a cafe and we have a guy who comes in monthly for his staff meetings... I absolutely cannot bear him! My heart sinks when I see his car outside. To look at him, you’d wonder what I was on about.. pleasant looking, cheery manner.. etc - but he makes me want to start running and not stop!
Everyone, both sexes, in our place can’t ‘get’ what I’m on about, saying ‘Oh J’s a nice guy, great fun’ etc but I just can’t stand him!
Weirdly, it’s like he knows I can’t abide him.. he’s always calling to me, trying to get me to be ‘his’ waitress, finding reasons why I’ve got to go to his table... Nope... I suddenly become very busy when he’s around and avoid him without apology.
He works for a BIG, very well-known company... but there’s something setting off my 😱 😱 alarm!!

Any guys out there who get the same creeped-out feelings - or is it just a female thing??

Really outing but...

I used to live in a long-term hostel type place for people under 25. Ex-residents from there were allowed to come in to use the computers and there was one very creepy guy who was there daily. I hated walking past him. He also was a known druggie and would ask everyone if they had anything, as we were all young and he thought we'd have drugs, despite the hostel having a very strict anti-drugs policy. He only ever talked to the female staff and residents and wouldn't let a conversation drop.

A year later my friend had an awful MH breakdown and ended up an inpatient in a MH hospital. Went to visit, and creepy guy was there as he'd been caught raping a 14 year old and with over 150 images of child sexual abuse and bragged about it at every meal time to other patients.

Then after he was released from hospital (never knew how) he moved in three flats across from mine. I never felt safe and was desperate to move. Thankfully I have now but occasionally I still have to go to my old town and bump into him and he still tries to constantly talk to girls.

My dd's Partner.
I hated him from the moment I met him. He left me cold.
Turned out he was more evil than I could have ever imagined.

I was about 18 and walking back to my parent's house with my best friend quite late as we had got the last train home. It's a small town so there was hardly anyone around. As we were walking we became aware of a car driving towards us that was slowing down. The car stopped about 20 metres ahead of us and a guy got out and was looking at us. My friend was much more quick thinking than me and pulled us in to the nearest drive where we hid behind a car. It was a gravel drive and we set the security light off. We heard him walk on to the gravel too and he stood still for what felt like an eternity. We couldn't move as he would have heard us and we couldn't risk setting off the light again. Eventually he left as must have thought we had gone in to the house. When we heard his car leave we ran all the way home. It was terrifying.

Wehttam I spent 12 years putting some of the worst of these wrong 'uns behind bars to help make the world a safer place so no. I've just been around MN for a looooong time and seen many, many of these threads and the same tropes crop up. I find the posts where people have had the strong gut feeling but there's no conclusion far more believable than the ones all tied up with a neat bow of "and then 20 years after that day when I ran away from this stranger after a 30 second conversation I saw their photo on the news and it was [insert serial killer/rapist here]". The latter certainly makes for a better story but it's precisely because of 12 years in the criminal justice system that I know how faulty people's recollection of faces, facts and events usually is.

God I hate these threads. Intuition only works for those who come from non-abusive families or who've had a lot of therapy since then.

For those of us who've suffered emotional, physical or sexual abuse, or intuition 'wires' are crossed and what feels 'right' or 'familiar' is often the very person who is likely to do us huge harm. Conversely 'nice', decent, straightforward people often give us the creeps or make us uncomfortable.

That's why a cleaner in my workplace, who i'd always regarded as friendly and kind, was able to walk straight up to me and sexually assault me when i was 17 and it wasn't until his hands were groping my breasts and he was forcing his tongue in my mouth that I twigged anything was wrong.

That's why I stayed with an emotionally, physically and sexually abusive man for more than a decade: because his aggression and abuse of me 'felt like home', even though it was objectively awful.

I can’t help wondering how many people felt evil vibes from Jimmy Savile, but kept quiet about it because he was famous and well respected because of his so called ‘good works’.

As long ago as the 1970s my folks were good friends with a very senior professional at Broadmoor, and were sometimes invited to various events there, plays put on by the inmates, etc.

At one such event they met Jimmy Savile and my mother, who was a hyper-sensitive type and occasionally acutely telepathic, said he gave her the absolute creeps, she actually shuddered as she said it.

ParkheadParadise I hope your DD is safe, well and away from him

I agree that intuition is often very fallible. There was a member of SMT at DDs school who most people thought was just lovely. So caring and kind to the students. I even sent him a thank you note after a residential trip as he had been so good to DD. He was found with hundreds of secretly taken images of the girls in his care on his laptop, he avoided prison on a technicality but (happily) will never teach again. We will never know which children were in those photos (they didn’t include the faces). It was genuinely shocking and the more so because no one would ever have suspected him of doing something like that.

Jane Fae.

@GiveMyHeadPeaceffs I had to read yours a few times because my mind had serious trouble trying to comprehend the horror I just read!

I come from an abusive background and my intuition doesn't warn me.

My first marriage was to a gentle, soft-spoken man who terrorised me for years. Good friends of mine took his word over mine and didn't believe that he was abusive.

My second husband was another gentle guy who got his jollies abusing me mentally. Another charmer.

I'm in a good relationship now after a lot of therapy. I'd love to have been able to avoid these men.

Q

What about all those people you've felt 'evil vibes' from who havent subsequently been arrested/revealed to be paedophiles or violent criminals?

Is there some element of confirmation bias at work here with these 'I trusted my intuition' stories?

My friend's ex BF. Absolute creep, he had a creepy smirk and made my skin crawl. He kept making a pass at me every time her back was turned or sending me messages etc. Every time I turned him down he'd try and convince her that I was out to get her in some way.

He later conned her out of loads of money and she found pictures of her son and his friends on his PC.

I have a feeling he's capable of more...

Viewing a house one of the neighbours approached our car and practically begged us to move into the cul de sac..
Took quite an interest when we did. Kept him outside as didn't like him at all. He had a dw +dc tho never saw her.. We got a dpuppy and she hated him. Growled through the window, pulled on the lead towards him.. I never let my dc over there even though his dc were lovely..
He organised a party one summer and murdered one of the other neighbours.. Got a manslaughter charge and was out in 6 years...
Alwyas trusted ddogs judgement - and told new bf he was to be tested - - he passed and we married - sadly lost ddog to cancer just 5 weeks ago.. Aged 10..

Such an interesting thread!

I had a GP a few years back that I felt like this about. I only had one appointment with him, he just made my blood run cold. I can’t really explain why; he was perfectly polite but there just didn’t seem to be anything behind his eyes. Like he wasn’t properly human. No sensational ending to this story I’m afraid.

The thing is, there are lots of sociopaths out there, and most wont go on to do anything awful, but they just aren’t quite like us, and I think the more intuitive of us can spot them, even if it’s not really clear what is different about them.

I tend agree with OnlyTheLangoftheTitBerg. It makes me feel like I am falling short as a woman when I read this kind of threads - I have never had my suspicions validated by a newspaper article 20 years later.

I tend to feel off around someone when they are over familiar and pushing into my boundaries, also think people with poor social skills can unknowingly do it too.

Also, successful wrong 'uns get away with it because they are probably very normal and charming, that's how they reel people in.

I agree OnlyTheLang.
These threads come up every so often.
I do wonder if there's an element of titillation in telling stories that "prove" your instinct was right.
People's memories are just not that reliable...and their radars aren't either.

As RuffleCrow says...intuition doesn't work for people who experienced abuse at home.
In fact, the weirdness feels familiar..and all the excuses used at home surface in your mind.
"don't mind him, he's only playing", "he's harmless" and the worst "he didn't really mean it".

If instinct was that reliable, domestic abusers would be shunned by their communities.
They're not.

It was Michael Barrymore for me, I was a young teen and my dad and I were watching one of his shows. This was when he was very popular but I turned to my dad and said to him this guy gives me the creeps.