Presence of evil

[beachcitygirl]

Aibu to ask if you've ever felt yourself in the presence of evil. Following on from
The intuitiion thread.

I once met a friend of my ex in a coffee shop. The man was nothing but civil & friendly. Soft spoken & was an ex police officer. My then husband was there also.
I went to the loo & spent ages as something about him made me feel afraid. I stress it was just a feeling. Zero untoward behaviour.
Many years later he was arrested & found guilty of violent rape.

Has anyone else ever sensed evil? (For want of a better word)

2 incidences.

Years ago now I was really into stone circles, and I went to see the Rollright stones, a circle that's meant, in legend, to be where a King and his men were turned into stone by a local witch. They're in a very quiet field and at the time you could go right up to them all. I've never felt anything odd when I've visited other stones, but these just felt weird from the get-go. When I walked up to the main circle, it felt like I'd stepped into a pocket of cold air - like when you get a current in the sea, it really physically shocked me - and I just felt absolutely terrified. It was a lovely sunny summer day, broad daylight, and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Very eerie and strange.

Second incident was quite recently, walking my dog in the forest. The dog is basically a soppy attention-whore who will love and adore anyone who makes eye contact with him. He loves everyone and everything and is ridiculously friendly. We were walking along a pathway and a man was coming in the other direction from quite a way away. My dog stopped dead and his hackles rose - he started making this peculiar low growl that I've never heard in my life before or since and wouldn't budge. The man passed us - didn't speak, didn't make eye contact - and I don't know if it was the dog's reaction or something else but I got a really weird feeling from him. The dog stared him down, making this horrible low growl, until he was a long way past us. No "and later I saw he'd murdered 4 people"-style denoument, but it was very scary at the time.

@Timeturnerplease

Your post gave me chills. Something was obviously very very wrong. His family clearly knew it too if they were putting his brother in their bedroom to sleep safely. How disturbing!!!

How does evil not exist?

I feel my father and his grandfather are pure evil!! The spidie senses are picking up on them..

I don't like being in large groups of people because I can usually sense a bad'un..

"My friend was pointing out all the clues that certain people were lying. Lots of subtle non-verbal clues, but once she pointed them out they were obvious. "

You mean it was obvious because they were in prison!
I'm sure there are people who are very skilled at this and you can watch FBI interrogators and the like who have videos on YouTube, but it's not an exact science.

I’m not religious but did once hear evil explained not as a presence but an emptiness ( a turning away from care for others) which did make some sense to me. Maybe it is that lack of essential kindness/ empathy that we can sometimes sense.
It’s probably a scale too. Nazi Germany, Rwanda show that lots are capable of more than we would expect when societal restraints are removed.

@MaryAndGerryLivingInDerry

Well evil doesn’t exist, so no, but you can certainly form accurate gut instincts about people based on unconscious signs they give off.

^this

And in terms of criminality and the law the term evil is pretty unhelpful

I think our brains try to make sense of things that don't make sense.
Think of optical illusions. Think of how effective the power of suggestion is.
Say there was a bad feeling in a room - to use previous examples, due to toxic mold, lead in the paint, infrasound, dodgy electrics, magnetic energy etc. and we couldn't figure out why, our brains & imaginations try to rationalise what we think we're seeing/feeling and fills in the gaps.
There's a classic example online of infrasound in a room due to a faulty fan & one of the symptoms was to cause minute vibrations in the eye causing people to 'see' grey/whitish indistinguishable shapes in their peripheral vision. When they looked around they were gone. What does that sound like?

@TerraNovaTwo you nailed it... exactly my point .
I don't consider evil as a supernatural kind of thing that influences and takes over ... more the inherent make up of a person being immoral and wicked to the core. Not all people are inherently good .....

Yes In particular areas of Aushwitz concentration camp and a house I used to work in ..

These ghostly shapes or visions coupled with the sense of dread that infrasound triggers et voila, evil spirits.

My cat did when my ex came round he sat on the opposite sofa and glared at him he turned out to be a very horrible guy! With my now DH he went straight up to him and sprawled out on his legs!!

As much as i believe in the concept and reality of Evil, i don't believe that anyone has some sort of 6th sense to pick up on it but i can't prove that obv.
Evil people are excellent at hiding it, take serial killers? they seem to have no problem luring their victims into their houses etc..

I think if you think enough times someone is bad, your going to be right now n then.

But on places, yes i think evil leaves a mark or presence.

Believe in your gut! Often we have been told to believe in facts but if something is not right it probably isn't. Trust your gut, what else do we have!?

Loving this thread!

@Harls1969

Bodmin Gaol creeped me out. Eerie place.

Me too. It was awful in there.

HRTFT but, according to Dr Michael Moseley, we have as much brain tissue in our guts as cats have in their heads so we should definitely listen to 'gut instinct'.

"I’ve had a dog bark and growl at me for no apparent reason but I like to think I’m not evil grin"

Maybe it didn't like the way you smelled or the smell of a food you'd eaten recently.
I don't think we should take dogs' reactions as gospel - look up racist dogs, for example.

I met a man once who I felt a very strong clear instinct to stay away from, after he engaged me in conversation.

I wasn’t scared though and I didn’t “sense evil”, I just had an absolute knowledge that I didn’t want to engage, draw myself to his attention - it was almost a “stay invisible” kind of feeling and so definite it was as if I was receiving a firm instruction, almost like a parent voice saying “don’t talk to him” ( wasn’t a voice but the best way I can explain it!)

A friend commented that the man was staring over at me, and I just shrugged that off and didn’t even engage in conversation with her about that, just moved away and out of his eye line.

I’d have forgotten about too, it just wasn’t a big deal in terms of effect on me, if a woman hadn’t been raped and murdered two nights later, in a random attack. For a couple of reasons and details I heard, I realised it was the same man - he was caught straightaway - and it did turn out to be the one I met.

I have met people I have felt much more fearful of and have no idea if that fear was founded or not, and others who have been harmful who I didn’t feel uneasy about.

There is only one other person I have felt that specific “stay low” feeling about though since. It was a primary age child !

One that I went to tell off in the our local park, a couple of years ago, as he had been swearing at my children. An innocent looking little thing, but the way he looked at me went through me and I got that definite feeling.

I told my children “don’t bother with him if you come across him at all, don’t engage at all, good or bad, and if he says anything to you, be polite but walk away and contact me - just don’t react at all and stay away from him”.

I went home and said to my husband “That child is a psychopath”.

I don’t know that he is, but I did recently hear that he had been picked up by the police for setting fires, one which could have put lives at risk… I will always recognise that feeling now, and would value it above an actual feeling of panic or anxiety as a gut reaction to someone.

@MummyBearBoo

My cat did when my ex came round he sat on the opposite sofa and glared at him he turned out to be a very horrible guy! With my now DH he went straight up to him and sprawled out on his legs!!

@MummyBearBoo what an awesome cat. And I love hearing about all the dogs in this thread who could sense a wrong 'un

Yes, a man who lives down our road.

We gave him a lift home once, I moved to sit in the back with our daughters so that he could sit in the front.
It was my idea to give him a lift, my husband would never have thought about helping anyone.
Anyway, it was only about a 15 min journey but by the time we reached our road I really needed him gone, there was just a strong presence of something being very wrong about him. I got my husband to let him out at his house even though we are only 5 houses away. I was so disturbed by his presence.
It was about 27 years ago and he has never done anything wrong to my knowledge but he is a real loner since his wife left him 30 years ago.

He retired from being a pharmacist about 8 yrs ago and his house, garage, etc are in ruins. We say hello to each other ( well he grunts ) but he won't look at me. I don't have the same feeling now when passing him in the street during the day.
Maybe it was just something about being in an enclosed, captive space with him.

@CaveWoman1 Honestly, there is just something terrifying about him. Just no emotions whatsoever, though he had learnt to act happy/sad/apologetic depending on the context by the time he left us. But the eyes never changed.

I really hope he doesn’t become another sad story that maybe could have been helped early on….

I’m very naive about people in general, always seeing good and never seeing bad, so my judgement is always off. My trust in people has lead me down some slippery roads. So no, I can’t say I’ve ever felt the presence of evil, although I’m sure i’ve been around it sometimes without realising. I think some people just have that sixth sense, and some don’t.

And in terms of criminality and the law the term evil is pretty unhelpful

Is it? How do you differentiate between someone who murders one person and one who murders millions?

All it actually means is ‘profoundly immoral’.

@disconnected101

I think our brains try to make sense of things that don't make sense. Think of optical illusions. Think of how effective the power of suggestion is. Say there was a bad feeling in a room - to use previous examples, due to toxic mold, lead in the paint, infrasound, dodgy electrics, magnetic energy etc. and we couldn't figure out why, our brains & imaginations try to rationalise what we think we're seeing/feeling and fills in the gaps. There's a classic example online of infrasound in a room due to a faulty fan & one of the symptoms was to cause minute vibrations in the eye causing people to 'see' grey/whitish indistinguishable shapes in their peripheral vision. When they looked around they were gone. What does that sound like?

I think there are plenty of rational things, like this post, that explains "evil".

I don't believe in evil as a separate force. Any evil in this world comes directly from us humans.

And far more people are capable of evil acts if our societal restraints were removed, than would ever admit to it.

I remember reading a war novel, a long time ago, by an author called Sven Hassel. While his later books were made up nonsense, his first book was pretty much autobiographical, detailing his experiences in the German army in WW2. He was in a penal battalion, so his comrades weren't exactly posh officers.

He wrote that his experiences made him realise that people enjoyed killing and other nasty stuff when no one was around to enforce laws.

Humans only have a thin layer of civilisation.. We are all capable of more than we think, good or bad.

I’ve taught a child who frightened me, like a few other teachers on this thread. Definitely wouldn’t use the word ‘evil’, but the child seemed fanatically interested in controlling the others through fear and manipulation, and didn’t seem to understand why this was problematic. His reaction to distress in other kids was detached interest. I found it very uncomfortable to witness and never found a behaviour management strategy that seemed to work. I assumed he was being bullied at home but when the school checked this out we couldn’t detect any abuse or issues.

I do think we’re tuned in to picking up difference, and that our knee-jerk reaction to difference is fear. Which is sometimes useful and sometimes really shitty for people who are not neurotypical, or not from the same race or sex or cultural background or faith as we are.

And I also think I might be able to smell psychosis, which in itself feels a bit delusional but there we are. Had a very close friend who went through a period of dreadful mental health including periods where he was psychotic and his smell changed. It was an awful time, really traumatic and I ended up being on the receiving end of physical and emotional abuse from him while he was in the grip of paranoid delusions - it was terrifying and really sad and has definitely left me with some mental scarring. I had a student who was very mentally unwell and had to ask not to teach her because she smelled so exactly like my friend when he’d been ill that I’d get a gut-punch of visceral panic and a blinding sense of not being able to keep her or anyone else safe when she walked into the classroom.