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)

@Wavypurple

Not trying to de-rail but in response to your OP there’s no need to distinguish his crime as a ‘violent’ rape, all rape is violent.

Doh! Of course it is, but in addition to the violence of rape, he also hit her with a hammer.

Also. This is a thread about creepy stories/gut instinct. Not a religious thread/not a thread to unload racism/not a thread to bitch about Meghan/not a thread to discuss what rape is.

If you want those type of
Threads then start your own. Most of us are enjoying this one without all that crap.

@llizzie

ChargingBuck I disagree with you. What do you think gives you that 'inner morality'?

Life itself gave it to me, @llizzie

Humans, like all herd & pack animals, have an innate awareness that others of their species also have feelings & that taking heed of them serves the general good.

Humanity. Soul. An intellect that can distinguish between right & wrong. God didn't give it to me, because god is a human invention. Mother nature did.

It's fine with me that you disagree, & I'm glad your faith gives you comfort.

@beachcitygirl

Also. This is a thread about creepy stories/gut instinct. Not a religious thread/not a thread to unload racism/not a thread to bitch about Meghan/not a thread to discuss what rape is.

If you want those type of
Threads then start your own. Most of us are enjoying this one without all that crap.

@beachcitygirl is this your first time on an internet forum?

You know how discussion works, right ..?
Somebody says the sky is blue, someone disagrees that it's grey, another random pops up to say the sky is irrelevant & why is nobody talking about grass today ... & so it goes on.

Relax. You don't need to police it.
& you certainly don't get to announce what you reckon "most of us" think and retain any credibility

@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.

Except it does, just because you don’t like the word. What you mean is you don’t believe in supernatural causes for it. Plenty of evidence of evil acts committed sadly.

OP did you really think you’d mention the “presence of evil” without people discussing the nature of evil?

@MaryAndGerryLivingInDerry

You are wrong. Evil most certainly does exist. Just ask Women's Aid.

As a victim of DV I can assure you that it is all human force that abuses women.

Again you are confusing the word evil with supernatural. People carry out evil acts. Personally I think the word evil describes events like the holocaust perfectly. Evil as a act most definitely does exist.

Years ago house hunting , visited one which was being sold after a divorce. Both of us had a terrible feeling and couldn’t wait to leave. We were both separately convinced there had been a lot of violence and abuse there. I have no spiritual or religious feeling, but I do sometimes have telepathic senses in other situations. I think we as women should always trust our gut feelings about men in particular as they could well save us from at best interaction we don’t want. These feelings are more important than the need to be kind and should be acted on. The number of women on this thread reflect their experiences and there are more men with bad intentions that’s we like to think.

@TatianaBis

OP did you really think you’d mention the “presence of evil” without people discussing the nature of evil?

Exactly. If you didn’t want people to discuss the nature of evil/the existence of evil then maybe you should have started a thread called ‘creepy stories but no rational explanations please.’

Faiths go back a thousand or more years, and is more often than not passed down in our genetic makeup
Genes do not code for religious faith. It is learned through your environment - parents, home/school/community life.

I believe that other faiths - Islam included - have also passed down the generations, and we can no more change others or ourselves to other faiths as we can insist they have a different gift passed on from ancestors
This is rigid thinking.

I am sorry you have such an attitude to faith, because I believe everyone needs to be with similarly minded people who understand their reasons for everything they do

Of course people seek to surround themselves with like-minded others to reinforce their beliefs, and not just where religion is concerned. I think it can be healthy, for eg. it can provide a community and the support that comes from belonging to such, and it can be unhealthy, such as in a cult, where beliefs are not challenged or questioned.

@Sazzasez

Well, we were hitching in his area, in his heyday (1976), and he clearly spent a LOT of time driving around & offering lifts to young women. We were lucky there were 3 of us, and he was alone.

It’s in the middle of a 3-year period when he’s not known to have killed anyone. Still: I’m glad I didn’t get back into that van.

There were a lot more hitchers around, too.

I told this story (there’s more to it) at a True Stories Live storytelling event just before the pandemic, and a young woman in the audience came up & said her Dad got lifts from Fred West, who he knew from his building work. They lived in Cinderford in the Forest of Dean, which is close to where we were hitching.

@Sazzasez - interesting what you say about Fred West.

I used to holiday in a village in SW England and we got to know a local family, the father was an artist and he had 2 daughters and a son as well as a wife. The daughters were 11 and 13 when I met them and the eldest was into horse-riding and the younger one more into animals and art. Anyway, they were into the Specials a lot and had the haircuts (sort of a skinhead) - they'd had lovely long hair beforehand but were pretty girls and used to come up to London when they could for concerts/parties etc - we lived on outskirts of London so it was handy for them to get a lift and/or stay with us sometimes. We lost touch over the years and then I got in touch with the younger daughter via FB. I asked about the elder daughter who they'd had a big falling out with as a family. One of the girls went on to go to art college. The younger daughter lives in a big city now in SW and the last time I was in that area (due to relatives living nearby) I went to meet up with her and subsequently stayed with her. We were talking about my and her family, I have cousins who live in Gloucester but about 10 years younger than me. Cheltenham was mentioned too as other cousins used to live and go to school there. I mentioned Fred West and how spooky and strange that was and she suddenly said 'do you know, we were given a lift by him once? We'd been asked to stay with friends just outside Gloucester, there had been a party happening and they got lifts as they often did. They got a coach to Gloucester but then had to get a lift from the city centre to where the party was. There were buses but it was winter and it had snowed and they tried to get a lift. They recalled actually being picked up in a car or van by a very strange man who had said, if they needed a place to stay, he had rooms in his house free and also asked them what were they like re looking after young children. Luckily both of them got the lift, made their excuses and got out where he dropped them but my friend described him down to a T, small man, Gipsy looking (a bit like the singer, can't think of his name) and dirty. Friend told me years later they were looking at TV/newspaper footage of the murders and of Fred West and she turned to her then boyfriend and said I accepted a lift from him when I was hitchhiking! Lucky escape.

I moved house once and went back a few weeks later to pick up any post that hadn’t been redirected. I knocked on the door and a handy man answered and said the owners weren’t home but invited me in. As soon as the door shut I felt spooked by his demeanour and he asked if I wanted to have a look upstairs at the new works that he had done. I made my excuses and left.

@SingleMamaGY I think your post and so many other similar ones serve to highlight where real threat/danger/malice comes from - people
It's people who are capable of doing awful things. The potential to do harm is inherent in humans. Every human possesses the capacity for a spectrum of behaviour and personality traits. I think we mostly have developed senses and learned responses which override risky and harmful behaviour, and instincts which serve to protect ourselves and keep our offspring safe in order to survive.

As for spooky feelings provoked by places etc. I do think there are logical explanations for the vast majority of them but they make for good stories and a good thread, when not derailed by a debate on morality and so on and I say that even though I've contributed to the debate (because it pisses me off when real human people are not held accountable for or thought capable of truly awful actions).

I'm really logical and rational but I still love reading threads like these at night & feeling spooked, like watching horror movies. Your rational self takes a back seat for the thrill.

@TatianaBis, @Kanaloa

If you didn’t want people to discuss the nature of evil/the existence of evil then maybe you should have started a thread called ‘creepy stories but no rational explanations please.’

I am quite new to posting.. lurking for years. I did say at the beginning that I used the word evil for want of a better word. I guess it's an education how S
People can make everything about their hatred of a black woman or their personal sky diary ba.
Lesson learned. I'll go back to lurking

Sorry for typos.
Should say. I didn't expect this to turn into a thread about the sky fairy or hatred of a black woman. Lesson learned. Thanks folks

It’s been a great thread on the whole OP most people have taken it in the spirit intended, the others seem to have an overwhelming need to have the last word and bore people into submission.

@dibly

It’s been a great thread on the whole OP most people have taken it in the spirit intended, the others seem to have an overwhelming need to have the last word and bore people into submission.

Thank you! X

I would think someone confident they could broker peace in the 1600s in a country they’ve never been to where they are a person out of time has possibly been reading a bit too much Outlander. I’d also wonder if they’d maybe be better placed brokering peace somewhere else, like, I don’t know? Here and now? If you’re so confident you could sort Scottish history and prevent any warfare or rebellion surely you could put those skills to use in our world at this very moment.

@RobbieWeirdicht

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Excuse me but I most certainly did NOT ask for my post to be deleted!

Give your heads a wobble Mumsnet!!

@Kanaloa

I would think someone confident they could broker peace in the 1600s in a country they’ve never been to where they are a person out of time has possibly been reading a bit too much Outlander. I’d also wonder if they’d maybe be better placed brokering peace somewhere else, like, I don’t know? Here and now? If you’re so confident you could sort Scottish history and prevent any warfare or rebellion surely you could put those skills to use in our world at this very moment.

Apparently @groovergirl has decided that they can't 'fix' historical Scotland after all and has run to Mumsnet to get their post deleted

@robbieweirdicht and @kanaloa, I' ve reported my own post as inappropriate and badly worded and asked for it to be taken down.
No, not a messiah, but a weary person trying to sort out family problems. I'll get off this thread now.

Sorry, I didn’t realise you had deleted it. Maybe it touched a nerve with me along with all the nonsense about feeling sudden strange feelings of oppressive sadness while visiting Scotland - I’m actually Scottish you see (as in born and grew up there) and it just feels a bit silly. I mean, Scotland isn’t any more bloodstained than England, but nobody seems to be stuck down with pain and suffering in Manchester do they?

I’ve been thinking about this thread and I definitely have no spidey sense for ‘evil.’ My friend’s mum actually went to college in the States with Ted Bundy and never thought there was anything untoward about him. You’d think if you were going to get evil vibes off someone it would be him.

I read an essay years ago by Michel Foucault about the French serial killer Thierry Paulin, where he argued that the reason we ‘other’ killers as monsters/evil/inhuman is because it’s scarier to think we might ever be capable of the same. We need to see them as almost a different species.