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)

[InThePresenceOfWeevil]

When my DC was a baby, I took them for their first jabs and the nurse was so cold and horrible, she literally jabbed the baby's legs and left them with blood dripping down each thigh. She wouldn't even let me get them dressed before sending us out the room. I sat crying in the waiting room trying to do my DC's outfit back up and another lovely nurse came out to check I was ok.

The horrible nurse was later jailed for attempting to kill her mother

[InAState22]

Not evil but I have an ex MIL who I believe is the only truly wicked person I have ever met.

She has absolutely no moral compass, and her psychological control of her Dcs - including my abusive exh - was absolute. It was seeing a cult first hand. She is the only person I have ever met who lacks any basic decency or humanity and who is utterly cold.

I got out 2 years ago and am still recovering from psychological trauma at the hands of EXh, who was raised in her ‘cult’.

[JustJam4Tea]

Friend who had to deal with a man through work, had a really uneasy feelng about him. He turned up once when he'd have known she was on her own. She always made sure that never happened again. Convicted of rape.

A man who was delivering stuff to our allotments. It wasn't a busy day up there, he walked straight on to my plot and started asking questions, just had a really uneasy sense about him. It spooked me from going up there for a while as I just had a horrible sense from him - really misogynistic.

[ElftonWednesday]

Instinct combined with confirmation bias.

[SocialConnection]

I think women are both socially conditioned and more able to pick up signals from others, for our own and our children's safety.

We see, hear and feel flickers of body language, tiny micro-expressions, tone of voice, proximity etc which our survival instincts tell us to beware.

I'm pretty sure dogs can pick these up too, we know how sensitive they are.

We could probably not physically defend ourselves if attacked, so those instincts say get away now.

As to places - I think we have learned certain things like darkness, hiding places, strange noises etc can mean danger.

Low level subiminal sounds can cause uneasy gut feelings.

And places where we know bad things have happened, like castles and forts etc, starts us thinking about what else could happen there.

And after all that? Yes. I do think some people are wrong 'uns ... and we can sense that.

[JustJam4Tea]

@EftonWednesday probably - but that first instinct that something is off shouldn't be ignored I think.

[housemaus]

I do think some people are good at reading tiny signals that something is 'off' with another person.

I don't believe in a lingering sense of evil in a place etc, or at least don't think I do - often I've been somewhere very old, for example, and found it creepy but I think that's largely my head making assumptions based on stuff like horror films and ghost stories.

But there are certain people you just get a feeling off, and I think that's probably some kind of super fine tuning in some people's personalities that makes them very perceptive to others. Not in a woo way, just in a 'we don't often have to detect threats from other animals these days so our sense for potential danger is lower, and some people have still got a better sense' way.

Having said that: there's no magnetic field around a morally good or bad person, and what's good or bad is very often cultural/situational rather than fixed (like those who've met murderers: killing someone is bad, but would you have had the same 'sense' if you'd met someone who killed someone else in self defense? It's not morally the same, but the outcome is the same). So I'm not sure specifically what we'd be sensing, if you get me?

It is interesting, though. There's someone I see a couple of times a year at work events and he gives me the worst vibes, but I've no idea why.

[ladycarlotta]

@foxychox

2 places made me feel really uneasy and not surprisingly - a cave in Kanchanaburi in Thailand where UK prisoners used to hide from the Japanese and the Tuol Sleng detention centre in Cambodia. in Tuol Sleng I literally couldn't enter a room even though I really wanted to...

Tuol Sleng made me feel that way too, and so did Ottawa Jail which is a youth hostel now but looks pretty much exactly as it did when it was a Victorian prison. Mind you, in both situations I knew the history of the place.

[Pawprintpaper]

@Wreath21

I think some people have more finely-tuned instincts than others so can detect something 'wrong' with certain individuals. Nothing woo about it, just an awareness: it might be a turn of phrase or a look in the eyes; could even be something about the way they smell.

It's a useful survival instinct, really. (I am old enough to remember watching Jim'll Fix It on the telly regularly, and I certainly found Savile, even onscreen, creepy. I might have liked to have certain wishes granted, but I wouldn't have wantedto sit on his knee...)

I got that vibe about saville as a child too… weird

[52andblue]

@beachcitygirl

Ooh *@52andblue* culloden made me feel freaked out too.

It regularly comes up in lists of places people feel a sense of doom / misery /. oppression / evil (pick a word)

[MissPicky]

When I lived at home our 'front room' - the best room was always cold, even in the summer. Always had sun coming through. You had to walk to the end of the hallway to switch the top landing/stair light off. I always opened the living room door first so there would be light before switching off the other light. I would never look up the stairs in the dark......Dont think the rest of the family ever noticed anything or said anything? Never sure what I thought I would see on the stairs if I looked.

[LampLighter414]

Confirmation bias

[whiteworldgettingwhiter]

@52andblue - One (I later learned) has a reputation for being evil

🙄 What does this even mean?!

[Pawprintpaper]

There was an experiment on tv when a psychologist I think (or maybe tv doctor) passed around a jumper, people were happy to touch it/put it on until he said it belonged to a murderer (it didn’t). Everyone was really creeped out about it, said it had an evil vibe etc. the power of suggestion is quite powerful (although I do also believe evil exists, maybe not in the same way).

[CoalCraft]

I felt like this about someone once. Just felt really uneasy and distrusting the moment he spoke to me.

I later realised it was because he had the exact same accent as Moriarty from the BBC's Sherlock. 🤦

In general I think these gut feelings are just subconscious associations where something about a person reminds us of something half-forgotten but bad.

[whiteworldgettingwhiter]

@WabbitsAndWeasels

My mum tells me a story of when I was about 5 years old. We were walking through a schools nature reserve (it was actually what would become my secondary school) and I became inconsolable, refused to walk further and wanted to go home. When the time came for cross country running at secondary she informed the school I had to go around the reserve and not through (they allowed it). There was an extremely violent rape in there when I was about 13. I don't believe in things like this but do believe in gut instinct, I think I just felt the place was unsafe for whatever subconscious reason but as a 5 year old I couldn't communicate it.

This doesn't make sense. So you, aged 5, somehow foretold that there would be a rape in the nature reserve 8 years later?! That's insane. At 5 you could have been tantrumming about anything.

[HerbertChops]

Yes, I have, and so did a random man who warned me!

I was on a train station platform about 9pm heading home on my own. Not paying attention to anything. A young man came up to me and said there was a man further down the platform watching me and acting weirdly, he wanted to warn me as he looked dodgy and he’d been keeping an eye on him but his train was arriving in a minute and he was worried about me. He pointed him out but he was half hidden behind an advertising board so I said thanks to the young man, he jumped on his train and I looked back at the dodgy guy and he was staring right at me. He did look weird, there was definitely something not right about him, the look in his eyes was totally off, I can’t even explain it but he was extremely creepy.

I walked down to the end of the platform where I knew I’d be next to the exit when I got off my train and rang my mum who said she’d pick me up from our station. My train arrived, I was keeping an eye on the dodgy guy who was still further up the platform and I jumped on my train as the doors were closing. I didn’t see him get on the train and I sat facing back towards where he would have got on just in case he walked through the carriages. Didn’t see him. I was only on there 3 stops and got up to stand at the doors as the train was pulling into my station and in the reflection of the window I made eye contact with him standing right behind me. He actually smirked at me, everything about him felt evil.

Soon as the doors opened I sprinted over the bridge to the station forecourt and jumped in the car with my mum. About a year later I saw his photo in the paper, he was a serial rapist and targeted women by following them from public transport. I’d Google him every now and then to check up on him and he died in prison about 6 years later. So grateful to the young man at the station who warned me, and shows how obviously evil the rapist guy was that he was noticed.

[Lavender24]

@Mrsweasleysclock

Yes. I used to walk to school with my DD and DS. A man was on a bicycle riding towards us and said good morning (he also said it to other people so he was just a friendly type guy I guess) this went on for a few days but each day a little more conversation. For some reason I just got a creepy vibe from him, just felt like behind the friendly exterior there was a very bad man. Felt like he was scoping out the kids somehow. I changed the route I walked but I still felt the kids, especially my daughter, were somehow at risk. I even spoke to her teacher at the time to make it clear that only I would ever pick her up from school and we set up a password with the office so incase in an emergency I ever did have to send anyone else to get her, she would only be released to them with that password. I never told anyone because it seems like such an over reaction but there was just a stomach churning bad feeling I got from the man.

I actually shivered reading this.

[Cam2020]

I felt the same way about Savile! I always thought he was creepy and scary.

There was a man at work who creeped me out, no idea why. Other people felt the same way too.

[RenGreen]

Yes as a child a friend of my grandfather’s we went to his house and I met his wife and kids who were unusually quiet. Just an uncomfortable house to be in but he was loud and obnoxious. He got prosecuted for murder ( not his wife and kids but makes me wonder what sort of life they had).

[Summerhouse1998]

We were staying in East Sussex a few years ago, and my husband decided to go for a walk up to Beachy Head. When he returned he was really quiet. I asked him if everything was ok and he said "No, I've just had the most awful experience". Let me first of all say my husband is an atheist, doesn't believe in evil spirits, ghosts, afterlife etc. He said that as he walked up there he got the most overwhelming feeling of gloom, could feel something oppressive in the air. He said there were crosses near the cliff edge marking where people had committed suicide, as he got a little nearer to the edge (but within a safe distance) this voice kept shouting "jump, jump, jump" (he was the only person there at the time)
He made a quick exit out of there, said he'd never experienced anything like it and couldn't explain it, but it absolutely put the wind up him....

[Ponoka7]

There's been a lot of research done on people disliking others without knowing them. It always shows to be unconscious bias. We also look for confirmation bias.

[MmeD]

@Ozanj

Interesting and weird. Like all those people who say the Krays were lovely and turned out for their funerals. How could they? I do think that my friend must have picked up on the reactions of people coming the other way up the street - perhaps they saw Frankie Fraser behind her and reacted in a way (a start of fear, a slightly wider berth etc.) she picked up unconsciously.

[Carebear69943]

@HerbertChops

Yes, I have, and so did a random man who warned me!

I was on a train station platform about 9pm heading home on my own. Not paying attention to anything. A young man came up to me and said there was a man further down the platform watching me and acting weirdly, he wanted to warn me as he looked dodgy and he’d been keeping an eye on him but his train was arriving in a minute and he was worried about me. He pointed him out but he was half hidden behind an advertising board so I said thanks to the young man, he jumped on his train and I looked back at the dodgy guy and he was staring right at me. He did look weird, there was definitely something not right about him, the look in his eyes was totally off, I can’t even explain it but he was extremely creepy.

I walked down to the end of the platform where I knew I’d be next to the exit when I got off my train and rang my mum who said she’d pick me up from our station. My train arrived, I was keeping an eye on the dodgy guy who was still further up the platform and I jumped on my train as the doors were closing. I didn’t see him get on the train and I sat facing back towards where he would have got on just in case he walked through the carriages. Didn’t see him. I was only on there 3 stops and got up to stand at the doors as the train was pulling into my station and in the reflection of the window I made eye contact with him standing right behind me. He actually smirked at me, everything about him felt evil.

Soon as the doors opened I sprinted over the bridge to the station forecourt and jumped in the car with my mum. About a year later I saw his photo in the paper, he was a serial rapist and targeted women by following them from public transport. I’d Google him every now and then to check up on him and he died in prison about 6 years later. So grateful to the young man at the station who warned me, and shows how obviously evil the rapist guy was that he was noticed.

Omg. What a lucky escape and thank goodness for that main who warned you on the train.

[Fluffycloudland77]

Twice. Once when I had to treat a prisoner handcuffed to two prison officers with another two officers acting as guards and once when a patient held me hostage in a clinic room who’d recently been released from prison. I talked my way out of it, it was close to closing time and I was lone working.

I don’t know if he wanted to hurt me or rape me but it was very frightening. I rearranged the clinic room so the clinician was always next to the door and the manager moaned about it.

Fuck you Michelle, and fuck your frumpy hair do too.