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)

@TatianaBis

I think people need to define their terms.

When they say “evil doesn’t exist” what do they mean?

I suspect they mean supernatural evil, evil as a force.

Psychopathic acts and people exist nonetheless. How would we describe the Holocaust or Stalin if not with the term “evil”?

I think you need to define what you mean by evil tbh, if you assert that it exists.

f f f

Dachau concentration camp. Good god I have never felt the presence of evil the way I did when I visited there.

I mean people saying awful things have been done therefore evil exists doesn’t exactly cut it.

I don’t think there’s such thing as ‘sensing the presence of evil’ otherwise surely nobody would ever be murdered/attacked because everyone would give a wide berth to those evil people.

I do think some people are extremely malicious and abusive/aggressive, even if they don’t outwardly appear so. I think our minds somehow subconsciously pick up on these little signs of the malice of the person (perhaps even a tiny expression that the person doesn’t even know they are doing) and tells us to stay away from them.

I also think the power of hindsight is a great thing. If you always strongly disliked your colleague then discovered he had raped someone you would think ‘aha! I knew it, I sensed his evil!’ But if you always hated him and never discovered any wrong doing then you would just probably forget about him.

I suppose evil really means something deeply wicked/immoral, however it is generally characterised by an association with the religious or supernatural, or an idea about the inherent ‘badness’ present in someone.

That’s why I don’t really agree with it as a concept. To me it’s the same as the word ‘monster’ when used about someone who has murdered someone, and is mainly used to ‘other’ people who have committed horrific crimes rather than accepting that it’s likely to be in some way a societal issue rather than that some people are inherently evil. It sort of removes blame or responsibility for the crime in my opinion.

I have a customer facing role and on occasion I get an instinct to be wary of someone. I don't believe in evil as such, more that I believe people can be a threat to my safety.

When I was a teen I visited a shopping mall close to my school... I hadn't been before. I found it creepy & I remember looking around me wondering what it was that gave me the creeps. Within a year there was a mass killing there. I was shocked, but not surprised.

Also once I sat behind the brother of a serial killer in a courtroom. I felt paralysed watching him as he stared at the killer on the witness stand. At sentencing the judge said he felt the killer hadn't acted alone (the brother was a suspect). He's still a free man...

Yes, @Wreath21, even as a small child I couldn't watch Jimmy Savile on the TV. He made me very uncomfortable.

I've mentioned this on a 'hauntings' thread but I found Thetford Abbey, although beautiful, really unwelcoming and 'heavy'. God knows what happened there.

@TatianaBis

I think people need to define their terms.

When they say “evil doesn’t exist” what do they mean?

I suspect they mean supernatural evil, evil as a force.

Psychopathic acts and people exist nonetheless. How would we describe the Holocaust or Stalin if not with the term “evil”?

I think for me "evil" suggests something inbuilt and unchangeable, also it others the people commiting the awful acts. Which might not sound like a bad idea, but it does then absolve society of any obligation to look at ways in which "evil" behaviour may have been enabled or even encouraged.

So I prefer not to use the term "evil".

Yes, someone I once interviewed for a job. On paper, he was ok for the job (we were recruiting for a pool of casual staff so the more the merrier) but he would have been working either on his own or with just one other person (usually female). I had to admit to the other person I was interviewing with that he made me feel really uneasy even though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was about him. I’m so glad she agreed.

.. I have to drive past a petrol station where a young girl was murdered. I hate it and will drive miles further with a nearly empty tank rather than stop there.

I had a night terror with full demon hallucination, and genuinely believed I was in the presence of an evil demon that was about to drag me to the underworld. There was an overpowering sense of malice radiating from it like fog.
It was a fascinating experience, I can remember the whole thing vividly. Once you know that you are half awake and dreaming it makes more sense, but at the time it seemed completely real, nothing like a dream. I was sat up in bed with my eyes open and it was in the room with me at the foot of the bed.

The only place I can think of right now was, for me, Hatshepsut's Temple in Egypt. I remember feeling the most almighty sense of dread and have never been to a place more hostile and unwelcoming in my life. I felt really rattled and just wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible. It may have had something to do with the massacre of 62 tourists that had taken place there just four years before we visited, or due to its earlier troubled past. All I know is that I never want to go there again!

Not from the living.

Needed the loo late one night in town. Asked in the Subway and they said yeah, through the door, down the stairs blah blah blah. So off I go. Once you're down the stairs it's bright white, no shadows etc and quiet but just, I've never felt something like it. I ran to the loo, did the world's fastest emergency pee and legged it upstairs. It was just BAD, really scary and a dark feeling.

Spoke to my Mom and she can remember years ago when it was all bars along there where she worked, and said lots of weird things had happened in the basement areas.

I'd actually rather pee myself in future than use it again.

I've been to Auschwitz, Culloden, Towton and more and lived within the city walls in York till I was 20 but the only sad/evil feelings are related to what I know of the history and any obvious markers (like the manacles etc.). You'd have to be a robot not to understand these places have reverence but I've never felt anything where I wasn't already primed.

I am on ADs and wonder if this has dulled me!!

Never felt inexplicable evil from someone and I went to school with a murderer and have dated around 50% of the abusive men out there.

I feel like I see through people quickly for dickishness (though I bet we all feel we do this!), like being introduced to a friend's relative or partner and immediately thinking 'well, you're a dickhead' and being baffled people are entertaining them for a minute. But maybe everyone feels that when they meet me! I've never felt evil, just ick, but this probably just life experience.

I do like some people, I promise, and am very nice to most. Internal tolerance is at an all time low, though!

@Thelnebriati it's an incubus. I had a similar experience once when I was about 20. It stuck its snake like tongue into my ear and tried to have sex with me . Fucking hell, what an experience that was. Where the hell our collective brains dream these evil creatures up from, I do not know!

@beachcitygirl

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

I have been to Culloden and never felt a thing, it was a nice sunny warm day when I went.

I worked with a man who literally gave me cold shivers that raised goosebumps - he terrified me and I couldn't be near him without someone else being there too. He was menacing without actually making any threats, so there was nothing to report to anyone, just a gut feeling of extreme dread.

There's no 'and then I found out he was a serial killer' end to this particular anecdote, sorry.

@Lanique Eeeww! I think I would have cried if it had done that.
I threw a pillow at mine and it disappeared, so I went back to sleep like nothing had happened.

@Kanaloa

I suppose evil really means something deeply wicked/immoral, however it is generally characterised by an association with the religious or supernatural, or an idea about the inherent ‘badness’ present in someone.

That’s why I don’t really agree with it as a concept. To me it’s the same as the word ‘monster’ when used about someone who has murdered someone, and is mainly used to ‘other’ people who have committed horrific crimes rather than accepting that it’s likely to be in some way a societal issue rather than that some people are inherently evil. It sort of removes blame or responsibility for the crime in my opinion.

Totally agree with this.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/56465.The_Gift_of_Fear

Has some interesting thoughts on trusting your instincts wrt people.

As for Savile - did you see the state of him, and the fucker yodelled for a catchphrase...EVERYBODY knew he was a creepy weirdo he just happened to know the right people and ironically, do a lot of good charity wise.

No one is an emapth for noticing there was something 'a bit off' about Savile!!

I hope this doesn't offend anyone. I am a teacher, I teach mainly little ones (under 8). I've taught hundreds of kids in my time. One child - I'm not sure about evil as such but I was genuinely afraid of him. Not of what he might do to me - he was far too young of course - but just of who he was and might become, if that makes sense. I believe he was a psychopath and would not be surprised if he ended up committing violent crime when older. I have never felt that before or since - I love kids. It was just bizarre and I could never say it IRL.

I get a gut feeling about people and so far have been right every time. I can’t say what it is but I just know they are to be avoided and when it hasn’t been possible and I’ve had to have dealings/contact with them I’ve been proven right.