Have you ever felt the presence of evil?

[Petridish]

I mean, without having any rational reason to feel it? It could be a person or a place.

For me, a friend's father used to really radiate evil - much later, my friend confessed that he had been physically and emotionally abused by his father

I also knew a woman who had a senior job with the police. She was a friend of a friend and I had a bad feeling about her. She eventually got struck off and imprisoned for stealing huge amounts of money from a children's charity she was in charge of.

i do wish someone who works around death a lot had read the thread and commented as to whether they'd ever experienced something similar to what i did when they took my grandfather's body. or even woo theories as to what causes such a thing. i've mostly focussed on trying to rationalise it.

the one similar feeling described on here was by a poster who felt someone behind her open up a blanket that was going to envelope her - like her i felt it was imperative that this thing didn't reach me.

grunt we rented and had prepayment meters for our gas and electric. I was going to the shop to buy top up card type things like you would with a PAYG mobile phone. ?

I've also just remembered.. before we took on the house where I met the scary trafficker bloke.. we looked at another, it was an old terraced house with a basement. It hadn't been decorated since the 60s/70s I swear.. very psychedelic.. even the bathroom.. (this was 2001) that was fine as DH was a decorator, nothing a lick of paint couldn't fix. It was going great until the agent opened the door under the stairs to the basement to show us where the meters were for when we would need to top up. It was like he had opened a gateway into a vacuum. It radiated evil. My hairs went up on my arms and neck and I felt so sick. Nope nope nope. I went outside. DH followed shortly after having said 'yes, lovely we will be in touch' and we made a quick exit. Freaked him out too. I'm not even bothered by basements, ive lived with them in my house before but this one.. It was something else. You could tell as soon as he opened the door.

Totally agree honey totally agree...also, my apologies, didn't realised you had replied about the meters X

This one will get me called woo but we can't possibly know everything about the world .
We lived in a quarrying village and the houses were old but not ancient. Like a pp we had a cellar/basement we used it as a utility room some days I could go down and feel neutral but most days I felt a strong sense of evil and it was so bad I could not go down there it was like something was stopping me it was such a paralysing fear.

One night I was cooking and saw A large black silhouette of a man in the conservatory by the cellar it wasn't anyones shadow or reflection I was home alone and the curtains were shut.

I was sat on the computer one day and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up like someone was behind me it felt awful.The dogs started growling and going mad and I went to sit with them.I told the dogs to sh and I heard a SHH behind me loud and clear that felt evil.

There was more at that house but you will be carting me off so I shall sh for now.

ThatsNotMyRabbit
It's not very nice to laugh at somebody you know.

Not ever with a person I don't think but a place.

I was out on the motorbike with DP. I go out with him a lot and I always love it, I just sit on the back and take in the views.

Anyway this one time we went a different way and when we went through this particular place I felt horrible. I just felt like I really didn't want to be there and o wished he would turn around but I didn't want to tap him otherwise he'd stop and I didn't want to stop there either, so I just had to hold on and feel terrible, then when we went through and left the place behind us I felt fine. It was like a little village thing.

Anyway when we got back I told DP that I didn't like going through that place and never wanted to again and he told me that was weird because he had the same feeling the other week the first time he went through it with his mates and told them he didn't get a good feeling about the place.

I don't know what it is. I'm not woo at all but I really wanted out of there.

Can you say where this place was Hurr1cane at all?.

Despite being all logical these days, I feel that I am often very woo. I sometimes wonder if my preconceived ideas influence the 'feelings' I get about which course of action to take, or whether it's totally random. Still not sure.

I have trouble trusting my 'gut instincts', because I don't think they're the be-all and end-all. I mean, our instincts can be trained - for better or worse - according to our childhood experiences, so (e.g) a girl with an abusive dad may be drawn to similar men as an adult because they fit her concept of normal. I have to force myself to act against my instincts all the time, like my instinct to belt my son across the face when he misbehaves (my mother's disciplinary tactic of choice) or my instinct to hide under the table when people shout (see above), or my instinct to go back and check all the windows and doors when I leave the house (anxiety). Hell, this morning I had to stop myself from checking that DS1 was really safe at school and that I hadn't imagined leaving him there.

Having said that, I do think some people are far better than others at spotting threatening micro-behaviours in others (due to training or a natural gift) and that they don't consciously know they're doing it, hence ascribing it to woo.

Also (and this will be controversial) when DS2 was a few days old I remember looking down at him in the dark as he screamed and wriggled and being absolutely certain for a whole 2 seconds, as I saw his dark pupils in wildly moving eyes, that he was a devil. As in, a demon, an inherently evil thing. It passed very fast but I remember it. Even now I feel like there is more potential for him to do horrible things than DS1, who is essentially a clumsy but well-meaning soul. So I'm not sure whether that's my instincts being right :( or just a bit broken

In summary, I don't know. This is a very intriguing thread though!

Probably not Ophio but when someone says something the equivalent of "I asked my pet unicorn and he agreed with me" it's difficult not to snigger :)

Thanks Honey and Maria for the explanation. Trying to understand how you would go to a shop for your gas and electricity did make my brain hurt. Fortunately, that's only a little pain.

Around 20 years ago I was living with my fiance who had befriended a young man across the round. The man had been in a terrible accident several years before which had left him in a wheel chair and his wife had left him shortly after. Now I am always a sucker for other peoples misfortunes and even though he was always welcoming and pleasant, I just couldn't settle when we would sit with him on an evening, his house always felt cold, I just had a really bad feeling to the point I felt nauseous. Even when we checked his home for him while he was on holiday I just couldn't shake the bad vibes. Eventually after telling my fiance that there was something about him that I didn't like our relationship began to deteriorate because of my lack of understanding towards his good friend and we went our separate ways.

15 years later I bumped into my ex, we had a chat and a catch up and he apologised to me for not listening about his friend who was arrested 10 years earlier for being in possession of child pornography (and god knows what else), horrible man I still get a chill when I think of him.

Have had this feeling several times throughout my life with various people I just tend to take a wide berth and be sure my children do the same.

Just read the one about the dog above and it reminded me of my choc lab a couple of years ago. My choc lab is the softest dog ever she barks when the door goes and then sits on the step to be stroked by complete strangers . Well anyway, one day I took my children and dog for a walk and all of a sudden she stopped in her tracks and started growling with her head down. I have NEVER seen her like that the fur on her back was up and she looked like cujo (all teeth and slobber!!), when I looked up there was a man heading towards us so I called my children and had them stand on the opposite side of me. My dog stood between myself and the man and didn't stop growling or take her eyes off him until he had gone past us and walked a good 10 metres away. When he had gone she just switched back to her usual self and I've never seen her do it since.

21andcounting that's fascinating about your dog's reaction to the man. I wonder what on earth animals are picking up (and how) when they do this.

Probably not an indication of evil, but 21andcounting, my dog (placid, gentle, wouldn't hurt a fly) did exactly that when we put a scarecrow up in our field. She kept between me and it at all times and when I tried to walk to it, she wouldn't let me, kept pushing me away.
I don't know what she sensed in it, but it was quite reassuring that she was so protective.

Talking of dogs and extreme reactions - my brother once tried to walk our (ridiculously soft and docile) dog down a certain lane which I can't identify as it would maybe out where I grew up - but this place has a Tudor building on it that is now listed as an English Heritage site. Now, our village even the house we lived in was old - old things everywhere around. My aunty lived in a Tudor house. So that kind of thing didn't particularly bother big brother. But he said the dog just suddenly froze and went mad and then refused to move another mm. Literally all four legs stiff like Scooby Doo. Part way down this lane just sort of the EH site.

There is no way anyone is moving a full sized bull terrier who doesn't want to move, so he picked her up, turned her round, and took her home.

He told me about it. I had this trick where if she 'did a refusal' (a big EBT thing) on a walk, I'd lift her up, spin round fast in a circle, then stick her back on the ground facing the way I wanted her and she'd usually trot compliantly after me. So we went back together, and tried this. No joy.

It's 40 years on but he still mentions it sometimes, so it seems to have really spooked him. Out of interest, about ten years ago we were driving past and had our dog (also a bull terrier) in the car. We decided to stop, get out and walk her a bit down the lane. She trotted perfectly happily past this building.

Tbh her reaction did initially freak me out a bit, because like I said I had never seen her do that before. I do still wonder if maybe there was a scent that she didn't like because he was quite a distance away when she started to react and dogs noses are very sensitive. Either way there was no way he was coming near us that day and I dread to think what would of happened if he had tried!

"down a certain lane which I can't identify as it would maybe out where I grew up"

Your choice, of course, but just out of curiosity, what's the problem with outing where you grew up?

I really am quite :O at how lax schools used to be when hiring staff.

Make that

hmm yeah my nan always says "there was none of this back in our day" what they really mean is nobody knew or spoke about it.

grunt it is a small village. Why would you need to know which one?

My friends are very experienced foster carers and have had looked after many many children in their time, and have seen a lot of troubled kids.
Both told me about one placement they had, a young teenage boy. He'd been moved from foster home to foster home as no one was happy to have him for long. My friends have seen it all and dealt with all kind of unhappy children, and deemed experienced enough to give him a stable home.

Being lovely foster carers, they're a loving and patient couple, always looking for ways to develop a good relationship with their placements, finding ways to boost confidence etc. But this one boy was something else.

They never felt so scared in their own home and would often take shifts to sleep, and place heavy furniture behind the door of their bedroom.
They say he wasn't like anybody else they have ever met and say they worry for what he will grow up to be. Maybe not evil but definitely a psychopath in the making.

Needless to say he didn't stay long with them, he had to go to a residential unit in the end. I'm hoping he's moved far far away, even though I never met him.

When we were house hunting, we saw one house which was tastefully decorated and had lovely period features, but felt sooooo wrong. Both my husband and I felt sadness, and an ominous oppressive vibe there. When we were led upstairs by the owner, she apologized for not getting round to fixing the door and the plaster work around the door frame of one of the bedrooms as they had been kicked / punched by her daughter. She went on to say that her daughter had been suffering with depression.

We left thinking, is the house full of negativity because of the daughter's mental illness or was the daughter's depression brought on by the negative vibe in the house??

I have never experienced real evil, but I do believe in trusting your instincts.

When I was at school a man sat down beside me in the local park. He looked normal, clean and well shaven but I just knew there was something not right. He proceeded to open his coat and flash at me! I quickly ran into the busier part of the park.

Not evil but creepy.