Sometimes, you can just tell when someone is bad news. You get an eerie feeling that a person is gonna be a problem, and you have to go with your gut.
And your intuition is often right, so if you get that feeling of dread, don’t fight it. It might just save you from a dangerous situation – like it did for these AskReddit users.
1. Creepy bus ride
“A random guy sat next to me at the bus stop and I instantly felt weird about it. He didn’t even look at me, but I somehow knew he wasn’t there to wait for the bus, he was there because of me. I was very drunk, unfortunately, and disregarded my own feelings.
He got on my bus and sat directly across from me. I ignored him for most of the ride, as I was quite out of it. I was a bit surprised when he went to get off and called to me from the door: “aren’t you getting off? Hello? Are you getting off?” I didn’t answer and he sat down again, but this time he put his feet on the seat next to me so I was locked in.
We went one more stop and the driver told us this was the last stop. I got off, found it a bit creepy that the guy would go off too, but thought there would be more people there as well – then I looked behind me. We were the only people left on the bus.
I stood outside the bus and thought about what I should do. I could see the guy in the corner of my eye, he was standing about 5-10 meters from me and a bit away from me, but I knew he was keeping an eye on me. The bus driver leant over to me and asked if I knew the guy. I said no. The bus driver asked me to get on again. I did, and he closed the doors behind me. The guy instantly threw himself at the doors, screaming to be let in, banging his fists at the door.
I’m very, very fortunate that my bus driver was smarter than me that day.”
2. Creeper
“Not me, but my cousin. She was on an overnight greyhound bus and a man got on and many of the seats were full. He walked towards the open seat next to her and looked as if he were going to sit there and my cousin goes “you can’t sit here” usually a very open and friendly person she kind of thought to herself “wow that was b*tchy of me” but she had a bad feeling about him.
So the man finds another seat and my cousin falls asleep. A little while later she wakes up to the bus pulled over to the side of the road and police cars outside. The police come onto the bus and arrest the man who wanted to sit with my cousin. He had found another woman to sit with and attacked her.”
3. A real psycho
“Back when I was in high school some new kid joined. Only really interacted with him on the football field but he really rubbed me the wrong way. I’m not a small guy, I’m big enough to fend for myself so while he creeped me out, I wasn’t really scared of him (I should have been, but ego gets in the way when you’re a teenager)
All of a sudden, he tries to injure me in discreet ways while playing football, like stamping on my ankle, tripping me up while none of us had the ball / nobody was looking etc.
After a couple more incidents he stepped it up, a lot.
He ended up stabbing me in the face while I was reading a book. We don’t know if he meant to murder me, or seriously maim me but he punched me three times with a sharpened key in his fist. Two of the blows got deflected by my glasses, which left a giant mark on the lenses and where my temple was.
Sometimes you feel off about someone but they don’t look like they can really threaten you too much but in reality they can and will.”
4. Story about mom
“Not me, but my mom. My sister was going to visit her friend out of state, so her friend’s friend offered to drive her there. He drove a few hours to get to our house and was noticeably tired when he arrived, so my sister suggested that he just sleep on our couch and they’ll go in the morning. The entire night, my mom’s going in and out of our rooms saying that there’s something off about the guy; that she doesn’t really like him but can’t figure out why.
She actually quietly went out the side door and wrote down his license plate at one point. The next morning my sister’s in his car for maybe 30 minutes before she feels sick and asks him to just take her home. Which he does, much to my mother’s delight. About 6 months later my mom’s looking at her news feed when she sees a familiar face and calls my sister and I over and yells, “I told you something was off about him!”. Turns out that about a year earlier he murdered his ex-girlfriend and that his friend, who helped him bury her body, finally decided to tell the cops not because he developed a conscience, but because he was mad at him for stealing his toaster.”
5. Stop that man!
“My mum and I were in a café and she had her handbag down by her feet. This couple comes in and sits at the table behind us, and he attracted my attention because he kept poking his GF, telling her how to sit and stuff and just… The hairs on my neck went up, I hate that controlling bullshit. So he’s in my periphery and this guy won’t sit still when my mum says “hey where’s my bag?”
She finds it a second later, moved and open – she reached in to get her purse and said “my card has gone!”
So the couple behind had stood and were walking at speed towards the door and I didn’t even hesitate “STOP THAT MAN!” because I figured I could apologise later if I was wrong. One of the waitresses was right by the door and she followed him out the door at which point the guy dropped my mum’s card mumbled something about having found it and then ran for it. I guess if he hasn’t been such an ars* to his GF I probably wouldn’t have noticed.”
6. Not my dad anymore
“Hey, don’t know if anyone will see this, but around middle school I started getting creeped out by my father. He wouldn’t even do anything you could point to and say “That right there, that’s it.” But you just got the feeling he was like a spider…watching and waiting. Something lurking and dangerous.
He began running with a group called “Scam the Scammers”, where they’d make scammers do ridiculous things. It was “all in good fun” because “they deserved it”. Humiliating, sometimes painful things.
Teachers wouldn’t call home to discuss anything we did, positive or negative. There were notes in my file to only discuss things with my mother, no matter what.
He started to become obsessed with conspiracy theories. Obama was a Kenyan Muslim, my mother was cheating on him with a woman and three men, all sorts of things.
You got the feeling something was wearing my father as a skin suit. That’s the best way I can describe it.
Turns out he has an inoperable brain tumor. He’s permanently changed. My father is alive, but he’s no longer my dad.”
7. “I found him very creepy”
“When i was around 14 a guy started in my school. We were never really friends cause i found him very creepy, but we moved in the same circles, so i met him now and then. Something was off with him. Fast forward a few years he stabbed a guy to death cause he wouldn’t give him a cigarette. When he got out of prison he found god in a burning bush on a mountain, and became a devoted christian. Then he stabbed another guy to death for unknown reasons. Don’t know what became of him after that.”
8. The guy from class
“Not me, but my friend talks about his experience all the time.
My Friend had a very off feeling about some guy in his Computer Science class. At the start of the semester, the professor went around the class and insisted everyone introduce themselves, as well as explain why they chose to take Computer Sciences. Everyone responded very generically “Computers are cool” and “Its a growing industry” but not this guy.
His response was “There’s not a lot of girls in this class”. From that point on, he was quiet and kept to himself. He was balding, dressed poorly, had bad hygiene and was always on his laptop.
Last year, that very same guy rented a van and ran over 26 people. Killing 10 and injuring 16. At the end of his rampage, he attempted suicide by cop but was unsuccessful. His Facebook revealed he praised Elliot Rodger and was an active member of a 4Chan incel group (a misogynistic virgin cult). His hatred for women and sexually successful men reached a climax when he committed the deadliest terror attack in Canadian history, all because he couldn’t get laid.”
9. Shudder
“Not something that happened to me, but my mum. She just had a random feeling that she should visit my grandma one Thursday after getting off work. Usually she’d just put it off and do it during the weekend but for some reason, she did it because she felt something was odd.
She arrived to see my grandma laying in her bed bleeding from her head. Apparently my grandma had fallen down before that and managed to pull herself back into bed. Ambulance was called and everything went fine after. My whole family shudders at what would have happened if my mum decided not to.”
10. Eerie
“When I was in high school I worked at an Orange Julius with a girl. I was working there from the ages of 15 to 17. This girl was in her early twenties and her boyfriend was around her age. Every time he came in I never said hi to him I never talk to him I just got this very eerie terrible feeling about him, and around the age 15 I had learned to listen to this feeling.
Growing up in the ghetto can make you very vigilant. Anyways so I never talked to this guy while my other co-workers say hi talk to him all the normal nice things most do with their coworkers significant others when they frequent their work. I ended up leaving the job at 17. She left awhile before me.
I went down to the police station one day to do something (I don’t remember) and saw our Most Wanted people up on a board and I was looking at them and saw her boyfriend’s face. He was wanted for murder, he had murdered her. I’ll never forget the chills that ran down my back when I read that. Still get them when I tell the story.”
11. Not enough emotion
“I took a year off my junior year in college to co-op/intern at a company. This one research scientist i worked with seemed normal, but there was just something slightly off with how he interacted with people – like, as if there was less emotion behind his interactions with his colleagues. A lot of us nerdy engineers have our own quirks, i know i do, so i didn’t really think about it much.
The time i really stopped and thought to myself how something seemed off though was when i asked him about a picture of a raccoon on his desk. He went into this story about how he and his family had found a baby raccoon, raised it ad part of their family like a dog, etc. He then talked about how he had to kill it for whatever reason. So this happened 10 years ago so i dont remember the exact specifics, but i do remember thinking that the way he described it seemed odd considering he was talking about having to kill a family pet…. i grew up on a farm and am accustomed to people having to put their dogs/horses/etc. down, yet this guy didnt seemed to have the same reverence that most people do. Anyway, if i had to put a word to it, at the time i felt like the guy had no empathy.
Literally one week (two weekends) after the raccoon story he goes on an murder spree. Other than a colleague telling me Monday morning, nobody ever talked about it. Such a weird experience.”
12. Very odd
“A guy in one of my college classes seemed off to me. I don’t know why. Just weird little things … like one time there was spilled water on the ground and he ended up putting his bag in it. He noticed, but pretended there was nothing wrong. Left it there for the entire duration. Then, when class was over he didn’t move from his seat. And stayed there after everyone left. I thought it was so odd. A few months later, he was arrested for killing his mother. He was found playing video games while her body decomposed in the next room.”
13. The priest
“This is creepy in a different way than most here, but I think it’s relevant. 20 years ago, when I was a practicing Christian, my church got a new priest. He may as well have been God himself the way people fawned over him. I liked him at first too. Then, after a few brief conversations, I got this feeling that his entire life was a major power trip, and he was in no way cut out to lead a congregation of actual human beings.
After he made an off-the-cuff remark to me about being divorced (the shock!) I was like, “Later dude” and transferred to another church. People thought I was nuts, because how could I not adore Father Perfect the way they did?
After a few months, I noticed a trickle of people from my former parish in my new church, and that trickle eventually became more like a flood.
“Father Perfect” had formerly been a highly respected surgeon with a God complex, and he was quite used to giving orders and having them carried out without question (as I would imagine is necessary in a surgical suite). Not the best quality for a man of the cloth.
Eventually he drove out several deacons, the choir leader, the sexton, and about half the congregation. He put a message on the church answering machine about what types of messages could and couldn’t be left. Total control freak who apparently mistook himself for God. He finally left after the parish completely fell apart.”
14. Lightning
“Well, i guess i was the one the creepy feeling was about. When i was little i always slept in a crib at my parents house. My Dad was always vast asleep and nothing could wake him up fast. One night as i have heard, he just woke up in the middle of the night, screaming my name. Ran to my bed and picked me up. Turned around and as he walked away lightning hit the roof and the window broke and fell on the bed i was sleeping in.”
15. At the movies
“Oh I have a story for this! When I was 15, my two friends and I went to the movies to watch a 18+ horror movie. I sat on a bench next to the escalator while they went to buy tickets, because we were already rejected that morning (I was very obviously under 18). I had a strange feeling that the guy who sat next to me was taking pictures of me, but ignored it because thought I wasn’t attractive enough to gain attention, placed it under being paranoid. My friends came back, we went up the escalator and while I was making a joke about the guy following me as we reached the top floor, my friends ran.
Turns out, he actually was following me with his two very large friends. They looked for us while I hid in the arcade nex to the cinema, we sneaked past them and regroup, then told the cinema security about the men (who were standing at the entrance, still looking for us).
Three/four cinema security workers stood next to our hall entrance while we watched the movie that none of us could focus on because we were so shaken up by it. Gave me hope in humanity for all the help we got.”
