Sometimes our bodies can just sense that something is off and if we listen, it can end up saving a life. I was reminded of this when I wrote about people escaping dangerous situations by following their intuition.
So many of y'all shared your own close-call experiences with intuition. Here are some of the most thrilling ones:
1. "In high school, I was at a party with my friend. Randomly at about 11 p.m. I started to feel really sick to my stomach. I told my friend that I want to go home and she said okay. We had another friend who was our ride, but something in my gut told me to call my brother and ask him to come pick us up. The next day, we found out the guy who was going to drive us home had been drinking and got into an accident. He totaled his car. The whole passenger side of the car was gone. If we had gotten a ride with him, we would have died."
2. "One day, my siblings and I were just chilling and watching TV in the living room. My mom was at work, so we were home alone. I was eating some chips and suddenly thought to bring some to my younger brother who was asleep in my mom's room. When I went into the room, my brother was actively having a seizure. He had spit and bile coming out of the side of his mouth. I immediately called for help. If I hadn't gone in to bring him chips, who knows what would have happened."
3. "In college, I had this overwhelming feeling right before an exam that I needed to go home. I started the test, but couldn’t concentrate. I turned in my paper after five minutes and took a cab home. I found my mom bleeding in bed. She had a cyst in her uterus, and it ruptured. She had to have an emergency hysterectomy, but she was otherwise perfectly healthy."
4. "When I was in college living in the dorms, a few of us were watching a movie that we'd all been talking about when suddenly my friend got up and left. She went to go take her laundry to her car to take home with her the next day, and she didn't come back. Later, she told us that when she got outside, there was another girl we knew who lived there who had tried to overdose on her prescriptions and needed to be taken to the hospital. She lived, and my friend later talked about how she just suddenly thought she should take her laundry out which didn't make sense — why not do it later or just when she was leaving? But she did it anyway and because of it, she was there when that girl needed her."
5. "I was driving with my sister on one of the main roads in our town. I was in the left lane and we were coming up to a hill where you really couldn't see over the other side of. I suddenly felt like I needed to move to the right lane, so I did without even looking. A car came speeding the wrong way in the lane I'd just been in. It would have been a head-on collision."
6. "My mom and her cousin were at the Boston marathon the year of the bombing. They were cheering on my mom's other cousin who was in the race. They were on their way to watch the rest of the race at the finish line, where one of the bombs would go off, when my mom's cousin stopped in her tracks. She said that she knew something bad was going to happen, and that they should just head home instead. They were on the train back home when the bombing happened. They didn't even know what went down until I called my mom later that day in tears after watching the news. My mom was almost another victim of that horrible tragedy, but her cousin saved them that day because of her intuition."
"It still makes me cry when I think about it." —kkkaaaaiiitttt
7. "I am fairly young but have had stomach and digestion problems since high school. It got to a point where I knew I needed a colonoscopy just to make sure nothing cancerous was downstairs. I went to the doctor and he dismissed me, saying I was 'too young' to get a scope done. I kept telling him I thought I needed one and things felt wrong. He finally relented. They found so many tumors during the colonoscopy. If I didn't insist on getting checked, I would have gone full-cancer within the year. I had so many tumors that I ended up having to have two surgeries done within six months to save my bowel."
8. "I had just had my second baby and started a new 'dream' job. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong. One night, I told my husband he needed to take more pictures of me with the kids so they would remember me. It was usually me taking all of the pictures of the family and I was often missing. He took a few random shots of me with the kids at dinner time. Then, I had a strong compulsion to clean out all of my closets, drawers, and 'stuff' that I collected over the years. I threw away all the clothes with holes, organized everything, and threw away anything that I might not want someone to find in the event of my death — they call it a 'Swedish death clean,' and I was ruthless. I even put together baby boxes for the kids with notes. Two months later, I was diagnosed with late stage breast cancer."
"I am still alive five years later, after years of treatment and near-death complications. Sometimes I look back at those dinner photos I made my husband take and I can see the worry and sadness in my eyes." —leahfarrell
9. "My cat had to see a vet to have her teeth cleaned to make sure she wouldn't get an infection. After we woke up that morning, and as I was getting ready and putting on makeup, I suddenly got the feeling I had to spend the time before going to the vet cuddling her — something told me I might not get the chance ever again. I gave her some of her favorite snacks, kissed her, and snuggled her up to the very second we had to leave. I said goodbye to her at the vet, convinced it was just my anxiety acting up. When I got home I started cleaning up her toys, because I thought it would be too painful to do so if she passed away. Half an hour later, I got the call that she had suffered a heart attack due to the sedation. I’m thankful my intuition led me to spend our final moments that we had together loving her as much as possible."
10. "At the peak of the pandemic, I was working from home and my boyfriend wanted to surf with me during my lunchtime the next day. At first, I was really reluctant of going because it just felt so uncomfortable. It felt really weird and sad, and I was so close to saying no, but the next morning I woke up with a feeling that it was the last time we were going to be together. So, I went to surf with him. He drove a few hours to the point, and I was working from the car the whole way, I had meetings after meetings but I felt like I was supposed to be by his side. I had a meeting at the exact time we were going to surf, so he went alone, while I stayed in the car working. That day, it was stormy and there were big waves. He was an experienced surfer, but something felt off. 25 minutes later, I heard his voice and something pushed me outside the car to look for him."
11. "My papa had colon cancer and was supposed to be having surgery. We all got to the hospital in the morning and they told us he had tried to get out of bed and fell, and ruptured his ulcer. We all got in our cars to go home. I got a couple miles away from the hospital, and something didn't seem right. I went back, stayed with him until he woke up, almost 10 hours later. Turns out he had been over-sedated, which is why he fell in the first place. We would have never known about the over-sedation unless I had gone back."
"He couldn't get any nourishment after the stomach rupture, and unfortunately died about a week afterward." —luckyangel30
12. "After getting married, I got pregnant. At seven weeks, there was no heartbeat and my doctor said it was a missed miscarriage. By 11 weeks, I hadn't miscarried, so I had a dilation and curettage procedure. A few days later, I had lab work to check that my HCG was negative, and the result per the obstetrician said that it was. I had a weird nagging feeling about that though and one pregnancy test left, so I took it. Per the test, I was very pregnant, but I shouldn't have been. My OB's office laughed at me and brushed me off. I kept insisting that something wasn't right. Turns out, there was an error at the lab, and new lab work showed my HCG was still in the ten-thousands. I had had a partial molar pregnancy and a rare form of cancer developed in my uterus called choriocarcinoma."
"Because I listened to my gut, I was able to get early treatment." —shannonnearyg
13. "My husband and I drove to a different state to go to a friend's wedding. It was about a 10-hour drive for us and we got to the hotel around 9 p.m... Avengers: Infinity War just came out that day, and my husband really wanted to see it. I did too, but we were so tired from the drive. Normally, I would have convinced him to just go to sleep and we could see it in the next couple of days. But I just felt like we should really watch it, so we found one playing at 9:30 p.m. and went and had a great time. When we drove back to the hotel, there were cop cars everywhere and a big firetruck. The hotel roof caught fire and was still on fire when we'd returned. I stupidly ran into our room to get our luggage, and there was so much smoke. If we hadn't gone to see that movie, we would have been sleeping and lord knows if we would be here today."
14. "My dad and I were really close before he passed away. I was looking for a nursery in Qatar for my 2-year-old daughter. I visited a couple of them near our home, and came across one established in a mall. When I arrived in front of the nursery's glass door, I felt like my dad was with me and said, 'Don't go inside. The door is not wide enough.' Then, I had a weird feeling. I got out of there quickly, and I never went in. A week later, the nursery burnt down. Everybody there was trapped inside. There was an electrical failure that started a fire in the shops in the floor below. The staircase was around the elevator and there were only these options to get away. They had to be rescued them from the roof."
"It was too late and nobody made it. My dad saved my daughter." —bellen41
15. "I was working at the mall around Christmas and I had a night shift. I was planning to show up early and do some gift shopping, but got a feeling I should just stay home, take a nap, and chill instead. There was a shooting right when I had planned to go, in the same part of the mall I planned to go to. My boyfriend’s mom was shopping in that part at that time and saw the shooting."
16. "My sister and brother-in-law just had a baby and were throwing a big party with about 100 guests of family and friends on the baby's 40th day, an auspicious time in India. The party was on a Tuesday, and many people insisted to do it the next day as many people in India don't drink or eat meat on Tuesday (a religious day). But my brother-in-law insisted; he felt it should stay on the correct day and not the next day — whoever didn't want to eat or drink could do so. The day after our event, the venue was attacked by terrorists. No one at the party venue survived. If my brother-in-law had not decided to stick with the originally planned date, we would've all been dead, too."
17. "Some years ago, a new co-worker invited me to her 21st birthday party. When I got there, I instantly felt like there was a magnet between my shoulders pulling me towards the door, and I knew I couldn't stay for long. After half an hour, the feeling became so overwhelming that I told the birthday girl I was tired and went home. When she came in for her next shift, she told me 'You are so lucky you left when you did.' About 20 minutes after I left, the whole night went straight to hell."
18. "Several years ago, I kept having the same hyper-realistic dream about a specific date and an accident at my mom's job at the time. It would show the date, time, and accident over and over and it never changed — Feb 13, 11:30 a.m. The stairs to the basement would collapse while they were bringing water jug refills down, and the jug smashed full force where my mom sat. I begged my mom not to go to work that day. She said I was 'psychotic and delusional like my grandma.' She ignored what I said and went to work that day. At 11:25, she went downstairs to smoke and get lunch like always, and saw her co-workers bringing down the water jugs. She glanced at the clock and it read 11:29 a.m. She stood up and walked a few feet away to another vent. As soon as she did, the stairs collapsed and the 60-pound water jug smashed down right where her head would have been."
What's a moment in your life when your intuition inexplicably saved your, or somebody else's, life? Tell us in the comments.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.