While reading my favorite forum (unusual stories), I came across a thread by Echo4Lima, titled “What was it?” Fascinating thread.
His discussion of the sixth sense is one we should expand upon.
In writing my book on safety topics, I discuss this sense, giving examples from experts in several fields who recount personal stories of being saved by the “sudden sense of danger”. (Jim Corbett, numerous military vets, personal experiences, etc.)
One of my own experiences was during a different kind of hunting. (It was in the “outdoors”, so I’m going to go ahead and post it; I hope you’ll forgive me.) I was a Dallas Police Officer, training a new officer. He was much older than I, in fact, he’d been an Army Ranger during Vietnam, when I was only a child. Very level-headed, mature, and cool, as you’d expect.
We were sent to a “missing neighbor” call. Nobody’s seen the folks next door for a week. Papers on the grass, etc. Maybe dead inside, maybe gone and forgot to cancel delivery, who knows? It was about noon, in the middle of the summer. Not an intense call, and we’re very relaxed about it.
As we approach the front door, I start to get a weird feeling. Almost like a physical resistance to moving forward. The hairs on my neck were standing up, but I forced myself to knock at the door. I’m being watched, and I’m the example. I’ve got to do my job. No answer. I had to look in the window. I tell my “rookie”, “Hey, go around back, see if the door’s open. I don’t smell anything like a dead body, but if we can check, we really should.” As he circles the house, I screw up my courage, and look into the windows at the front of the house. Piles of books and magazines clutter the house. I mean 4 to 6 foot piles, or stacks, more precisely. I had the strong sense of something watching me, and a strong sense of evil. Like Echo4Lima, I found myself thinking; “If I go in there, it’ll get me. I’ll never come out.” I had a sense of something lurching through the darkness of the unlit house. Something evil. The phrase someone, never came to mind. It was some THING….
I’m not a religious person, I don’t hunt ghosts or panic easily. I’ve been shot at a few times, and am still here to tell about it. I’d never felt like this except in childhood nightmares. I understand about how the amygdala (primal fear center) works, and can see no logical reason for its sudden stimulation.
About this time, the “rookie” came back around, and said the back was locked up. I said, “Good, let’s go”, and we did. Quickly. About 2 blocks away, he said, “Man, I don’t know what it was, but from the time we got out of the car, that place scared the hell out of me! I’ve never felt anything like that. There was something evil in that house.”
I hadn’t told him of my fears, and we hadn’t been telling creepy stories beforehand, but we’d both had the same primal fear instinct. We talked about it (but only between ourselves) for days.
I never found out what was in the house, and I never want to.
And I never doubt that when somebody says they sensed evil, that they were telling the truth.
Gavin deBecker, in his excellent (except for biased, anti-gun comments) book, the “Gift of Fear”, says:
“Intuition is soaring flight compared to the plodding of logic.
Nature’s greatest accomplishment, the human brain, is never more efficient or
invested than when its host is at risk. Then, intuition is catapulted to another
level entirely, a height at which it can accurately be called graceful, even miraculous.
Intuition is the journey from A to Z without stopping at any other letter along the way.
It is knowing, without knowing why."
Echo4Lima is right. It is there, it is in us, and it’s for a reason. Heed it.
