It’s not uncommon for people to have a feeling that “something bad is going to happen.” These feelings often precede an announcement of the intention to divorce or a diagnosis of illness. Incidents of this nature are often brushed off because people “know their spouses well enough to realize something is wrong” or they “know their bodies well enough to feel when something has invaded their immune system.”
Sometimes, however, predictions and premonitions precede something so terrifying that it cannot be comprehended by the person seeing the vision or dreaming of their inevitable future. This list reveals ten of these feelings that led to terrifying realities.
Related: 10 Unsettling Premonitions That Came True
10 Shadows of Fear
Evelina Onida had lived in Illinois for many years when Typhoon Haiyan struck her home city of Tacloban in the Philippines in November 2013. Telephone and internet services were both down, and Evelina didn’t immediately know the extent of the tragedy and how it affected her family. However, she had a premonition in the days leading up to the disaster.
She was at a party with friends when she was asked to retrieve something from the cellar. Inside the cellar, she felt uneasy. Then shadows started swirling around her, and she fled. When news of the approaching typhoon broke, she couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that her family would not get through it unscathed.
And she was right. She eventually learned that her father, Salvador Onida, had drowned and that the rest of her family lost everything in the disaster.[1]
9 Passing By
In May 1982, Carol Kingston and her husband, John, were woken up by the incessant ringing of their doorbell at one o’clock in the morning. John rushed to the front door only to find their porch empty. Carol had a fleeting thought that became stronger the more she pondered it. She was suddenly sure it was her brother Steve who was in the SAS and based not far from her home.
The bell rang again, and John went to the door again, but nothing. It rang a few more times, but both decided to ignore it. At ten the next morning, Carol’s father phoned with sad news. Steve had been killed in a helicopter crash hours earlier.
Carol’s eight-year-old son had a dream about Steve that night. He told his mother that he saw Uncle Steve rise up out of a body of water, his arms stretched to the heavens, saying, “Don’t worry about me. I’m okay now.”
The family later learned that the helicopter crashed over the South Atlantic Ocean and that Steve had subsequently drowned.[2]
8 “I’ll never know if I could have prevented it.”
When Sue Klebold gave birth to her son Dylan, a powerful sense of impending doom enveloped her. Her thoughts took on a life of their own, and one, in particular, wouldn’t let go: “This child will bring me a terrible sorrow.” Soon after, Dylan became ill and needed surgery. Sue reflected on the awful moment she’d experienced after his birth and wondered if it was some type of intuition at play trying to tell her that her son was ill.
Years passed before her premonition came to terrifying fruition. Seventeen-year-old Dylan woke up early on the morning of April 20, 1999, and bounded heavily down the stairs without turning on any lights inside the house. Sue heard him and called out for him, but he simply shouted “Bye” and left the house. Sue was immediately concerned because he sounded “off,” and she implored her husband to speak to Dylan after school.
But he would never get the chance. Dylan Klebold and his friend Eric Harris murdered 13 people and wounded 24 others inside their high school that day—Columbine High School in Colorado. They both committed suicide afterward.
Five years later, it would emerge that the two teenage shooters weren’t trying to fight back against bullies as many believed to be the case. In reality, they wanted to be known as the two people who inflicted the “most deaths in U.S. history.” And they came close to their ideal. If their planned bombing had gone smoothly, more than 600 people would have died in a single explosion. And even more bombs would have gone off in their cars, ripping through gathered crowds, rescue workers, and reporters, if they had wired the explosives properly.[3]
7 Voice in Her Head
On December 17, 1980, Etta Smith was going about her workday at an aerospace company in California when she heard a disturbing story on the news. A thirty-one-year-old nurse by the name of Melanie Uribe had been missing for days, and police were no closer to finding her.
Suddenly, Etta heard a voice talking to her. She looked around but then realized the voice was inside her head. The voice said: “She’s not in a house.” Shaken up, Etta began to see a picture in her mind. She saw a dirt path, a canyon, a curved road, and something white peeking through some shrubbery.
Etta couldn’t just let it go and decided to go to the police and report her experience. She told police she believed Lopez Canyon was what she’d seen in her vision and that Melanie Uribe would be found there. The police officer she spoke to was accommodating enough, but Etta worried he wouldn’t take her seriously. She enlisted the help of her daughter, Tina, and together they drove to Lopez Canyon in Los Angeles County.
As soon as she stepped out of the car, Etta experienced an intense feeling of fear and dread. She and her daughter drove a little further, and then Tina spotted something in the brush. It was a body wearing white nurse’s shoes. Etta immediately contacted the police, who arrived shortly afterward and removed the body. It was confirmed via autopsy later that the body was indeed that of Melanie Uribe and that the nurse had been raped and murdered.
As expected, Etta became a suspect and was locked up for several days while police investigated the case. However, it wasn’t long before three young men were arrested for the crime, and Etta was released without being charged. The three killers were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.[4]
6 “I feel like something’s gonna happen.”
On the morning of September 20, 2009, 21-year-old hip-hop producer Kevin Robert Harris II hugged his mother and held on to her. His mother, Katheryn, recalled that she asked him whether something was wrong, to which he replied, “Everything’s just happening so fast. I feel like something’s gonna happen.”
Katheryn told him not to think like that. Her musician son was on the road to immense success, with Ice Cube just having bought one of his tracks and rumors flying that both Rihanna and Britney Spears wanted to work with him. Things were definitely looking up.
But that evening, Kevin was sitting inside his car outside a music studio in Inglewood, California, when a car filled with people drove up beside him. He opened his window, probably because he knew some of them. Then, shots rang out, breaking the silence. Kevin was shot at close range, shell casings littering the inside of his car. He was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly afterward.
His murder remains unsolved.[5]
5 Impending Doom
Debbie Turnbull was overjoyed after giving birth to her son, Christopher. She was told she would never fall pregnant and believed that Chris was her “miracle baby.” Soon, however, her joy was replaced by an ever-increasing sense of impending doom and an unshakeable feeling that her son would die young.
As the years passed, Chris survived two near-drownings, and Debbie began to believe that her fear was irrational. Chris was a strong swimmer and loved the water. But then tragedy struck when Chris was 15 years old. The teenager went swimming at Capel Curig near his family’s home in Wales and was sucked down 9 meters (30 feet) into a cold whirlpool under a waterfall. He drowned after suffering cold water shock and a minor heart attack.
Debbie had dropped him off that morning, not knowing that his emphatic “I love you, Mum” would be the last words her son would ever say to her.[6]
4 An Inescapable Certainty
Susan Palmer didn’t believe in clairvoyance and wanted nothing to do with fortune tellers and the like. So when a psychic predicted that Susan’s husband would die when their son turned 13, she brushed it off as nonsense. Susan didn’t even have a son at the time. Eventually, she gave birth to a boy whom she named Matthew.
Many times, Susan and her husband would joke about the prediction made by the psychic. But mirth turned to tragedy when Susan’s husband died three weeks after Matthew turned 13. Susan was left emotionally incapacitated and couldn’t reconcile the psychic’s prediction with the loss of her husband. About a year later, Susan started reflecting on the premonition. She still couldn’t produce a plausible answer for what had taken place but reflected that her reaction was one of awe and discomfort.[7]
3 Sometimes, Nightmares Come True
A young woman named Amanda from Washington State was having a nightmare, tossing and turning next to her husband. In the nightmare, she was standing next to her husband in their baby’s room, where the chandelier that hung above the crib now lay shattered inside it. Below the pieces of the chandelier was the body of her child, crushed to death. Outside, a storm raged furiously. Her eyes caught the time on the clock: 4:35 am.
Amanda awoke with a start. A chill ran down her spine as she got out of bed and ran to her baby’s room. Her child was sleeping peacefully. She looked outside, and there was no sign of a storm. But she remained shaken, so she picked up her baby and took him back to her room.
Both Amanda and her husband were woken up by a loud crash hours later. Rushing to the baby’s bedroom, they found the chandelier inside the crib. As they stood together in shock, they became aware of a storm raging outside.
Amanda looked at the digital clock. The time was 4:35 am.[8]
2 “I’m very fearful.”
School shootings are a terrifying reality for Americans. Teachers giving up their lives to try and save their students and the brutal slaying of innocent children continue to headline newsreels.
Even as long ago as 1992, teachers knew that simply going to work every day didn’t mean they would return home safely. Robert Brens felt this fear very strongly. He told a fellow teacher, “I’m very fearful that one day one of these students might harm me or even kill me.” He went on to tell Robert Ledford, “And if someday this were ever to happen to me, please make sure that the death penalty is put on this person.”
Somehow Brens knew his fate. On May 1, 1992, former Lindhurst High School student Eric Houston arrived at the school armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and a sawed-off .22 caliber rifle. He held a grudge against Robert Brens for failing his class; Brens was his first target. Houston fatally shot the teacher at close range. He then went on to shoot and kill three students at the California high school. Ten more people were injured during the shooting.
Twenty-year-old Eric Houston was convicted and sentenced to death for the murders. He is currently on death row.[9]
1 Written Account of Premonition
Private Jake Kovco had been on a tour of duty in Iraq for 14 days when he had a disturbing dream. The dream bothered him so much that he wrote it down in his journal: “I dreamt I was sitting in our room (here) by myself. And for some unknown reason, I pulled out my 9mm pistol and shot myself in the head!? I have no idea why, but it seemed I wanted to see what it felt like.”
Kovco went on to describe the sound of the “click of the hammer” as he shot himself and how the sound went dull as the bullet entered his skull. He also wrote that it seemed like he could feel the bullet inside for a few seconds before going limp and starting to bleed out. He wrote that he was not suicidal and had no intention of shooting himself but believed the dream was a premonition of him getting shot in the head. Kovco ended the journal entry by writing to his wife and children, “I love you Shelley, Tyrie, and Alana, you are all my world. My heart will always be with you… your loving husband and father, Jake.”
A month later, on April 21, 2006, Kovco’s body was discovered in his quarters in Baghdad. He had been shot in the head, and it was determined that the bullet came from his own pistol. The bullet exited his head the same way he’d described in his journal entry. In addition, it was discovered that Kovco was not alone in the room but that two of his friends were present. They both testified that they didn’t see the shooting and that Kovco never seemed suicidal.
A military inquiry concluded that Jake Kovco mishandled his pistol and accidently shot himself in the head.[10]