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Bad Vibes About People

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Ilikepencils

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I'm sure there is probably already a thread somewhere related to this, but I am interested to hear anybody's experiences of getting 'bad vibes' around certain people. What causes us to have these feelings?

I always remember one incident when I was about 10 and I went into a shop that I never normally visited with my mother. It was a grocer's store, nothing out of the ordinary and there was a checkout in the middle. There was a tall, thin man with grey hair manning the checkout and for some reason I got such an awful feeling about him that I couldn't go anywhere near the check out. I'd never seen him before. Didn't know him or anything about him and yet the feeling was so intense that I just wouldn't budge and stood uncomfortably at the door waiting for my mother to hurry up so we could get away!

I can't remember what he looked like or if there was anything about his posture or manner that might have creeped me out but I never went in that shop again. If I ever passed I would glance nervously in the door, hoping to not to see 'the creepy man' yet kind of hoping to see him again, to see why he creeped me out so much! I never did see him again. My logical mind says he must have subconsciously reminded me of an unsavory character in a film or something but I've never forgotten that horrible feeling. Bizarre.
 
I don't get this much, but Techy does. For example, as soon as he was introduced to a new relation-by-marriage of mine, he knew that this person was bad news. He was proved right over and over again. :(
 
I occasionally have those feelings to varying degrees. When I first left school I worked in a bank and had to hand deiver letters to nearby businesses.
There was a travel agent who was always very smiley but I just didn't trust him. Turned out later he had defrauded the bank of thousands.
Another was a jeweller and I felt so nervous near him I would put the letters on the counter and quickly leave. After I left the bank I found out whenever his wife went on holidays he would induce one of the young bank girls to stay at his house.
When I helped at canteen when my children went to school one of he women would bring her sister in law and I could not stay in the same room as her as I felt sick in my stomach.Turned out she had been in jail for assault with a knife.
Another was a woman one of my friends had at her house one day when I visited who made me feel really nervous. I wrote elsewhere about the incident where I had never been so afraid and refused to visit my friend if she was there.
 
I guess that over a few million years of evolution the human ability to read body language has got pretty refined, helping us to spot a wrong 'un.

Those people not so skilled at this may well fall victim to a wrong'un in one way or another, and in extremis this may result in them being removed from the gene pool... :(
 
There's a couple of people like that I see around who I don't actually know anything about, but I seem to lose the will to live as soon as they come in the room.

One is a woman who is often at the morning lane swim session, thankfully she gets there quite a bit later than me, so if she shows up I change lane, just don;t want to be anywhere near her.
 
I always had a bad feeling about a girlfriend of one of my long-time friends. I actually commented to another mate that I thought she was a vampire and obviously that made me look quite mad. But I had to explain I wasn't talking about a vampire in the fictional blood-sucking sense, but in the sense that she sucked people's energy out, like a negative black hole. Anyway I have always felt distinctly uncomfortable in her presence and to my disappointment he's been with her ever since.

Also to add-the friend in question is an alcoholic and drug addict and his addictions and mental problems have increased a hundred-fold since she's been in his life. In fact from what I have heard she quite likes him that way and quietly encourages his increasingly bizarre damaging behaviour. This makes me think my instincts were right-but who knows.
 
I think there's a lot to be said for instinctive reaction to people, afterall we talking about millions of years of evolution as a social animal where picking the "good" from the "bad" could mean life or death. Children's instincts seem to be particulalry acute, unspoiled as they are by politeness and an over rational mind. Since being a parent myself, even though I have usually very good instincts on people, I have learned to listen to kids because a couple of times they've picked up something dodgy when I haven't.

One that always sticks in my mind from my childhood was a partner of a relation of mine (I'm from quite a close extended family). I was a young child, about 7, when I first met him, and he creeped me out so much I didn't like being in the same room as him, he just made me feel horrible and a bit panicky. I wouldn't let him near me or touch me or talk to him even though on the surface he was perfectly friendly and polite, until it became a family joke. Later on when my relation divorced him (partly on grounds of increasingly outspoken and unsavory views) it turns out he was a member of the BNP and a generally racist fascist little sh*thead. To my knowledge he's never been physically violent or in trouble with the law, but, yes, I applaud my childhood instincts very much.
 
Yes, children don't seem to have a 'filter' so they can sense a person's demeanour quite accurately.

My Mum told me about a visit from the local C of E vicar when I was young (about 4). When I'd seen this man with his black outfit and red face, I ran away and hid. My Mum chatted to him over a cup of tea, and I only came out when he'd left.

Anyway, as it turns out, years later that vicar was found to be a bit of a paedo...and my Mum in recent years said she was always amazed at how accurate my instincts were.

Mind you, as an adult, my instincts aren't so good. I once had the misfortune to make the acquaintance of somebody who turned out to be a nasty little psycho, and it took me some time to get away from this person's sphere of influence.
 
My daughter works in a supermarket and the other day she told me she always avoids one of the men there, a butcher, as she gets bad vibes from him.
Today she came home and said that in the lunchroom he started talking to one of the other women and boasted that he had been charged with murder once but the police couldn't put a proper case as they couldn't find a body.
She spoke to the other woman later and she said she was petrified and had also avoided speaking to him before as she also got a funny feeling.
 
Me too. :shock:

The man accused of killing April Jones is a butcher. Bits of burned bone, possibly human, have been found in his home. :(
 
:( Brrrrr... It's the classic horror film set up - the nutter who works in the slaughter house, and then turns his "skills" on to victims. :evil:
 
Well at least he'll have known what he's doing, i mean, you wouldn't want to be hacked up by someone that's useless with a knife, would you? :p
 
The only thing I want to know about this butcher is which supermarket we have to avoid.

And don't mention the pies...
 
Apparently he served in Vietnam so he may have been having some kind of psychotic episode,and perhaps in his imagination?
A woman I know is married to a vet and after he worked in a funeral home he started having strange violent behaviour, so much so that he doesn't leave the house now apparently. She works fulltime now so I don't see her around.
 
A couple of months ago I saw a woman who scared the crap out of me.
She had short black spikey hair, and her face seemed "long", or at least her jaw did, she looked kind of like a dog.

Now, I should say that I was in a fetish club, but that's nothing unusual for me, and there's always weird and wonderful people wandering about who might be described as "strange looking". The vampire look is quite popular, in fact , lots of people go out of their way to look as disturbing as possible, but I'm an old hand and don't see anyone's clubbing look as anything out of the ordinary these days. Frankly, the harder some people try, the more they look like cartoon characters.

So, black contacts and pale face is standard stuff, but this woman seemed to glow too. Not glow as in "I holiday at Sellafield", more that wherever she was, it looked like her face was being lit very subtly, like in a classic B&W movie. I'm assuming that this is a very in-depth make-up technique utilised by professionals (rather than the trowel and slap technique employed by the vast majority of women, with varying results, mostly being "satisfactory") .

When I caught a glimpse of her face on, I could see that glint that usually points to a mouth full of fillings, but then again, maybe she had false fangs stretching the skin around her mouth. She certainly wasn't hamming it up, playing the scary blood-drinker, or snarling at anyone, I didn't see her acknowledge anyone other than the bloke she was with. She didn't seem to close her mouth fully (which leads me to conclude she did have false fangs in).
She had very high cheekbones, which again must have contributed to the canine look, and she looked very much like the slap-headed creature who ends up in the garbage shredder at the end of "28 Days of Night" (but I'll say again, I didn't see her baring her teeth or hamming it up in the way I'd expect from someone who had spent time and effort dressing up like something from a horror film.)

She was a dab hand with a pair of long floggers (using a technique similar to this chap at around 6 mins in. WARNING: Link maybe NSFW, even though it's YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAZEbaoJF54) I noticed, being really fast straight away, very hypnotic movement. Not clunky like the bloke in the video, but very fluid, very easy and incredibly fast.
Not actually hitting anyone, just playing with the floggers in a quiet corner. Again, when someone has perfected tricks like that, they generally show them off, but this girl was just toying, weighing up the floggers, moving up and down flawlessly, no tangles.

Anyway, I was mesmerised by this woman, but didn't want to go anywhere near her. She just made every part of me scream "RUN" (um, except my mouth, which was probably for the best). From the moment she walked in the door I felt ill, my stomach was doing cartwheels. She hung about behind her nondescript partner, didn't talk to anyone, didn't even even look in my direction, she just...scared me. Seriously, it wasn't like when I've watched "scary" Dommes and been strangely attracted to them, this woman distinctly made me want to go the other way! Quickly!!

I would have loved to get her picture, but taking sly pics is a capital offence in a fetish club, and there was no fucking way I was going to ask for permission. What would I say? "Hey, you look really weird, kind of non-human, can I have your picture, you bizarre looking creature?"

They didn't even know who she was on the door (it was my friend's party), her and her partner were definitely on the door list, but could have simply e-mailed for an invite (not a private party, just mandatory pre-bookings for admittance). They didn't stay long, and the atmosphere definitely lifted when they went, though perhaps only in my mind.

Most strange!

EDIT* The word that sprung into mind when I saw her, and leaps back at me now reading this post, is "Rotten".

TL;DR - I got scared by a chick who was trying to look scary. I think.
 
Anyway, I was mesmerised by this woman, but didn't want to go anywhere near her. She just made every part of me scream "RUN" (um, except my mouth, which was probably for the best). From the moment she walked in the door I felt ill, my stomach was doing cartwheels. She hung about behind her nondescript partner, didn't talk to anyone, didn't even even look in my direction, she just...scared me. Seriously, it wasn't like when I've watched "scary" Dommes and been strangely attracted to them, this woman distinctly made me want to go the other way! Quickly!!
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Reading other boards (like the camping/off-road driving forums I've looked at) people who report feeling like that usually find there's a good reason for it. I do think instincts should be listened to, and that seemed to be borne out by forum members who experienced that fear to discover a cougar or mountain lion etc was close by. I really think that if a person gives us that kind of vibe we should listen to it.

'Rotten' really made me shiver.
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I was talking to one of the ladies at craft group this afternoon and we both thought that maybe it's some kind of primitive survival instinct.
She told me about some man who used to work where she did and noone could stand being around him.
After he was eventually sacked he was arrested for murdering his girlfriend and putting her body in a barrel in the garage some years before.
 
Isis177 said:
I was talking to one of the ladies at craft group this afternoon and we both thought that maybe it's some kind of primitive survival instinct.
She told me about some man who used to work where she did and noone could stand being around him.
After he was eventually sacked he was arrested for murdering his girlfriend and putting her body in a barrel in the garage some years before.
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I agree that it's a primitive survival instinct.

Because I grew up in a family that was dysfunctional, to say the least ("sure, your uncle is a child molesting killer, but that's no reason not to give him a hug!") this instinct was effectively disabled in me when young - I couldn't sense dangerous people the way others could. After leaving home, I had to re-learn this instinct bit by bit. The instinct was still there, underneath but heavily suppressed. I learned fast due to necessity but was lucky not to end up dead in a ditch first!

The book 'The Gift Of Fear" by Gavin De Becker is an excellent source of info on survival instincts and intuition. Would recommend it to anyone.
 
Bunnymousekitt: hugs, now I know why you chose that picture.

As a child I too had some difficult relatives (but not killers) and I thought it made me more aware especially of when to dodge if my mother was in a bad mood, or to scratch to get away from another.
Maybe the instinct is there and if there's no wild animals it still awakens when we are tested with dangerous situations.
 
Isis177 said:
Bunnymousekitt: hugs, now I know why you chose that picture.

As a child I too had some difficult relatives (but not killers) and I thought it made me more aware especially of when to dodge if my mother was in a bad mood, or to scratch to get away from another.
Maybe the instinct is there and if there's no wild animals it still awakens when we are tested with dangerous situations.
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Aw, thanks. Hugs to you, too, Isis :likee:

You know, I've noticed that, the way some people come out of these situations extra aware and sensitive to such things, and then on the other hand, there are those who can't trust their own judgement, 'cos the bar for crazy was set so high by their family that the average psychopath seems normal. I'm not sure of the reason for the difference, but I think it may have something to do with the amount of gaslighting* that went on in the family.

*link to the term "gaslighting" - I don't know how common the usage is, so just in case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

Thinking about it just now...if gaslighting has the effect of suppressing those natural survival instincts in the victim, that makes it more even more evil than i'd previously considered. :shock:
 
I agree "The Gift Of Fear" by Gavin De Becker is a very interesting book.

Also pertinent here I think is Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" which is about people's ability to make instantaneous judgements on the basis of very little concrete information, that tend to be sound more often than not. It touches on the ability to identify strangers and situations as dangerous even when one can't conciously identify a reason.

I'm finding it interesting that Bunnymousekitt feels her upbringing de-sensitized her to dangerous people. From what I've read children that grow up with unstable parents/relatives (and I count myself as one) are supposed to become acutely sensitive to cues of danger. But I have a friend whose parents really did a number on her, and I feel that she often perceives animosity or danger when there truly isn't any, and that tragically she is attracted exclusively to men who are users & manipulators. So in her case, she is paranoid about non-existent dangers while at the same time oblivious to other real dangers.
 
IamSundog said:
I agree "The Gift Of Fear" by Gavin De Becker is a very interesting book.

Also pertinent here I think is Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" which is about people's ability to make instantaneous judgements on the basis of very little concrete information, that tend to be sound more often than not. It touches on the ability to identify strangers and situations as dangerous even when one can't conciously identify a reason.

I'm finding it interesting that Bunnymousekitt feels her upbringing de-sensitized her to dangerous people. From what I've read children that grow up with unstable parents/relatives (and I count myself as one) are supposed to become acutely sensitive to cues of danger. But I have a friend whose parents really did a number on her, and I feel that she often perceives animosity or danger when there truly isn't any, and that tragically she is attracted exclusively to men who are users & manipulators. So in her case, she is paranoid about non-existent dangers while at the same time oblivious to other real dangers.
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Oh yeah, Blink is a fantastic book. Very pertinent to the subject indeed. :nods:

Regarding your friend, IAmSundog, I found some info on this page here: http://www.asca.org.au/displaycommon.cf ... clenbr=194

Among other things:

Research shows that children and adults with histories of child abuse can respond to minor triggers with a range of catastrophic reactions. This is because traumatised children (and adult survivors) become increasingly responsive to relatively minor stimuli as a result of decreased frontal lobe functioning (learning and problem solving) and increased limbic system (amygdala) sensitivity (impulsiveness) (Streeck-Fischer & van der Kolk, 2000).

Decreased cortex activity

The cortex or the more rational, outer-layer of the brain is the seat of our thinking capacity. The cool, rational cortex is in constant communication with the amygdala and the hippocampus (the limbic system). The frontal lobes are situated in the cortex and are responsible for learning and problem solving. The capacity to learn from experience requires events to be registered in the prefrontal cortex, compared with other experiences and evaluated for an appropriate response (Streeck-Fischer & van der Kolk, 2000).

When children feel they are being threatened, the fast tracts of the limbic system are likely be to activated before the slower prefrontal cortex has a chance to evaluate the stimulus (Streeck-Fischer & van der Kolk, 2000). Only a state of non hyper-arousal allows activation of the prefrontal cortex needed for learning and problem solving.

Increased limbic system sensitivity

The limbic system is a network of brain cells sometimes called 'the emotional brain'. It controls many of the most fundamental emotions and drives pertinent for survival (McLean Hospital, 2000). The limbic system is the area in the brain that initiates the fight, flight or freeze responses in the face of threat. The amygdala and the hippocampus are part of the limbic system. A study by Teicher et al. (1993) found a 38% increased rate of limbic abnormalities ('emotional brain') following physical abuse, 49% after sexual abuse, and 113% following abuse of more than one type combined (cited in Streeck-Fischer & van der Kolk, 2000).

The amygdala processes emotions before the cortex gets the message that something has happened. For example, the sound of a loved one's voice is communicated to the amygdala, and the amygdala generates an emotional response to that information (for example, pleasure) by releasing hormones. When someone is threatened, the amygdala perceives danger and sets in motion a series of hormone releases that lead to the defensive responses of fight, flight or freeze. Because the amygdala is immune to the effects of stress hormones it may continue to sound an alarm inappropriately, as is the core of PTSD (Rothschild, 2004).

The amygdala's role in the encoding, storage and retrieval of emotionally-arousing material (and corresponding hormonal changes) primes animals to remember emotionally charged or threatening events better than every-day events (Howe, Cicchetti and Toth, 2006).
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I know I've got something like this going on, and probably so does your friend. I have an anxiety disorder, so lots of innocent stimuli can trigger an over-reaction. When your internal alarm system is always on, though, it becomes very tough to distinguish between a real threat and a false one - especially if the men she's getting involved with go out of their way to appear harmless at first. Add to that a person's tendency to seek out what's familiar, and you've got trouble.

When I was young I saw signs of this in myself, so I swore off relationships until I could get some therapy, get my head together enough to tell a good guy from a bad one. Perhaps your friend might need to do the same!
I believe the anxiety can be tempered and the natural instinct can re-assert itself, but it takes time and work.
 
To bring another level to 'bad vibes', between the ages of about 12 and 14 I began getting uneasy feelings about people that in retrospect I think I may have been attracted to! I'm sure at the time my mind was struggling to make sense of my budding sexuality and could only affix 'bad vibes' to the unexplained feelings I was having for certain people.

Ofcourse at that age I was having crushes on 'normal' people like pop stars and boys at school and that was fine but it was unusual characters that evoked these feelings. In one instance I remember seeing a guy manning a craft stall at a market. He looked very arty farty in big thick-rimmed, tinted glasses and a brimmed hat. Back then you just didn't see people dressed like that where I lived. I immediately felt unease, but perhaps I was actually intrigued. These feelings stopped when I got to about 15 and I was more comfortable with unusual people. I'm drawn to unusual folk now.

On the other hand, one time an old man who was a friend of my father and who I most definitely did NOT find attractive completely freaked me out by saying that I was so beautiful he'd marry me if I was older. I was about 11 and although I knew he was joking and was only trying to be nice (my dad was there at the time) I was completely repulsed and quite traumatised by it!
 
LordRsmacker said:
EDIT* The word that sprung into mind when I saw her, and leaps back at me now reading this post, is "Rotten".
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:shock: A dog headed person maybe? I've been to a fair few fetish parties and know what you mean about trying to look odd, but the fact that you got such a strong feeling to get outta there, is really odd :shock: The rotten thin = brrrr! :evil:
 
When I was young I saw signs of this in myself, so I swore off relationships until I could get some therapy, get my head together enough to tell a good guy from a bad one. Perhaps your friend might need to do the same!
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We've talked about this, and I wish she would, but she takes a very dim view of therapists as she feels she's been burned by them in the past, so she just soldiers on. At this point she's more or less given up on love altogether, which I find very sad because underneath the craziness she's a very wonderful person. The thing is, I think that even though she knows she's very off-kilter she's more comfortable believing that the world really is as f***ed up as she perceives it to be and that there's nothing to be done about it. Maybe facing the demons is just way too scary for her.

I believe the anxiety can be tempered and the natural instinct can re-assert itself, but it takes time and work.
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I believe this to be true and that I've benefited from therapy in this way myself. I think I was lucky to stumble upon a very skilled therapist. My own learned disfunctionality is slightly different in nature, and it's not that I'm cured of it but more that I can recognize when it is acting up and make a choice to conciously counteract it. It doesn't own me anymore, unless I let it.
 
Very interesting discussion. Due to certain aspects of my early childhood I was for many years too trusting, and have suffered for it - still am, in some ways. Some of the people I have loved very deeply, and carried on loving even though they've let me down time after time.

Now some of the ways I have been stupid have penetrated my thick head, probably about 50 years too late, but instead of readjusting the balance I find I have difficulty in getting close to anyone at all and am lonely as a result. Hence partly the displacement activity of spending a lot of time on-line.

So this begs the question, is an abusive relationship better than no relationship at all?
 
It's human nature to be trusting. It means you're a good person.
Really, don't beat yourself up for trusting the wrong people - we all do it. Been there, done that, and eventually walked away thinking 'Well, it's not ME who's the tw*t!' :roll:

These days I keep pets, mainly rehomed adult cats. They probably thought they could trust people too, until they were dumped or otherwise disposed of.

They can trust me though, and I trust them to claw my furniture to bits and spray all the woodwork. I accidentally spilled water on one last week and he immediately went out and pee'd on my bike. You wouldn't get THAT sort of straight talking from a mere human! ;)
 
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