I don’t believe it’s paranormal or anything, but this facet of human perception is definitely odd and currently unexplained and unexplored: People can often feel when someone is watching them.
I’ve experienced it and observed it in other people too. I’ve very rarely had a false alarm when I’ve had that weird tingling sensation. I can remember only a couple of times when I didn’t catch someone watching me on those occasions.
When I noticed this, I played with it for a while. It doesn’t happen all the time, but, more often than you’d expect, if you stare at someone in a crowd they’ll turn and look at you. Obviously, it happens more if you’re someone in their field of vision, even if you’re above the normal line of sight, though normally people rarely look up. When I was at university I once stood on a raised bridge for about five minutes. No one looked up when I just scanned the crowd casually, but more than half of the people I looked at specifically, who I followed with my eyes, did eventually look up and make eye contact with me.
That’s easily explained by peripheral vision and unconscious awareness of your surroundings, but it also happens when they can’t see you, like when you’re behind them and there aren’t even reflective surfaces to give you away. Casually following behind someone doesn’t trigger it, usually, but looking at someone while following will.
BTW, I stopped experimenting when I realized that I probably looked like a stalker to anyone who was observing me. I’m glad this was before the current social weirdness about stranger danger started to really get up to speed.
I’d love to see someone do some studies of some sort to see what it is that the person is picking up on. I really doubt it’s any kind of telepathy or Spider Sense, but it is very weird. I don’t think it can be satisfactorily explained away as observer bias.
Something common to many martial arts is supposed to be a heightened awareness of this . . . feeling, perception, whatever. In my first dojo, you didn’t pass your go-dan (fifth degree black belt) unless you could tap into it well enough to get out of the way of imminent danger. I’ve seen a few tests performed and it is damn eerie to watch. I have not taken the test myself.
The test is performed only by the big guy, head of the whole organization, since passing it is the equivalent of demonstrating fitness to instruct. The student sits in seiza on the mat in front of him with his eyes closed. Sensei stands behind him (or in rare cases, her) with a wooden training sword raised above his head in jôdan, a ready position, also with his eyes closed. He doesn’t move at all until at some point he brings the sword straight down at the student’s head. Judging from what I saw, he’s not quite going full speed and full force, and he’ll try to pull the blow if the student doesn’t move, but you’d still get a nasty thunk in the noggin or shoulder if he hit you.
Given the short distance involved, the only way to successfully get out of the way is to move virtually simultaneously with his strike. Your reaction time is not enough to respond; you have to anticipate it. The first time I witnessed this test being performed, I saw three tests: two successful, one not. In both the successful tests, they were jumpy for the first few seconds, managed to calm down and stop flinching, and then sometime after that—boom—if you blinked, you missed it. The guy who didn’t pass never stopped flinching. He wasn’t quite ready for it, I think.
One guy passed very cleanly, leaning off to one side to let the strike at his head slide by and rolling out of the way, the other didn’t move quite far enough and the blade clipped his gi sleeve. He still passed, because he did feel it and anticipate the strike, and he didn’t actually get hit. The guy who didn’t pass only moved his head because he didn’t move until he actually heard the strike coming. He had a nice bruise on his shoulder from it. The second test I attended, both passed well.
Supposedly, what’s happening is that Sensei is projecting the intent to kill the student, while not actually taking action that would necessarily end in his death. He definitely gets a very disturbing expression on his face in that split second before he strikes. The student’s role is to feel that and move before the blow would land. All of those who passed described their experience in similar ways, “I felt like I needed to move, right now.” They might have questioned themselves when they were squirming around earlier, but there was no doubt when the actual moment came. One said that he felt like he was going to throw up in the instant before he moved. Another said that he felt prickly all over, like he had a sudden chill. One said he had no idea what happened, either couldn’t recall or didn’t want to talk about it. The final guy said, “I don’t know what I felt, but it was not pleasant. At all.”
I can’t really explain it, but I don’t think it’s unexplainable. My wild assed guess is that the martial arts training and its ways of thinking about things, along with the circumstances of the test, combine to heighten perceptions, making subliminal stimuli available to a higher level of consciousness than normal. Something you wouldn’t normally be able to hear or feel might alert you that he is going to move, even though he doesn’t telegraph his movements in any overt way and in fact has years of training in learning not to telegraph. That probably gives you just enough time to move and if you were really in tune with what was going on, you’d know when he was really going to do it and when he’s just standing there contemplating it.
In all, I’d say it’s less mysterious than being able to pick up on when you’re being followed in a crowd, even if it is a more dramatic demonstration of a similar thing.