The 1999 book, The Gift of Fear, talks about this phenomenon. Well worth reading.
Yes. Usually in prisons or holding cells.
I think I’ve been on the other end of this thread. Many years ago I worked as a cashier for a casino operation. There was one dealer who clearly did not like me, even though our only required interaction was for me to put their nightly table money into our safe.
One night the dealer was on break and I happened to need to get something out of my personal locker. I decided to find out what I had done that put her off to me. After asking she responded (paraphrasing) “Nothing, never. I just don’t like you.”
Accepting that I cast a malevolent vibe for this gal I kept my distance. I went so far as to make sure one of my fellow cashiers took the money bags from that point on.
Yuppers.
The easy ones to detect are the ones who try to be charming. The ones that really trigger my alarm bells are those who actually are charming. Beware! Beware!
Same here.
When I was a couple years out of high school, I got a job in an office, and there was one woman in the department who was my age and we presumably might have had a lot in common had she not refused to have any non-essential interaction with me from day one. More than once, she even passed messages to me on through another person so she wouldn’t have to speak to me. It was quite bizarre; I’ve never had that experience before or since.
It’s very rare, but yes, definitely. Years ago in a thread on this message board, I described a first (and last) date with someone who seriously frightened me. I’ve always wondered what happened to him - if I knew, I’m convinced my bad feelings would be vindicated.
The time I did eventually receive vindication of my bad vibes didn’t involve a sense of personal danger, however. Rather, I had a very strong sense that a person I met with as part of my work was a complete sleazebag. I was working with a chamber of commerce, and he supposedly wanted to do charitable work with us as a partner. My questions to him were quite direct, almost to the point of rudeness, because he gave off such scummy vibes.
He complained about me to my boss, but I was unrepentant, because I was absolutely convinced that the guy was untrustworthy.
About 5 years later, I found out by accident that about a year after my encounter with him, he embezzled a hefty amount of funds from the non-profit he worked for, and vanished suddenly. Once he was gone and people opened up about how they had felt working with him, it turned out he’d sexually harassed the women in the office.
Sadly, I had left my previous job by then and couldn’t go back to my boss and tell him I’d obviously been right.
Yep. Used to work at a clinic that had a contract with the Bureau of Prisons to help transition people from prison to the outside world again. Some of those people set off my alarm bells from down the hall. Some of the other people at the clinic who had absolutely clean police records could do the same. Any number of customers I met while working retail, because of course scum have to shop, too. Not just men, some women set off alarms, too.
^ This.
Sometimes evil has a pretty face, polite words, nice mannerisms… “Nice” isn’t always.
At one of my first jobs, the owner had a male secretary who always set off alarm bells. He was also a jerk, but people said ‘thats just who he is’ and he’s in good with the owner… so I did my job and I stayed away from him.
It was a few months after I left to work for another company that another coworker (someone who I knew that still worked there) told me the rest of the story.
Law enforcement (I wasn’t there, I don’t know what agency) came in one day and took the secretary out of the office in cuffs. The company car that he drove was impounded and stripped down to the frame looking… for evidence…?
(They said that they knew that part because the owner was never able to get the car to run right afterward & was upset that he had to sell it and replace it.)
The secretary was charged (I was told) with kidnapping and the rape of a minor. His boyfriend was arrested at an apartment in Philadelphia where a boy, who was a minor, had been found chained to a radiator in a (sound proofed?) bathroom.
The story went that after work on Fridays, the secretary would drive the company car down to Philly and would help to sodomize this young boy for the rest of the weekend. 
I never saw the story in a newspaper, but I always figured that Philadelphia was a different market and that, being a large city, not all crimes made the papers in a large way anyway.
After I typed this, I read it again to myself and I realized that I could have been told a whopper of a tall tale. After all, I had no corroborating evidence beyond what I was told… and I have no way to prove my post.
Given that, I decided to google his real name and to look for a picture of him to see if I’d been told lies.
I found him.
“XXXXXXX XXXXXX Registered Sex Offender”
“Last Known Address XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Bronx, NY 10463”
Once, twentyfive years ago. I was in the video rental store just a block down from my house. I noticed a haggard, intense looking guy in his fourties that took some video’s off the shelves, then set them back. But, as he did that, he wasn’t looking at the titles; he was looking at me. Staring at me. Very intensely, and a bit malevolently. He did not seem to care that I saw him looking. I got such a bad vibe that I made a bee line to the cashier and asked him to call me a cab. I did not want to walk home with that guy following me or knowing where I lived. When the cab arrived, I told the driver to drive in the other direction from where I lived. Just to get this guy on the wrong trail, if he would be following me outside. I never saw him again, or heard from him, so I don’t know if my reaction was justified.
Another time, I went to a guys place. I did not know him well, but I was there to drop something off, or pick something up. His place smelled… sweaty, dank, and like…fear and nerves. He asked me to come in, I said no thanks, gotta run, and he kept inviting me and, and I kept refusing, way past the point where it became awkward for the both of us. I was not afraid, but I knew that it would just be a bad idea to accept his invitation.
I read that the easiest way to spot a parasitic psychopath (one who plans to use you, your place, yourt ime, effort or money) is that they try to evoke your* pity*. They want you to feel sorry for them.
A Christian friend of mine had that vibe with my hairdresser. It was the eigthties, and both the hairdresser and his wife had that artsy new-wave goth look. For all I knew, they were just what I knew them to be for thirty years: honest hardworking people in their own artsy business.
A good friend of my biological father’s always gave me the fuckin’ creeps for as long as I can remember. I have no good reason for it, he’s dumb and has always been nice to me, but whenever I see him I want to get the hell out of there.
I learned sometime in my teens that when I was a young kid (too young to remember) I once returned from a weekend with my father with physical evidence that I had been sexually abused. The case was investigated, the worker told my mother they believed that something had happened but they had no way of proving anything. I think my Dad’s own Mom asked him if he had molested me, which pissed him off. I don’t know many details, but I heard this story from both my Mom and bio father, and my bio father is still pissed anyone thought he had anything to do with it.
Well, then it turned out my Mom’s husband actually was molesting me (he confessed to her clean out of nowhere one day), so he went to prison and everyone assumed case closed. But what my stepfather did, according to court records, shouldn’t have resulted in the physical evidence that prompted the first investigation.
I think about that guy, and I wonder.
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan]
Yuppers.
The easy ones to detect are the ones who try to be charming. The ones that really trigger my alarm bells are those who actually are charming. Beware! Beware!
[/QUOTE]
Several years ago, I had a conference (actually assisted senior Counsel) with one Convict (kidnapping, rape, murder)
He was courteous, polite and engaging. Spoke softly and was actually fairly harmless looking, almost nerdy.
Guy Scared the hell out of me. I wanted no part of that conference or that guy. I just wanted to be out of there from the moment I entered.
Just don’t know why, his actions, while horrific, weren’t any worse than other crimes of that type that I had seen, and I had also seen and dealt with worse. I think, it might have been the matter of fact, nearly mechanical way he discussed his actions, his victims and yes, his sentence.
Walking home from work one day in the summer. I’d picked up some groceries and was heading home down the back alley behind the store. A white car pulled up on my left and stopped. He rolled the window down about two inches and quietly said “want a ride?”. He had on a baseball cap and dark glasses and looked like he was in his 20’s. I’ve never felt anything like I did then. It was like a wave of nausea and I knew without a doubt that I was in serious danger. I think the thing that saved me was that I was on the passenger side of his car. Anyway I said “NO” and quickly walked the rest of the way out to the road. He then passed me and drove off. Three months later a woman was sexually assaulted less than a mile away by a guy who approached her in a white car, wearing a baseball cap and glasses. I’m positive it was the same guy.
Yes, twice. Neither time was it my initial impression-- it was their aura when they let their guard down.
I knew I was in great danger.
From what happened later with the first person, I know I was right.
My ex was almost positive that she was approached by Ted Bundy in a park in the Seattle area; she said the guy rang all her alarm bells.
It may not have been in the news because the story involved a minor, and there may have been information that, were the story to be publicized, could have identified the victim.
I read this very interesting book about Charles Manson when it first came out, and one common theme throughout the book is that 99%-plus of the people he met knew what he was the instant they met him. It was that other <1% who enabled him to do what he did.
While I don’t doubt that humans and dogs can pick up on subtle cues that (in the case of humans) they can’t adequately verbalize, I strongly suspect that:
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a large number of these interactions are with people who have no malicious/evil intent whatsoever, and
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we often trust people who give off no negative vibes, but are best avoided for our mental and physical safety.
Interestingly, there’s some evidence that dogs that react negatively to certain people are picking up on our feelings, rather than specifically reacting to those individuals.*
*and sometimes there’s no telling why a dog seems standoffish. One time I tried to make friends with a strange Labrador (with his owner’s permission). The dog was having none of it, until I asked the owner the dog’s name and then repeated it out loud. All of a sudden the dog became very responsive. (“He knows my name. He must be a FRIEND!” slurp slurp Slurrrrp).
Good grief, Spice Weasel, that is some chilling stuff. 
I’m so sorry the little Weasel had to go through this.
I don’t remember any of it, other than some of the aftermath of stepdad’s confession. (Talking to social workers, lawyers, etc.) That guy just freaked me out so when I learned about that story later I wondered if there weren’t a connection.
I don’t talk to my bio Dad anymore so it’s not really an issue. But the last time I did see that guy, I was in my 30s, and he still creeped me out.
I can’t remember a time anyone else has pinged my creepy-dar. I tend to be pretty gullible and trusting.