There are some very interesting stories here and there are some biomechanical reasons why this stuff is really intriguing.
I am a Biologist by trade so I have a pretty solid Science background and I do believe in the effectiveness of rationality and deductive reasoning. That being said there are SO many gaps in our understanding that it is absolutely arrogant to assume that we can grok all the dynamics of the "real world" or what's ACTUALLY out there, beyond the mediation of our central nervous system. A great example is the electromagnetic spectrum (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electromagnetic-Spectrum.png): I know this is likely not news at all to most of you but it still floors me whenever I think about this. We assume that our senses are revealing the world as it is when in reality the senses act more like a reduction valve, showing us only the most evolutionarily relevant parts of the picture. In reality, the percentage of the electromagnetic spectrum we actually "see" is
tiny in comparison to the total scope of the spectrum. The same is true regarding the percentage of sound frequencies we are able to hear. Sure, we now have machines that can measure the totality of the electromagnetic spectrum but this is just an example: our bodies and brains construct the world as we experience it out of selected pieces of information that are filtered out of the overall informational matrix; they do NOT show us the world
as it is.
With this knowledge (and the work of Freud and Jung) in mind it is easy to surmise that there is all sorts of information being funneled past our CNS receptors that never make it into the rational portion of our mind that we would associate with our thoughts. Otherwise stated, it is completely possible that we receive and process a lot of information sub- or un-consciously and therefore the notion of instinctual behavior has a serious biomechanical underpinning, and all signs point to "instincts" being really vital signs that we should learn to pay attention to. I for one always listen to my instincts, and have a story that can illustrate the effectiveness of these feelings.
It was the first time my family took me to our camp and I had never been in a place more remote than the old wood lots that surrounded our house in the recently developed part of the city we were living in at the time. I'd got my fair share of splinters, stings and bites playing in those woods but there were certainly no dangerous animals around and as such I had never been educated about what to look out for while in the woods. So, we had been visiting a relative who lived up in that area permanently when my uncles decided to go drinking at some hunting shanty. Since the adults didn't need us around cramping their style my oldest cousin (he was probably 16 or 17 at the time, and I was maybe 6 or 7) was designated to take the young ones back to camp. We had about a half hour walk back and were in an area that is mostly a fishing village, so although there are some permanent homes there it's pretty rural and there was no street lamps or anything like that at the time.
The whole way back to camp I KNEW there was something wrong. I felt it the moment we left the home we had been at and started walking. None of the cousins my age seemed to notice but my older cousin eventually started to look spooked. I kept asking him what was wrong and he kept brushing it off saying he didn't know what I was talking about and I should stop trying to scare the others. Well, it was dark that night and you couldn't see 30 feet to any side of yourself. What I was able to see, however, was something like 8 or 10 glowing green orbs trailing us at about 40 feet--just outside of our visibility. I tugged on my cousin’s arm and pointed it out to him but he just shook his head and told me to be quiet and keep walking. The rest of my cousins chatted away like nothing was going on.
That night we were supposed to sleep outside. We had set up our tents and such earlier in the day around the fire pit but the moment we got back to camp my cousin rushed us all into the little cabin that was on our property, and as soon as we were all in he slammed the door shut, told us that NO ONE was to leave and then ran to the bathroom and started to get sick. He came back and sat us down and told us we had just been stalked all the way home by a pack of Coyotes.
Apparently he didn't notice it until I first pointed it out to him and by that time we were about half way home. He was well experienced in the woods already but had drank a beer or two that night, so I think his instincts were off

He then took us to the window and we watched as the green orbs circled around the cabin. All you could see was their eyes in the distance...they always stayed JUST outside of our visibility, but the feeling never left me; not even when were inside. They circled the cabin all night and I honestly think they were waiting for one of us to leave the cabin alone...and that poor soul would have been a goner.
So...at the time I had never heard of a Coyote: since we lived in the city it had never been explained to me and this was our first night at camp so my uncles were just kind of overwhelmed by all the stuff there was to do and unfortunately did not give us the safety talk (that was planned for the next day before the hunting started haha). So, it just goes to show that you should pay attention to that nagging sensation that something is not right...because as other have said: if you feel that way it is probably because SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT! I had no idea there were dangerous animals out there and I certainly didn't know that the glowing orbs I saw were eyes, but I knew whatever it was it meant danger. Just felt it in my bones. We didn't survive hundreds of thousands of years of predation through rational thought alone: instincts are real, all animals have them and despite what some of us would like to believe we are definitely animals.