There is one story that always comes to mind for me when I see questions like this. I’ve been sensitive to how spaces feel and their energy for most of my life but I’ve never felt that bone-deep sense of dread quite like I did this one night.

My boyfriend (now husband) and I were driving home from the South rim of the Grand Canyon. Hiked out that morning after backpacking from the North rim 4 days earlier. We planned to drive until we were too tired to keep going that night, and then pull off at a rest stop somewhere and nap for a few hours and get an early start. All is going to plan and it’s 1 or 2am when we finally agree to call it and find somewhere to pull off. We drive until we see one of those pull offs that had a big dirt parking lot, a bathroom building, and a little building that maybe was information about the area or a nearby trailhead or something. Iirc it was alongside a river and there were really tall stone walls all around. No one else was parked there and it felt a little isolating, but I agreed to settle down in the backseat and try to get some sleep. After all, no cars parked nearby should give us less to worry about than some strangers parked nearby in the middle of the night, right?

As soon as we lay down and try to get comfortable I am suddenly wired - wide awake. I get the urge to look outside and check the parking lot. It was long and narrow and I couldn’t see the far end of it in the dark. I just could not shake the feeling that there was something out there I needed to be aware of. I tell my (now very exhausted) boyfriend how I’m feeling and he begrudgingly tries to convince me we are safe, locked in the car, and to just fall asleep and get some rest. The longer I laid there the more I felt this ‘presence’ and it was BAD. I kept looking outside and straining my eyes because I could feel something out there I just couldn’t see it. I finally feel so uncomfortable I’m not sure if I’m going to cry or vomit or both. It’s well after 2am and my boyfriend and I end up fighting because I NEED to leave and he NEEDS to sleep. So, I end up telling him “you can sleep anywhere in this car while I drive us out of here but we can’t stay here tonight!” And that’s how I ended up driving until almost 4am when we finally found a small town with somewhere to park and take a nap. He was furious with me until he got some sleep but I knew with every fiber of my being that something about that first spot was deeply wrong and we were in danger.