I am pretty sure that I have shared this story here before, but one example I can think of, happened to me one rainy night. When I was in my early twenties, I worked as a waitress. We often had drunken customers who would come into the boardwalk restaurant after the bars closed, and they would harass the waitresses. I was safe until it was time to go home, because our boss usually looked out for us.
But sometimes, the drunken customer would wait outside for us to quit work, and continue the harassment. At those times I took a taxi home. On this night I couldn't afford a taxi so I decided to walk. It was about a forty five minute walk and on the way, a light rain started to fall. I had walked home this way before, and the part of the walk that I was dreading was where I had to pass a cemetery. For some reason, there were no lights at that end of the street, so it was pretty creepy.
As I drew close to this area, I felt a jolt of terror go through me. I stopped and felt that I absolutely should not go on. I started forward anyway, and again felt the terror. I finally realized that I was fairly certain that someone was waiting in that cemetery who meant to harm me. As I stood there in the drizzling rain, I envisioned a man's form crouching behind a tall tombstone, waiting for me to pass. Somehow I knew that he had been planning this for a long time, and had possibly noticed that sometimes I walked home. I still had a good distance to go, but knew that I would never make it home if I continued on foot. I ended up asking a trucker, who had stopped at a donut shop across the road, if he would allow me to travel another half mile in his truck. As the truck passed the cemetery, I knew that I'd had a narrow escape.
I think this illustrates how emotions went along with the "clair' that it was. There was no way I could have explained the terror and the certainty in scientific terms, only that I felt a primal instinct of danger, and avoided it.