yeah I'm pretty sure it's just intuition as zloff said
We went into a dungeon in the Czech republic, there was a deep black pit that if I walked by it I had the instinct to speed up although I wasn't bothered by it. I think it's just your body/mind telling you it doesn't know that something is in a given area or zone so you have to leave the area or check it out.
probably why it's tough sleeping in new places too
It's funny because the tour guide didn't say anything about the pit either, but he gave ghost stories for all the other things