Knee-jerk Paranoid Fatalism

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Two examples:

When I was young, if I saw an ambulance I would immediately wonder if it was taking someone I knew to the hospital. I think that eventually did stop as an adult.

The orher day I got call from out of state number I didn't know so I didn't answer. Probably spam. But I looked up the area code and saw it was a state where a close friend has a lot of family. That friend is out of town right now and also going through a divorce with a husband who is paranoid about her cheating (she's not). My knee-jerk thought was that it might have been her family calling to tell me she'd been murdered by her jealous husband.

It's not persistent paranoia. I don't spend all day worrying about it. It happens and then I move on. But that mental leap to "something terrible has happened to someone I know" without any real evidence to justify thinking it, even as a passing thought, bothers me.

Does anyone else deal with something like this?

I think what you are describing is probably sub-clinical paranoia. I.e, paranoia that registers as abnormal in a person, but doesn't meet the clinical threshold to be diagnosed as a paranoia related mental disorder.