Once we find out someone has a secret, we just can’t let it lie until we found out what it is—but when the truth finally comes to light, sometimes we wish we’d just left it alone. From second families to sordid affairs, these dark secrets made our jaws drop.
1. Parallel Families
A few years after my grandfather passed we found out that he had two families and although he was with my grandmother for over 60 years, he never married her or divorced his actual wife. He had five kids with his "wife", and six kids with my grandmother. Some of the kids overlap and the women knew about each other.
But none of that stopped him from abandoning the first five kids and their mother. The second family moved across the country and never returned to the original area. Near the end of his life, he kept saying he wasn’t going to heaven and his only request was not to tell anyone about his passing, no obituary, no notice in the paper, nothing.
2. The Truth Revealed
When I was around 6-8 years old, my uncle passed. I thought it was something sudden and medically tragic, as I remember him having lung problems of some sort. When I got older I found out what really happened. He took his own life because his girlfriend broke up with him. I remember visiting my dad and hanging out in my uncle's room where we got to play video games and listen to cool music with him.
That was the start of me learning about mental illness running in the family and connected a lot of dots for me.
3. Weird Uncle
When I learned my family secret, all of a sudden I knew why my uncle was so weird. He would always pick me up and carry me away rather than let me stay alone in a room with my grandfather. I never knew why and for the longest time I thought my uncle was a real prude until I eventually learned the agonizing truth. And I was shocked.
My male cousins could all swim in the buff or run around in just their swim trunks, but my uncle made me always wear a swimsuit and cover-up when I came out of the pool. He later admitted, "God forbid he touched you, I was making sure no one could try to blame you. They blamed all his other victims for being too tempting."
My uncle, bless his heart, wanted to end that man’s life so badly. For that matter so did my dad. Finding out my grandfather was a pedo made all of their mutterings to each other at family gatherings make so much more sense.
4. Above The Law
This is my school's "dirty secret." There was this girl that was in the grade above me. Years after we graduated, she became a teacher at the same school we both went to. She was very stuck up and thought she was better than everyone else. Apparently, she was working out at the weight room when one of her students came in, said hi to her, then went to the back with her. They were hooking up when someone walks in on them. It was a huge scandal.
You'd think she would be detained for something like this, but no. Her father was one of our football coaches/the health teacher and I’m sure he pleaded with the boy’s parents not to press charges. It must have worked, because she didn’t go away for it, but she did lose her job. Being “privileged” shouldn’t pardon you for your inexcusable actions.
5. Mom’s The Word
My dad never called his stepmom anything but her real name, which was Margaret. He has seven brothers and sisters and they all called her mom. I always wondered why, and when I got older, I found out my grandpa was cheating on my real grandma (my dad’s mom) with Margaret while she was battling colon cancer. My dad was five when his mom was suffering in the hospital. When he was a little kid, he had to call my grandpa and tell him to come home because his wife was dying.
After my grandma passed, Margaret and her three kids moved into the house. My dad hated them from the get go. So when he turned 16, he decided to move in with his best friend and his friend’s mom. He's never really let go of the resentment he feels towards Margaret and to this day, he refuses to call her anything that resembled "mother" because that’s not what she was to him.
6. Burning Issue
I wasn't allowed to go to my grandfather's funeral, and they told me he had a heart attack. I was so confused because everyone around me would clam up when I asked about him. Years later, I learned the truth. It turns out that he had a heart attack while trying to put out a field fire, collapsed, and got horrifically burned.
I still have no idea how long it took for people to find him, but I'm assuming it was hours. The body was too grisly for my parents to let any of the kids see.
7. Resemblance Made Clear
My late mother looked nothing like her parents and exactly like my dad's uncle (my grandfather’s older brother). She even has the same heterochromia that he had (one blue eye, one brown eye). And she was conceived while her mother’s husband was in Korea. When she was born, he hadn’t been home in over a year. So yeah, you do the math.
And that's not all. My grandmother became well known to the local authorities and the other side of my family for absolutely all the wrong reasons. Her roommates and friends were working girls and she was likely one, too. My mum and my dad dated, had three kids, had an okay marriage until my dad started drinking and became aggressive. Finally, they called time on their marriage and divorced. That's when my grandma dropped a bombshell.
After the divorce, my grandmother admitted that they shouldn’t have been allowed to date, marry, or have children because they were first cousins. My great uncle was her father. All the adults knew and hid it because to them the idea that either family was appearing as less than perfect on the outside was unforgivable. After all, what people would think of them? Each side blamed the other for my cerebral palsy.
8. Short Cool Down
I worked in an airport hotel, and I know all the dirty secrets. Hotels often sell rooms multiple times. Many guests most likely won’t arrive due to missed or delayed flights. There are guests who check out from 2-3 AM to catch their early flights, so even though the room is technically still theirs, someone quickly and sometimes poorly cleans the room.
Then they tell the arriving unexpected guest or new booking that there’s a random computer issue and to wait 20 minutes. After, they check them into the departed guest's room, praying all the while. I’ve had to run a kettle many times under a cold tap to hide the fact the previous guest used it 15 minutes before the new guest arrived.
9. A Woman Scorned
My senior prom was in 2010. After prom, I had a party at my parents' cabin, which was just outside of town. Later that night, I stumbled on something horrific. I found my boyfriend, in my car, getting it on with my volleyball co-captain. Up until that point, I thought we had been friends and that my boyfriend was totally faithful. There was nothing I could do…but plot revenge.
I didn’t confront them. Instead, I went to his car, which was pretty much brand new, and took a dump in the passenger seat. I wiped it with some napkins he had in the glove box and put them in his cup holders. Then I went back inside and kept on partying.
10. Every Family Has One
My dad's affair with a man roughly my age. My childhood with my parents was traumatic and physically harmful enough, and I'm too detached to tell my mom or siblings. Also, word to the wise: If you're expecting a text from the hot young stud you plan to see later, maybe don't leave your phone on the restaurant table while you go to the bathroom.
11. Ice Cold
There is an infamous story from my school about this girl who ended up needing glasses after she got a snowball in her eye. The snowball had come flying from the other side of the building, across the roof, and hit her smack dab in the eye. This was 15 years ago, now. No one knew who threw that snowball...but it was me.
12. Daddy Issues
My father got fired years ago for trying to sneak money from his employer, but he told me he quit for the sake of his mental health. I found the truth out a few months after it happened. But his latest lie is the worst by far. He tells our extended family that he’s still working, and that the reason he never has any money is because he’s “supporting” me.
I pay my own way, and have loaned him hundreds that I’ll never see again—thousands when you count the money my sibling has loaned him, too. Meanwhile, I have to deal with my entire family thinking I’m an evil selfish witch for forcing her father into poverty. I’m looking into moving out and getting my own place, and I’ve drastically decreased contact with my family.
It got to the point where I was suicidal a few years ago because of all of it. When they call, he’ll dramatically tell them about the eight 12-hour shifts in a row he just did while I supposedly do nothing. Covering for him is no longer worth the toll it takes on my mental health. I come up in bright red stress rashes before family visits because I know it’ll be days of hearing how hard he has it and how much of a burden I am to him.
As this happens, he says nothing at all to defend me or to make them ease up. His biggest response has been to do “funny” impressions of what I look like when I’m having a panic attack. My brother knows the truth, at least, and he keeps me sane. And through it all, my dirtbag father still doesn’t know I know the real reason he left his job.
13. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire
My secret is that my father burned down our childhood home for the insurance money. He took me along as his alibi, so that I could “verify” that he wasn't anywhere near the location when it happened. I was only 13 years old at the time. I remember crying so hard knowing that all of my clothes, books, photos, and everything I owned would be destroyed. I wasn't allowed to save anything because he told me it would have looked too suspicious.
I found out years later that he blamed the whole thing on me. He told the fire chief (plus all of our friends and family) that the fire had started because I had been secretly smoking in my bedroom. I've never smoked in my life!
14. In for a Penny, In for a Pound
My secret is that my dad bribed my mom with a small sum of $1,500 for full custody of my youngest sibling when we were kids. Not only would this be a massive blow to my sibling's self-esteem if she ever found out, but my dad remarried quite quickly and his new wife is the very definition of an evil step-mom.
I don’t think that my sibling could live with the knowledge that her real mom gave her up for next to nothing and the trade-off was more than five years of torment. Her ego would be destroyed.
Flickr,
15. He Just Needed to Vent
When I was about 6 years old, I was super scared of the dark like most 6-year-olds are. It was late at night one evening and I needed to pee really badly. I had an air vent on the floor near my bed. So, obviously, my 6-year-old mind thought that it would be a good idea to pee into the vent. My parents never found out about it, but for a good while they were constantly complaining about the pee smell in our house that they could never seem to locate.
I’m taking this secret to my grave.
16. I’m Not Who You Think I Am
As a teenager, I had cancer multiple times and almost lost my life on several occasions. At one point, I spent several weeks in intensive care and survived despite no doctor thinking that I could possibly live. More than 20 years later, everyone I know still comments on how I survived purely thanks to my intense will to live. In reality, my secret is that I was nothing like that courageous, determined hero that they all make me out to be today.
I actually spent every waking moment in that hospital bed in absolute agony, desperately wanting to die as quickly as possible.
Piqsels
17. Inside Out
I once planned to end my own life and had it all planned out. My letter was already written and ready to go. Then, on the morning of the day that I had planned on doing it, the person who had tormented me at school for years and made my life miserable shocked everyone by taking his own life. That was when the reality of what I had been planning really sunk in and I realized that I had almost made a terrible mistake. I swore to myself right then and there that I would get help.
Even though nowadays I can paint a really happy picture on the outside, I can still sometimes feel myself having days where I want to bawl my eyes out, crawl into a corner, and just disappear. My life is exponentially better now than it was before, but that still doesn't change how messed up I sometimes feel on the inside.
My darkest secret is the fact that I still fight these urges, and that I still hate myself.
18. Dad’s “Nice Face” Explained
My late father was a great dad, went to work, came home every night and nothing was really out of the ordinary except that he would ask my sisters and me to let him use the money from our piggy banks (my granddad lived with us and he had a great pension and relatively no bills, so he spoiled us rotten and would always give us money) because he knew we had it, but he told us not to tell anyone and that he'd give it back.
He would also really only have two moods, really cranky or extremely sweet (my sisters and I called it his "nice face"). This was all we knew until I was about in Grade 8. We went to a private school and my dad would tell us school was cancelled, that there was a gas leak, or there were institute days and so we would stay home. When we would go back to school, nobody else would know what we meant as they had been in school.
One day, just before my graduation, I heard my mom let out a terrifying scream. Our house was being foreclosed on and my dad hadn't been paying the mortgage and had been trying to cover up for the fact that he had been a functional addict for years. The "nice face" was when he was high, the school absences were because he'd spent tuition money on drugs and then had to pay before my mom caught wind.
It had gotten worse by this time but he'd been an addict for more than 20 years and none of us knew.
19. Why Holidays Are Weird
My grandma and grandpa have been separated since we were all young kids, but they kept up this charade of a marriage. My grandpa would always fall asleep on the couch before we went to bed on holidays and when we’d wake up in the morning, he was “out getting coffee.” We never thought anything of it because they were still always together.
However, looking back, I don’t remember them ever being in the same room or ever really interacting beyond the age of about five. They’re super Catholic and obviously don’t believe in divorce, yet they both have moved on and gotten new significant others, who are now pushing them for marriage. Holidays are very weird nowadays.
20. My Brother’s Keeper
Dad and his brother hate each other. That was no secret. The secret was why. It all came to a head when my grandfather (my dad’s father) was on his deathbed. He needed a kidney. Dad was a match and didn’t donate. Once grandpa passed, things kicked off for real. I always thought it was due to my dad not giving the kidney. It was so much more.
My dad drinks a lot. It would affect him greatly to give up a kidney. There were many accusations about his drinking and being selfish. After the funeral, we were asked to come to take a lot of his belongings and his brother showed up and made a big scene. However, last year it all became 100% clear. That's when the true nature of their antagonisms was revealed.
My uncle likes to play the victim. My uncle has been married six times. He lied to his wife about how many marriages he had. He is a serial cheater. During my grandfather’s numerous hospital stays my uncle would travel to “be with his dad” but in reality, he was out sleeping with everything that moved, namely a nurse looking after my grandfather.
At that time, he was married to wife number six (she thinks she is the third) and has his first child who is now about 10. My uncle had always been this guy, but it blew up when my dad was hanging out with my uncle and my uncle’s business partner. Dad drank too much and laid all his brother’s dirty laundry out to the business partner. All of it, every detail.
The business partner jokingly made comments about it in proximity to my uncle’s current wife. This caused tension, a tension that eventually had the business partners separate. Uncle went nuclear on dad about it. Dad told him 1) if he was that upset about it why does he keep doing it and 2) back off unless he wants him to lay all this out to the current wife.
So all this time, all this hate was due to my uncle trying to keep his secret while masking it and blaming my dad for being an alcoholic and not saving his dad's life.
21. Hot Tamale!
A few houses down from us, there was this older couple—a husband and wife. The husband would come out during the mornings with homemade donuts to sell, whereas the wife would come out during the night with tamales for sale as well. Everyone in the neighborhood knew them and liked them, until one day, the husband suddenly passed.
He had a massive heart attack, as old people do. Everyone came to give their condolences to the wife, who was destroyed. When the funeral came, there was no body because, as she said, her husband had already been cremated. Afterward, she kept on selling tamales. Some people complained that they tasted different…I think it's pretty obvious what happened.
That same night, some locals stormed into her house and found something there to confirm their suspicions. It had to be pretty disturbing, because my mom wouldn’t tell me what it was…
22. That’s Not Santa
A freshman at my school with Asperger’s had a really terrible home life. He was a problem child and often got in trouble on purpose, but no one went too hard on him because everyone knew how awful his parents were. In the end, he was a well-loved kid at school and in the community. Looking back, that just made what happened to him even worse.
One day just before holiday break in December, the freshman got really sick, but his mom sent him to school anyway. She locked him out of the house, so he decided to try and get into one of the empty houses down the street, through the chimney. Now this kid was the size of a second-grader, but he was still too big to fit through, since chimneys get thinner as they go down. His mom never answered her phone when the school reported him missing.
His awful mother actually went a whole day before reporting her kid missing. No one knew what had happened to him. It was about a month and a half—and then, the horrifying truth came out. We all thought he had run away and was alive somewhere. Maybe he went to his sister’s house. Nope. His body was found in the chimney.
The schools organized an entire week of counseling, they wore pink for a day and handed out little pink ribbons on pins for him since his favorite color was pink. Everyone was hit really hard by it. That's how our small town started 2020. It hasn't gotten any better, as you can imagine. So weird that its almost been a year now...
23. He Never Left
In my town, a local high school student went missing back in the 80s. Apparently, the chief of local law enforcement didn't like the father of the kid, so they didn't investigate the case very well and it went unsolved. The father went around all the time complaining about the department and the town council, saying that they were part of a cover-up.
15 years later, the kid’s body was found next to a popular walking trail downtown. It was almost in plain sight, in our downtown, for 15 years. I probably walked past without noticing it at least 100 times.
24. Bringing Out the Beast in Him
I know that my grandfather was secretly into some really dark stuff. When I was a teen and still visited my grandparents' house often, I would log into YouTube with my own account on the family computer there because it was convenient. One day, I forgot to sign out before going back home. For about five days after that, I was inadvertently able to see the kind of stuff that my grandpa was searching for on YouTube.
I guess he didn't know where else to find this kind of stuff. I know I could've just paused my search history, but I was simultaneously sickened and curious as to how far this would go.
25. Family Tradition
I know what's in my mom’s will. My brother gets almost everything—90% of her estate. I once kind of confronted her about it without letting on that I actually knew—you know, wording it as a hypothetical kind of thing. She responded by basically admitting to what she was doing and stating that she would be giving him a "larger share" because he was weaker and not as well educated—whereas since I am educated, I was going to be fine even if I got nothing from her.
I just accepted it and moved on. Nothing is worth my family, man. My grandfather was self-made, and gave my father nothing but an education. He gave the rest his land and cows, and within less than a decade they were all destitute and begging for money from my dad. My father is self-made, and he has given me an education. I will be self-made too.
26. Dear Diary
I read my mom's diary from 2002 when I was 9 years old. Thanks to that, I found out that she got an abortion when she was a teen. I didn't understand what it meant at the time, but now I do—and I'm feeling kind of guilty for all the times I asked her for a sibling.
27. Young at Heart
I know that when my mother was a teenager and was pregnant with me, she drank and did a ton of drugs because she had never wanted to be pregnant and was planning on leaving my dad—which she did a year after she had me. She went to an abortion clinic, but couldn't go through with it. She doesn’t know that I know, and I will never tell her that I know.
I didn’t find out until well into my adulthood and I hold no hate towards her because of it. Regardless of what she did when she was young, she raised me the best that she could and gave me and my older sibling everything we ever needed. She was a very loving and hard working mom.
28. So Many Questions…
My dad has a family. A whole, entire other family that I have never met or even heard of until I recently read a report made by my school when they skipped me a grade. It details my mother's and father's family history. My father is married to another woman who I don't know, yet he still comes over and makes love to my mother often.
He is a grandfather. He just turned 60 but looks like he's 30. His grandchild is the same age as me. I'm 15.
29. Blaming the Victim
My dad took his own life almost 20 years ago. At the time, my mum told me that it was because he had been having gay affairs with people and he couldn't handle that "sinful" lifestyle anymore. It turns out she cheated on him, and that was what had actually sent him over the edge. I only know this because I was finally able to read a copy of his note last year.
30. Inferior Officer
I know that my superior officer, who is a huge jerk, is cheating on his wife of about 15 years with the female patrol sergeant. I could literally ruin his life with this information if I wanted to. Everyone basically hates him anyway, but I still haven't built up the nerve to face him. However, if he's ever being a jerk to me, I might just tell him that I know about this. That'll shut him up for a bit!
31. A Photo Is Worth a Thousand Words You Don’t Want Your Kids To Hear
I have a relative who committed suicide, and next to their note, they left a small stack of things they wanted to be buried with. Several days after the funeral, the director of the funeral home called my mom and let her know that sadly, the items my relative wanted to be buried with did not get put in the coffin. It happens sometimes, and he told mom that they try to contact the family member who seems least likely to lose their mind over it.
I'm paraphrasing of course, but my mom was the perfect person; the woman is unflappable. Mom went up to the funeral home and they returned the items to her. She told me the story once, and that nobody in the family knew, but that she wanted me to know where the items were in case she passed before she found an appropriate time to give the items to my relative's kids (it was some photographs of my relative with family and friends, and then a wedding ring).
The kids were very young, so it wasn't appropriate for her to give it to them at the time. It's been well over 20 years, and I don't think she has ever passed the things on. We have never discussed it again, and I haven't ever told anyone. One day I am sure I'll have to have that conversation with one or both of my relative's kids, but until then, this is the only time I've said anything about it.
32. When Will Microsoft Office Stop Wrecking Our Homes?
I was working on a paper for school and took a break for a few hours. When I got back to the computer, I opened Word and clicked on the most recent document, which for days on end had been my paper, but during my break my mom had gotten on the computer to work on a letter to her best friend from her school days. Right at the top, it talked about how she'd caught my dad cheating on her and all the pain she was going through, etc. They never said a word about it to me and I never told anyone that I knew.
Years later I overheard my dad on the phone and from his tone and the conversation, I just assumed he was talking to my mom. You know, there's a way he talked to everyone else and a way he talked to her. I walked in the room and he quickly ended the call, which I thought was odd. 30-45 minutes later, my mom called me, and from our conversation I knew she hadn't been the one he was talking to.
I highly suspected he was cheating again but remembering from that letter how much the incident she knew about had clearly hurt her, I didn't know what (if anything) to do about it. Ultimately, I did nothing.
33. Better Late and Online Than Never
My parents have no idea that I didn't graduate college when I said I did. In the spring of my senior year, I overloaded and took 6 classes instead of 5, in order to graduate on time. My grandmother passed away that semester, and in the aftermath, I was so depressed that I barely passed 5 of the classes and failed the 6th entirely.
My parents aren't abusive, but I was living with them at the time and they would never have let me live it down. My school let me walk, so I just lied and told them I had finished. I already had a job lined up when I was supposed to have graduated, so I started working, and a year later I took an online course to finish my degree.
My parents just think my diploma got messed up by the school, and that's why it was late.
34. When The Second Time Isn’t the Charm
I was touring Australia for six months with my girlfriend Jan, whose twin sister had lost her son to SIDS a few months before we left. Jan was devastated but still really wanted to go to Oz with me. Her twin sis had given birth to a second son about three months after the loss, and when we left for down under, the boy was about three months old and a big focus of love for everyone after the shock of the SIDS.
Every week, Jan would ring home and talk to her mother. At the end of the second week, the mother asked to speak to me. This was unusual. We did not have much to say to each other normally, so I was surprised. It turns out she wanted me to know the second son had been diagnosed with leukemia, but whatever happened I should not tell Jan as it would spoil her holiday. She was right that it would devastate Jan and that she would want to leave at once, and to be honest there was nothing she could have done even had she returned.
So, I sat on this awful news for nearly six months. To make it worse her mother told her on our return that I knew about the diagnosis from the start, so it was one of those circumstances where you can never win.
35. Don’t Let This Cat Out of the Bag
My sister's cat passed during the night a couple days ago, and I'm the one who found her in the morning. I lied to my sister about how I found her. I said she was lying on the ground and possibly had a heart attack (which would explain her eyes being wide open, I couldn't close them). I actually found her trapped, under the dining table, hanging between two chairs with her front leg and her head back.
She must have fallen and couldn't free herself (she didn't have good control of her claws anymore). She looked like Jesus on the cross, completely stiff from rigor mortis. I was freaking horrified and still can't get the image out of my head. It hurts me so much to know that her last moments were of suffering. I now can't ever tell my sister how it really happened.
To slightly soften the story, she was a very old cat, about to turn 20 years old. What was unbelievable was that it was on the morning of the day we had booked a vet appointment to put her to sleep. My sister actually feels relief that she passed "naturally" rather than being taken to a strange place she didn't know. I can't share the same sentiment, sadly, but I'm just relieved that she is relieved.
36. The Other Peg in The Love Triangle
That my Dad was cheating on my mom. I found out during middle school/beginning of high school but kept it between my sister and me. We weren’t sure what to do. Today, my mom found out while fighting with my dad. The secret just came out of me when he walked away, and she wanted to go after him. She was first upset that I had been dealing with that 4/5-ish years, but later on she started to turn her anger about it towards me.
Just lying in bed, not sure how to continue. My parents have always fought since I was little and always put me in the middle of it, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
37. Let’s Hope All Dogs Go to Heaven
My secret is that my partner's childhood dog didn't go peacefully. He passed muzzled, screaming his lungs off, with the vet's assistant lying on top of him. I took him in to be put down because his cancer had gotten so bad that he couldn't walk. He was so weak...there was no reason for her to pin him like she did. His last few moments were filled with the most bloodcurdling shrieks of pain and fear...I never told him.
When asked I said that he slipped away peacefully. He thinks we don't go to that vet anymore because they were expensive. I think she was afraid of him. He was a big dog, obviously scared, and screaming in pain when she wrenched his hind leg out to get the needle in there. He had cancerous tumors all throughout his body and pulling his leg HURT. So, to keep him from struggling, she basically put her entire weight down on top of him as he passed.
His leg was turned out at a funny angle the entire time because he couldn't even straighten it with her weight on top of his body.
38. Too Little to Know the Power of Words
When I was about eight years old and in the process of getting diagnosed with ADHD, I had to go to a child psychologist to go through a screening process. After a while, the lady took me to another room and asked all these questions that all pretty much lead to whether or not my dad molested me. However, me being young and not knowing what she meant by “touching you in ways that I didn’t like,” I just assumed she meant when I would get hurt after wrestling, so I said yes.
Well, fast forward a couple weeks, and I’m being carted down to the local authorities to give a statement to say that my dad wasn’t molesting me. My dad was so close to being charged with molestation all because a child psychologist asked a kid a couple leading questions. To this day, they still have no idea that it was me.
So, it looks like my dad poisoned that families’ lawn as revenge for no reason.
39. Wild Horses Should Drag Him Away
The janitor of the school in my home town had the nickname “Schimmelreiter,” which means white horse rider. He got that nickname because he would sneak into the nearby stables and climb onto the horses there…totally naked. Oh, but it gets worse. Once up on the horse, he would start to pleasure himself. He got caught several times—and got a bloody nose several times too.
My father once got into an argument with the weirdo’s wife, because she blamed my father for her husband’s little obsession. Apparently, my father didn't lock his stable well enough. Yeah, like that's the real problem here.
40. You’re the Sequel, Baby
My cousins (who I was good friends with growing up) don't know they have two half-sisters, who are about ten years older than them. My uncle got his college girlfriend pregnant, then bailed on her. She had twin girls and married and built a life. My uncle signed away his rights, and she let him off with no support payments if the entire family cut contact.
The twins reached out to my grandparents once they turned 18 and built a solid relationship with them. I found out when I was in college because my grandparents saw them regularly and told my brother because they wanted to make sure someone would pass along the word if/when they passed away. My grandparents are gone now.
My cousins are in their 30s and their sisters are approaching 50. I've known for twenty years and never said a word.
41. My Mother, My Homewrecker
That the reason that my ex-girlfriend and I broke up wasn't that we drifted apart, or me moving to a different city for studying...actually, her mother asked me to stop this relationship because "we were from two different worlds." The crazy thing is that I understood it, and took it for granted. A decision which I still regret sometimes.
42. Domestic Bliss or Blight?
Someone I know has knocked up their girlfriend. They've only been dating for like six months. They are 19 and 20. She's already 4-5 months pregnant. Neither his parents or hers know, and he's never met her parents. Neither have stable employment. His parents are poor and would be financially ruined if they tried to help. She is an absolute freeloader.
And quite frankly, both are lazy idiots who try to offload any of their responsibilities onto others and would make terrible parents.
43. High School Sweethearts Last Until Heaven
I met this girl in the summer of 1985 while on a summer camping vacation. We got physical but no intercourse. Hung out for two or three days. I fell hard for her, but she only wanted to be pen pals. She lived an hour away, but when you’re 17 it might as well be eight hours away. We wrote a few times, and eventually, after her not responding to two letters, I let it go.
I've been with dozens of women since. Happily, on my second marriage. There's hardly a day that has gone by that I haven't thought about her in some way. I have looked for her for years, Google, LinkedIn, FB, you name it, no trace of her. She kind of dropped off the face of the earth in 1990, at least on paper. I'm ashamed of the obsession. I have never told anyone but a therapist a few years back.
I wonder what she would even think if I contacted her. The more I think about that, the more I'm a bit glad I can't find her; that would probably freak her out. Her mother was an Irish immigrant, so she has citizenship, she might have gone to Ireland and gotten married there? (I grew up in Chicago, this meeting happened in Wisconsin).
44. Now That’s What I Call Clean Eating
One time I was super stoned, and my roommate made some tortellini, and I wanted some of them. I got the impression that he didn't want to share so I waited for him to finish, hoping he'd leave his leftovers out for the peasants. Some time passes, and I go back to the kitchen to see what the tortellini situation was like. Lo and behold, there was some tortellini soup sitting on the counter.
"Oh, dang he made tortellini soup," I thought to myself. "Nice." So, I fish some tortellini out of this soup and decided they tasted weird, so I stopped eating them. I was so stoned I wasn't 100% sure if they were weird or I was weird. Later on, my roommate comes downstairs and says something along the lines of, "Dudes I poured a bunch of dirty dishwater in the left-over tortellini, and I think someone ate some." Everyone in the room was like, "Hah gross." I never told anyone it was me.
In short, I ate dirty hot dog water tortellini stew.
45. From Matchmaker to Match-Lighter…
My town's dark secret hit extremely close to home: My neighbor passed in her home because it was set on fire by her ex. I'd petsat for her tons; we didn't talk every week or anything, but we knew each other pretty well. Came over one day to get her keys for an upcoming petsitting job, and her ex was there. He seemed nice, I shook his hand, we all talked for a while and I left.
Next week after she got back, I was out at my barn feeding our horse and goats and I smell something burning. From the hayloft I could see it was her house, it was just a massive column of thick smoke and it stung to breathe. It was just me and my grandma at home, my parents were on vacation, so I had to grab the hose and wet down as much of our property as I could, including the roof of our house and barn because it was the dry season.
She was found in critical condition in her bathroom by firefighters, and later passed in the hospital. I'd always thought if I met someone "evil" like her ex I'd know or something; like I'd get a weird feeling. But he was just a normal, polite dude. It completely blindsided me and it's been hard really trusting people ever since.
I'm always scared if I go over to a friend's house and I'm alone with them, they'll end up being like him, and I'll get attacked or something. Then I feel like garbage because you're supposed to trust your friends. Idk what to do about it if it's been this long and I'm still not over it. Before they tore down her house and built a new one, I went over to her property and got some lamb's ear to plant in our front garden since she loved that plant so much.
At first, it withered back because it was still the dry season but then exploded and about two years later it started flowering. I'd never seen lamb's ear flower before and to this day it's the only plant I've ever been able to keep alive.
46. Pinball Is A Full Contact Sport
My grandfather lost his life in a bar when my father was still a toddler. The official story was that he was attacked over a pinball game. Back then, pinball was taken pretty seriously, I guess. It wasn't until recently that my grandmother made a shocking deathbed confession. She told us that my grandfather had actually taken someone else’s life and buried the body, days before his own demise.
So he was actually targeted in retaliation for a terrible thing that he had committed. Pinball was just the excuse. My grandmother kept this secret for almost 65 years.
47. Too Close For Comfort
My dad's cousin took a dude’s life in a substance-induced rage back in 1990. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then did the same to the victim’s son, who was only nine years old at the time. He was living in my parents' basement at the time. Investigators first questioned my dad, and then they found my cousin's shoes in the house.
The dude used to babysit me and my siblings when we were growing up. I didn't know about any of this until I was almost an adult. He used to call me from behind bars on our shared birthday, and it always gave me the creeps. I stopped answering when I discovered the truth. My dad and grandma swear he is innocent, but I read into the case. He's definitely not.
48. Bye Bye Baby
My mother was sent to an unwed mother’s home to have her first child. In Australia, this was very commonplace, even as late as the 70s. This is now referred to as “Forced Adoption,” as the mother never had a chance to even try to keep her child. It was common practice for families to send their pregnant unwed daughters to these places.
The idea was for them to complete their pregnancy and then immediately give the child away without “the neighbors knowing.” And that’s not the only bombshell. On top of that, she has since found out through ancestry DNA that her father wasn’t really her biological father, and that her mother had gotten pregnant with her from another man before her parents were married. Talk about hypocrisy!
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49. “Secret Family”
My grandma remarried when my mom was a toddler. Turns out that my mom’s biological dad was cheating on grandma with her best friend, resulting in a child, and a divorce. He recently passed after having no contact with us since he left grandma. It turns out we're his "secret family" and that his current family has no idea that we exist.
We also learned that it's very likely my mom has a couple of dozen half-siblings in Vietnam. Also, he left all his money in his will to his favorite working girl. Yeah, my grandpa is not the best guy.
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50. Weeding Out The Lies
My dad used to grow weed at the plant nursery he used to run when I was a kid. That explains why there was an opaque tarp covering the back half of Greenhouse 5! And why my parents told my brother and me never to go back there. And why some real scruffy looking young guys were always coming around blasting music all the time even though the only people I ever saw buying the regular plants were older men covered in dirt and driving trucks.
Apparently, my brother found it and sold it to some of his friends at school in exchange for candy (he was in Grade 5 at the time, only like 10). My parents naturally freaked out and scrapped the whole crop. The back half of Greenhouse 5 went back to growing regular plants and dad sold the expensive UV lights he was using to grow them.
51. Robbed Of The Truth
My great-grandma is still alive. One day, while visiting, she told me our family's big secret. It turns out that her father (my great-great-grandpa) robbed a grocery store in the 1960s and spent a year or so behind bars. This all happened when my great-grandma was already a married adult, so after that she pretty much cut him out of her life.
My great-grandma has never discussed him, other than to say he was mean and no one has ever brought him up around her. I understand now that she's probably more than a little embarrassed about it. But also, she probably has some hard feelings about it. You see, while her dad was in the clink, he would have left his wife (my great grandma's mom) alone and struggling.
52. They Say He’s A Real Blockhead
We grew up in one of the worst neighborhoods in my state. It was really rough. Anyway, 80s childhood being what it was, we used to ride our bikes everywhere, regardless of danger. Our home street was divided into three parts. The upper and middle parts were relatively okay in the daytime. The lower part was off limits no matter what, because that’s where the creeps and dealers lived.
We moved out finally and went somewhere a lot safer. Years pass. Our old neighborhood makes the news every so often for various outrages. One day, I saw in the newspaper that a woman had recently been found deceased in her house—she’d been sitting there for a month on her couch. It was already sad, but then things took a horrific turn.
When authorities showed up to deal with the situation, they discovered a big slab of cement in a strange place in the backyard. A neighbor told them that they’d frequently seen her at night sitting near and talking to the slab. If you knew how strange the people were in our neighborhood were, you’d have brushed this off as yet another weirdo.
Well, it turns out it was her husband. Only they weren’t officially married, so when he passed on—it was suspected to be natural causes, surprisingly—she couldn’t live without his Social Security check every month, so she buried him in the backyard and kept up the pretense that he was alive and living with his out-of-state relatives.
We used to ride by that house frequently when he was already buried in the yard. Oh, the 1980s.
53. Guilt Trip
I have an uncle who is an alcoholic and lived with my grandparents until they passed. We always thought he was just an unmotivated loser. I have another uncle who passed long before I was born (he got hit by a car coming back from the store). But then, after both grandparents passed, my mom told me the true story of what happened.
The alcoholic uncle was asked to go to the store but convinced his little brother to go instead which led to his being hit by the car. My grandmother, with whom I have always held in very very high regard, told my alcoholic uncle afterward that his brother would still be alive if he had gone to the store as she had asked.
I cannot imagine the guilt that he would have felt and completely understand why he ended up that way as a result. In my adult life I’ve found that my uncle is a pretty good man, he was just dealt a bad hand.
54. Punch Up
My dad's youngest brother came home inebriated one night and got into a fight with my grandpa. My uncle punched grandpa in the face and went to bed. Grandpa went to the bathroom and never came out. My dad came over in the morning and found him dead in the bathroom. It turned out that he had a massive heart attack in the middle of the night.
After that my uncle drank, smoked, and snorted anything and everything for as long as he could. He eventually did time and when he got out, he hung himself. Maybe he would have turned out the same either way, but my dad told me the full story about five years ago and it made me wonder if his life would have been any better if not for that one night.
55. Alien Probe
My father always talked about how his brother lied to a doctor with a crazy story so he could get on disability. I remember thinking how it seemed so easy for anyone to get disability insurance: all you had to do was tell your doctor you were abducted by aliens. Years later, my father had a mental breakdown and everything eventually became more clear.
My father started telling stories about the government implanting a chip in his brain. He went out and got a brain scan as proof, and he would point to things that weren't there. My dad was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and years later, he started collecting a disability cheque because he couldn't hold a job (kind of hard to perform any job when every conversation, including interviews, veers into the government probing you, literally).
As an adult, it dawned on me when my aunt mentioned mental illness runs in the family. My uncle had never lied to his doctor. He told that doctor what he believed to be the absolute truth: he had been abducted by aliens.
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56. Stranger Than Fiction
So, a woman wrote what was essentially a tell-all bodice ripper about the doctor-patient scandals going on in my small town. I believe she had recently moved there, and was disgusted when she heard about it, whereas all the residents were either in on it or totally dedicated to maintaining the fiction of the "pure" town.
She was sued for libel, although I'm not sure what the result was. She was also harassed quite substantially and her house was vandalized. The local chief at the time had warned her that it would happen but, of course, did nothing to prevent it. The original printing run of the book was about 200,000 copies, most of which have now vanished.
When it pops up, it usually sells for around $500. If you find a copy, odds are you'll find notes in the margins trying to piece together who was who.
57. A Secret Literally Carried To The Grave
Sometime in the early 90s, my brother passed on in a car crash. For years I grew up idolizing him. My family held him in a very high esteem: He was going to be a lawyer and his loss was seen as the worst possible tragedy. When I was 16, I discovered a box hidden in a compartment in his closet. What I found inside made my blood run cold. There were journals, sketches, and essentially a plan to kidnap and get rid of a girl from his school.
Whether this would have ever come to fruition or was just a fantasy, I’ll never know…but it messed me up for a good few years.
58. Sibling Support
From my father's family line: my great grandfather took my great grandmother’s life with an axe while she was sleeping. My grandma, who was the oldest one, raised all of her siblings. She was 19 at the time and just married my grandad, who was 19 too. The youngest sister was just two years old, and there were nine of them in total.
I knew my grandma raised all her siblings but I always thought it was because her mother succumbed to some illness. I only found out what really happened when I asked my aunt. I still struggle to believe it. It's just so awful.
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59. Addiction Kept Hidden
My aunt and uncle were drug addicts. I adored them but as I got older I started seeing less and less of them and never understood why. My parents briefly told me when I was 16 that my uncle didn’t pass of a brain tumour, but instead that he shot himself while my aunt was in the other room. Sadly, things got even worse. Overhearing my uncle take his life was part of what led to my aunt's fatal overdose on New Year’s Day.
They finally told me the whole story when I was 21. I was literally the last person to know (even my little brother knew before me) because I was extremely close to them and thought of them so fondly. Even after knowing all this, I still remember them with love. I wish I knew the truth sooner but I understand why my family didn’t tell me.
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60. It All Makes Sense Now
My mom was in the hospital, so I flew home. My dad and I were hanging out. He started telling me family secrets, almost like he was trying to get a reaction out of me. An uncle was victimized, an estranged aunt might have a different father than we thought, etc. The one that got me was when he revealed that he used to do coke.
I was imagining he meant like in his 20s. I asked, "When did you stop?" and he said, "I think you were about 19." “My entire childhood?” And he said, “Yup.” “Did mom know?” “Yes.” “How much?” “About a gram a week.” I was gobsmacked at first, but looking back, it made a ton of stuff make way more sense.
I grew up with my dad always having crazy mood swings and starting explosive fights. One minute he would be fine and then suddenly he would be raving about something. I knew he drank so I always blamed the instability in the house on that. But finding out he was regularly doing coke all my life was both astounding and it made complete sense.
61. Permit One
Not far from me, some years back a farmer decided to extend his farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. He didn't get planning permission—which is needed here if you want to build anything worthwhile—and somehow the authorities caught up with him and ordered him to knock it down. He said no, it was his land, it wasn't harming anyone, that's that.
It gained local media attention, TV cameras turned up and this man suddenly had cameras in his face and his name known all around town. Because of the attention, the authorities made sure to make an example out of him and kept pressing. They were sneakily trying to demolish his property during the night while he was sleeping. That’s when it took a dark turn.
One day when law enforcement turned up to enforce things, he pulled out a piece, there was a short stand-off all caught on camera, and point blank shot one officer. Of course, it's never right to do such a thing, but I can't imagine the mental and emotional strain put on this man who just wanted to live in peace only to suddenly have his face splattered everywhere.
He got sent behind bars for his actions, and passed on shortly after being released.
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62. Wrong Foot Forward, 20 Years Later
While my older brother was in basic training (around 1990), he sustained an injury to one of his feet. In the weekly letter home, he told us how it was a minor thing and he was recovering well. He sent me a second letter letting me know that, due to the doctor not taking the injury seriously, he nearly lost the foot. Everything was OK at that point, but he wanted somebody at home to know what was going on, just in case.
Our mother would have freaked out, so he sent me the info and told me to keep it secret. Under no circumstances were our parents to find out. About fifteen or twenty years later, at a family Thanksgiving dinner, the subject of "things we got away with as kids" came up. I thought, "Surely he's come clean about this by now," and shared the story. Yeah, it was the first my mother had heard about it.
She was NOT happy. My brother and I are both adults with careers and families, and we still got bawled out for it.
63. Dial 1 for Hatred
I'm 99% sure I got my neighbor disowned from his family. His prejudiced mother one day pretended to be him during our usual Skype conversation and told me, "I got a new phone, here's the number," and for me to call it. Call it and turns out it's her, and she starts interrogating me, asking me about the things I've done with her son. And little me is scared, so I answer truthfully.
Cut to a month later, he moves out of my neighborhood, hasn't spoken to me on anything (played a lot of games together before), and when I finally get in contact with him, he says his life is ruined and it's my fault. And that his family can't stand being around him. This was four years ago, and I still think about it daily.
64. Can’t Wash This Down With Water…
I went to a small Christian college and I lived in an on-campus apartment with five other guys. One day, I got back from chapel before everyone else and thought it would be funny to take a dump in the shower. A few hours, later I acted upset when I went to take a shower and found this massive turd. Naturally, all of the guys denied and thus began the Mystery of the Shower Pooper.
We had been leaving our front door unlocked and sorta had a grudge against one of the neighboring apartments. A bunch of smug mother-effers that we just couldn't stand. One of the guys I lived with suggested that it might've been one of them playing a prank. We started locking our door, but sometimes we would forget.
Anytime I came home and found the door unlocked I would poop in the shower; this happened about a half a dozen times. The guys started really getting angry and this escalated into a series of pranks for the rest of the year, most of which involved urine and fecal matter. I've never told anyone that it was me the whole time.
65. Booking for Three
Three person secret: So my fiancée and I were having a hard time setting up stuff for our wedding and reception. Her maid of honor was having similar hardships putting her wedding and reception together. We invited her over for drinks and to talk BS. Then we wake up the next day, all three of us naked on the couch. We don’t speak about it since we don’t remember.
My secret: I wasn’t that drunk, and that three-way is my fapping material for life.
66. Search Party
A few years ago, a boy who was around my age—he would be 23 by now if he was still around—was up at his family cabin in the mountains. He was from the next province over, and was living there to work at the ski resort during the winter holiday. One night he went to a party at a house. He only lived a five-minute walk from there.
He was walking home with some friends, and when one of his friends looked back, he was gone. Just vanished into thin air. There was a search for him, but he was never found. And here's the weird part: There was no struggle or any footprints in the snow. Law enforcement asked the people who were at the party but a lot refused to answer questions about what happened or said they didn’t know. He’s been missing for three years now, I think.
Sadly, his mom hasn’t stopped looking for him and she goes to their cabin once a month for a few days to search for him. She is aware at this point he most likely passed but she wants to find him so that she can be at peace. Many think that the people who were at the party know exactly what happened to the kid, so there could possibly be a secret we don’t know about.
67. An Explosive Surprise
There was an old man who would cut, chop, and stack his own firewood all summer and fall to heat his house during the winter. One year, someone started taking wood from his pile at night. Which was really unnecessary because if they had just asked him he probably would have given them whatever they needed.
It went on for a few weeks and the local cop couldn’t really do anything about it. So the old man came up with a chilling plan. He bored holes into a few logs and filled them with black powder and plugged the bores. Like a week later, a house on the other side of town’s fireplace blew up. No one said anything at all. We pretty much all agreed they deserved it.
68. That’s a Story All Right
We are married. We have children. We share a bank account. When we were first married, we lived in an apartment in a converted garage attached to her parents' house. Her crackhead brother came in one night while we were asleep and took money from my wife's purse. Myself, his father, his mother, and my wife confronted him in his bedroom. He was in bed under the covers fully clothed but claimed he didn't do it.
We SAW him run out of our apartment. We had a fistfight and he ended up running out of the back door. I chased him, in my underwear, in January, in the freezing rain, barefoot, for almost a mile before my body gave out. You can't catch a crackhead. I returned to the house and told my wife to pack our stuff because we were moving out.
The next day, we moved into a single-wide trailer we rented from my grandparents. It was a dirty hole that I wouldn't have lived in if I had other options. It was cheap, and crackhead free. A few months later, he got busted for stealing cheques from his boss. He took $19,000 and when he was busted they found pills and coke in his car. He ended up with 109 charges and has been in prison ever since.
My wife's mother was his enabler. She always defended him whenever he did stuff. Fast forward 5 years. My father in-law contracted a serious infection from an airborne fungus. It infected his lungs, then his bloodstream, then his spinal column. His brain swelled and he almost passed before they figured out what was wrong with him. He had no health insurance because they couldn't afford any. He lost his job. They lost their house and every dime they had.
Her mom always sent her brother money in jail. So did we. So did his aunt and grandmother. He milked everyone he knew for money. I assume he's still on drugs in prison, or he's paying a protection fee. I was at her parents' house when his mother broke the news that she couldn't send him money anymore because they didn't have any. I could hear him yelling at her through the phone. This made me so furious. He didn't care that his father was almost dead. He only cared about his money.
I drove 2 hours to the prison on his next visitation day. I cursed him out and the guards made me leave. I'm not allowed back in, ever. That little payment we were sending him, I put a stop to. I told my wife he gets three meals and a cot to sleep on. He doesn't need money. She agreed we wouldn't send him any money.
Fast forward 1.5 years and I get the mail out of our box. There's a credit card bill in there that says open immediately. My wife was late on the payment. I breeze though and see the amount owed is around $2,200. The bill shows she made two payments to the prisoners' payment service. When she gets home, I confront her.
She spills her guts and says she's been sending her brother money because he called her begging and crying and all this bull. She used her credit card because she knew I'd be mad if I found out. We both have good jobs. She's a nurse, I work for the local government. We aren't hurting for money. TBH I don't care if she sends him money, it's the hiding it from me that really upset me. We had money in the bank she could have sent him, and she's running a credit card bill up and paying interest. She called in and made the $2,200 payoff and cancelled the card. I thought that was the end of it.
Fast forward almost 2 years, and I find the invoice in her car. It's a JC Penny card. She's been doing the same stuff, and judging by the $1,800 probably never stopped. I knew she had the card, but for some reason I wasn't thinking you could use it as a credit card, only in-store purchases.
I haven't confronted her about it yet. I've been putting it off. TBH I'm not even looking forward to it. I'm going to make her agree to work extra hours to pay off the $1,800 so it doesn't affect our money in our bank account. I'm also going to demand she cancel every credit account she has and offer her a chance to come clean if there are more cards I don't know about. It's not the money.
We are doing spectacularly well for people our age. We started with nothing. We both come from families that weren't exactly poor, but weren't anywhere close to rich. Nobody helped us get where we are. We both worked two jobs to put her through nursing school. We ate ramen noodles. We lived in a trailer. We now own our own home, we have bought land to either build a nicer home on or sell as an investment. We have plenty of money in the bank and we live well within our means.
Divorce isn't an option for me. I love her and I made a commitment for life, and intend to keep it. But this can't keep happening. I understand why she does it. It's her brother and she loves him. I don't blame her. If it were my brother I'd probably do the same. They were close growing up. They were born only a year apart. He had delayed speech problems and speech issues his entire life. Even though she was younger, she always stood up for him. When people made fun of him in school, she made it her fight. They have a strong bond. I can't change that.
I also can't change the fact that he is a toxic person that takes advantage of everyone who loves him. Ideally, I'd like her to come to realize he just uses her and if he cared he wouldn't ask her for money. Me preaching at her won't do much. She has to come to that realization herself. He gets out in a year. Right now, my plan is to attempt to restrain myself from beating him. I predict he learned nothing in prison except how to be an even worse person. I'm going to sit back and see what happens. Maybe he will come out and be a productive member of society. Time will tell.
If he goes right back to doing drugs, I'll be there to point out to my wife that he will never change and she needs to distance herself. If that doesn't work, there's always the option to kidnap him, put him in a crate with some MREs and a few bottles of water, and ship him to Mexico.
69. Just Leave Immediately
A girl I dated a few years back had just graduated with her bachelors, so I took her out for a night on the town. Her and our friends got absolutely demolished and since this was before Uber, I volunteered to be DD.
So around 2 am she's tanked, we head out and she wants Krystal burgers. Very adamant about that, so I stop by Krystals and order a steamer pack so I can have some too and then have leftovers. She eats somewhere around 8, I get her home, get her into her bed and she immediately passes out. I am sitting next to her watching some TV when I smell something. I notice that she has just pooed herself.
She is one of those people who would be so ashamed of herself if anyone found out so I just... left. I called her the next day and told her I dropped her off, got her some water and headed home. Never mentioned her pooing herself or anything so to this day she thinks she did it in her sleep after I left. I could have stayed and helped her clean it up and I probably should have, but she would have cried over that and avoided me sporadically for weeks.
70. Too Little Too Late, But He Doesn’t Need to Know That
When my mother-in-law was in hospice and dying, we had gotten the call that her last rights were being read to her and we should come because it was very close. The family gathered in her room, my father-in-law (her husband of 42 years) had been by her side and hadn’t left for days. We were there for hours. My sisters-in-laws had to take their kids home at some point, so they had left and it was just my husband, me, and my FIL left.
The nurses were saying that they might have spoken too soon because she was still hanging on, it was awful to watch. My FIL looked ragged and tired and he said he was just going to go to the other floor for a cup of coffee, my husband went with him. I said I would call if something changed but he was only going to be gone for 15 minutes maybe.
About five minutes after they left, my MIL really started to have very labored breathing, I called the nurse to see what was happening and by the time she came to the room (maybe two minutes) my MIL had passed. I asked the nurse to wait for me to get my FIL and husband back to the room to pronounce her dead. They rushed back and my FIL held her and after a minute the nurse and doctor pronounced.
My FIL believes he made it back to the room and was holding her while she left this life, I have never told him or my husband. And I’ll never take that away from him.
71. Mother Dearest and Potentially Deadly
That my mother was abusive to me as a kid. I kept it for 22 years. I told my dad a few months back. I told him in anger because I blamed him for letting it happen. He truly didn’t know the extent, she kept it well hidden. He then explained to me that he tried to protect me from her, and he did when he was around. He told me he’d been in an abusive relationship with her.
She separated him from every friend and family member he had. She took his entire paycheck and wouldn’t let him have a card. She told him he couldn’t leave her because she’d never allow him to see me again. My dad’s not perfect and he left me in dangerous situations, but he tried at least. And now both of our 20+ year secrets are out to each other.
72. The Great Escape
My family’s secret is that my dad tried to run out on my mum while she was pregnant with me, because he’d been embezzling money from a photography club at his workplace. His workplace then was a government institution, where he’d been treasurer. It was all about to come out because the club needed the money, so my dad decided to cut and run.
My mother’s brother and father caught him by pure accident as he was leaving the house, and my grandad, a burly Scottish coal miner, got him by the throat and told him if he ever pulled a stunt like that again, then his life would come to an end. My dad, according to the story, wet his pants right then and there on the spot.
My grandad paid the money back to the club so that no one found out, as not only would my dad have lost his job but he’d most likely have ended up behind bars, too. My mum, however, could never trust him with money again. So, although they had a joint bank account, she had them limit his access and she also made a separate account to control the bills.
She also went back to work so she could always support herself, which in those days in rural Scotland was really uncommon. In that area, most women were stay-at-home moms, so there was no such thing as childcare for children under the age of four. Mum went back to her job as a primary school teacher, and I spent the first few years of my life sleeping in a basket in the stationery cupboard in her classroom.
At my mum’s funeral, some of her former colleagues were still coming up to me and saying, “Oh, it’s the baby in the cupboard!”
73. The Night Before
My family’s secret is that my mom walked in on my uncle "servicing" his best man the night before he married my aunt. This was back in the mid-1960s, so being bi or gay wasn't something that too many people openly admitted to. She said nothing to anyone and only told my dad about it many years later. The marriage actually turned out really happy, and they are still together to this day.
They just celebrated their 57th anniversary, actually. They're both retired teachers. They travel a lot and just enjoy life. I adore both of them. They're lovely people.
74. The Gift Of Taking
My grandad made hundreds of millions through his business and investments by the time he passed. Most of it only happened a few years before he passed, though. He never got along well with the rest of the family apart from my parents. As a result, he left everything to charity in his will. Of course, the other family members weren't happy about this.
They wanted to get rich off his hard work, so they lawyered up and fought for years to get the money. Unfortunately, they eventually won the case. They were awarded not all, but most of the money in question—taking millions from needy charities and instead spending it on houses, cars, holidays, and gambling. Lots and lots of gambling.
Needless to say, we don't talk to or about that part of the family.
75. Young Love
My great-grandfather forced my grandmother to take my aunt to have an abortion when she was only 16 years old. This caused my aunt to become severely emotionally unstable. She cut her own face up so terribly bad that she now wears a large amount of makeup at all times just to cover it. And it still hasn’t really gone away in almost 45 years—and there’s an even more heartbreaking twist.
She ended up marrying her high school sweetheart afterward anyway, and they had two children together. From what I know, she never forgave either of her parents for it. I only very recently learned about this. I guess she found it hypocritical because my grandparents were married at 16 with a child. My grandmother was even excommunicated from the Catholic Church because of it.
And it still gets worse. Part of the reason my grandmother was excommunicated was that she had already been married once before, even though she was only 16. This part I was really confused about when I first heard it. She was married at 15 to another man, and traveled to California to get a divorce. She then eloped with my grandfather, who then immediately joined the Navy to fight in WWII in the Pacific Theater.
Needless to say, every single part of this has been kept a secret.
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76. Fathered By A Friend
I have a great aunt whose children look nothing like her husband. Now I know the wild reason why. It turns out he had mumps as a kid and it left him sterile. So he asked a buddy to "contribute" because he and his wife wanted kids. They kept this secret, insisting that the kids looked like someone on a great uncle's side of the family (whom we never met).
This went on for years until his funeral when she decided to tell her kids that their biological donor was a man who lost his life in the army. Yeah, it was weird.
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77. Night Of The Hunter
My family’s secret is that my grandma once tried to take my grandpa’s life. My dad tells me that my grandpa was a controlling and emotionally insensitive person. He never let my grandma go out, not even to church. But my dad also doesn't reveal much about the past. So all I know is that there is a lot of deep resentment—and it had devastating consequences.
Towards the end of his life, my grandpa had a stroke and was completely bedridden. He couldn't even speak. He was conscious though, and understood when we spoke to him. We had a full-time aid worker for him who would bathe him and feed him because my grandma didn't want to. As it turns out, she was not giving him or the carer any food.
Later, we also found out that she wasn't giving him his medicines and would ignore him for hours when he had fits. She would not give him the adult diapers and let him lay in his filth for days. Eventually, my uncle took him in and they took over his care, even though my aunt was recovering from breast cancer at the same time.
He was doing well and recovered somewhat. My grandma sometimes visited him and asked to be left alone. Once, the carer caught her trying to choke him, and she threatened to call the authorities. She just stayed quiet while my uncle kicked her out. This worsened my grandpa’s condition, and he was in the ICU for a while.
At some point, when she visited him, my grandma had also broken his arm. We didn't know, though, because he couldn't verbalize it. Needless to say, this whole chapter in my family’s history is a very deeply kept secret.
78. A Horrible Development
Back in the early 1990s, my uncle's stepson took the lives of my uncle's wife and his two daughters. My uncle himself only barely survived the attack. This is obviously something that my family does not tend to enjoy talking about or bringing up around others. The whole situation was just tragic beyond words. I hope no one else ever has to experience anything like it.
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79. Modern Art
This is not the darkest secret, but definitely the most well-kept. I grew up with my family in a small town in Texas. It was the Fourth of July. I had just been granted my Learner’s Permit to learn to drive, so I begged my aunt to ride with my sister and me to go and get fireworks so that I could try driving somewhere. She said she would, but only if she could show us something first.
She directed me to drive to one of the bridges in town in the middle of a very nice-looking rich people neighborhood. On the bridge were spray-painted two very obscene images of male privates. The pictures covered up the entire bridge. I don’t know what possessed my aunt to draw them, but it was massively funny to us.
We all laughed at it for a bit, and then we went and got the fireworks and returned home. That next morning, my mom made everyone go to church. After the service was over, my mom went over to the other group of middle-aged women. All of the women that lived in this particular neighborhood were all going “Can you believe what someone has done to our neighborhood!”
My sister and I could only side-eye each other. We didn’t tell anyone we knew who it was, and my aunt was never caught. That image showed up in some engagement photos before they were able to remove it.
80. The Gang’s All Here
A not too distant cousin screwed over this notoriously dangerous biker gang in our area. And he did so a big way. The incident included him forcing himself on someone's wife and swiping one of the leaders’ motorbikes. He has been on the run for the last 20 years as a result of this. When people ask us whatever happened to him, we just pretend that he moved away.
81. Proud Of Your Heritage
My dad's side of the family has some secrets. We live in Singapore, where Chinese is the majority ethnicity. My family has always been listed as Chinese in our ID documents. Photos of my grandparents show that my grandfather was significantly darker-skinned though, and we have two photos of my great-grandmother in Burmese wear.
Turns out that my great-grandmother knew that things would be better for us if people thought we were Chinese, so she got a Chinese man to adopt my grandfather in name. In my country, our ethnicity as stated in documents follows our paternal lineage. I'm a quarter Burmese and my dad is half. But he gets upset when we mention that he's not fully Chinese.
Our family’s true origin is considered a huge secret.
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82. Gone Too Soon
A year or two after her adoptive mother passed, my mom went looking for information about her birth parents. Eventually, she found out that her birth mother and her mother’s husband had been gruesomely slaughtered by a dealer. There was even an article about what had happened to them in Rolling Stone magazine at the time. It showed a bunch of gory pictures of their bodies.
83. A Whole Biography
My great-grandfather had more secrets than anyone I’ve ever known. First of all, he was the illegitimate child of an Italian doctor and was born somewhere in southern Italy. Supposedly, the doctor had an affair and had to cover it up. So he sent my great-grandfather to northern Italy as an infant, where he became an orphan and had to hide his past from everyone he met.
As if that isn’t enough already, my great grandfather supposedly got involved with the Italian mafia at some point. He helped them pull off a major bank heist along with two other family members. My young grandmother was supposedly the getaway driver. Eventually, he got caught and they all got put behind bars with the exception of my grandmother. All were eventually released, never spoke of the incident again, and eventually passed of natural causes.
I just found all of this out about two years ago. I'm 33 years old. I cringe.
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84. A Lot To Keep Track Of
The family secret on one side of my family is that the surname passed down for five or maybe six generations was just selected one day totally at random by this ancestor who moved countries and needed a surname for paperwork and to meet with cultural norms. He literally just chose a random one that he'd heard and liked the sound of.
Then he had seven kids, and one of his sons had fourteen kids, and most of those kids had a fair few kids themselves. So now there is a whole pile of folks running around with this ancestral name which reaches an abrupt end six generations back if they ever try to trace it. It’s as if that guy just sprung up fully-formed out of the earth.
85. I Hate This One
When I was little, I found out that my mother was secretly hated by her entire family. This was due to her having a different mother than all her siblings. I only know this because I was hated too, due to me having a different father than all of my siblings. So my grandmother felt bad and confided in me about the truth. It feels strange having so much family, but have nobody even wanting to associate with you.
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86. Money Can’t Buy Happiness
The town I was raised in wasn't exactly small, but here's the one "dark secret" I know. My hometown was where lots and lots of sports players had their mansions. And so of course, their wives and children were out and about in the community a lot. Every single sports-player-wife in that town was (is?) dealing with a serious addiction to opioids. Every, single, one.
This kind of problem is obviously an issue all over the country, but among the rich wives in the town, it had a 100% 'infection' rate, so to speak. I know because one of the sports player wives passed of an overdose a few months after moving to our town. It was sad. She was troubled, but she was so kind. She even gave the homeless man in town an iPhone just out of the goodness of her heart.
87. Dad Needs to See Himself Represented
Maybe not a deep dark secret but outside of one other comment I have never spoken of this—not with my dad, not even with my brother. I have heard that everyone has a revelation at some point, where they realize their parents aren't superheroes, just people. This is mine. My mum and dad divorced when I was very young (four I think) and my mum verbally bashed my dad on the regular. He always took it, never said a bad word about her, ever. He was a big guy, strong, immovable and quiet; he would just hug myself and my brother and the world would put itself to rights. That kind of dad.
We would see him on the weekends early on. This would change as my mum became more vindictive, but for the first few years, this was the status-quo. I remember playing Doom with him, just sitting in his lap thinking this was the coolest stuff ever, then we would go to Blockbuster get a movie and a takeaway and chill on the sofa. My brother and I always ended up sitting on the floor by my dad’s feet (either side) just to be a little closer to the action.
Anyway, it was a usual weekend, bike ride, Duke Nukem and some wrestling on the sofa. My dad had already rented the movie, so we didn't know what it was, turned out it was Mrs. Doubtfire. Ok so we made it through most of the film without incident, then it came to the scene in the courtroom where Robin Williams begs for his kids, literally begs just to be in their life, watch them grow, be their father.
My dad gets up and goes to the toilet, I assume. For a few minutes I didn't notice, there were sounds coming from the kitchen, inconsistent breaths and pacing. I walked into the kitchen to my dad gripping both sides of the fridge, his forehead touching the cold metal; and he was just shuddering a full body shudder while tears fell freely.
I didn't know what to do. I started to cry as well, I was only eight and I didn't understand, I couldn't understand, and it scared me. I just whispered "Dad?" His head whipped around, and I thought for sure he was angry, but he just dropped to his knees and held me. He called for my brother and squished us together, he was still shaking, it was so powerful.
He held onto us like we were the only things rooted to the ground, like he was scared we would disappear. After a minute, he got up and held onto the fridge again, he opened it, pulled out some ice cream, smiled and said, "Come on" as he walked to the sofa. That is one of only two times I ever saw my dad cry. It was the day I realized he wasn't made of stone and metal, he wouldn't fly, and he couldn't save the world.
He was just a man who loved his kids and couldn't bear to see them go.
88. Just Impound the Whole Father
The "car accident" was my dad getting stopped by the authorities outside the city with his "friend" and a girl. She was underage. Everyone thinks the car was totaled, but it is in evidence for a trial that might happen sometime in a few months. I've always had a sneaking suspicion my dad was up to some slimy stuff, but never knew exactly how far it went.
Once, he had me clean out an apartment when I was 16. Got rid of everything, paid a guy at the dump to take it all for $200. I knew the whole thing was shady. I should've said something. But I told myself my dad was helping someone move in, which he was, just at a different apartment on the other side of the city. I used to think he just got call girls, but now I'm thinking there's more to it.
I hate him for his lies, they destroyed my life and they are going to destroy the rest of my family when it all comes to light. But I have no choice but to act like everything is alright.
89. It Begins With A Broken Heart
My wife left me nine months ago. She broke my heart, and her sudden departure destroyed my life. I was nine months away from finishing college but instead I dropped out and I’m currently teaching in China. I'm drowning in student debt. I don't speak any Mandarin and I'm so desperately depressed I've become addicted to painkillers.
I seriously can't stop taking them. I don't know what to do with my life and I have no one to turn to.
90. Love Doesn’t Lock You Down
To punish me, my mother locked me in my room whenever I wasn't in school. It became my prison. She'd talk to me through my brother and refer to me as trash. I was completely cut off from the outside world for six months. She would tell me I was lucky to be inside the room because if she saw me, she'd kill me. If I had to use the restroom, I would hold it until I was at school or she would go to bed.
At first, being put in the room wasn't that bad because I had a lot of books, and I was at school for most of the day. But soon her husband threw away my books and then came summer vacation, when I spent the entire summer locked in that room, watching my family have fun in the pool. That was 15 years ago, and I still get panic attacks thinking about it. My girlfriend (who I live with) only recently found out about it when I slipped up and had an episode in front of her.
Ever since moving out of my mother's house, I always had a roommate or lived with a GF, so I didn't really know this was still haunting me. Recently my GF got a job the requires her to travel a lot. What she doesn't know is that every time she's gone, and I come home to an empty house, I feel like I'm in that room again. I start to panic and break down crying until I eventually pass out.
Now she's leaving for a month next week and I'm terrified about how I'll handle it. I tried telling her what's been going on, but she assumes I'm joking and to be honest I don't want her to really know. I'd hate her to think I'm weak and I know how much she loves this job and what it means for her future. I don't want her to give anything up for me or feel guilty for leaving.
So, I've decided I'm going to start streaming on Twitch while she's away. This way I can interact with people and keep myself distracted. I just hope it works.
91. Panic Explained
I learned why my mom panics the way she does and jumps to conclusions all the time. If she can’t get ahold of my brother or me on the phone, she automatically assumes we're never coming home and she goes into an intense panic. Recently, she couldn’t contact my brother for a few hours and she lost all composure and had a nervous breakdown.
I only recently found out why. Many years ago, when my mom was in high school, my granny (my mother’s mom) attempted to take her own life. My mom made a horrible discovery: She was the one that found my grandma on the floor. Luckily, she found her just in the nick of time, because if she'd gotten home even half an hour later, my grandma wouldn't have survived. We just are starting to realize after all these years, that she probably has undiagnosed PTSD.
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92. A Cry For Help
In the county I lived in as a teen, we had a local soldier pass under some extremely questionable circumstances. They said he was high or experiencing mental distress and raided a nursery—the plant kind. It was reported that he was attacked by wasps and ran. He called 9-1-1 several times and claimed that someone was chasing him and trying to kidnap him.
But then in the last 9-1-1 call, he suddenly said everything was fine. Just 14-15 minutes later, he was struck by a car, then run over two more times, and passed from his injuries. The autopsy showed no signs of bee or wasp stings. The connection to the nursery is because it was just up the road from where his body was found. The place was ransacked, trashed, money taken. But the man's wallet and phone were sitting on the counter, undisturbed.
However…the family was not ok with that explanation, especially because he had previously texted that there were some problems with the "local boys." So the family had a private investigator look into his passing. They analyzed the 9-1-1 recordings, and found several instances of other people talking in the background, though most of it couldn't be made out. Except for one, and its contents were chilling.
In the 9-1-1 call where the man told the operator that everything was fine, a male voice could be heard saying "Tell her." And the nursery? There was no DNA, no fingerprints, no footprints that lead back to the deceased man, even though his phone and wallet were there in the building. A lot of people, his family included, think he was taken out by some of the local guys after they got into a fight about something.
They chased him down, and caught him. He was able to run again after the final 9-1-1 call, and was hit by a driver while trying to get help. And law enforcement in the county covered the entire thing up because the boys involved were connected to the department somehow. Of the three drivers, none were charged for hitting/running over him.
I think only the first driver stopped, but it was discovered that one of the other drivers was connected to the department either through family or friendship. I wouldn't be too surprised since there is a lot of shady stuff happening in small town law enforcement departments, including covering up bad stuff committed by their own officers. I really hope his family gets him justice.
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93. Carpet Diem
I used to be a carpet cleaner. I’ve seen everything except a murder scene. I used to work in some of the nicest houses in my state, but I also spent a lot of time in the ghettos cleaning places for landlords or tenants so they could attempt to keep their deposit. Back when I was new to the job, I didn’t know where I stood, so I wasn’t willing to turn down any work.
On one of my first jobs, I went to this grody apartment complex in a pretty nasty area. We went in and checked the place out, and there were three guys inside with a single couch, bed, dresser, TV, and nightstand. That was it. The place reeked of stale cigarettes and moisture, was a bit moldy, and all the carpet was brown. It was off to a bad start—and it was going to get so much worse.
One of the three guys was sitting on the floor eating cereal, and they all looked borderline homeless. This wasn’t too outside the norm, and in any case, who am I to judge if you’re trying to better your life? So we got started. We left for maybe 10 minutes to get the equipment and came back. The dude who called us for the job passed out on the couch, and his boys were standing in the kitchen, keeping an eye on us.
Now, whenever we clean a place, we move the furniture, clean under it, and then move it back. Well, this dude in short shorts had passed out on the couch from drugs. The work we were doing wasn’t quiet, so we asked his friends to move him, but they just stared at us. So my coworker said, “Screw it. Grab the other side.”
We moved the couch with the dude still on it, and he still didn’t wake up. It was super awkward for me because I was brand new to the job. So, I just went with the motion, and then my coworker started going into the bedroom. We usually don’t move beds for multiple reasons; we just try to get under them as much as we can.
But after my coworker went in there, one of the customer’s friends asked, “Are you going to clean under the bed?” Without missing a beat, his other friend yelled, “NO! DON’T CLEAN UNDER HIS BED!” At that point, I was standing far back enough that I could see under his bed. Underneath were women’s heels—about 50 pairs at least, and they looked big.
So I looked over at the dude on the couch, and I noticed he has completely shaved legs. So again, I was new; I couldn’t be annoyed, so I kept working. I went to move the nightstand, and his vibrator rolled off as I moved it. So I just kicked it back under. Again—awkward. But aside from all that weird and awkward stuff, I think the thing that was the weirdest was the condiments.
This freaking dude had mustard and mayo packets all over the surfaces of the few pieces of furniture he had in his bedroom. It was all lined up and organized, nice and neat, and it was next to his vibrator on his nightstand. I’m not sure if this dude was making burgers in bed or what, but I was happy to get the heck out of that place.
94. A Recipe For Disaster
In the mid-2000s, a super nice Chinese restaurant was built in our town. The owners were a young couple with a baby. They ran the restaurant downstairs and lived upstairs. It was a popular place and probably one of the nicest restaurants in the area. I was a child back then but my mum said that it was a well-decorated, quite fancy place, with the best food around.
Needless to say, this place and the owners were loved and well-liked in town…which makes what happened next even sadder. One night, around midnight, the husband of a waitress was worried because she didn't came home. He drove to the Chinese restaurant. He found her, another waitress, the cook, and the owners lying on the floor, each executed with one precise shot.
The baby was still alive. No one had heard anything, the restaurant had shut down only an hour before. Law enforcement arrived and turned the whole house on its head. Special units from the nearby city were called in. It was absolute chaos. Patrols were controlling cars on all highways and larger streets. The flat of the couple had been searched by the culprits.
They had taken a laptop and a bit of jewelry but there were still a lot of things off value in the house. In the next couple of days, law enforcement managed to find and catch those responsible, who were five men in a van. They said that it had been a burglary and are still in prison but nobody actually believes that.
We still don't really know why everyone had to be offed like that. There hasn't been a place selling Asian food in town until like 2015, but that place burned down last year. It was never rebuilt. It's ridiculous but most here believe that owning a place selling Asian food is some kind of curse in our town.
95. Preacher Comforts
The pastor was sleeping with a number of married women that he was supposedly counseling. It’s amazing, because he was no prize. The best part? It all came undone because one of the housewives he was shagging found out about another housewife he had banged, and she was jealous, so she showed up at the other lady's house...
It was a complete disaster that only became even funnier when the pastor confessed to the congregation on a Sunday. Half the crowd wanted to go across the street to the other church.
96. Hold Your Horses
My high school had a farm on campus. We had an Agricultural Science program and everything, so the farm was a natural fit. There were horses, a cow, pigs, chickens, alpacas, etc. at any given time, which had mostly been donated to the school. The year or two before I started there, the seniors decided to play a prank and release the farm animals in the school one night.
In my mind, not a bad prank, kinda funny overall if planned right—but sadly, it took a chilling turn. Our school is three stories tall and they didn't think to close the doors to the staircases. I don’t know if you've ever seen a horse on a slick surface—like well-waxed school floors—but it isn't a pretty sight. Combined with the fact that they can't really go down stairs...I'm sure you can see where this is going.
Unfortunately, the horse broke its leg and had to be put to sleep. Of course, the school was looking to press charges on whoever had a hand in it, but nobody said anything. People DEFINITELY knew who did it. It was the talk of the school just about up until I graduated. But no one said a word, and now it's just a dark secret that someone's carrying around with them.
97. A Toy Story
So get this... I dated a guy in my late high school years who was very reserved and very handsome. The first seven or eight months were unreal, I was so happy, and things were going great. Soon thereafter, he and I decided to tell each other our deepest darkest secrets. (10/10 do not recommend) He told me that when he was young, he used to cut holes in his stuffed animals and would have intimate relations with them.
I had no idea what to think, but I honestly didn't feel like it was the worst thing someone could do, so I just let it reside in the back of my mind. For unrelated reasons things got a little rocky in the months after. He became so jealous and overprotective. He would come up to my work and watch me for hours, he would drive me to and from wherever I needed no matter what, he would also get so upset when I spent any time away from him.
When I did get the opportunity to hang out with friends, he would always buy me flowers or pillow pets and leave them on my car almost as if he was letting me know he was watching. This just got worse over the next 3 months and I figured it was probably time to end things. I decided I was just going to drive over and just let him know things weren't working out, simple enough, right? Wrong.
When he figured out what I was doing, he completely lost it. Punched holes in everything, broke whatever was in sight, and had a full-on episode. When I got to the house he was waiting for me in his truck which was completely ripped apart, might I add. I figured it probably wasn't the best idea to get out of the car, so I turned around to drive away and he busted out his truck window and then followed dangerously close to my car.
After about a half hour, he finally let off and called me claiming he wrecked his truck. I went back to get him, but I'll skip the details on the endless crazy things he pulled that night. Needless to say, it was over. A few months after the break up I decided it was probably a good time to get all of the things I had left at his house.
It was mostly clothes, but I always left the stuffed animals he got me there just because. Long story short, I walked into his closet (The walls were still completely demolished from his episode) and I found some of the pillow pets he had bought throughout the relationship. I grabbed my favorite one (a grey elephant named Charlotte) and on the underside she was just covered in you-know-what. By covered I mean graciously glazed from multiple endeavors.
Side note: It is so weird typing this out. It never seemed as crazy as it actually is.
And that's all I have to say about that.
98. Daddy Issues
This was one of those revelations that haunted me the very moment it came out. It was a case where my client, a mother, was trying to get a restraining order against her brother for harming her kid. The entire time, she’d been super dodgy about the kid’s father’s identity. Well, in the middle of open court…she confessed that the brother was her child’s father.
99. One Man Down
It was an “intentional community” I joined when I was 19. There were a bunch of hippies living in tents on a piece of land. A charming, shirtless dude was the leader, the group included several young women—although there were a few other dudes and an older woman involved as well. After I moved in, I discovered their dark secret.
I learned that one of the other guys had gone missing after having a disagreement with the leader. He packed up his car full of all his belongings, and then…was nowhere to be found. They searched the property for his body, contemplated calling the authorities, but decided not to. Instead, they decided to just hold hands around the fire. I left.
100. Famous Last Words
When my dad passed, the associate pastor of my mom’s church spoke at the funeral and talked all about how devastating cancer is. Meanwhile, I knew the pastor’s secret. That pastor used to attend a different church, but had to leave after she was caught for having faked cancer for two years. Her husband left her and her daughter disowned her after they found out.
My mom was the secretary at that church. So she knew, and had already told me. My dad’s funeral was only like two years after that whole thing went down. I would have walked up to the podium and punched her right in the face were it not disrespectful to my parents.
