Look at the most recent texts on your phone—those ones from the people you speak to every day. The ones that you know inside and out. Well, they're probably hiding some kind of secret that you don't know about. After all, isn't there a secret you haven't told them? No matter how much any one person can claim to be an open book, most people will always have at least one dark secret they wish to keep hidden. Be it a forbidden affair, a chilling mistake, or a humiliating moment, these secrets can range from sad to utterly explosive. These Redditors came together to share their experience of keeping secrets—or watching other people's secrets get exposed. Either way, they're utterly jaw-dropping.
1. Hanging On The Telephone
The secret that I've kept hidden is that I was working as an operator for an adult phone line back in university. I told everyone I know that I was working the phones for our local department store. One day, my dad innocently asked me whether they were hiring, as he thought he might want to give my alleged job a try. Nope. We were not...
2. Loose Lips Sink Ships
I keep seeing the wedding photos of this girl I went to college with on social media. We weren't close, but she decided to tell me and the rest of our group one day that she cheated on her groom at a sorority party, and then opted not to tell him. It’s hard to see him in those photos. It would be so easy to let the guy know anonymously.
3. Looking out for Number Two
My wife went out drinking with co-workers and ended up having a few too many. Like, I had to struggle to get her inside when she came home. Crying, puking, all that. It was a nightmare—and it wasn’t her first time doing this. So after putting her to bed, I got my revenge. I pooped on the driveway next to her car door. And then I upped the stakes.
The next morning, I told her she did it last night and that the neighbor had seen her do it. She found it going to work the next day. She has not gone out drinking since, and this was four years ago.
4. Be Careful What You Wish for
Using the results of an ancestry DNA test, my mom found out that my great uncle was adopted…mid-Thanksgiving dinner. We have pretty casual dinners, so everyone was sitting around the room. I found it odd that my mom was on her laptop and not eating, so I slipped behind to peek over her shoulder...just in time to see the adoption paperwork. She’s never said anything and has no idea that I know.
5. Five More Minutes
When I was 15 years old, I was lying in bed one morning when I heard my dad coming up the stairs. Being a typical teenager, a conversation with my dad first thing in the morning was not something that I could be bothered with, so I pretended to be asleep. I heard my dad come into my room and stand at the end of my bed in silence. I waited, expecting him to say something, but he just stayed right where he was and didn’t say or do anything.
This went on for an oddly long amount of time. After about 5 or 6 minutes, he left the room and I just thought to myself, “Good thing he finally left! What was he doing staring at me? That weirdo!” My dad then walked downstairs, continued out the front door of our house, and drove off. They found his body 3 days later. It turned out that those 5 or 6 minutes in my bedroom was him taking a last look at his son before he took his own life.
Ever since then, my darkest (and guiltiest) secret has been the fact that I spent my last ever time in the presence of my dad thinking that he was a weirdo.
6. The Worst Day of All Time
This is something that I should probably have told my best friend about a long time ago, but I just don’t have the heart to break it to him. Only an hour before his girlfriend lost her life in a car accident, I saw her at my job making out with the captain of the track team (my best friend’s cousin). It’s now been eight years since the accident, but I still can’t tell him about it. It would destroy him emotionally, and I can’t do that to him.
He was planning to propose to her that day, too…
7. I’m Not Who You Think I Am
Sneaking out, bad grades…my secret is a bit different. I routinely pay random escorts to show up to family events as my “girlfriend” so that my parents will stop telling their friends to try and hook me up with their daughters. Every time we have a gathering, an escort shows up with me to meet everyone, and then they always claim to have to leave early. I pay by the hour. It gets the job done, and my parents have no idea that I’m happily single all the while.
8. A Family Matter
My secret is that my mom is in a relationship with her somewhat distant cousin. Yes, we call him Tio (Spanish for uncle). Yes, he lives with us. And yes, I find it disgusting. I have done everything I can to hide it from people I know. It is extremely embarrassing. Fortunately, my mom and dad are not related.
9. Video Games
Back when I was in the seventh grade, I started to get into watching adult videos and my favorite kind, for some reason, was guy-on-guy stuff even though I’m a girl. Anyways, I didn’t know how anything but YouTube worked back then, so I ended up downloading and saving something like three explicit gay videos on my phone.
Needless to say, I did not tell my mom about this secret interest of mine. But I had an Android phone so when I deleted the videos, the titles were still in my phone and could be viewed in my download history. For some reason, my mom took my phone from me one day and went through it. She then sat me down and asked me about the video titles she had found on it.
Now, I’m not necessarily proud of what happened next. I’m a very good liar. But in this particular situation, I didn’t have to do much lying. That was because as soon as I started crying and saying that I didn’t do it, she immediately believed me and blamed the whole thing on my stepdad. She said that she’d had a suspicion that he was gay throughout their whole relationship and all that.
After that, she never confronted him and just continued to stay with him even though she thought he was gay. Unintended side effect? That was when I realized that my mom was a golddigger. But regardless, my secret remained intact.
10. Risky Business
My secret is that I've been sleeping with my boss's wife for four and a half years. We've never been caught by anyone, and I don't even think anyone suspects anything. They have a totally dead bedroom, or at least that's what she's always told me. I believe her. They never go away on anniversary weekends or even do any date nights.
She says that, most nights, he'll fall asleep way earlier than her, and she'll sleep in a different room. That's comforting to me because I love her. It all started about three months after she got hired to work in the office at the warehouse where we work. He is the warehouse manager and I am the second shift supervisor. Our plant runs 24 hours, or three shifts a day.
She works in the sales office. I was working in the office and trained her to take my position, as I was moving on to become the plant supervisor. She started hitting on me right out of the gates, but I didn't think it was anything more than a flirtatious personality. She was out of my league from my perspective, not to mention married to the guy who was about to be my direct boss.
But after a few months, she was straightforward about pretty much telling me all the things she wanted to do to me and let me do to her. For a while, I was strictly, "No. I don't get involved with married women. If you're unhappy in your marriage, deal with that." But they have two kids and she wanted to keep the family together.
He's a good father and they live a pretty comfortable life. Slowly, she wore me down. I live about three miles away from the plant. She comes over a minimum of three days a week on her lunch break. We usually see each other both Saturday and Sunday, too. Though, not always. We are friends on Facebook, but never like each other's stuff or send messages. Now, it's starting to destroy my life.
When I see new family pics of them together, I burn with rage. When we do company stuff or have cookouts and she stands near him or sits with him and he touches her, all I can do is struggle to contain my seething anger at the whole situation. I usually overcome it by rationalizing to myself that I'm actually the monster in this situation.
Then, I get angry at myself. But I can get over it quickly because, eventually, I always redirect that anger towards her, too. She always knows I'm angry, and the next day she'll come over and make it up to me. Six months ago, the situation got even more complicated. My boss’ boss, who is a regional director about five hours away, put in his retirement.
He will be retiring in three months. My boss is definitely getting his spot. Their house is going up for sale soon and they'll be moving. I am the one poised to take his position here at this plant. If my secret relationship gets discovered at any point from here on, I'm sure I will be forced to resign and the fallout would be ruinous for all parties.
Of course, she's moving away with him. I can rationally say that we'll all be better off. But I truly love her and would do just about anything to have this play out in my favor somehow. In the end, though, it may already have ruined me. When I sit alone and think about it, I absolutely hate myself for all of this and have for a long time.
Lying and cheating are not a part of my DNA. That I've been able to keep it up for so long makes me feel evil. In a lot of ways, I hope I never forgive myself so that I'm the only person that ever gets hurt by me. I can't wait until she's gone, yet I would give anything for her to stay. I never want to see her again. Yet she'll be here in about an hour.
11. An Opportunity to Vent
When I was about six years old, I was super scared of the dark like most six-year-olds are. It was late at night one time and I needed to pee really badly. I was too scared to leave my room when the hallway was dark, though. I had an air vent on the floor near my bed. So, obviously, my six-year-old mind thought it would be a good idea to pee into the vent.
My parents never found out about what I had done, but from that day on they were constantly complaining about the pee smell in our house that they could never seem to locate. If they ever found out that I had caused it for such a stupid reason, I don’t think I could ever live the embarrassment down. I’m taking this secret to my grave.
12. Secret Liaisons
A really good lifelong buddy of mine dropped out of college after the 2001 attacks and joined the army to help protect our nation. He completed three tours in Iraq, got married, had a kid, and all was great for him. His mom was the type that was always close to his friends because they reminded her of him while he was away.
Because of that, us guys would take her out and keep her company, as a group. One day, she called me up and asked me to go out and have a drink with her. She had apparently found some pictures or whatever of her son and me from childhood that she couldn't wait to share. We met up at a local watering hole for a couple drinks and a few laughs.
She kept feeding me drinks and, before I could say that it was time for me to head out, she had her hands on me and was very forward. I admit it wasn't a decision that I was capable of making at that time, so I went with what felt good. We went back to my house and slept together. It was one of the craziest experiences of my life.
For obvious reasons, I have kept this a secret and never told anyone about it. Tragically, my buddy lost his life in Iraq just a few months after this incident. I am a horrible person.
13. Musical Graves
When I was 13, a friend and I went to a graveyard. We noticed about six fresh plots that had placards in plastic sleeves in place of tombstones. I decided to switch them all up. To this very day, I feel horrible about this, and I will for the rest of my life.
14. Bunker Bliss
Two and a half years ago I was in dire financial straights, so I sold my home to keep my struggling business afloat. The new family seemed great, so I felt bad about deceiving them, but I neglected to tell them about the property's weirdest feature: There is an 800 sq. ft. bunker on the property that I built about seven years previously. But that's not the worst part. Not even close.
I also neglected to tell them that the bunker is the place I've called home since I sold the house. The entrance to it is well-hidden, but I still come and go very early or very late in the day, just to make sure I’m not seen. I'm a single man who keeps to himself. I'm now in a situation where I could move somewhere else, but I love this hidden paradise so much, so I stay.
15. Boy’s Best Friend
When he was still a little kid, my younger brother used to eat the dog’s food because he thought it would make him better friends with the dog. It got so routine, we began to leave a bowl out for him next to the dog bowl.
16. Little Brother Is Watching You
I know an awful lot of things that my parents don’t realize I know. That is thanks to the fact that I overhear all of their private conversations every single night. I have horrible sleeping patterns, and people always assume that I’m asleep when I’m not. This is because when I lay down for too long, my mouth opens and, when I close my eyes, it looks like I’m sleeping.
Because of this, I know that my dad is cheating on my mom. I’ve been hearing him calling another woman every single night while he thought I was asleep and unable to hear. I also happen to know that my mom steals money from my dad on the regular, as well as from me and my brother. She also badmouths my dad a lot of the time and complains about the fact that I'm not good at dealing with conflict.
She also thinks I'm too sensitive. Many nights, I can hear them arguing behind closed doors, and then, in the morning, they just act like everything is great and like nothing ever happened. But I know that that’s not true. I’ve also secretly heard them badmouth me and my brothers, and talk about wanting a divorce. And it still gets so much worse...
I’ve heard them express the fact that they both don’t want me or my brother. They also both don’t want our pet cats. They openly admit that they hate each other, and they love pointing out sensitive things that will anger each other. They also hit one another from time to time. Night after night, I learn more and more secrets about how awful they really are. And I never let on that I know any of it.
17. Kissing Cousins
I have two cousins who are married. The rest of the cousins were outraged and appalled when they decided to get married—which brought out the real secret. My aunts and uncles were all suddenly like, “Well, your grandparents were cousins, too.” To which most of us were again, even more concerned. The cousins are still married and trying to conceive.
18. The City of Motherly Love
You know those stories about girls in the 70s who “went to live with an aunt” for a year during high school? I did that. In 2008. I was a very naive teenager who was still just getting used to the way her body worked, and my friend thought it would be absolutely hilarious to buy a few of those cheap pregnancy tests from Walmart and see what happened.
We laughed the whole time, until one of them came out positive. We couldn’t remember which one was which, so we got 2 more and it turned out it was mine. That was when it dawned on me: I had recently slept with someone. My school did not offer any kind of education and my parents were useless in that regard, so it was completely possible that I had not used my protection properly. I panicked and swore my friend to secrecy.
I basically put it out of my mind until my clothes didn’t fit anymore. I was always close with my older cousin and we were talking on the phone one night when she asked how school was going. I just broke down and dumped all of it on her. She calmed me down and then came up with the perfect plan. It was already April and, when I’d finally gotten up the courage to go to a Planned Parenthood, they’d told me that I was due in August. So, my cousin called my mom saying that there was this amazing summer music program in her town that I just HAD to attend, and that I could stay with her the whole time.
My mom thought it was great and the day after school ended, I got on a plane to San Francisco. I stayed with my cousin, she went to all of my appointments with me, and she helped me find a social worker and eventually my daughter’s future adoptive parents. When I arrived back home before my junior year of high school started, my mom asked me how my summer was without really caring and then remarked that I must have lost a few pounds.
My cousin lost their life in 2012 in a car accident, and no one else knew about this whole thing apart from that one friend, the doctors I saw in Oakland, and the people involved in the adoption. I get a photo and a letter about the child once a year, and I send money for her college and a card for her birthday every year. When she turns 16, her parents are allowed to give her the cards if she wants them, but they are not permitted to pass any contact information along.
I have no interest in meeting her or getting to know her personally. I know she’s safe and comfortable, and that’s all I want. I will die before I tell anyone about her, and if my friend were to ever spill the beans I would simply deny it.
19. Oh, You Beautiful Doll
I will never let anyone know that I used to have one of those expensive and fancy life-sized “girlfriend” dolls that you see in movies and cartoons. I got rid of it at the first possible opportunity as soon as I got a real partner. Nevertheless, it remains the one thing in my life that I am not willing to ever tell anyone I know about.
20. Pen Pals
When I was 12 years old, I secretly saw some emails on my mom's iPod touch. The emails were very suggestive and were between my mother and another man. I never told my dad that I saw those emails. I wish I did, because it turned out that she was cheating on him. This is the first time I've ever mentioned it to anyone. It feels good to get it off my chest.
Pikrepo
21. Vengeance Is Mine
My grandfather took advantage of me from the ages of eight through 12. I had to go to his place after school every day to be babysat until my parents were done work. I told my mom after about six months or so. Her response was, "Don't tell your dad, it would really hurt him." It was my paternal grandfather who was doing this.
I gave up on trying to tell anyone else about it for a year or so. Then, I told my cousin, who is four years older than I am. Her response was anger, and asking me how I could dare to speak out against our grandfather in that way. That was the last time I tried to tell anyone about what he had done. But it was far from the end of the story...
Fast forward to when I was 16 years old. My grandfather had a stroke and was in the hospital with pneumonia. He was lying in his hospital bed with an oxygen mask on. The whole extended family went to visit him together on one particular day. I don’t remember what the occasion was exactly, but we were all there and hanging out as a group.
My uncle was in the hallway with my baby cousin, and at one point he called everyone out there to come and look, because she was starting to take her first steps. So, everyone gathered in the doorway facing out, or in the hall, and I was left sitting in a chair, on my own, beside my grandfather's bed. He started coughing. I leaned over and took his oxygen mask off.
It was so surreal. He was gasping, and my heart was pounding. I was waiting for someone to turn around and see or hear him, but they were all intent on watching my little cousin and they were all being so loud. It only took a couple of minutes, but it felt like hours. I put the mask back on his face when I knew he had passed.
I waited a couple of minutes, and then yelled for my dad to come in because "grandpa looked weird." I remember my face was burning hot, thinking holy heck. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I figured they had to know. Someone is going to know for sure! But nope. No one knew. And no one has ever found out. This remains my deepest secret by far.
22. A Work Of Art
When I was in my early teens, we didn't yet have a computer or the internet at my house, but we did have Cinemax and my friend Doug introduced me to the late-night movies that were shown on the weekends. The secret that I hid from my parents was that, as a teenager who read comics and was not fully aware of the female anatomy, I would try to draw naked pictures of my favorite characters from those movies. Well, my mom found out…but it didn’t really go how I thought it would.
I used to hide the drawings either inside my comic books or in between my mattress and my box spring. I never considered the possibility that my mom would one day change my sheets. When she did, she discovered my secret. She told me that she was disappointed with me for drawing the pictures, but she was also impressed with the artwork.
So, she put the drawings into her special “hope chest” with all of my other stuff that she was proud of. I was embarrassed then, but now in my 30s, it's just nice to know that my mom cared that much about me and the things that I did. I bet not everyone could say that about their parents. Especially not after they discovered your secrets!
23. Exploration Gone Wrong
My secret is pretty dark and tragic. When I was a kid, I had a friend. Let's call her Amanda. Well, the two of us were hanging out at a park and right across the street, there was a building planned for demolition. Anyway, the genius in me had the great idea to go inside it and check it out. As we were exploring, the floor caved in beneath us.
Amanda fell down two stories and landed on some debris. She was severely injured. While I caught myself on the first floor, she didn't make it past the first day in the hospital. I'm still haunted by the memory of her screams and begging for help. Every year, I have a little memorial for her by myself. I still blame myself for causing her demise, and it doesn't get any easier as more time passes by.
After this incident took place, I slowly started to dull out all my feelings. Now, I can't seem to care at all about most things. It's caused me to try and take my own life multiple times. Every time I tell my friends about this, they don't actually believe that I tried. They all ignore that and say to stop joking about that stuff. But they'll never know the truth. One day, I hope Amanda can somehow forgive me.
24. Frosted Friday
When I was a kid, I had a really mean neighbour. He would shout insults at anyone who passed, he pushed girls around, and he was just awful to everyone. One day, I decided to plot revenge. In preparation, I stored my excrement in a coffee can for 3 days. Disgusting, I know, but it was for a worthy cause. Then, late on a Friday night, I decided that the time had come.
I took a rubber spatula… and frosted that dude’s car like a cake with the putrid contents of that coffee can. It felt so good the next day to see him and his parents outside, screaming in disgust. I was 13.
Public Domain Pictures
25. Karma Seeker
I grew up a middle class kid. I worked 40+ hours a week all through high school, so I always had extra cash. When I went to college, however, that changed significantly. During holiday breaks, I never traveled to see family for reasons I'd rather not cover. This meant that I was left alone in a college town that was nearly empty. That's when I committed unforgivable acts.
It started with burglarizing apartments that I could walk to. This burglary spree quickly escalated from private residences to businesses. I've outrun authorities on foot three or four times. I've outrun them in cars a few more times. I've had to spend hours hiding in woods waiting for them to leave before I could get outta dodge.
I know how to completely disable an alarm system in a matter of seconds; I can open sliding doors with a coat hanger; I can jimmy doors, run scanners, etc. It's been ten years since my last burglary. I'm married with kids now, and I'll never tell them how I made money back in college, but at the same time, those memories will never leave me.
26. That’s Got To Be A Record…
One day, forgetting that my girlfriend was away at camp, I went to her house on autopilot and knocked on the door. Her mom invited me in and we laughed over my mistake. Then things got weird. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but we started drinking, and I ended up sleeping with her mom. I was 17, she was 38, married… and a Mormon.
27. Bad Teacher
I’m a teacher, and I've seen my co-worker hit a kid. The kid was about four years old and wasn't really listening to her, so he got a fairly sharp slap on the back. I was so shocked that I didn’t intervene at the time, and I didn’t know what to do about the knowledge for a good long while. I just told my supervisor yesterday, so finally, action will be taken.
28. A Family Affair
My ex-wife slept with her sister’s husband on New Year’s Eve. The four of us know. That is it. The sisters sort of made up. I am just glad that I’m divorced from that family and the drama, and that I have the most amazing girlfriend now. We talk, we communicate very well....It is a mature adult relationship. Good riddance to their garbage.
29. Something Wasn’t Right
Many years ago, when I was still just an awkward tween, my brothers and I used to spend a lot of time at our grandparents’ house. We had been raised by our grandparents since we were all little kids; and even after my dad remarried, he and my stepmom both worked graveyard shifts. So, we would very often spend the night at my grandparents’ house while my parents were at work.
One day, my grandmother informed me that it was my grandfather’s birthday, and suggested that I wish him a happy birthday. He was downstairs in the living room sitting on the sofa, and I went up to him and gave him a big hug around the neck and said, “Happy Birthday, Grandpa.” It was kind of difficult to hug a person sitting down, so I ended up kneeling on the sofa between his legs rather than trying to hug him from a standing position.
He was quite happy and gave me a hug back. When I pulled back from the hug, he held me in his arms and gave me a big smile. And then he put his tongue in my mouth. Sometimes, when I was a little kid, we would kiss other family members on the mouth, but those were nothing but chaste pecks on the lips. I could tell immediately that this was different.
His tongue was on my teeth. It lasted only for a moment, and I was grossed out and confused when I pulled away. At that moment, my grandmother walked into the living room. I turned my head around to look at her. My hands were still on my grandpa’s shoulders. She seemed really happy that I had wished my grandfather a happy birthday like a good little kid. I gave him a final quick hug and then scrammed out of the room.
For the rest of my tween and teen years, I was always careful not to be alone in the same room with my grandfather ever again. He passed during my twenties, a good decade ahead of his time due to lifestyle-induced health issues. As I expected, my family chose me to speak at his funeral. I had really complicated feelings about it because I did love him.
My grandma and grandpa raised me, after all. Also, my grandfather was the rock of the family and, after he passed, the three branches of it (my dad and our family, plus his siblings and their families) gradually drifted apart from each other. Nothing would ever be the same between us again. We don’t even spend Christmas all together anymore.
I’ve never told anyone in my family about it because I just couldn’t bear to break my grandmother’s heart. She’s survived her husband for 10 years at this point, and still talks to and about him every day and visits his grave multiple times a week. So, thanks for listening to my very personal story, internet people! It’s nice to finally get that off my chest.
30. Moving on
30 years ago, I got ripped off by a "friend." He faked his rent payments for our flat, and we got evicted. Then I did something truly unforgivable. I made some calls, and he got sent back to his home country for an ongoing series of student visa breeches. He had been evicted or kicked out of every place he had resided in since arriving on his visa. Still, I feel really bad about it to this day.
31. Eye Spy
When I was a kid, another kid in my neighborhood once shot me with an airsoft on purpose, even though I wasn't playing with him at the time. So, a little bit later, I wrapped an airsoft pellet in tinfoil and shot the kid in the eye. I hid somewhere where he wouldn’t see me when I did it, so he had no idea who was responsible. He never seemed to figure it out, and nobody else did either.
His eye is permanently damaged, and I believe it’s completely blinded to this day.
Wikimedia Commons, Santeri Viinamäki
32. Always Remember Where You Came From
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is the truth about my location for the past 25 years. They have no idea where I have been living that entire time, and I want to keep it that way. It’s a long story, but I have now spent more than half of my life going out of my way to make sure that they never suspect the true location of my residence.
Unsplash
33. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire
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 lighting up in my bedroom. I've never smoked in my life!
34. Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Equally
My mother is cheating on my father and my father is cheating on my mother. Neither of them knows about what the other is doing. They both know that I know about their own behaviors, as they each separately made me promise not to tell the other parent. Parents can be messed up sometimes…
35. Sitting on a Big Secret
My secret is that I have been sleeping with my babysitter for many, many years. I know that it sounds crazy and hard to believe, but it’s completely true. This whole thing started when I was fairly young and it just never ended. Nobody has ever caught us or suspected a thing about what we are really up to when she’s over.
36. Living on the Edge
My secret is that I almost ended my sister’s life many years ago. She was about three years old at the time and I was maybe about nine or eleven years old. I carried her out to the terrace, which was five stories high including the ground floor. And like some dumb idiot, I placed her at the edge of the terrace, above a barricade of sorts.
There was nothing whatsoever to protect her from falling and directly below, five stories down, was a cemented path. I don't remember what was so important that I had to do, but I left her dangling there at the edge. All I remember is that she was starting to sway backward, towards the ground. Alarm bells suddenly started ringing in my head.
I ran over there as fast as I physically could, and I somehow managed to grab on to her just as she was about to fall. I felt my heart racing against my chest. I hugged her for a really, really long time. I was too afraid to let go. To this day, I still haven't told her about this incident. She's 25 now. I have never told our mom about it either.
Even just typing this story up still makes me nervous. That height, how a baby's body would have ended up splattered all over the hard cemented pathway, how I could have been institutionalized, how my family would have disowned me, how I would have missed out on watching her grow up. All of those thoughts still haunt me.
It developed a lifelong irrational fear in me of carrying babies around. Even if I'm not the one carrying them. Or even if there is no height involved.
37. We Have a Winner
My secret is that I won a fairly sizable lottery of roughly a few million dollars a little while back and told absolutely no one, family and friends included. I quietly took a bunch of steps to secure my kids’ futures, and we live a very comfortable but not lavish lifestyle. I'm pretty generous with the people around me. I think that they just think I'm doing very well in my career.
Either that or maybe some of them think I’m involved in some kind of sketchy dealings under the table. I justify keeping this a secret by thinking that if it was general knowledge amongst friends and family, it could easily cause tension and ruin relationships. I want to be able to continue my life the way I have always lived it. And besides, my priority needed to be my kids.
38. Evil Next Door
When I was about 11 or 12 years old, the guy in the flat next door was a computer nerd type. I got interested in learning a little about computers from him, as this was the 80s. To cut a long story short, he took advantage of me over a long period of time. I found he had several magazines and videos lying around that should have raised some red flags.
It got as far as hugs and kisses, and then he tried to feel me up. That's the point at which my brain kicked into action and I ran away from there as fast as I could. I was intensely scared, ashamed, and somewhat retreated into myself. I realized that my parents, and specifically my mother, knew something wasn't right in this odd child/adult relationship. Yet I didn't act on their suspicions.
That totally messed with my mind and led to many, many years of confusion and introspection, and if I'm honest some screwed up attitudes towards people from myself. I told one girlfriend many years back, and she basically blocked it out, didn't want to discuss it, and made it fairly plain that she wasn't sympathetic or willing to be of any help.
That could have gone very differently. I have a loving family and have learned to be sociable. I have also managed to create some level of trust with people. The dark memories still burn me on the inside at times, though. I have sort of accepted that they are something I will never fully get away from and will take with me to the grave.
39. A Family Secret
About six months before my grandmother passed on, she told me a terrifying secret about my dad. Before then, I remembered visiting him in prison and he seemed great… but then my mother and I changed our names and she told me that we couldn't see dad anymore because he had passed on. I was sad and then life went on; I was just a kid and never thought much about it to be honest. Mom and I never talked about it.
My grandmother, my dad's mom, wanted to see me before she passed. Before I went, my mom finally told me the horrible truth about my dad: he was a very well known serial killer. After she told me, I looked at his picture, and my memory version of my dad didn't look the same, but then she showed me pictures of us together in the prison visiting area… so I knew it was true. I went through a few days of shock and then mourned the loss of my dad after I found out that he had been executed. A different feeling comes from knowing your dad was executed versus him just dying.
We look alike, in some ways, and I know he did terrible things, but I just remember that he was loving to me — or, at least he was in the limited memories that I have of him. None of my friends know, and I will never tell anyone. The deepest secret? As much as I know he did terrible things, I would do anything to have had him escape prison again and be alive with us today.
40. Butterfly Effect
I blame myself for my sister’s passing. She passed on from complications following a car accident. The car accident was caused by sun blinding the other driver as he drove over a crest, which only happens at a specific time in the morning. Everyone knows that my sister accidentally slept in that morning before driving to the coast.
No one knows that it was my fault. I borrowed her alarm clock the night before. I did it because I wanted to get up early to finish an assignment that I had left to the last minute to complete and I regret it every day.
41. Up and Away
One day, my toilet was blocked to the point that if I peed in it, it would have spilled onto the ground. Naturally, I end up having diarrhea before the plumber comes out. What I did was so, so brutal. I ended up pooping in an Amazon box, taping it as quickly as possible, then putting it down the slide into the trash chute. Oh, I wish I hadn't. The box opened as it flew down, and lava poop just went all over the chute and the huge trashcan.
42. How Much Is That Doggie on the Sofa?
I am the only person alive who knows that my mother-in-law sat on her pet dog until it suffocated; and I intend to keep it that way.
43. Age Is Just a Number
My secret is that I lost my virginity at age 27 with a woman who was 58 years old. She is a sweet lady who knew my mother and felt badly for me. It was purely done out of pity, but I didn't care. I continued my relationship with her for another 2 months until she ended it because she was worried that I had grown "dependent" on her.
I'm 29 now and she's still the only woman I've ever been with. On the bright side, it will be easy to take this secret to the grave since I know I'm gonna die alone.
44. Handling Things On Your Own
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is the fact that I was falsely accused of violently attacking someone when I was 17 years old. I am legally considered an adult in Texas, so the authorities didn’t have to tell them. A detective actually confiscated my cell phone for an entire school day to verify the veracity of the text messages proving that the encounter was consensual.
The whole thing was a really scary experience and a really weird time in my life. I had to deal with the fallout at school, as well as the challenges of not telling my parents about it.
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45. When Age Isn’t Just a Number
My secret is that I’m 18 years old, yet I’m in love with a 44-year-old. Just how much older than me he is could ruin my life a bit if people knew about it. But I still want to be in a relationship with him more than anything in the world. I'm selfish and I miss him. I would do anything to protect him from any people who thought his behavior was inappropriate.
46. Don’t Judge Me!
I am a judge in a town in the United States. I also have a bit of a secret wild side in the bedroom. I tell all of my co-workers, assistants, and family members that I go up to my cabin most weekends, and that they can't contact me because there's no cell service. They think that’s the way I like it, to get away from the stresses of the jobs and to just enjoy hiking.
In actuality, I go see a mistress 20 years my younger. I have a college-aged daughter and an ex-husband. I also have a fair share of cash lying around and a lot of people who work in law who look up to me. For obvious reasons, I have made sure that absolutely no one ever has any reason to suspect what I am really up to on the weekends. If anyone ever found about this secret double life of mine, it would probably make some waves, to say the least.
47. Brotherly Love
My secret is that my twin sister and I love each other. In an intimate kind of way. We love each other more than siblings probably should. I'm sure that if people knew about our relationship, it would disgust many of them. That alone would probably ruin a lot of relationships. Our parents and grandparents would probably disown and disinherit us.
Other family members would probably break off all contact with us, and we'd lose a good chunk of our friends. I imagine the news would spread like wildfire amongst our social circles. Our older sister might be the only person in our family who wouldn't outright condemn us, and I'm not even too sure about that, to be honest.
Sometimes we think about running away to Europe or something, so we can start new lives together with fake identities.
48. You Always Hurt the Ones You Love
My secret is that I live with enormous guilt because I ruined someone’s life. My first ever girlfriend was really the love of my life. She was the only person that was ever able to finish my sentences, and we bonded over sort of a mutual disdain for the world we lived in. I knew her psyche was fragile and I literally gave her a reason to live while she was institutionalized.
We broke up and she took her own life very soon after. Or at least that's what I tell people—no one knows the horrible truth. In reality, I cheated on her and she destroyed herself when she found out. She burnt holes through her skin hundreds of times, cut herself, and eventually threw herself off a bridge in a fit of rage.
All of that happened because of me. And this was someone that I loved very deeply. I can't even imagine what others would think of me if I ever revealed all these facts to anyone. I've only told a couple of people that the relationship even happened, but as far as the details? I probably should do so, but I just can't face that.
49. Motherly Instinct
My secret is that I lied to everyone about being infertile. For some reason, I enjoy the thrill of letting guys sleep with me without them realizing that they could be getting me pregnant. It feels risky and exciting. I knowingly lie to my partners because I want the forbidden thrill of doing something that I am not supposed to do. You would never know it by my personality, though. This fact haunts me. It would ruin my family.
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50. Acting Aussie
After graduating from high school, I went to a small out-of-state college where no one from high school knew me. I was told many times how impressive my false Australian accent was, so I decided it would be great fun to go through college pretending to be from Australia. All of my friends—and even my girlfriend of two years—think I'm Australian.
I have a completely fake Australian identity, family, and past. I will soon be graduating, and I plan on asking the girl to marry me. Everything she knows about me is Australian, and I don't know how to tell her she doesn't really know me. Guess I’ll forever be a bloke.
51. It All Came Crashing Down
My first car accident back in high school was not the result of me swerving to avoid hitting a deer, like I told my dad and the authorities. What actually happened was that I tried to pull the emergency brake and do a 180 while going 50 miles per hour down a steep hill, just to see if I could pull it off. Had I crashed on the other side of the road instead of where I did, I would have fallen down a 50-foot hill and into the river. That was the last time I ever tried anything like that.
Lucky for me, there just so happened to have been visible deer tracks in the mud near the ditch that I ended up in. I avoided getting a ticket and my dad paid to have my car fixed. I have never told him the truth in the more than 15 years that have passed since the incident.
52. Thrown In The Slammer
My mother has no idea that I have been incarcerated twice—but that’s not the worst part. One of those times, I was in there with my father. He has been just as adamant as I have been in refusing to tell her about what happened. I don’t plan on ever letting her find out that we were there. I don’t think she would be too happy about it if she found out...
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53. A Close Shave
My deepest secret is that I once almost had an affair. I have no idea why. I absolutely love my husband and would absolutely hate myself if I had gone through with it. I had no reason to do it. My life and my relationship with him are amazing. Nevertheless, for some reason, I came really close to doing it. If I ever told him about this, I think it would destroy him.
54. Fire In The Hole
My cousin is not a good person. He was an addict and he used the house we used to live in as kids to cook and use illicit substances. One night, while I was living with my mom a few houses down the road from him, I was up at 3 am just watching his house from my kitchen window. I saw him leave. Without thinking about it too much, I grabbed a lighter and a piece of printer paper. I snuck out, walked over, and knocked on the door. No one answered. That's when I got an evil idea.
There was a small window on the side of the house that was open, and the curtains were dry and thick. I twisted the paper as tightly as possible, lit it on fire — and then set the curtains on fire. I threw the paper through the window onto the floor and then snuck back in my house. I sat at the kitchen window and watched my cousin’s house slowly catch on fire with a smile on my face. All of the sudden, it exploded. I guess the stuff he used to make his drugs went off.
My parents woke up and called 9-1-1. I took a lawn chair and sat at the end of my yard and watched it burn from about 300 feet away. Law enforcement found the remains of the lab after the fire was out and my cousin got sent to prison. I knew what I’d done was wrong, but I still cant help feeling that justice was served.
55. Scoop and Snoop
I once helped out a female friend's family by taking care of their cat. Every day for a week, I would go over there, feed the cat, scoop some poop away—and then get to work snooping around their house. I found my friend's diary, and proceeded to read the entire thing. I then used this information to get her to like me. She is currently my wife.
56. Double Take
My brother steals money from my parents’ wallets. My parents know this, and despite that, my father will fork over money to him all the time when he asks for it. No discipline at all, ticks me right off. One day, I just couldn't take it anymore. In retaliation, I took the money out of my brother’s wallet while he was sleeping and returned it to my parents’ wallets. Since that night, I've done it many more times. No regrets.
57. Bonus Gift
When I was very little, what I thought was going to be a harmless toot turned into a little bit more. This was before I had the wherewithal to know not to check for poop with my hand. I had no clue what to do because the bathroom was right past my parent's room and I thought I would get in trouble if they saw that I had wiped my butt with my hand.
So, I looked around my living room, and I saw big speakers that were hooked up to the TV. These things were taller than I was back then. The shelves we kept our cassette tapes on hid the backside of these speakers, making them the perfect place to hide some poop. The worst part isn't that I wiped my butt chocolate on these speakers...
...It's that when my parents eventually bought a better TV that came with better speakers, they generously decided to give the old speakers to my cousin's family. It's been about fifteen years since we gave them the poopy speakers. My cousin's parents, my aunt and uncle, got divorced a few years back, and my aunt is now in possession of the poo speakers. Fifteen years later, nobody knows what I did.
58. Too Little and Too Late
When I was a kid I heard a shot while walking down a street. I ran back home, fast as I could. Went to my room and watched TV to calm myself down. Didn't tell anybody. Two hours passed, and the phone rang. Mom told me my uncle passed on of a gunshot wound, trying to stop a fight nearby. At the funeral, we were told my uncle could've lived if paramedics arrived earlier.
For 20 years, I've always thought I could've saved him.
59. Don’t Take Your Family For Granted
When I was 11 years old, in 2006, my little sister tragically drowned in my mom’s backyard swimming pool while I was at my father's house on the weekend. I was very close to my sister, and I loved her with all of my heart. My mother often talks about how she misses my sister, and I agree with her. There is only one problem. I have almost no memory of my sister.
My mom does not know this, because I know it would break her heart. I don’t know why I have such a hard time trying to remember her. One of the only moments I do remember was when I swimming in the pool, trying to do back flips. I was yelling out to my mom, "watch me!" My mom was holding my baby sister and talking to her, so she didn't hear me. I, being selfish and rude, yelled at the top of my lungs, "STOP BABYING HER!" and stormed into the house.
I have no idea why I can remember this moment, but not any good moments.
60. Hush Money
I have been having a long-term affair with a famous actor for the past seven years. I have his child (now five years old) and he pays me a LOT of money to keep everything a secret. He bought me a house and gives me money every month. Yes, we still hook up occasionally. He is married with children. I have never told a soul. I told my friends and family that I don't know who the father of my child is. I will perhaps tell my son one day.
It's hard living a lie.
61. Does Not Compute
When I was around 14 years old, I once overheard my parents arguing with one another. My mom was yelling at my dad about some inappropriate adult searches that she had found on their computer’s internet history. But I knew the dark truth It was really me that was going on the computer in their room without permission and watching adult videos. But I chose to keep that a secret and say nothing as they argued.
Needless to say, my silence meant that my mom blamed my dad for the searches. He kept adamantly denying it, and she kept calling him a liar. As a result of this whole ordeal, he had to sleep in the guest bedroom for an entire month after that fight. The secret truth was never revealed, and hopefully, it never will be…
62. On the Run
This is an odd one, but here goes. My secret is my present location. I'm currently estranged from my family and recently got some cash in an insurance settlement. If my mother found out, she'd come running for a share of it so fast that it would break the sound barrier. Light traveling from the sun would be like, "Hey, yo! Slow down!"
I've pretty much had to hide the existence of this money from everyone I know. I have basically become a ghost. I moved away from my longtime home and am living in an undisclosed location. Right now, all of my mail comes to a PO box and only three people know the true address of where I'm staying. And I’d like to keep it that way.
And for you enterprising folks who want to track my IP address, don’t bother. I’ve already taken care of that. Everything I do online routes through a cell tower about thirty minutes away from where I actually am. I have no intention of ever resuming my life with my insane family. Not only are we estranged, but my female cousin and I used to sleep together.
That should give you some idea of how messed up our family truly is. As far as the estrangement goes, my father is a convicted felon who preyed on children. His reprehensible behavior took place while my parents were married, and my mother didn’t seem to care too much. I'm my father's only child. My sister and brother are from my mother's first marriage.
Those two and my mother never got any kind of therapy to help them cope with what happened. As a result, most of the unresolved anger that they feel towards my father was taken out on me. I've paid for my father's sins for the last 30 years of my life. There was only so much of that treatment I could handle before we finally all went our separate ways.
As far as not sharing the money with my mother, she isn't owed any of it. I gave up nursing school and a promising career to take care of her when she was diagnosed with cancer. I did everything for her. Then, when I was homeless and had no place else to go, she looked me dead in the eye and said, "So what?" when I came to her desperately begging for help.
Growing up, she emotionally and verbally mistreated me. She also took the three thousand dollars a month that my father paid her in child support, and spent it on her own hobbies instead of on my needs as a child. I grew up wearing rags of clothes until I figured out how to swipe whatever I needed, and then I eventually found employment when I was old enough and began to take care of myself.
As far as why I'm hiding, it’s because I've tried to get away from them twice before and was unsuccessful. The first time, I moved half a country away to Florida. My mother hired a private investigator to track me down. She subsequently harassed my then-fiancee and her family until she couldn’t take it anymore and dumped me.
My mother kept the harassment going until I finally caved and moved back to a close enough town where she could mooch off of me. The second time, I moved 50 miles away and she called me on the daily, harassing me and everyone else she could. Again, she was constantly trying to control my life and mooch off of me in any way she could.
My mother is not a good person. She's been unemployed for over 20 years and lives off of my brother and the government. As far as my internet goes, I have a WiMAX connection that hops from cell tower to cell tower and connects to the internet proper at the nearest major city via fiber op trunk. As I mentioned, thirty miles away from where I actually am.
As far as the cash settlement goes, it was the result of a simple car accident. Some dude rammed into my car going 55 miles per hour while I was stopped by the curb. It was a company truck, and he was clearly at fault. I had no idea how much money I was going to receive as a result of the incident, and I immediately knew I would have to keep it a secret as soon as I found out.
The hiding is the tricky part and I'm sure someone will eventually come along asking for me. My official address is still listed as my mother’s place on all government documents. All of my mail is being double forwarded, first to my friend's PO box, and then to mine. I use a burner cell phone, and the room I'm renting is paid for in cash under the table.
There's a lease, but only two copies of it. And the place I'm living at is pretty remote. It's a 20-minute drive to the nearest Walmart, gas station, fast food restaurant, etc.
63. Body Horror
I was a TA for a human anatomy class. Part of my job was to prepare donor bodies for upcoming classes, and I would receive specific orders from the professor, which body part, what kind of class, etc. Well, one day, I dropped a human brain and put it back like nothing happened. Everyone was wondering what kind of head trauma that person had.
64. 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.
65. 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.
66. Skeletons in the Closet
When I was 15, my dad sat me down and told me the true story of why my parents divorced when I was still just a kid. My brother and I had lived with my mom, so we only heard her story before that, which was that my father was an awful alcoholic and she decided to leave because of it. The truth was much more complicated.
The true story was that, yes, my dad was an alcoholic and he and my mom weren’t compatible in any way. So he threw himself into work—and my mom began an affair with my uncle’s neighbor. My dad caught them, filed for divorce, then got sober. 12 years later, only my dad and I still know the true story. We both knew that my brother wouldn’t be able to handle knowing. It took a few years and therapy, but I forgave her.
67. Such A Sad Situation
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I was taken advantage of in our home for years when I was a child by the person that they know I hate the most. If they knew about this, they might finally understand why I hate this person so much. This is also the person that they would probably least suspect of ever doing a thing like that.
I doubt my parents would even believe me if I ever told them about what happened. In fact, my mom once actually walked into the room during one of the times that this was actively happening to me but she did not pick up on what was going on. She held a full, nonchalant conversation with us while it was going on right under her nose.
I was horrified because I was very obviously in danger and yet she was totally oblivious. I didn’t know what to do about it, and I’ve never brought it up to her ever since.
68. Sham Education
I faked the last two years of my college education. My parents put so much pressure on me that I couldn't handle it, so I faked it all. I lied to everyone, and even made up fake transcripts. I got my foot in the door in my desired field thanks to a friend, as he hired me as a subordinate. This place only hires college graduates, but no one double-checked my credentials since an employee recommended me.
My hope is that if I need to find another job, I'll have been at this place long enough to get it by experience alone. I'm not bad at my job; I'm actually quite good, but my fear is that eventually I'll hit a wall and the lie will come to light. No one has figured it out for the better part of a decade.
69. Liar, Liar
I know someone on my Facebook who is lying about her dad passing of cancer and her eldest daughter fighting a brain tumor. It’s all lies. Her dad is alive and well. Her daughter is completely healthy. One of the pictures she used as "proof" of her daughter’s illness is the girl lying in a hospital bed, but from what I know she was just in for observation after a small fall.
This woman has two Facebook profiles. One is for all her family and friends of the family. The second one—the one I’m in—is for old school friends, general acquaintances, and anyone she dates. There are so many more lies, but those two are the ones I know 100% to be false. I tried to confront her about this, and she denied it. Then the plot thickened.
She even tried to provide screenshot messages between her and her sister, HOWEVER, the reason I knew it was lies was that I talked to her mother to give condolences! Yep. Didn't go down well. Her mom accused me of being mistaken about the lies until I showed her screenshots of the posts. She didn’t reply. That's when I confronted the liar by message.
As far as I know, she's still lying. I did tell her to get help, and I admittedly took it very personally as my dad had passed not long before she lied about her dad, so it hit a nerve. She never admitted to it. Never explained. Instant block.
70. A Blessing and a Curse
I had a baby when I was 15, and he was adopted. Closed adoption. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever gone through. He turns 18 in a few months and if he so chooses, he can find me. I’m married and have kids now, and my kids have no idea he exists. I really, really want to meet him, but I’m terrified he’s got mental disorders like his biological father, who is now behind bars.
71. Boy Trouble
A few years back, one of my wife’s best friends started dating a guy who pinged my wife’s “jerk” radar. He didn't have a driver's license and claimed he never had one, yet he owned a car that didn't work. He then started using my wife's friend's car regularly and used her debit card to pay for gas. Something wasn’t right, so my wife paid to have a background check done on him. The results were disturbing.
She found out he had a revoked license for a hit and run, and a rap sheet that looked more like a laundry list. My wife actually chose not to say anything because she thought she'd gone too far, and her friend thought the guy was The One. This was a big mistake. Soon enough, he wiped out the friend’s savings buying illicit substances. So maybe she should have come clean on that one sooner...
72. All in the Family
My brother-in-law was sleeping with my now ex-wife. I tried telling my sister, but she only screamed at me that she wanted nothing to do with me. Before I could show her my evidence, she just told me to stay away from her. My brother-in-law now avoids me because he knows that I know everything. Still, I haven’t told anyone, and worry for when I do because they have children and a house together.
73. Proud Papa
My one friend has no idea that I've known that he doesn't have kids for months. I also know he's been saying this and lying to everyone for attention. He tells a very convincing story. He goes into vague details, has a photo of the girl who he claims is his ex, and says that she's been showing him fake paperwork as proof for the children.
Little does he know, I've been watching him closely and also researching to find this woman. I know she isn't real and that he's lying and has been lying this whole time for almost a year. Nothing he says makes sense, and it just keeps escalating, which also doesn't make sense. I literally couldn't help myself but investigate.
If everyone finds out that he's been lying this whole time, it will spread like wildfire. He doesn't have many friends and the friends he did have stopped talking to him because of his compulsive lying.
74. Saved by the Smell
My secret is that I know my dad cheated on my mom. I know this because, when I was just 9 years old, he invited the person he was cheating with over to our house while I was home, thinking I wouldn’t know or understand what was going on. At the time, my parents had been frequently fighting, but they were trying to work things out. It was bad enough by this point, though, that they had already started sleeping in separate rooms.
Earlier that day, I had jumped on my dad’s bed and broken the board supporting it on the frame. I wasn't allowed to jump on the bed, and often got in trouble for doing so. When my mom came into the room to discipline me, she could smell the fact that my dad had just had company, because the woman had clearly smoked while she was in the room.
She asked if I had jumped on the bed. I said no, fearing that I would get in trouble if I confessed the truth. I was surprised to see that there was no follow up trying to prove my guilt. Years later, I suddenly remembered the whole incident—and that's when I realized the painful truth. My seemingly harmless lie basically incriminated my dad in her eyes. She thought he and the woman broke the bed. Now, I'm sure he was actually guilty of what my mom suspected; but nevertheless, it was my lie that got him kicked out of the house for good.
I will never let anyone know that I was the one who really broke the bed; or that I broke up my parents’ marriage in the process, either.
75. An Unwanted Gamble
If my mom ever found out, she’d never forgive herself. The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is the fact that my cousins used to repeatedly take physical advantage of me when I was a kid. Throughout my childhood, my mom would regularly leave me at their house for hours at a time so that she could go to the casino and play her favorite games. If she knew what had taken place while she was away on those casino trips, she’d be horrified.
76. Love Triangle
A server I worked with when I was a cook is now three months pregnant… with MY child. No one knows it's mine, but that's not even the worst part: Since we're no longer speaking, she thinks I don't know she's pregnant. She's letting her boyfriend think that it's his...and it's definitely not. I really don't want kids, but I'm also having extreme moral issues about what I should do.
77. A Remote Possibility
Even though my secret seems kind of stupid, it could absolutely destroy everything that I have built up in my life. I am employed by a company that allows people to work remotely. The catch is that they only hire people in specific states in the USA. My secret is that not only do I not live in one of those states, but I don't even live in the US at all.
I am a US citizen, but am currently living outside the US. Thanks to my current job and the lousy economy in my new country, I get to live a pretty lavish life. Every 1 US dollar is worth about 600% more here because the currency is weak, getting weaker, and it's just cheap to live here to begin with. I've been working for months and I've had some close calls.
I almost gave myself away a couple of times and they questioned me about it. I had to lie.
78. Family Ties
The secret that could destroy me is that my youngest niece is, in all likelihood, my daughter. Yes, this means I slept with my sibling’s spouse. And yes, their child looks exactly like me. For obvious reasons, this fact would cause tremendous stress and shock for every member of my family, and I have no intention of allowing them to ever find out about it.
79. Opening Up
My secret is that I'm asexual. I’m also married to a man who definitely isn't asexual. My husband knows, obviously, because we've been together for years and haven't slept together yet. But no one else knows. They also don't know that we're in an open relationship and that he sleeps with other women, because we both know that's the one thing I can never give him.
And no, I don't mind that he sleeps with other people. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It was my idea to have an open marriage, and we have strict rules about it that he's always followed. We're both very secure in our relationship. This secret wouldn't exactly destroy my life, but it would absolutely change the way that everyone saw us.
80. Stranger Danger
My secret is that I occasionally, as in pretty much daily, find strangers on the internet, hop on a video chat with them, and engage in role-play with them where I act like a 25-year-old woman who's into being tied up and taken advantage of. I'm an otherwise straight, average 22-year-old man with no strange quirks at all. I have no idea what's wrong with me.
81. Behind Closed Doors
When I was about nine years old, my oldest sister passed. She was 32 at the time. As a result, her two kids came to live with us. I was a "surprise" child, so all of my siblings are much older than me. My nephew and I began to share a room. He was just a year younger than me. Around the time when I was eleven and he was ten, we started doing...things together.
Obviously, this is a huge secret of mine. Over the years, we started out by cuddling with clothes on, then clothes off, then eventually things escalated even further. We eventually started engaging in this kind of behavior nearly every night. When I went away for college at 18, we never did it again and we haven't spoken of it since.
As a matter of fact, I don't remember ever talking about it. One of us would always just give our gesture to the other that we wanted to start, and we would go at it. I'm 21 years old now and in the process of coming out as gay. He identifies as straight and is in a relationship with a girl, but I wonder all the time if it's just a coverup.
Anyways, we're the only two people in the entire world who know about this little secret, and I would never dare to even think of telling anyone about it. Not even my closest and most trustworthy best friend, who knows literally everything else about me. Sometimes, I still fear that my nephew might decide to tell someone one day…
82. Footing the Bill
I'm a guy who is very into other people’s feet. That is my greatest secret in the world. I have never even told my own wife about it, even though she has amazing feet. But it gets worse. I have a weird twist to this interest of mine. The thing that really turns me on is what I call "pedal pumping," as in watching someone’s feet as they motion like they would when pedaling a bicycle.
I guess that's the best way I can describe it. I'm mortified to tell my wife or anyone else about this, and I never have. When I was a little kid, I spent a lot of time at church during the week for my mom's choir practices. There was this decent looking piano player lady who would always kick off her shoes and play the piano barefoot.
Even though I knew nothing about myself at the time, I remember spending many Saturday afternoons up on the stage or by the pulpit during boring choir practices, laying on the carpet, playing with toy cars, and trying not to make it seem glaringly obvious that I was transfixed on watching this lady's barefoot pushing on that piano pedal.
I remember getting very excited while watching this, and wishing so much that I was that piano pedal, on the floor, with her amazing foot pushing down on me. I was totally transfixed, and the feeling continues to this day. I can never control myself when I see women playing pianos, organs, driving barefoot, or using a sewing machine barefoot.
My fantasies usually always involve me imagining myself as the pedal, and the woman as sporting a bare, nylon, or sock-clad foot. If it's a smelly foot, I like that even better. Don’t ask me why. I have no logical explanation for it. I feel guilty and stupid about this whole thing to this day. Why on earth would a feeling like that develop when I was just an innocent little kid?
83. Passing the Real Test
I am a teacher. I once had a sweet, wonderful student who had been in foster care for years, but his mom worked her butt off to get him back and eventually did. He had to take a very important state exam and she called me afterward to ask if he had passed it. I looked at the grades and saw that he did, so I told her so. She immediately burst into tears of joy; and that was precisely when I realized that I had been looking at the wrong score.
He had actually failed—but I knew what I had to do. I changed his grade to a pass. No one knew. That was the only time in my entire career that I ever did something like that. It could have cost me my license. The weird thing is that, on a separate occasion, when my awful and corrupt principal tried to pressure me to change other students' scores so that we could raise our pass rate, I refused.
I never told anyone about what I did for that student. He eventually went into the Armed Forces, was extremely successful there, and had a great wife and kids. So at the end of the day, I guess that I did the right thing. Screw those standardized tests. They aren't human.
84. The Night Before
My secret is that my cousin slept with an adult dancer during his bachelor party on the night before his wedding. Hours earlier, we randomly ran into his fiance and her friends, and she made a huge deal about not wanting him to go to a gentleman's club specifically because she was afraid of something like this happening.
As it turned out, she was absolutely right to be worried about that. He never told her. Only 3 people know this. Me, him, and the dancer.
85. Friends for Never
I made up a person. When I was in high school, I wanted to sound more popular, so I made up a guy friend. He had an incredibly interesting backstory. This went on for years, well into college. I had the same friends, so I couldn't just end the charade. The funny thing is, all of these people—my family, my best friend, even my husband—believe that they met this man.
I never introduced them to anyone, but over the years, they all have different memories of seeing him. Finally, I just sort of phased him out, saying that we grew apart and lost touch. And yet, people will randomly ask me for updates on him. I just give vague answers and watch my husband smirk from across the room. My husband is the only person who knows the truth. I am so ashamed that I will never admit it.
86. An Onion Farmer’s Story
Growing up, my mom told me that my aunt and uncle didn't live in our country, and that's why we never talked with them. The truth was so much more horrifying. My uncle never wanted kids and resented his wife (my aunt) for having my cousin, so he took her life and then his own, leaving my cousin with both of his parents dead in the middle of the night, all by himself.
As crazy as this sounds, my cousin is now an onion farmer out in the middle of nowhere and we only hear from him once or twice a year. It's very, very sad.
87. Meddling Grandmother
My uncle got his high school girlfriend pregnant, and my grandmother drove her to the clinic for an abortion, agreeing to pay only if the girlfriend didn't tell my uncle that she was going to abort his child. It tore him up when he found out, but that hardly excuses his next actions. My father got my mother pregnant around that time as well, and she was also (not too discretely) offered the same deal by my grandmother. My mother refused with a few choice words.
My uncle found out, tracked my mother down, and punched her in the stomach for "daring to take what was ripped away from him." My mother subsequently miscarried who would have been my big brother. My mom, the saint that she is, forgave him and tried to help him get some therapy. He rejected her help and joined the army instead.
I didn't find out any of this until I was an adult, which really messed with my head since my uncle had always been really close to me, right up until I came out of the closet. I think he somehow thought of me as the daughter his mother had forced his girlfriend to abort.
88. The Other Family
I had a cousin who passed a few years ago. I went to his funeral and was walking around hugging his wife and kids and giving them my condolences when a lady and two teenage boys walked in. Nobody knew who these people were, so of course, my great aunt asked. She claimed to be his wife and the two boys were his sons. Turns out all those week-long work trips he'd been taking weren't actually work trips. They were trips to see his OTHER family.
89. Dark Father
I was always told that my dad left me when I was born, and technically that’s true, but I was told my dad was someone completely different. I got a little suspicious about the whole thing because my cousin, who apparently didn't know the whole cover story, told me that my dad had blonde hair and my mother had black hair, and that's where I got my black hair. Strangely, everyone else told me my dad had black hair.
When I had to use my birth certificate so I could join the military, more evidence surfaced, and the mystery deepened: the name of my father said Alexander Smith. My last name is Smith, but my family told me that I got my name from a baby book, so that's why my last name was different from everyone else’s in my family. I then spent a couple of days doing research on Alexander Smith.
He was born in Russia and changed his name when he got here, and I'm 70% Russian so that makes sense. What really sold it for me was that it said his mother's name was Natasha Kelovich—which was my grandmother’s name. I confronted my family about it and they revealed that he was my dad, and they told me what had really happened. To put it bluntly: after I was born, he decided he didn't want any kids, so he tried to smother me in my sleep.
Luckily, my brother and my uncle stopped him, and he fled. They called law enforcement, but they didn’t find him fast enough. He returned in the middle of the night and set fire to our house, got rid of our family dog, and took the life of an old lady in the process when the fire jumped to another house. After that, he was sent to prison for life, never saw the outside again.
They said they wanted to keep it a secret so that I didn't know my dad was a psychopath who tried to kill me. They were planning on telling me through a letter when I joined the military, but I figured that out before-hand.
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90. One Bump Can Wreck Your Love Life
I used to work the desk in an ER. One day, we had a fellow brought in via EMS after a horrible car wreck. After a while, a lady came to the desk and said, "My husband is here, he's just been in a car accident." I checked with the unit, they said he could have visitors, so I let her go back. I went on with my day. About 20 minutes later, a different woman came to the desk.
She said, "My husband is here, he's been in a car accident." I knew that we only had one MVA back there, but I asked her for the patient's name, figuring maybe she'd come to the wrong hospital. But she had not. This man was not polyamorous. Instead, he was leading a double life of Bruce Wayne proportions. He wasn't just sleeping with two different women.
He had two sets of children. He had convinced both that he was officially married to them. And neither had any idea the other existed. There was, how you say, a mild kerfuffle. In the end, the women joined forces against him and walked out planning their respective divorces. It was just amazing to me that this guy's whole life was blown up by a minor fender bender that wasn't even his fault. Dude looked just haunted when he walked out.
91. Frosty the Liar
I ran a very successful cake business for years. I was really a cake decorator at heart; I had been doing it for years and that was my true passion, but I HATED baking!!! I tried to bake from scratch, but it never tasted good. So I came up with an ingenious plan. I would visit my local "big cost savings" type store and get CASES OF FROZEN SHEET CAKE. Seriously. People complimented me ALL the time.
I even made my wedding cakes and celebrity's cakes from this stuff! Frozen, pre-made sheet cake. Yep. It was actually okay stuff; I mean, I made my own icing and filling so yes, the cakes did taste fine and they looked great. I just hated baking and still do. I'd always be sneaky about buying the frozen sheet cake too, scared that I'd see a customer.
Wikimedia Commons, Michael Prudhomme
92. Way to Leave Us Hanging
When I was young, my mom's best friend passed. She wouldn't tell me how, only that it was sudden. When I asked why we weren't going to the funeral, she told me that there wasn’t one. But just months ago, I was scrolling through her phone to find the number for a pizza place, and as I’m looking I come across the phone number of the long-dead best friend.
I was floored, and very suspicious. The next day I called the number from a pay phone—and that’s when the situation went from suspicious to disturbing. As I'm scrolling through her contacts I come across the phone number of the dead best friend. Biggest WTF moment of my life. The next day I called it from a pay phone at Waffle House and she picked up. I instantly recognized the voice and accent. She's not dead.
93. Making It Work
I've never actually told anyone this. My dad passed about 20 years ago when I was 15 years old. He worked putting in skylight glass for big buildings like malls and stuff. Anyway, according to the details, one of the crates on the forklift was tipping and he tried to stop it; no one came to help and it crushed him. That's what we kids were told...
It wasn't until three years ago I found out through a guy Dad worked with that no one was even there on the job but said guy and my dad. They were closing up shop. My dad had been discussing things like suicide with this guy. When the guy turned his back... my dad shot himself in the head. There was no forklift accident. He wasn't crushed.
The guy made it look that way so we kids would end up with an inheritance and a lump sum payment. I freaking cried for days. Thank you Clark, for setting all that up. You didn't have to change our lives for the better. But you did.
94. The Cheater
My sister’s fiancé passed very suddenly and very tragically from a heart attack. She was 20, and he was 23. It turned out that he had an underlying condition. In the months following his passing, she found out he had been cheating on her basically since the start of their three-year relationship. Some women were long term and knew about her, others were just casual one-night stands that probably didn't know.
She kind of went off the deep end a little, because now she was not only mourning a man she loved; she also had to deal with this fact without being able to ask him for answers. Silver lining though; she ended up dating and marrying one of his good friends. They sort of bonded in the aftermath. He is the best thing that ever happened to her and vice versa. They will be married for three years this summer.
95. Can't Hardly Wait
My dad had a deep, dark secret for a long time, but I managed to find out about it on my own. The woman who he is now married to is the woman with whom he was having an affair...when my mom was dying of cancer.
96. Dad’s Tragedy
Here is one that my dad never told me but my uncle shared after my dad has passed. He was madly in love with a girl when he was 17 years old. They were soul mates, lovers meant to be, engaged to be married and grow old together... all that sweet jazz. They went to the county fair one year and decided to ride the Ferris Wheel.
About the time they got to the top and started heading back down the safety bar came unhooked and swung open. My dad grabbed her and held onto the seat. He tried to hold her but he couldn't. She fell and she didn't make it. My dad never mentioned it, never said a word to anyone, even to my mom. My uncle said her passing broke his heart and he was never the same again, until after I was born.
He would never let me go to fairs, amusement parks, or any place with rides when I was growing up and we used to get into big fights about it when all my friends were going. He always told me it was just because they were dangerous and didn't want me to get hurt.
97. Revealing Too Much
On the day of an economics mid-term, all 300 students had to go to a big lecture hall to take the test. Because it was such a big group, the professor had to use a microphone to give us instructions. So after giving this whole speech about the exam, he bid us all good luck and left the lecture to go do some work in his office next door.
Well, he didn't realize one important thing: He had left his microphone on, so while the entire class was silently writing the exam, we listened to the events that unfolded inside his office. We heard the brief muffled conversation between him and the female TA of our class. Then that conversation stopped. We all realize that they’re being intimate.
The TA’s quieted moans were magnified on the speakers in the lecture hall. The entire class stayed silent. Then, the professor swore loudly and abruptly shut off the microphone. Later, as if nothing had happened, the professor came inside. He was fired a week later.
98. Miss Me?
It was the day of my husband's funeral. I answered a call from an unknown number—that’s when everything fell apart. There was a woman on the other end claiming to be his girlfriend. She’d been calling his cell for weeks but I’d had it turned off when he was in the hospital. I had no idea that he'd been unfaithful, but it was about to get worse. She told me that he'd been paying her rent for a year—while the bank had been about to foreclose on our house.
99. The Old Switcharoo
My wife and I absolutely adore our son. It’s been amazing to watch him grow up—but neither of them know the painful secret that I’ve had to keep from them ever since the day my wife went into labor. She nearly perished while giving birth, and the labor was so difficult that she fell into a coma afterward for days. When she woke up cradling our son in her arms, she had no idea about the sin I’d committed.
Our baby never made it through the birthing process, and I secretly bought our son from a human trafficker. This is quite easy to do in my country, considering that there are a lot of very poor parents willing to give their children away. My wife has no idea and I have no intentional of telling her or our son the truth.
100. You’ve Got A Friend In Me
My mother has always wondered why I didn't have too many friends back in high school. The real reason is a secret that I would never want her to know about. It is because, growing up, my family was always broke and I knew that she was struggling financially. So, in order to avoid anyone seeing how we lived, I always refused anytime people from school wanted to do things with me or have get-togethers at my house.
To make matters even worse, I decided during my senior year that I did not want to burden my mother by asking for money when I needed to buy things. As a result, I started working as much as I could outside of school. This gave me even less time to make friends. I would never want my mother to find out about this, and I would never want her to feel guilty or blame herself for my lack of social life as a child.
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101. Like the Brother Never Even Existed
My brother who passed on. We never, ever talk about him. It’s so strange, growing up I knew I had a brother and I knew he was hit and killed by a car walking home, but I don’t know anything about him aside from that. I’ve seen his pictures, I know what he looked like. I don’t know anything about his personality, his likes or his dislikes, the type of music he listened to. I once found his comics in my mom’s closet when I was younger, but that was about it.
It is almost like it’s just a story and he wasn’t a real person. It wasn’t until my grandfather passed on about 11 years ago that my mother and I walked to his grave. She broke down into an inaudible mess, and it really hit me for the first time ever that he was a real person, as crazy as that sounds. I don’t understand that pain of losing a child, but it hurt to see my mom mourn like that, almost as if it had just happened.
The only time since then he was ever mentioned was by my dad a few months ago. Out of my mother, father, and sisters, I’m the tallest. My dad told me how the only one of us who was taller than me was Jimmy, and how he always seemed to keep growing, how he probably would have towered over me. I almost cried. I wish I got to know him.
Sources: Reddit, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 16, 17, , , , 21, 22
