There's no such thing as the "perfect" family, and there's nothing as dangerous as the truth. These people kept their family's deepest, darkest secrets hidden for years, but couldn't resist unleashing skeletons from the closet. From double lives and perverse scandals to fiery affairs and secret siblings, these revelations are not for the faint of heart.
1. That’s Not Even the Half of It
My “half-brother” isn’t actually related to me at all. Because my dad’s ex-wife cheated on him and got pregnant. Everyone knows but my half-brother.
2. Ancient History
My grandpa doesn't know that his dad was hit by a drunk driver. He was only two when his dad passed, and can't remember any of it. The only thing he said he knew was that he thought it involved a truck. I found the newspaper article about my great-grandfather's passing when I started digging into my grandpa's family tree.
I also found that great-grandpa was the result of a teen pregnancy and was raised by his grandparents. I'd tell my grandpa, but I'm not really sure there's too much point in bringing it up now.
3. Dark Deeds
My Uncle Joseph is very probably a serial killer. He was a major suspect for the West Mesa Bone Collector. He has also been convicted of even worse offenses. One day, Uncle Joseph was just sort of out of the picture and no concrete explanation was given. At the time, I was young enough that I didn't think to particularly wonder about the details.
4. Didn't See That Coming
One of my good friends was shot last year. He was one of the nicest guys I knew, he always called everyone he knew, checked up on them, made sure everyone was okay and was really supportive of everyone. Move forward a week or two after he passed, and someone was put behind bars due to a murder that happened a few days before my friend’s.
Turns out the guy who got put away was the cause of multiple offenses (yet he had perfect alibis for everything); except we later found out that my friend was working for him and was getting paid 5-10k per person. No one saw it coming but everything soon made sense...
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. The Other Family
I had a cousin who died 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.
8. Paranoid Delusions
I had a brother who had some paranoid delusions (FBI, CIA following him, spying on his apartment, etc.). My brothers and I tried to get him help and he would just have no part of it. After a few years, it seemed like it had gotten better. He stopped bringing it up and we felt like it must have just passed. After he passed, we found his journal and it was just horrifying.
Right up until the night he passed, he detailed all of the torment that they were inflicting on him. I can't go into much detail—it's hard for me to write about. Briefly, he believed that they were using some type of focused energy beam. They focused on different parts of his body at different times. Every noise that an appliance made was proof of electronic surveillance. Every bump on the wall or person walking in an adjacent apartment was a message from either the "bad" FBI agents or the "good" FBI agents.
It was just incredibly disturbing to read what an awful life he was living inside his mind while acting relatively normal outside.
9. The Boozer
My grandma (Dad's mom) was one of my favorite people before she passed when I was 14 years old. She was extremely sweet, generous, and gave good advice. My brother and I stayed with her and were alone with her all the time, and she never mistreated us or in any way acted unusually. I found out only a couple of weeks ago at 33 years old that she was a severe alcoholic who would get drunk almost daily.
My dad said she would beat him and his brothers when they were kids, and as adults would still say severely psychologically abusive taunts while grinning at their faces. I never had even the slightest idea.
10. A Mother’s Greed
My friend's mom offed her husband. She had taken a $200k life insurance policy out on him six months before he passed, and he passed from not taking his medication that he'd taken no problem all of his life. My buddy was away for the weekend so he wasn't home when it happened. After his mom passed, we found out even more: She'd taken a life insurance policy out on my buddy at some point too, and she'd also forged his signature to sign over $100k my buddy's dad had left to him.
She robbed my buddy blind and he had no clue. She took his inheritance from his grandma too that he'd had no clue about and gave a big chunk of it to her friends/his godparents who used it to buy a beach house... She also faked illnesses to get prescription drugs and had little books filled with info on what she'd sold and how much she'd made from selling them.
11. The Siblings
I have nine siblings. We all share the same father. I only knew about seven of them until my dad passed. I found out that two of my "cousins" were actually my brother and sister. My father had cheated on his then-wife with her sister. So those kids were born out of wedlock. When my mother passed, I figured out that my sister (whom I thought we shared the same parents with) was fathered way before they met.
My only full-blood sibling is my twin. I'm only close to him and my sister. The other half-siblings get along well with us but we are not close.
12. 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 forces, 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 the authorities, but they didn’t find him fast enough. He returned in the middle of the night and set fire to our house, ending the life of our beloved family dog, and offing 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 end my life. They were planning on telling me through a letter when I joined the forces, but I figured that out before-hand.
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13. Missed Moments
My father talked about how he was there with my mom for her last dying breath. It wasn't true. My brother-in-law (who was abusive and crazy) was searching for his wife (my sister) because she had been away from the house too long. He called my father in a freak-out-panic trying to figure out where she was, assuming that she was somewhere cheating.
While my father was trying to calm him down, my mother passed. When my father came back to my mother, she was gone. When my brother-in-law passed a few years later, I was surprised that my father didn't seem that upset. Before my father passed a few years after that, he told me why. I was in my mid-30s.
14. The Hypocrite
I found out that my father (at least in part encouraged by my stepmom) had been fraudulently using my social security number on a variety of loans and credit cards. I'm a junior, so nothing was red-flagged for most of this stuff, apparently. I still am trying to clean up a certain amount of the messes he made, though things have tailed off since he's been dead for over a decade.
I still struggle with the fact that the man who preached honesty and integrity to me as a child, and who beat the ever-loving heck out of me when I transgressed even slightly, would do something like this. I realized after he passed that he was both a narcissist and a bit of a sociopath, but still... it's hard to reconcile at points.
15. The Mistress
My father had this secret mistress and when he passed, she had the nerve to show up at his funeral. It was really terrible, but not as terrible as all the stuff we found out later. It turns out that my dad paid all of his mistress' bills, including her college bills for when she went back to school in her early 30s.
The college thing really hurt my mom as she always wanted to get an education for herself but there was never money, or so my dad said...
16. Clandestine Vacation
When I was three years old, mom and her mother took a month-long vacation together. That was the only trip the two of them ever took just by themselves. It was also the only time my grandmother took a vacation without her husband. Dad's parents looked after me in the meantime. The day mom returned, she handed me a pair of maracas.
She and her mother told everyone they had been to Spain, but they didn't bring back any pictures or tell any stories about it. In contrast, grandma was full of snapshots and anecdotes about her other travels. When I was around eight years old and asked mom about Spain, she quoted old movies: right out of My Fair Lady, she answered, "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."
She never showed me a passport stamp. For all I know, she never even had a passport. When I was in college mom claimed that she had never traveled overseas. When I reminded her about that month in Spain, she fell silent. Apparently she had been hoping I'd forgotten. There had been other hints that something was off.
During childhood, she tried to donate those maracas to charity a couple of times. I insisted on keeping them, but they disappeared when I was ten or eleven. Shortly before they vanished, she saw me playing with them and told me they weren't really maracas. This started an exchange where I asked her what the correct term was, and why she had always called them maracas until then. She gave a couple of evasive responses before falling silent.
None of this added up until decades later, when I finally made a dark realization. I realized her trip to Spain took place shortly before abortion was legalized where we were living, and that something like 30% of women in the United States have had an abortion. My best guess is that she and her mother either drove to Canada or flew to the UK and spent the month shuttling between medical clinics and a hotel room.
Mom, dad, and I had been living in a one-bedroom apartment at the time. Mom and grandma probably decided she couldn't afford a second child. Dad never guessed a thing. Incidentally, my mother is a lifelong Republican who's also adamantly pro-choice. Mom never had substance problems, and her marriage was going well, so mental health treatment doesn't seem likely either.
Although she and dad were on a tight budget, a month-long trip was no stretch for my grandma; she and my grandpa were country club people. My mother has never been a reliable narrator, and her mother has long since passed. The big tipoff is my mother’s adamant support of abortion rights. It's neither her political leaning nor within her personal temperament to take abstract stances in favor of rights, but she'll champion issues she knows firsthand.
17. The Garden
There was a woman in my town, and after she passed, people were clearing her garden and found what they thought was a model skeleton. Yeah, it wasn't. It was her husband, who went mysteriously missing in the mid-90s. Apparently, she was fairly well-liked in the town and she told everyone her husband ran away with another woman.
She had a really well-kept garden with hard-to-grow orchids, etc. and put a lot of care into it, but was very secretive about it and wouldn't let visitors in there because they might "trample the flowers".
18. The Ally
After my nana passed, I found out that her marriage to my papa was a complete lie. It turns out that she only married my papa and had three kids with him all as a cover story for him being gay. This was during a time of LGBT prejudice in America. The kicker is, they really pulled off the married couple routine and I think they were genuinely compatible and happy together.
19. Running from Demons
My friend was wealthy and successful; he had it all, and then one day, he told us the awful truth: He had stage 4 cancer. Passed shortly after that. I went to his funeral to find that he had actually taken his family's entire inheritance, ran away, went AWOL and started a life in our country. That's when I had met him. I didn't know about his past.
His elderly parents and sister were distraught upon knowing this dude had married a foreigner and their money was stuck in a lawsuit with no sight of a resolution. It's tainted my memory of him, I used to think he was a generous dude and kept a low profile because of wealth; now we all know he was running from his own demons.
20. 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.
21. Back from the Dead
My grandmother had three brothers fight on the Eastern Front in WWII. A fourth brother was 13 years old, and a mandatory member of the Hitler Youth. He was conscripted to fight in Berlin against the Soviets. They gave him a gun, put him in an apartment building to fight, and a few hours later one of those Soviet rocket trucks came down the street and unloaded rockets.
Seeing this, without firing a shot, he dropped his weapon, walked outside and surrendered. 20 years later, after my grandmother's family had already had a funeral for him, he showed up back in town unexpectedly. Somehow (he has not explained to anyone how he did this) he escaped from a gulag in Kazakhstan and came back to West Germany.
He's still alive, and he didn't let the town take up his gravestone. His stone says 1932-1945 because, as he put it, "Werner passed in 1945, the man I am now was born in 1945."
22. An Aunt’s Love Story
When I was 14, my aunt passed very suddenly. She was only 37, but she had a lot of health problems (obese, substance issues, alcoholism, etc.) As a family, we tried our best to encourage her to get healthier, but disappointingly, she never listened to us. None the less, she was always happy. Smiling, laughing, and always complimenting me and saying how much she loved our family.
I never understood why someone with such cheer and utter happiness could end up in the situation she was in. While I was spending the night with a distant cousin of mine, we got into a deep conversation about my aunt. We both spoke our feelings about his final days, including my confusion for why she had so many problems.
My cousin looked at me with an “oh no, you don’t know?” kind of look. I asked what happened but she hesitated. She asked me to not tell anyone I heard it from her. I said of course and pushed her to tell me. She explained how when my aunt was about 17, her mom (my grandma) had just gotten married to another man.
His brother (let’s call him T) was very close with my aunt. Apparently, they went out to ice cream and looked at fancy cars that he promised to buy her. When my cousin was telling me this, I was confused, because it’s just an uncle and niece type of thing. Why is that so bad? Well, one night, my aunt had to spend the night at T’s house while her parents worked graveyard shifts.
My cousin didn’t exactly know what happened, but it was heavily implied and speculated that they slept together, or even worse, he assaulted her. This was because, after that night, my aunt asked to spend the night over and over again. She basically begged to see T every day. T and her parents eventually got tired of it and said that she wasn’t allowed to go over there again.
T never acted the same around her. He ignored her at family events, didn’t take her out anymore, and never brought her up or even talked about her in conversations. After that, my aunt struggled to find a real boyfriend and even tried experimenting with girls. She never knew what real love was, and it was obvious that it bugged her. She had been played with by this tool and left in the dust.
She eventually got a husband and had a kid, my favorite cousin that I love oh so much. But life wasn’t kind to her. And I guess drinking her life away was her way of coping. It hurts to think that she passed thinking that she was nothing but a waste, when in reality, she was a blessing to everyone who came in contact with her.
I wish I could tell her how much I love and appreciate her.
23. The Certificate
I lost my father when I was 10 years old, and I was told he had a heart attack. Fast forward eight years; I was applying for a passport and needed parental documents. My mother was out of town so I went through the documents cabinet to get his death certificate. As I read it, I burst into tears. He passed of HIV. It broke my heart, but my mother has always been kind to me so I decided to not tell her that I knew.
This was ten years ago and she still doesn’t know that I know.
24. Psycho Granny, Qu'Est-Ce-Que C'est?
When I was about 31 years old, I found out my maternal grandmother, who practically raised me, was the woman behind my grandfather's untimely demise. I was doing research trying to build out a family tree and wanted to find out about my grandfather who passed about four years before I was born. We never really talked about him or how he passed. I found an article about his passing in 1978 and had found a corresponding report number for an arrest of my grandmother in the same year.
I didn’t immediately put the two together, but once I did, I put in a FOIA request for the case file. Apparently, my grandfather was in ill health, had a few strokes and needed A LOT of assistance; assistance my grandmother grew tired of. One day, he was sitting in his chair and she just snapped and stabbed him numerous times, killing him.
She was tried and eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity. She spent some time in an institution, only to be let out in 1981, the year before I was born, to move in with my family. As she lived in our home, she basically raised me from a child. She was the sweetest lady in the world and this SHOOK me.
When I asked my dad if it was true and how he could let her alone in our home with me as a child, his response was, “Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, you turned out alright.”
25. Ignorance is Bliss
I had the best grandpa growing up. Like the typical movie grandpa. He was perfect. He spoiled us like crazy; great corny jokes and he always had crazy silly stories. He always saved the day. Just the best man I knew. After he passed, one of my aunts told me and my little sister he had cheated on my grandma with her own sister multiple times. We never knew.
I wish she never told us.
26. The Second Eldest Aunt
After my grandad passed, my great aunt told me that he was responsible for the sudden passing of their baby sister. She said that when he was young, he picked the baby up, but because he was so small, he dropped her and she hit her head. When we went to clear out the house, we found a ton of family documentation, including birth and death certificates for the family.
It turns out the little girl passed of whooping cough. I was like, what? It turns out that my aunt let my grandad go to his grave believing he was responsible for the demise of his baby sister. I can just never get my head around why.
27. The Lazy Step-Dad
My stepfather was getting more and more tired, falling asleep during the middle of the day, sneaking off for a nap... really ticked off my mother and I. We were helping him renovate a house at the time and we didn't appreciate him always dozing off. A while later, he got diagnosed with bladder and kidney cancer, which had already spread too far to be treatable. We only really realized after he passed last spring that he was tired all the time because his cancer was already slowly killing him.
I didn't always get along with him, and I regret a lot of things I said to him. I just thought he was being lazy, I never thought he'd be dead within three years.
28. The Betrayal
After my wife passed, I learned that she had been cheating on me all throughout our marriage. When the shock subsided, it was replaced by rage and betrayal. I lost it and I just started destroying and trashing everything of hers. The only thing I didn't destroy or throw away was her urn. I gave that to her parents. I seriously thought about flushing her ashes down the toilet, but I decided not to.
I completely got over her in record time.
29. The Matriarch
We always thought something was up with my nan. She always kind of shunned any females in the family. Her sons and grandsons were like gold to her. Wives and granddaughters were treated like rubbish. Wasn't until she passed a few years back that it came out that she had been abusing her sons and possibly some of her grandsons.
One of my uncles ended up going to prison for inappropriately touching all three of his children, two sons and a daughter. Tore his family apart. When my nan was dying, our uncle never left her side; he organized the funeral and seemed more cut up over it than anyone else. He was the favorite son. Totally gives me the creeps.
30. The Gift of Debt
After my father passed a few years ago, we learned that he had taken out about $40k of loans in my name. We share the same initials (and surname obviously). He forged my signature, and kept on applying for loans and credit, got approved and never paid a single dime back. Seeing as he was the main contact, no-one ever called me to ask me why I wasn't paying my debt... so only after he passed, we got contacted by institutions informing us that my father owes them money, just to find out it was actually on my name...
So now my credit record is screwed due to years of payments not being made and I need to pay back all of these loans. Fun times, right?
31. The OG Hot Priest
My grandfather had an entirely different last name than we thought, and he was actually a bad boy Catholic priest! After he shacked up with my grandmother and had a bunch of children with her, he just never told the rest of his family. They thought he was living the chaste life. Um, nope.
32. The Work Incident
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.
33. The Second Life
My grandfather was Polish. He fought in WWII in the Allied forces after escaping to occupied Italy. Later, he came to the UK and met my grandmother, with whom he had an unbelievably troubled relationship, and five kids. He passed when my dad was 14. My dad and his brothers found some old projector films in the attic. One of them changed everything.
It was a slideshow that appeared to depict my grandfather in a suit, next to a woman in a wedding dress, standing at an altar. The guy had been married already, in Poland. We don't know what happened to his first wife, but now we know why he was estranged from his Polish family.
34. 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.
35. Scandalous Great Grandma
Great grandma ran a "hotel" in the late 1800s near a train depot and army fort in the Oklahoma territory. Turns out it was a brothel. Great grandma was a madam! She must have been good at it, because she left a lot of money to my grandma.
36. Secret Sister
When I was a kid, I knew my grandfather was odd. He'd call me his grandson even when I was wearing a dress and clearly female, but my parents would tell me to ignore it. Then I found out that when my dad was a kid, grandpa had sold my dad's sister Barbara to someone, and kept my dad and his brother because he didn't want a girl in the family.
My dad found his sister Barbara around the time I was in middle school, through making some calls and getting access to records. They were reunited, and she's my favorite aunt now. No one liked grandpa.
37. 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 illegal 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. The authorities found the remains of the drug 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.
38. Anger Management
It still freaks me out to think about this. It's the worst thing I've ever done. I tried to strangle my mom once when I lost my temper. I don’t even remember what I was angry with her about. Ever since then, I've done everything I can to keep my anger in check, because it scared me. I was like 13 years old then, and thankfully not strong enough to actually hurt her.
39. Once in a Generation Blues
My daughter turns 5 next week. If anyone knew the truth behind her parentage, I could probably lose her forever. I grew up in foster care, never knew my parents or siblings. In my senior year, I met an older guy and we dated for almost a year...getting pregnant about 7 months in. One night, while we were watching TV, the subject somehow came around to our real parents (he had been adopted as a young child).
Turns out the man I was seeing, the father of my daughter...is my half-brother...we have the same mother. Our relationship didn't last, and he is not in her life, per his own choices. My daughter is extremely smart, beautiful, and well-rounded. She'll never know the truth...her father and I made a pact to never tell her. I just hope she never needs a kidney or something.
40. Baby In The Cupboard
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 (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, he’d be dead.
My dad, according to the story, wet himself right there. 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, he’d most likely have been locked up too. My mum could never trust him with money again, and so although they had a joint bank account, she had them limit his access and made a separate account to control the bills etc.
She 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 kids under 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 mum’s funeral, some of her former colleagues were still coming up to me, saying, “Oh, it’s the baby in the cupboard!”
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41. Misdiagnosis
I’m not sure how my dad discovered this, but he found out he had a secret older brother, his parents' oldest child (Ron, if I remember right, named after his dad). When Ron was preschool-aged, my grandparents were told he was mentally disabled. Horrified, they turned him over to the state and never spoke of him again.
Years later, they learned the truth. Word got back to them that the kid was not, in fact, disabled; he had "auditory dyslexia"(now called auditory processing disorder). He grew up to be a fully functioning, independent adult. He refused to have any contact with the family when my dad reached out. I don’t blame him at all.
42. My Aunt, the Bootlegger
When my family came over from the "old country," prohibition was just starting. They knew how to make moonshine from living in the old country. So, my great-aunt became very involved in bootlegging and made a whole bunch of money. We have all these great photos of her all dressed up in furs and fabulous clothes from back then. This great-aunt never had any kids, but my grandmother had eight kids.
My great aunt put a significant amount of money in a trust for my mother and her siblings that was supposed to pay out when my grandmother passed. My mother had an older brother who was a lawyer. They put him in charge of the trust and a whole other bunch of family money. It appeared he was doing well for himself. He had nice cars, went on ski trips, had very nice boarding schools for his kids....
Well, eventually he started to fall apart from alcoholism. If the trust from the bootlegger aunt had been properly managed, it should have been worth around $1.5 million. At this point, there were five siblings left, so that was nothing to sneeze at. People started asking about the money, and there was almost a fist-fight between my uncles at my grandmother's funeral.
Turns out, the vacations and private schools were paid for by the trusts, and not because my uncle was a successful lawyer.
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43. Online Discovery
While using a certain DNA service, I was contacted through the website by a first cousin. However, I did not recognize this cousin. Turns out, this cousin was put up for adoption at birth years ago by my aunt. My aunt only told my mother, who told me after I started digging to figure out how this person and I were related.
My aunt is horrified that I found out about her child, and now avoids me at all costs at family gatherings. I honestly don't care that she had a child and put the child up for adoption.
44. Too Close a Call
When I was 15, my parents were going through a divorce. My mom worked night shifts and my dad was living with a friend of his. One night my sister, who was 19, at the time came home pretty drunk from a party. She was acting goofy and fell on the couch next to me. She started grabbing my leg and laughing and we started fondling.
We ended up hooking up right there. When we woke up the next day, she had no recollection of the night before, so I just kept my mouth shut. Fast forward to when I’m 18. Sister is home from college and dad is over for a visit. They get into an argument and in a fit of rage my dad announces how he has never forgiven her for the abortion she got when she was 19 and subsequently killing his grandchild.
He's very religious. I then realize the baby she aborted was in fact mine...and as far as I know, I am the only one who knows since she has never mentioned that night.
45. It Started With a Snowstorm…
When I was around two, my mom's mom was watching my sisters and I while my parents were at work in the city. For some reason, she refused to let us see our parents after that for any reason, and we ended up staying with her for around half a year. All that time, we had no idea my parents were living a waking nightmare. Turns out our parents had been trapped in the city for two days because of a horrible snowstorm, so my Nanny had gone to the courthouse and claimed they had abandoned us.
She took temporary custody of my sisters and I, and my parents had to wait six months to be deemed "suitable" parents so that we could return.
Piqsels
46. 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.
47. Save the Last Word
When I was 17, I had an argument with my father and told him to screw off. Later that evening, he passed. Our argument was the last time he spoke to anyone in our family and for that, I feel a terrible amount of guilt for. Instead of him saying goodbye and I love you to my mom and brothers, he got told to screw off. My punishment is to live the rest of my days in shame and guilt.
He never left a note either.
48. Affair With The Mailman
During WWII, my great grandmother had an affair with the mailman while her husband was away at the front and ended up getting pregnant. To save her marriage, she decided to put the child, my grandfather, up for adoption before her husband came home. Nobody ever found out. Somehow (and I have no clue how), she managed to keep it a secret until she was on her deathbed, when she finally told her two daughters, who were born after my grandfather.
Sometime later, in the early 1990s, they hired a private investigator to find their long lost brother. When they found him, they waited in the parking lot for him to get off work, and broke the news to him that they were his sisters. My dad told me he remembered going to a Christmas party with them as a child, but that was about it, they lost contact after that.
I’ve never met them, but the story still fascinates me.
49. 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 killed her and then himself, 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.
50. Crazy In Love
My great aunt was a nurse at a mental hospital about 100 years ago. She fell in love with a guy who had been committed there by the State. She helped him escape, and they ran off together to another part of the country. Romantic, right? Wrong. It turns out that the guy was a psychopathic killer, and he got extradited back and put in prison.
My aunt, a sweet old soul, lived to be 99 years old, and I never knew anything about her past until decades after she was gone.
51. Like the Brother Never Even Existed
My brother who passed. We never, ever talk about him. It’s so strange, growing up I knew I had a brother and I knew he was hit 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 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.
52. The Inheritance
When my grandma passed, we discovered that the entire family was willing to screw over her daughter for a bigger slice of the inheritance by going to court with a bunch of accusations. It was just like Hollywood drama, but worse because it was real life. They all had the same (rehearsed) story, so guess what the judge decided... I'm not the type to be greedy for inheritance; my father is worth millions and I don't care if I never see any of it.
The guy is a jerk and I'd rather be self-made. But the family tearing itself in half for $500k? Bunch of idiots.
53. TMI
My uncle held "gender reveal parties" in 1990 before they were cool. As in, he would go to restaurants, reveal his "gender" to unsuspecting people, and then run away. He took a plea deal and agreed to leave South Dakota and never come back. My father got drunk and told me this—I did not want to learn about this.
54. Was There a White Pointy Hat?
After my great aunt passed, we found KKK letterhead stationery and some other paraphernalia that indicated she'd been doing secretarial work for them.
55. Squatting Aunt-Turned-Cultist
I had an uncle who was trying to sell a really nice house of his, and after a year and a half, he called his agent to figure out why it wasn't selling. It turns out that my aunt had taken all of the For Sale signs down, and had been living in the house the whole time. When confronted about it, she sold off all of the furniture and stripped the house of wiring and pipes before ditching out.
This same aunt hands out business cards with "Reverend Dr.” before her name because she got some certificates online. Now, she owns her own church and all of the church members live on this giant property in Virginia. Sounds like a cult to me.
56. Wild Woman
My father found out from an obituary a few years ago that he had an aunt who he never knew existed. He asked my grandmother about it, and she revealed that her parents had put her sister in an institution when she was in her teens (in the 1940s) because she was "too wild" and just NEVER TALKED ABOUT HER AGAIN. Even when he asked her about it, she didn't want to discuss it with him. Eventually, she gave him that bare minimum, saying only that she was very wild and their father had had her sent away to an institution.
I've never been able to find the obituary—but this is a very strange and dark part of our family history.
57. Butterfly Effect
I blame myself for my sister’s passing. She passed from complications from 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 me that took the 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.
58. A Family Secret
About 6 months before my grandmother passed, 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. 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 offender. 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.
59. When Forgiveness Doesn’t Seem Like a Good Idea
When they were grown, my dad and his younger brother learned that their father had attacked their sister on multiple occasions and threatened her to keep her quiet. She didn't tell anyone until long after it all happened. Later, she reconnected with her father...and allowed him to meet and spend time with her children. She’s more forgiving than I am.
60. Turnaround
My uncle met his wife during the time he was using drugs pretty heavily. She was a prostitute. They have two kids now and they're great parents, nobody would ever guess that they have a rather dark past. They haven't let it visibly affect them at all.
61. The Felon Granny
It's disturbing in a way: My great grandmother went joined the forces after committing an offense, and while serving her country, she confessed to a judge. He punished her by extending her military contract and forcing her to serve in the war. I never knew what happened until way after she passed when I asked my dad about it. My jaw dropped when I learned the truth.
There was a man in her neighborhood who was touching kids and going after boys. My grandma beat the snot out of him when she saw him try to lift two boys.
62. The Victim
All the lies unraveled after my grandfather passed. My mom finally admitted that when she was a kid, he'd touch her. I was pretty shocked, especially since my mom didn't seem to carry any kind of baggage from it, though of course I don't know what went and still goes on in her head. Something that made sense though was how she always made sure my brother and I always slept in her room whenever we stayed at Grandpa's place, which wasn't too often.
We were never alone with my grandfather, and we never had a warm or loving relationship with him. He was cold to us and we never really got attached to him, and we visited him maybe once a year. I think my mom felt obligated to have a relationship with him for some reason, but she was always very protective of us and my brother and I were never victims of his.
63. Long-Lost Son
I was the family secret. My biological parents started having kids as teenagers. For context, when my biological mom found out she was pregnant with me, she was 21 and I was their fourth child. They quickly realized they needed to get their act together. They were already struggling financially, had countless drug issues, etc. They decided that they were going to put me up for adoption when I was a baby.
A loving family adopted me quite quickly, and we lived only about an hour’s drive from the city I was born in. Coincidentally, I ended up returning to that same city for college. During my sophomore year, I decided to seek out my biological family. It turns out that my biological parents separated right after I was born. My biological mom is still in and out of the clink to this day, but my biological dad was able to start a new chapter.
He got clean and sober, remarried, started going to church, and built a legitimate career for himself. He told his new wife about me when they first met, but didn't tell any of his children. My other siblings didn't know I existed. Thanks to the internet, I ended up tracking down his work number and gave him a call. Later on, he said as soon as I said, "Hi, this might be really weird, but..." he knew it was me.
Apparently, ever since I turned 18, he and his wife were waiting anxiously for me to resurface. They knew the day would come eventually. That evening, they sat my siblings down and told them about me. It was difficult at first, but now I'm 25 and he and I have a pretty solid relationship.
64. Unknown Twins
My dad was discharged from the forces for going AWOL. He had found out his ex from when he was around 15 had had his children back then and had never told him about it. I have two siblings who are twins. I don't know their names or what they look like, but they're out there somewhere, and they're only three years older than me.
65. Things Aren’t Always as They Seem
I love my husband, but he doesn't love me. After five years of problems, it finally clicked for me. He loves having a wife, he loves not being alone, and he loves our kids; I, however, am incidental. I can't afford to leave him and I don't really want to because of the kids. We don't hate each other by any means, but I basically have a roommate that I raise kids with.
To our friends and family, we are the perfect, super-duper happy nerd family, but in reality, it's such a sad situation. You never know what goes on behind closed doors.
66. 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.
67. Dark Secret
I always thought that my paternal grandfather, from Denmark, was one of three boys born to my great-grandparents. However, I found out that there was a fourth brother that no one would talk about. Eventually, I learned the chilling reason why. It turns out that he was offed in WWII by his own men when they found out he was actually a German sympathizer who'd been trying to act as an agent provocateur.
He woke up one day, was greeted with an armed escort, taken out to a tree line, and shot until they ran out of ammo. They didn't bury him or bring his body back. The family got a short letter from the army saying he was KIA, then a family friend who was in the army and in the know sent a letter filling in a few details, just enough so they knew why they weren't getting a body to bury.
His name was never spoken again until my grandfather was in his 90s and starting to mentally slip away.
Wikimedia Commons
68. Jer-ry! Jer-ry!
My "grandfather" was my great-uncle and my "great-uncle" was my grandfather. To make this less confusing...let's say there are two brothers, John and Harry. John has a good job in America and is back visiting the old country. Both brothers are at a football match and meet my grandmother, Rose. Now, Rose is really into Harry, but John is the one with the job in America, so when he asks her to marry him and go with him to Boston, she agrees.
So John and my Granny marry, and she has three of his kids. Sadly, it ends up being not a great marriage (go figure), and they haven't had another child for 10 years. Meanwhile, Harry has come to America and is living with the family…when all of a sudden, grandma is pregnant with my father. Fast forward to much later, when Rose gets drunk and admits to someone that she "really loved" my father's father.
John had always treated my father poorly, so we were able to put the pieces together. I’m pretty sure John and Rose weren't sleeping together by this point, so he definitely knew the paternity of my father, but being a good Catholic, he just put up with it. So, there's my Jerry Springer-level family secret.
69. Axe-Grandpa
My grandfather tried to kill my dad with an axe. He literally showed up to his place of work and went looking to cut him down. Somehow, my unprepared dad fought him off with his bare hands. Grandpa escaped—but the nightmare wasn't over. He came back the next day to finish the job with a gun, but my dad didn't show up to work, so my grandfather turned the glock on himself in the parking lot.
I still can't completely grasp that this story, and the circus of insanity that surrounded it, were real.
70. 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.
71. Gang Family
I discovered that my family was taking part in some really bad stuff involving Mexican gangs. I found out when my brother’s dad was found dead the day he got out of prison. My mom was talking to my aunt about it. They were talking in Spanish, but they didn’t know that I was learning the language (we never learned Spanish as my siblings and I grew up, so they would talk in Spanish if they didn’t want us to pick up on what they were saying).
Anyway, after that, my uncle went to where the offense had taken place and, after about a month or so, a couple of other people that our family knew were reported missing or dead. Later, I asked my mom about it, and she said that our family has been part of this shady stuff since before my grandmother even migrated from Mexico.
Suddenly, it all made sense. I always wondered why we would have to move every three to six months, why my uncle and grandma always had respect from countless people I've never seen before, and why they were given so many freebies from strangers. People seemed to know me before I've ever even heard of them. My siblings and I are not involved anymore, but four of my cousins are.
72. 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.
73. 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.
74. Letting the Past Lie
My great aunt and uncle had a baby when they were still in the dating phase. They were in love, and getting married was a sure thing down the line. However, coming from a very conservative society in the Middle East back in the 50s, they had to give the child away to an orphanage. Once that was done, they got married and eventually had four other children.
That first child grew up knowing his origins, but was only allowed minimal contact with his family. He still isn't invited to family events, and has a family of his own. When my great uncle passed, I was told he was amongst the mourners who came to the cemetery to pay respects, but none of my cousins including myself know what he looks like. My dad and his siblings and cousins all do, but they did not introduce him to us.
It’s sad how he's punished for something that isn't his fault.
75. Great-Grandparent Histories
On my mum’s side, my great-great-grandfather killed his brother’s wife. Apparently it caused a rift in the family, because some relatives believed he did it (he did), and others thought someone else had done the deed. I also know that my great-grandmother was in Poland during WWII and came home one day to find her entire family just gone.
They were rounded up and sent to camps while she was out. She survived by working as a maid in Austria. After V-Day, she and some of her family that had survived ended up working on the anti-communist black market selling meat and underwear.
76. When Bachelor Parties Get Out Of Hand
My one cool uncle, who came to our house every Christmas and Thanksgiving, was always really great and pleasant. He had a bunch of cats and dogs at his house and got married to my aunt shortly before I was born. One day, my mom and I went to visit him and my aunt at their house, and there was this girl there. I think she was a year older than me, so about 15.
My mom and I asked who the girl was, and my uncle said, "Well...I just found out a few days ago that I have a daughter, so...I guess this is your cousin!" It was crazy, but then we learned the story of how she was born, and my jaw straight-up dropped. It turns out that before my uncle and aunt got married, my uncle had a pretty wild bachelor party in which a prostitute was hired...one thing led to another, and my cousin appeared 15 years later to find her father.
She was so sweet, and my uncle was actually really good about the whole situation. He even started paying child support to my cousin’s mom, his idea. My aunt was also very forgiving. I've never met my cousin’s mom.
77. 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.
78. 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.
79. 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.
80. Why Didn’t He Just Pay The Tickets?
My uncle was in prison for arson and burglary for 15 years, but growing up, I was always told that he was just behind bars for “not paying tickets."
81. 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 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.
82. Lucky Misfire
I came very, very close to committing a school shooting. I was picked on A LOT in high school. I think it was because I tried so hard to be cool and everyone saw right through it. There were these four cowboy jock types that gave it to me the worst. After being publicly humiliated and beaten in front of a girl I liked (as she laughed/cheered), I decided that none of it was worth it anymore.
I had no support at home being an only child and having parents that worked constantly and cutting and burning myself didn't make me feel better anymore. So, I got my dad's handgun out of the safe (he uses the same combo for everything) and brought it to school with me the next day. I can't adequately describe to you guys how ready I was to kill these four.
I had absolutely no fear or doubt in my mind. I wanted nothing more than to show everyone what happens when you push someone over the edge like they did. I had the glock tucked in my waistline. I was wearing this baggy pair of cargo shorts that I wore a couple times a week that day. I remember walking towards the cowboy's table, so ready for it to be over… when the gun fell out of my waistline, down my left short leg and made the loudest freaking sound as it hit the cafeteria floor.
I tried my best to grab it really quick, but people saw what it was and screamed, and one of the instructors tackled me to the ground. They eventually concluded that I had brought it to school to impress people with badassery, and had no intention of using it. I was expelled and sent to live at a youth ranch in Idaho until I was 18.
I did have the intention of using it though. I was going to kill all of them. I'm 24 now, and I still think about it all the time. I have not recovered from high school. I'm still terrified of people in general and avoid having relationships because of what I fear I'm capable of. I'm not looking for pity. I know that what I did was wrong, it just feels good to tell the story.
83. You Can’t Drown 0ut the Truth
When I was about 5 years old, my sister (2 years old) and I were in the backyard in a kiddie pool. When my mom went inside, I attempted to drown my sister. After I saw her lifeless, I realized that it was a big mistake, pulled her out of the pool and called for my mom. Luckily, she knew CPR and she was life flighted to the hospital. My mom thanked me for saving her, pulling her out of the pool.
Next week was my birthday, the firefighters and paramedics came to my house to give me gifts and celebrate my birthday. To this day 20 years later, I still think about it. I remember the day so vividly, not a soul knows the real truth.
Max Pixel
84. Someone Took Breaking Bad Too Seriously
This is more my husband's secret. I literally discovered it tonight, and it’s going to ruin my life even if it doesn't come out. My formerly loving and reliable husband has dropped his family and gone into the party and drug scene. Tonight, I discovered that he is probably selling substances. I am going to have to leave with my 5-year-old son. This was a man who is viewed as a stand-up guy and very intelligent. People love him.
85. Sister Swap
I found out that one of my Aunts had an arranged marriage. She wasn't actually the aunt who was supposed to be in the arranged marriage, but her sister was adamantly against marrying the guy. I guess my grandma somehow persuaded my aunt into replacing her sister's part of the marriage. My aunt and the guy got married, moved away, and had kids.
They lived far away so I barely ever saw them. Only as I got older did I learn that the dude was abusive to my aunt, to the point where she still had some intense mental breakdowns long after he was gone. I guess her sister was right.
86. Not to Rag on This Person…
I put a rag into a new water heater exhaust to keep debris out and installed it in a rental. I get a call a week later, there's been an accident. I show up and there's a ton of EMS staffpeople. They ask me where the gas shutoff is, and I go down to shut the gas off and see the end of the rag I forgot sticking out of the top of the heater.
Ripped the rag out, shut the gas off and head upstairs only to be told all the tenants were DEAD. I drink all day now and sleep. It's killing me from the inside every single day, but if I say anything my family is ruined; we have a bunch of rental properties and we'd be shut down.
87. 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.
88. The Tight Embrace of Motherly Love
This won't ruin me because I've already gone no contact with my mom, but it still hurts and is a big secret I've not told anyone. When I was a kid, I had asthma pretty bad. So, I'd be up all night, coughing constantly. My mom and I lived with her parents. We shared a room, so I slept in her bed often when I was a toddler. Mom would come home from work and lay down for bed, but I'd keep her awake with my coughing.
Sometimes at night, I'd be coughing, and she would hug me so tight that I couldn't breathe. It would really distress me that I couldn't breathe but I knew mom loved me so much. I didn't want to tell her she was literally squeezing me to death because I was afraid of hurting her feelings, so I'd just tell her that I loved her so much, and she would cry pretty hard after that.
Took me years after having my own kid and treating him gently to figure out that it's actually pretty difficult to squeeze a kid so hard that they couldn't breathe. Mom is bipolar and has had other incidents of hurting people and abandoning those in her care that need medication and can't take care of themselves. So...I finally put it together and figured out, mom would be so agitated with my asthma that she would try to stop me from coughing by squeezing me almost until I passed. And then she would cry out of guilt when I told her I loved her.
89. Rapacious Randy
My family could have been worth millions. My great-grandfather had built a company from the ground up called Johnson Corrugated. They made corrugated cardboard for shipping boxes. Great-grandfather wasn’t very nice, but he did build the family empire, so we still see him in a good way. My grandfather was supposed to inherit the company 30 something years ago…until Uncle Randy happened.
My great-grandmother was still alive after her husband passed, and so she was technically the owner of the company. She was also blind and deaf. Uncle Randy visited her, impersonated my grandfather, and had her sign away the entire company over to him. He gave half of the $15 million to his son, who fled to Europe after receiving some serious threats. Uncle Randy passed within a month after fleeing the family, from cancer. Nobody went to his funeral.
My grandpa is now 80 and can’t retire because he's been fighting this in court for the past 20 years and owes about $300,000 in legal fees. I found this out after stumbling onto a stack of legal documents in my grandpa’s attic. We still don’t know where Randy's son is, to this day.
90. When Grown Men Take Dares
Growing up, I always noticed an odd tension between my dad and my aunt. Any time we'd have get-togethers, she would try her best to distance herself from him. Fast forward to age 12: I went to have a sleepover with my cousin (I did so frequently) and my aunt had to work. So, being a couple of bored kids, we started snooping around where we shouldn't have been.
I went into her bedroom and started to sift through all her stuff, and after some digging, I found what turned out to be a suicide note. In it, she described how she couldn't handle the trauma my father had caused her. Me, being confused and concerned, brought the note to my mom, who then brought it to my grandma, who then confronted my aunt. The truth was devastating.
It turns out that my dad had assaulted her several years ago, and in addition, gave her HIV and Hepatitis B. My mom and dad had been divorced for about three years by that time. After discovering this, my grandma and mom confronted my dad. They then learned that he had intentionally given himself HIV because he was dared to by one of his drug-addicted friends.
91. Spoiler Alert
Two sons of a really wealthy couple go to the family lawyer to have their recently deceased parents' will read. The lawyer is super nervous because he has known them both since they were kids. One son gets the entire inheritance, and the other gets nothing. The explanation was that it should be passed through to blood relatives only. So that was the day he found out he was adopted.
92. 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.
93. A Sweet Treat Before It Ends
When I was in kindergarten my dad would routinely show up, sign me out of class, and take me for ice cream. Best memory ever. Later, I discovered the tragic reason for why he did this. In retrospect, my dad knew he was dying, and passed when I was 6. He routinely did stuff like this. I feel as if I missed nothing, I’m now 35.
94. If These Walls Could Talk
When I was in middle school one of my brothers’ friends that lived down the street went missing. She had an older boyfriend who also lived on the same street. He was allegedly the last person to see her and the story was that she had left his house late at night to walk home, and he never got the usual phone call that she got home safe.
After 24 hours of not hearing from her, her boyfriend and her family filed a missing persons report. Eventually, the search parties stopped, the missing posters were taken down, and she was deemed as lost. Fast forward to a couple of years later. The boyfriend had been moved out of the house for a while now, a new family moves in.
The kids are playing in the woods behind the house, and they find her bones. The skull was totally bashed in and a disturbing amount of her bones were broken. She was horribly beaten before she passed. The worst part was the remains were no more than 6 feet from the house. I have no idea why the cops hadn't found them, but it really sparked a debate in our town about how serious our local force is.
95. The Mistress
I received a phone call from my late husband’s girlfriend the day of his funeral. She was phoning his cell phone which I had turned off while he was in the hospital. She told me that my husband had been paying her rent for the last year. The bank had recently foreclosed on our house. I had no idea he was unfaithful to me, but she knew all about me.
96. Pregnant Disaster
I was pregnant with my oldest daughter and had extreme pain one day, so I came home early from work. When I get home I see two purses that I knew weren't mine sitting on the stand. I head to my room to see if my then boyfriend could explain the purses; I'm hearing noises coming from our room. I opened the door to peek in and he is having a threesome.
I close the door and just go back into the living room. I was shocked. I was supposed to be on bedrest, but I was the only one who had a job, so I was going to school and working while he got to stay home all day. I was livid, but what was scary is that I was so furious that I remained calm. I went into the living room, sat on the couch and waited for them to come out.
When they finally did I asked them if they had fun? I told them they needed to get out of my apartment. He tried to talk to me, but I told him he needed to get out. I calmly packed off of his stuff up, had a friend come over because I couldn't do heavy lifting being 7 months pregnant and dropped his stuff off at his parents house that night.
It's still shocking to me that I remained so calm being that angry.
97. Way to Leave Us Hanging
A long time ago, back when I was still in middle school my mom's best friend passed. She wouldn't tell me how she passed. Only that it was sudden. When I asked why we weren't going to the funeral she told me that there wouldn't be one because "her body was being donated to science." I didn't ask any more questions. That was the last time we ever talked about her.
Well, five months ago my mom handed me her phone to find the number for Domino's and 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. Second biggest WTF moment of my life.
