We've all been there: You stumble into a room at a friend’s house, or maybe someone hands you their phone for just a second, and you come across something you were DEFINITELY not meant to see. From hidden affairs to shocking secrets, these people accidentally uncovered way more than they ever wanted.
1. A Little Less Conversation
I borrowed my now ex-husband’s laptop one evening while I was at home and he was out with his friends. His browser was open to his Gmail account, including an ongoing email chat between him and his mistress. He must have been chatting with her from his phone, because their conversation continued on the screen in real time as I looked on in horror.
I scrolled back through the previous several weeks of their chat. He mentioned having a wife. He also sent her naked pictures. Sooooo many naked pictures. He gushed over his feelings for her over and over again, but she mostly just seemed to want to hit him up for money. It was horrifying, of course. But also a terribly sad look into that jerk’s inner life.
We’re divorced now, thankfully. Good riddance to bad rubbish!
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2. Diary Of A Wimpy Parent
When I was about eleven years old, I found my mom's old diaries and read them. I found one from when she was pregnant with me. Apparently, she was seriously contemplating adoption. Then, in one from several years later, she was wondering whether she had made the right choice by keeping me. It was a pretty unexpected thing to discover.
Some have suggested to me that she might have just written this stuff to let some emotions out and never actually meant it. While I don't feel this way about my own children, I can certainly understand people blowing off steam. But for what it's worth, when I read the entry, it didn't come as much as a surprise to me. She and I have always had a strained relationship, even from the time when I was a young child.
I think she just never wanted the responsibility of having a child. I would describe my relationship now with her as superficial. And I would describe her as very emotionally stunted. In many ways, she reminds me of a teenager and I've definitely taken on the more sensible adult role in our relationship. The bottom line is that whenever she feels slighted, she will lash out emotionally to make the other person feel hurt.
I think she has deep-seated control issues that probably stem from being hurt herself. I am doing my absolute best to finally break this cycle. I am trying to find helpful resources, particularly books or podcasts, about overcoming things like this. I am hoping to be a better mom to my children than she has been to me. I believe I am a wonderful mom, but I also can sometimes feel my mom's tendencies creep up inside me.
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3. The Ballad Of Party Guy
I lived in Deep South Texas for a few years after graduating college. My co-workers and I used to go to this dive bar to play pool and drink on the weekends. One night, there’s an older dude we’d never seen before who’s whacked out of his mind on something. He keeps wandering around from table to table and talking to whoever was sitting there.
At one point, I noticed he kept scratching his nose each time he went to a table, and it occurred to me he was probably looking for some white stuff. Soon enough, he shows up at our pool table and starts asking us if we’d like to party with him, can we help him find some party favors? Dude is halfway to the moon, not really all there.
We try not to engage him and eventually he moves on. After a while, I don’t notice him in the bar anymore. At this point, I’m starting to get pretty tipsy myself and realize I really, really have to pee. So I start toddling towards the bathroom and step inside. As soon as I get through the door, I look up to see two very large and very angry men holding Party Guy up against the wall, punching him and threatening him.
Party Guy has a look of blissful horror on his face. As soon as they realized I was there, the two men froze and slowly swiveled their faces towards me. I just kind of sheepishly stared at them for a moment. It occurred to me that I should probably just turn around and leave, but man, I really had to go. I knew what I had to do.
My brain determined that not peeing was not an option, so I proceeded to shuffle over to the urinal while the two men stared at me. I slowly undid my belt, staring back at them the entire time with a concerned look on my face. Pee immediately started gushing out of the floodgates. We all stood there, staring in silence, as I proceeded to relieve myself.
Eventually, I finished, did up my belt, and turned to leave. I decided it was probably okay to skip washing my hands this one time and went straight for the door—everyone’s eyes following me the entire way. As I was about to step through the door, I gave a sympathetic glance towards Party Guy. With a mournful tone, he muttered, “I don’t think I’m gonna be partying tonight” and the door swung shut.
I tottered my way back to my co-workers and informed them that perhaps now was the time to make our exit and we all walked home. We never did see Party Guy again.
4. Bad Daddy
When I was 13, I went into our computer room just in time to finish seeing my dad send an email that said, "I love you" and some other stuff to a woman who wasn't my mom. He tried to cover my eyes and act like he was joking around. I promptly left and went back a while later. I tried getting in his email, but he had changed the password.
Previously, we all knew it because his email was used to log into a lot of stuff within our family. I never told my mom—but I did get my revenge. A few years later, he divorced my mom and she asked me for help getting proof of him cheating from the laptop he had also used. I found GRAPHIC Craigslist messages that he had sent and received.
Just going to add a PSA here to parents, though: Don’t ask your child to do this. Take it to a darn computer shop and save your child the emotional and mental scars.
5. A Definite Overshare
One time I was up late at night scrolling Facebook at the same time as my married mother, who was an entire time zone away at the time. She was messaging an old fling from high school while her husband was away at work…and was sending him close-up pictures of her you-know-what. I found this out in the most awful way imaginable.
I know all this because she didn’t send them via messenger, SHE POSTED THEM ON HER ACTUAL FACEBOOK WALL. I had to call her in the middle of the night to get her password to delete pictures of her stuff off her own Facebook page.
6. Long Forgotten
When I was in high school, I used to spend a lot of time exploring abandoned buildings. One time, I was in a hospital. The top levels were all vandalized beyond recognition, but the basement was untouched. I assume because people were too creeped out or because half the building collapsed, so maybe the risk kept people away.
I was dumb, though, so I went down. All the paperwork was still on the desks, prescriptions laying around, names, addresses, and phone numbers. I was honestly amazed that all that information was just left there. It felt weird because I really wasn't interested in any of it, but I couldn't stop filing through rooms of paperwork, untouched for years.
It was just a weird compulsion because I knew I wasn't supposed to ever see any of that stuff.
7. Scrubbing The Record
I once accidentally walked in on a black market plastic surgery. I was hanging out with a buddy from middle school. He was shady about insisting that I only stay in his room, and that I enter through his back door and keep quiet. As we were leaving, I turned down the wrong hallway and walked into his kitchen. There was a doctor and some assistants in scrubs. Tubes, machines, and plastic wrap everywhere.
I was quickly ushered out, screamed at, and told not to talk about it.
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8. Haunted House
My mom and sister were on vacation, so it was me and my dad home alone. It was past my bedtime, but I couldn’t sleep so I went downstairs to see what my dad was doing. As I’m going down, I saw something that made me stop in my tracks. I see across my living room the silhouette of a woman walking by. I only saw it for a split second.
My dad came running towards me like, “Hey buddy, how’s it going, give me a hug!” He held me back so I couldn’t get past him to see who it was. I was really upset because I thought it was my sister and they were playing a trick on me or something. My dad was quick to tell me, “Oh, you thought you saw a ghost! Let’s call your mom and tell her you thought you saw a ghost!”
Years later, my mom finds out my dad’s been cheating and now he’s married to the woman. That guy sucks.
9. Silence Is Golden
When I was a kid, maybe eight years old, I went over to visit my friend who lived across the street. I’d often come over unannounced and just knock on their door to ask if my friend wanted to hang out. So I get there and knock on the door and wait for it to be answered. No one comes, but I can hear noises indicating that someone is home, so I knock again.
My friend would often play video games with headphones on and would be slow to answer the door, so I just keep waiting and knock again, unsure why it’s taking so long for the door to be answered. My friend’s dad walks into the hallway to try to spy through the glass door to see who it is. He stands there fully naked, and we make eye contact through the glass.
I turn to walk away, but he sees me leaving and approaches the door and opens it. At this point, I see a woman appear behind him who was similarly not-clothed and very much not his wife. My friend’s dad panicked and just stares at me. I panic too and ask if his son, my friend, is home. He awkwardly said, “No, he’s not here,” and decides that now might be a good time to finally cover himself.
I don’t say anything else and just turn to leave, at which point my friend’s dad just blurts out, “Don’t leave!” I look back, shocked and confused. He hurriedly leaves the room for a few seconds, while I’m forced to say a very awkward hello to the naked lady standing in my friend’s house. The dad comes back and hands me a fist full of cash and says, “Don’t tell anyone,” or words to that effect.
At the time, I didn’t comprehend why he was giving me money, so I refused it and just walked back home. It wasn’t until years later that I fully comprehended what I had witnessed and why my friend’s mother kicked their dad out of the house soon after that.
10. No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service
I teach high school. While I was taking attendance at the beginning of a Zoom class a few months ago, one of the girls in the class was clearly video chatting with her boyfriend on the side. I know this because she literally lifted up her shirt for him and flashed the whole class. I guess she forgot that we could all see. That made for an awkward communication with her parents later…
11. Seek, And Ye Shall Find
When I was seven years old, I was playing hide and seek with my cousins at my grandma's house. I hid in the wicker laundry basket with the lid closed. “This is awesome,” I thought to myself, as only a child discovering the greatest hiding place can feel. I could see through the small gaps in between the wicker. It was in my grandma's bathroom and just two feet in front of the toilet.
But then, something happened that I did not see coming. My grandma walked through the bathroom door not even thirty seconds after I had contorted myself and closed the lid above me. With my face pressed against the side of the hamper so that I couldn’t look away, my grandma walked in, sat down, and went to town on that toilet.
I couldn’t avert my eyes. I was staying perfectly still so that this awkward situation wouldn’t turn even more awkward. But the noises. The smell. My grandma’s privates. It was all too much to handle. I was never supposed to see any of it, and I very much wish I hadn’t. When all was said and done, I won the hide and seek game. But I lost my innocence.
12. Olly Olly Oxen Free
We were playing hide and seek and I hid in a bathroom cupboard. The door had like slats/vents in so I could see out, but no one could see me. My friend’s mum walks in and goes to the toilet. Let me tell you, SHE IS IN THERE FOR A WHILE. Meanwhile my friends are getting frantic, I can hear them calling my name and running around the house.
Then someone knocks on the door. “Mum, we can’t find Susan anywhere. I think she might have left!” The mum finishes her business and rushes out, and she starts shouting my name and searches the house. I can’t get out of the cupboard, there’s seven girls and my friend’s family looking for me in the house. If I get out someone will see me and know where I’ve been hiding and what I’ve seen.
So I stay there, right up until she calls my mum. I hear her ask if I’ve turned up at home and the anxiety in her voice as she tells my mum that I’ve disappeared. I sheepishly make my way out of the cupboard to explain to my worried mum where and why I’d been hiding for over an hour. I was traumatized, she was mortified and furious. And to make matters worse, she was my math teacher for four or five years after this happened.
13. He Wants To Get Caught
My ex-boyfriend used my laptop sometimes, and he left his Facebook open on his messages. I'm not the snooping type and I had no reason not to trust him, but the very top message preview was "What she doesn't know won't hurt her," and I didn't recognize the other girl's name. I went down a rabbit hole and found out he was texting several girls.
I also found out he was using my laptop to watch a ton of adult stuff on his days off and was still regularly reaching out to girls on Plenty of Fish, where he had an active account, and had a secret second email he'd give those gals to talk to them. Then he had the gall to try to tell me off for snooping through his private affairs...dude you literally used MY laptop to do all this.
14. Buzzing Away
I once caught my ex-girlfriend cheating on me. I woke up early and saw her phone light up. I thought it was mine since I didn’t have my glasses on, so I picked it up and started checking it. Sure enough, bam! Bumble and Tinder were both open. Later, when she woke up, I said: “So who’s Mark?” Her face instantly fell. And that was the end of that relationship…
15. Domestic Disturbance
I was staying at my buddy's house when his dad showed up. His parents were separated but divorce hadn't happened yet. Apparently, mom had a new boyfriend over and somehow dad got wind. I still remember hearing him pounding on the front door and screaming while his mom and the boyfriend yelled back.
Eventually, law enforcement showed up and took his dad away for disturbing the peace or something like that. We were huddled in the basement listening to all of it and then his mom came down and acted like nothing had happened. Asked if we wanted a snack or something. I just wanted to go home.
16. At Least They Were Clothed!
I once walked in on my wife sleeping clothed with another dude in our bed on New Year’s Eve. I was working a door shift at a bar that night. I got no texts from her throughout the evening to wish me a happy new year as she usually did. So when I get home, I'm walking down the stairs to our part of the house and I notice that the TV is on.
I walk into the bedroom and see her and this dude passed out on the bed, fully clothed, but with all the sheets removed. I yelled "WHAT THE HECK??" and they both jolted up. All I remember is saying "Get out of my house!!" followed by "No, you're not putting your shoes on! Get out now!!" to the guy. I grabbed his backpack and whatever else he had and threw it out the front door in our driveway.
My wife and I didn't really say much that night. She left ten minutes later to stay at the hotel she worked at. Apparently, the dude worked there too. Soon, she moved into that same hotel after we broke up. We tried to work things out for a little bit, but due to the fact that she had mistreated me many times in the past, I decided that I’d had enough.
17. Beggars Can’t Be Choosers
I once overheard my dad legitimately begging my mom to have intercourse with him. I couldn’t hear exactly what he said to her, but I did hear my mom stand her ground with, “It’s my body and it’s my choice. I don’t want to do it and you can’t force me to.” Obviously, at the time, I wasn’t supposed to hear any of that convo.
And even now I’m not supposed to know that my mom was concerned because my dad was sleeping with women in multiple states and she was worried about her safety since he’d stick his you know what in whatever was available. But I do.
18. Revenge Is Best Served Hot
I was two weeks into a new job, and it was a Friday before a long weekend so most of the office had left early or taken the day off. By the end of the day, it was just me and my project manager left. I let her know I was leaving, but on my way out the door, I forgot to drop off a document for my boss so I went back to my desk to get it.
My boss was doing some renovations in his office so I couldn't just leave the document on his desk as usual. Instead, there was a table with a bin in one of the corners of the room. The table had a foldable room divider in front of it, so I had to go behind it to drop off the files. As I'm standing there giving the files a quick look over, the project manager walks in.
I see her, through the gaps in the divider, come in with a plastic bag, a roll of paper towel, and a roll of toilet paper. She then places some paper towel on the boss's chair, turns around, pulls her pants down, and starts farting and pooping on the boss's chair. I didn't know what to do, so I kept silent and hoped she didn't come to where I was.
After she finished, she said, "From one butthole to another," packed her stuff up, and left. I waited until I heard the alarm arming sound before I ran out, disabled it, and waited until she drove away.
19. No Labels
My parents were getting ready to head out for a double date with my friend’s parents. Everyone came over to our place beforehand and brought their kids because their oldest daughter was going to babysit the rest of us. The adults were in the kitchen chatting and my siblings and I decided we want to show our new sitter this home video we made of a turtle we caught.
None of the tapes were labeled well, so of course, we end up putting on what turned out to be my parents’ bedroom tape. Five kids with our jaws on the floor watched as my mom pulled down my dad’s boxers and…you get the rest. The sitter, who was maybe 15 at the time, dove for the VCR and powered it off. Within seconds, all the parents come through, “Ok, kids, be good...” met with our stunned silence.
20. Pinpointing The Moment
One time, shortly after I turned 21, my dad took me to one of his friend's new bars, and we’re all drinking and having fun. I realize at one point that I lost my dad, so I go looking for him. Eventually, I find him in the back room. He’s with one of my friends who works in the kitchen at the restaurant where we all work together.
The second I enter the room, my dad immediately shouts: “Get out of here, don’t look! Just go!” It took me a couple of years to realize that they were doing lines off the pinball machine. I probably wasn’t supposed to see that...
21. Candid Camera
About a decade ago, someone placed a hidden camera in the living room of an apartment occupied by two middle-aged gents. Every time one of them moved around, the camera took a picture and sent it to MY email. To this day, I have no idea who these men were or why this was happening to me. I used my 1998 pinging skills and determined they were somewhere in France, while I live in the US.
For a while I felt scared to interfere, maybe it was a Mafia thing? Or something I didn't want to be involved in, anyway! The camera was hidden in some type of clock. I think it may have been sitting on a mantel because it overlooked the living room and a wall with three doors. Two of the doors were these men’s bedrooms, and the other one was the bathroom.
Many pictures were sent to me of them getting up to go to the washroom in their tightie whities in the middle of the night. Others were of them drinking bottles of red and watching TV. I waited a couple of days, thinking at some point maybe the person who set up the camera would figure out they weren't getting their emails and change the email.
Nope. Eventually, I called the company and made them stop sending the pictures. The men never did anything but sleep, eat, drink, and watch TV. Everything else is a mystery.
22. A Rough Patch
My ex-girlfriend and I had just started to turn things around after a rocky patch in our relationship, and she left the laptop I got her next to me while she went to the store. I ended up checking her messages while she was gone, and my heart just hit the floor. She had messaged multiple guys and sent many intimate photos to other guys that she had initially sent to me.
The one that screws me up mentally to this day, though, was the message from her best friend: “Why don’t you just leave him? He’s so good to you. You know he doesn’t deserve this.” Her reply chilled me to the bone. She said, “Well, someone’s gotta pay my cell phone bill.” What was ironic was the messages all changed about a week before I read them.
She had been messaging all the guys and saying, “I can’t do this anymore. It was a mistake.” Blah blah blah, because things had been better apparently. But there was too much damage done. I still broke up with her because I knew I’d be an insecure wreck the rest of the relationship if I stayed with her. Haven’t even had the same confidence since. Cheaters suck.
23. There’s A First Time For Everything
I was at a sleepover at a friend’s house and there were about 10 if us bundled into the living room. Me and another girl were last ones up watching some random garbage on TV—I think it was Speed. Anyway, that’s when the craziest thing happened. One if the girls sat bolt upright and the light of the TV was reflecting off her face.
Her eyes were glazed over and she wasn't responding to anything we said. She then got up and we obviously followed her, we guessed at this point she was sleep walking. Into the kitchen she goes, opens up one of the cupboards. This is where it got even crazier. She pulls down her PJs and starts peeing! We just stood there in shock. No idea what to do.
Because we were dumb kids, none of us wanted to touch it, so we just kinda shut the door on it. The next day, we could not get her to believe us. Apparently, she had never sleep walked before.
24. Ticket To Ride
I went to pay a ticket that I had gotten while driving with my headlights turned off. I walked into the courthouse office I was supposed to be in and looked through the glass. To my surprise, I saw the married and publicly elected male sheriff giving the female magistrate a back and shoulder rub. They both went white when I knocked on the glass.
The sheriff immediately stopped and walked over to another room. The magistrate gave me the weirdest look and said: "I guess Christmas came early for you." Without another word, he stamped my ticket and then gave me a receipt, showing that the charges had been voided. Sometimes, it pays to see something that you weren’t supposed to see!
25. Public, Meet Private
I work in tech, have for almost 25 years, and I've done most IT gigs over the course of that time. The 90s and early 00s were a great time to be a techie, but it came at a cost in the private sector, as our crew was frequently “expected” to provide on-site tech support to executives, directors, etc. On one of these visits, the female HR exec, who is in her late 50s, was asking me to configure her home machine to be like her work machine.
So, I'm working away, and she brings me a paper, which has the names of sites that she wants me to set up for easy access (she didn't know what bookmarks were...). So, I'm searching for the URLs in the history. Keep in mind these are the early days of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and the only people who know about the “history” function are mostly tech people.
So I'm typing in some of the addresses in history, so I can get exact addresses, and as I type, the history window is coming up with some incredibly interesting, *very* “adult-oriented,” previously browsed, websites. The woman pops in with some books and puts them away, casually mentioning that her husband had just got a new laptop, and was going to set up his own office space in another room, leaving this machine (that he had apparently been using) for her to use.
"That was nice of him," she says. He came home during my “support session,” and his wife explains how “I'm just setting up this computer for work...” He visibly stiffens up, casts a look my direction, and then disappears to his office. I did what I needed to do and got the heck out. I didn't mention anything to her, but I imagine he was sweating bullets for the next week or so.
26. Hitting Too Close To Home
I saw one really weird message, and then got sucked into reading a whole huge text chain of my dad’s really disgusting and inappropriate text messages with his girlfriend. And that's not even the worst part. He calls her the same very specific and highly personalized nickname that he's called me since I was child. It was like a train wreck, I just couldn’t look away.
The messages had a really strong role play vibe as well, and I have never fully recovered from reading them. It seems that he refers to her by my nickname whenever they are being intimate or romantic. For more horrific context: Said nickname isn’t some common thing like “baby girl.” It’s a reference to a specific misprint on my soccer jersey from middle school.
It’s incredibly distinctive, sounds a lot like my actual first name, and, to make matters weirder, the girlfriend has definitely heard him refer to me by that nickname hundreds of times. Also, it sounds nothing even close to her own name. I have wracked my brain a million times about it to try and make myself feel even slightly less grossed out, but I just end up feeling more upset.
It seems most likely that they do some kind of role play wherein she roleplays as me while being with my dad. I have no idea why else using that nickname in this context would ever be a thing. So, I’m traumatized and haven’t looked at my dad the same way ever since. But I sure as heck don’t want to ask him about it. I haven’t told anyone in my life about this because what would you even do about that?
It’s the only thing in the world that I haven’t told my fiancé about, because I think he might actually go crazy if he found out.
27. Channeling Their Energy
At one point, without really thinking it through, my parents hooked up the home security cameras to our living room TV. So one evening, I’m doing some drawings and looking for something interesting to watch as I doodle. When I got to the right channel, I inadvertently watched about ten seconds of my mom and dad getting it on before realizing what it was and turning it off.
I didn’t feel like finishing my drawing at all after that. I just walked out of the room and sighed with my childhood hatred on full display.
28. A Parting Gift
The thing I saw that I was never meant to see was my grandfather’s secret collection of adult magazines. I stumbled upon it while at his house one time when I was a kid. When he eventually passed at the hospital, I immediately ran straight to his room and purged it before anyone else even discovered that it had existed.
29. A Little Me Time
During snowstorms, the hospital I worked at would ask staff to stay overnight to make sure that if people couldn't get on the roads the next morning they wouldn't be understaffed. Stiffs like me who worked maintenance got to go sleep in our offices on the floor. There was a suite for some of the doctors and nurses whose presences were necessary for long periods.
It was so they could take a nap usually, but would be used for overnight sleeping during snowstorms. One of the doctors that stayed was a little "off." She was friendly enough but just seemed kind of over the top with it. After sleeping on the floor, I was woken at 5 am and told that I needed to get rooms that overnighters had slept in set up for patients.
There had been a bunch of car accidents overnight and they needed the beds. First bed I went to pull the sheets off of, something felt odd. I pulled back the top sheet and there was a collection of...personal toys. The sheets were heavily stained with bodily fluids. I immediately put the sheet back on and went to a nurse to tell her that the "personal effects" of whoever had slept there needed to be collected.
She seemed confused and went in to check for herself. A moment later, she emerged and hastily picked up the phone for an overhead page. As I busied myself in another room, the doctor that was a little off came jogging quickly down the hall and into the room with a gym bag. She left several minutes later. When I entered the room again, she had stripped all the sheets from the bed and put them into the bin.
30. Who Invited That Guy?
When I was about 14, some friends and I had a campout in one of our backyards. This was in a regular, older neighborhood in the city. Certainly not rich, but not a scary place either; just a working-class neighborhood. Anyway, I have no idea what time it was, but I woke up and made a truly horrifying discovery. There was this guy standing in amongst us as we lay there on the ground in our sleeping bags.
He was just looking at us. I freaking froze, but I was ready to scream my lungs out as I watched him through the slits of my eyes. After what seemed like a year, he stepped out from between us all, went over and hopped the chain-link fence and walked off down the alley. I immediately woke everyone and we went inside to tell my friend's mom.
Obviously, we finished our sleepover inside. That was also the last outside sleepover...ever.
31. An Earworm For The Eyes
All of my siblings and my cousins were having a big sleepover at my grandparents' house when my young cousin woke up me and my sister, and told us his bum was itchy. We were half-asleep and just told him to go back to bed, but he kept insisting it was really itchy and something was wrong. He pulled down his pajama bottoms. It was the most gruesome thing I’ve ever seen.
There were little white worms crawling from his bum and falling all over the place. My sister and I were horrified, and ran and got our mum, who then woke his mum. Needless to say, we all had to be treated for pinworms after that. Apparently it's highly contagious, and we likely all would have wound up like him from being in close quarters, playing all day, etc.
The image of his wormy bum is burned into my mind for all eternity.
32. A Shot In The Dark
I am a medical student, and I’ve had the privilege of taking practices in the rural area outside the city. The university offered a transport bus to take you to the different hospitals in case transport was an issue. I used to sit in the first row behind the bus driver so I could look out at the road. This was in order to avoid the motion sickness that I get on road trips.
One morning, when we were about to depart, the bus driver climbed inside the vehicle. Just as he was about to take a seat, the unthinkable happened. Someone came inside the bus and shot him six times with what I believe was a big revolver. He passed on the spot. The blood loss was out of control because, as I later learned, one of the bullets pierced through his aorta.
On a selfish note, I am glad the culprit was wearing a motorcycle helmet and that I couldn't see his face, because I swear that after he was done with the shooting, he looked right at me. It seemed like for a second, he contemplated the idea of getting rid of the witness, but then let me off the hook since I hadn’t seen his face. Either way, I was afraid of coming to school for the rest of the year.
It took me a long time to stop fearing that the guy would come back for me some day. Rest in peace, Mr. Bayron. You were the quickest and coolest bus driver I ever met, even when your driving made me really dizzy!
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33. Behind Closed Doors
When I was around ten years old, my mom and I went to visit an aunt and uncle. This visit was because my uncle, as in my mom’s brother, had just had a major surgery. During the visit, my aunt and my mom cooked a big dinner for everyone. At one point, my aunt tells me to go call for my cousin to come down for dinner.
I go to his room and open the door, only to be greeted by the sight of a huge stockpile of weapons and dangerous substances spread out all over his bed. I awkwardly blurted out "YOUR MOM SAID COME EAT" and immediately slammed the door shut. It was no secret to anyone in our family the type of business that our cousins were in.
He came out of his room a few minutes later and scolded me for not knocking. I was scared out of my wits, but the young kid brain inside of me was also extremely fascinated to see that they were real life "substance lords," like the kind you see in the movies. Nevertheless, I was clearly never meant to see their operation in action like I did.
34. All In Good Fun
I was at a work-related retreat for a week and ended up sharing a room with a guy from a different site. It was my first time meeting him, but we hit it off pretty well from the get-go. The last night I was there, I walked into our room and found him in bed with one of my male co-workers. Without missing a beat, I did a 180 and walked out the door without saying a word.
As I was walking away, my co-worker angrily whispered, "I thought you said you didn't have a roommate." For some reason, my roommate thought I was going to leave a night early, but that didn't happen. I ended up spending a couple of hours at the main cabin chatting with some folks so they could have their fun. I don't work there anymore, but I remember every time I would run into said co-worker, he would always try to avoid chatting with me.
I definitely didn't care if he was sleeping around, but, in retrospect, it was probably more embarrassing for him than it was for me.
35. Letting It All Hang Out
I was hiking in a forest with some friends, and as we continued on the trail, the mound of rocks on our right side opened up to more forest. Myself and one of my friends were leading the other two by a couple of yards, and we both briefly saw a couple having intense, er, relations about a hundred feet into the forest on that right side.
My friend and I gave each other that "did you see that too?" look. By the time my other friends caught up, though, the couple had split and we couldn't see them anymore. It was like 2 pm in broad daylight off of a main road, which was the weirdest part.
36. A Big Ol’ Softie
I live with two housemates. One of them has a cat which I think is pretty cute, but the other housemate, who is already pretty stoic in general anyway, almost refuses to acknowledge its existence. I popped my head into his room one day (his door was open) and I saw him with his headphones on, playing with the cat with one of those long stick toys with a string on the end.
He had a pretty big smile as well. He didn’t see me, and I just observed for a couple of seconds because it was surprising to me and quite cute, and then I quietly left. I didn’t bring it up afterward, either, because it seemed like a cute, private moment that I don’t think he would’ve liked anyone to have actually witnessed.
37. Picture Perfect
I needed a USB drive at work one day, so I asked one of my coworkers if I could borrow one. It didn't seem to work, though. For some reason, files wouldn't transfer onto it. I started looking around for clues and saw something I wish I could unsee: an absolutely massive adult photo collection on there. The coworker was looking over my shoulder the whole time. The only thing I could think of to say was, "Hmm, interesting."
38. All Planned Out
The thing I saw that I was never supposed to see was my mom's secret document outlining a plan for how she could take her own life. She had it written out on a small note pad that she kept in her dresser drawer. It had her planning on trying to make it look like an accident so that my dad could collect the insurance money.
She almost did it one day but, from my understanding, my brother unexpectedly came home early from either school or a friend's house, so she didn't go through with it.
39. A Dog’s Life
Yesterday, my dog was barking while I was facetiming a friend. I went out to the gate to see what he was barking at. I peeped through the hand hole to see my next door neighbor peeing on the land between our places. I saw his thing exactly at the moment when he looked me in the eye, thinking the eye belonged to my dog, and said “It’s okay, Buddy,” which is my dog's name.
So, in other words, yesterday I not only saw my next door neighbor’s private part, but also got to make eye contact with him while he was urinating. Fun times!
40. A Casual Encounter
One time, my mom's old friend came over. She is a little crazy, but very sweet too. She said I looked just like her daughter, and then spent about ten minutes scrolling through the camera roll on her phone with me, trying to find a picture of her. In the process, I saw at least two or three pictures of male private parts. She was a bit embarrassed, but just said "I'm sure you've seen one of those before, sorry." I assured her that it was fine.
Honestly, by the looks of the thing in the picture, I was far more concerned for her!
41. When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go
I was living with my girlfriend and her parents. One day, I ran down the stairs real quick to use the bathroom, only to find her parents getting down and dirty under the blanket on the couch. At this point, it was too late to turn around. So I just ran past them. I used the bathroom and came out to find her dad waiting for me in the kitchen. By far the most awkward moment I’ve ever had when it comes to parents…
42. The Woman Behind The Curtain
When I was nine years old, I walked into my parents’ room to talk to my mom, who was sleeping. She had cancer at the time, which I didn't know about, so she always wore a headscarf to hide the fact that she was losing her hair from chemotherapy. She woke up frantically and hurried me out of the room, but I cannot forget the moment when I saw her without hair and couldn't understand why.
In case you’re wondering, my mom passed two years later. I have come to terms with it though, and I am 22 years old now.
43. Look Away!
I saw my grandma naked. My room is across the hall from the bathroom, and I would do homework a lot with headphones on. I heard my grandma holler something to me from the bathroom. I took my headphones off and look to the bathroom door right as she opened it to go to the guest bedroom. Turns out she was saying “Don’t look! Naked grandma!”
44. Dad’s Little Secret
My dad gave me a piece of furniture one time. When I got it home, a post-it note that had been stuck to the bottom floated down to the floor. I picked it up, and in my dad's unmistakable handwriting there were various notes about gay personal ads he'd been responding to—they were mostly details about the other guys there.
Their names and ages and interests, the status of their conversations, etc. My dad was, at least I thought, very straight. I put two and two together and realized this piece of furniture was from an apartment he kept briefly while he and my stepmom were on the outs for about a year. None of this bothered me one bit, but I got the distinct impression that my stepmom (an older, very conservative lady) would NOT have been cool with any of this.
I let him go to his grave without ever telling him I knew.
45. Down On The Farm
One time, when I was a kid, I went through my grandma's old jewelry box. I found a little flash drive at the bottom mixed in with the miscellaneous and broken jewelry. Being as I was immediately curious as to what secrets might lie within, I plugged the flash drive into my older brother's computer. There was a video on it, titled, "Oregon Farm 2011."
I clicked on it and immediately saw the most horrific thing that anyone can possibly imagine. It was a bald man with an extremely large you know what inserted inside my grandma's mouth. I panicked and immediately turned off the screen. But it was too late. The image was burned into my mind. I put the flash drive back. I've never said anything about it to anyone, and I don't plan on it. I'll probably take this secret to the grave.
46. Creative Editing
I once accidentally found a very intimate tape that my parents had secretly made together. In fairness, they were silly enough to put it at the end of one of our family home videos. To my horror, I was showing my boyfriend at the time our home videos, so that he could see me as a baby. So the video cuts out, goes to fuzzy gray for a minute, then cuts straight to my 80s mom naked on the couch with my dad smiling at the camera. I rushed to turn it off as fast as I could.
Forever burned in my mind.
47. Does Not Compute
I am a cybersecurity consultant for a large consulting firm and I was brought in to conduct a pen test, which means an authorized hacking to try and find any vulnerabilities. I gained access to one of the employee’s laptops, and what I discovered on it was shocking and disturbing. He had his personal Dropbox account linked to on the laptop, with hundreds of illicit images of children inside it.
It was horrific, and it still makes me nauseous to this day. I reported it to my leadership and to the Human Resources department, and law enforcement was soon involved. The man is behind bars now. I definitely wasn’t supposed to see that, but it’s probably a good thing that I did so the guy could be stopped.
48. Pandora’s Word Document
In high school, I found a document on my dad's computer that looked suspicious. When I opened it, my heart dropped. It was basically a diary of his massive crush on another woman. I don't know why I opened it, and I felt really bad, but he probably shouldn't have kept it on a computer he let me use. It was weird, but I never told anyone and tried not to think about it.
My parents are still together today and they seem (mostly?) happy. As a kid, I just felt really sad for both of my parents. I figured they were just staying married because they didn't believe in divorce, but since I've actually been in relationships now I get that that's just a thing that happens, and maybe he was trying to write it out to move on.
49. I’ll Be Over Here
When I was 18, I was pulling an all-nighter trying to finish an English project. I decided to take a break and grab a can of coke from the kitchen. While walking there, I passed the living room—and saw my father screwing his friend's wife on the couch. I turned right the heck around and decided that tap water from the bathroom would suffice.
50. All In The Family
When I was 14, I was at my cousin’s house. We were supposed to be out swimming, but I had snuck back into the house to take a drink…and I caught my aunt in a very compromising position with my uncle. He gave me $100 on the spot to keep quiet. Every time after that when I would see him, he would always slip me anywhere from $20 to $50.
Finally, when I was about 19 I told him, “It’s all good dude, you do you.” He gave me a hug and we have been thick as thieves since then.
51. Password Protected
I was waiting in a condo apartment lobby, and I asked the concierge for the Wi-Fi password. She was not good with computers and just turned her screen to show a text file…that had every important password and keycode for the building. I am talking, router password, boiler room key combination, package room door code, security camera server password, their concierge email login. Everything.
Then, because she didn't want to read out each letter, SHE LET ME TAKE A PICTURE OF IT!
52. Loose Lips
I caught my step-dad looking at private ads for Army hookups. I decided not to tell my mother out of fear that it would worsen her depression and cause her to do something terrible. PLOT TWIST. We got into an argument a few days later and, me being an adolescent but maturing (kind of), I decided to write down my feelings.
I let everything loose. Something along the lines of, “You don’t even know how to keep your husband happy.” I ultimately tore it up and threw it in the trash. Well, I ended up getting kicked out and moving back to Arizona, not knowing why my mom hated my guts. She passed the day I arrived back. Come to find out she found the ripped-up note and pieced it together.
This all lead to me getting kicked out and her overdosing on her medication. I didn’t know about her finding the note until three years later. She found it, told my grandmother, and my grandmother then took out a lot of her spite on me when my mom passed. She said I was a rotten human being, calling me every name in the book.
I was shocked and denied it because I didn’t even think of the note. Grandmother then told me on her deathbed about my mom finding the note, and mailed me the message that was taped back together. I felt awful. Two for one. I saw something I shouldn’t have and so did my mother.
53. Belly Buster
When I was pretty young, I once had to have an operation that involved the doctors opening up my stomach. But somehow, the anesthetic wore off while the operation was still going on and I woke up to witness the surgeon with his hand inside of my stomach. I started to completely freak out like you cannot even imagine. I definitely was not supposed to be awake to see that!
54. Going Ape
Living out in the country when I was about ten years old, my parents went to the local video rental place one day and brought back a few VHS tapes. They told me to pop in Planet of the Apes. I did, and whoever had it before clearly didn’t rewind it because it started playing mid video. And all we heard was a bunch of moaning, before catching a quick glimpse of some private parts.
I stared, glued to the TV, while my parents freaked out and ran to turn the tape off right away. They had no idea what just happened, but we eventually figured it out. Apparently, the small local video rental store back then doubled as an adult video store as well. So, somehow, they had accidentally given us a copy of Playmate of the Apes instead of what we actually ordered.
55. One Very Dark Shoebox
I once found an entire album and shoebox full of Polaroid shots of my grandmother in intimate positions. I also found VHS tapes of my grandparents having key parties with other people, as well as videos of them committing hate speech. I found this all while clearing out my grandfather's trailer after he passed.
I also found jars full of pee, but I don't think he cared whether I saw those or not.
56. Blood Brothers
My brother and I were both very curious children. One day, he pulled me into our spare bathroom all excited because he had found a “huge surprise” in the garbage can beside the toilet. Inside the garbage can, there was a tortilla chip bag with a whole bunch of these weird rolled up things inside. We opened it up thinking that they were surprise toys left inside the bag by accident.
Nope, they were my mom’s blood-soaked tampons. Why, mom, why???
57. Buyer Beware
My boyfriend and I were messing around on my family Amazon account one day out of boredom. We found out that there is this really cool feature that lets you see all your orders from the past. We went through some of our early orders, which included some books I got for Christmas as a kid, a kindle, the elf on the shelf we had, my elementary math books, etc.
It was so cool to go down memory lane....and then....we found out about the archive feature. Intrigued as to what we possibly could have archived on Amazon, we clicked it. I wish I could unsee it. There was only one item, a 1-star rated fleshlight in October of 2019, right before our family vacation to Disney. My dad is the only male in our family, so there is no question who bought the toy, nor its intended purpose.
58. Parent Of The Year
I was stopped at a red light and looked in the rearview mirror just in time to see the man in the car behind me smack his kid fully across the face while screaming at her. She was probably nine or 10. The light turned green and I lost sight of them after the first turn or else I would have tried to report it, but I didn't even have a license plate.
It was one of those ruin-your-day kind of moments. I really hope that kid is okay.
59. A Double-Edged Knife
My family owns a liquor store, and we also live in a busy street. I was around 13 at the time this happened. Next to my bed was a window that allowed me to see outside while still in bed. So, one night I was doing exactly that, and I see three tipsy people, two dudes and a girl, walking down the middle of the street, arguing about something.
Suddenly, one of the dudes pulls something out of his pocket, which I now know was a knife of some sort, and stabs the other dude in the chest. Then came the blood. There was so...much...blood…I called the ambulance, and they told me to call the authorities because they can't respond when it is unsafe. So I did, and they came around 30 minutes after I called and the ambulance got there 10 minutes after that.
The stabber-dude and the girl just ran away when it happened, like this wasn't the first time they saw themselves in that situation. Luckily, the guy made it through.
60. Toilet Training
A while ago, my dad's friend came over with his kid. Our house has a layout where there's a bathroom door within view of the fridge. I later go to grab a snack when I see the bathroom light on with the door open, and in full view the kid is entirely naked standing on the seat peeing into the bowl. Noticing no one else was around, I walked away and tried to ignore that area until they left.
I still don't know why they go to the bathroom like that when they're definitely tall enough.
61. Window Shopping
The thing I saw that I was never supposed to see was my neighbor taking his own life. I was just casually looking out my bedroom window one day, when I noticed that my neighbor was standing on the ledge of his house. Next thing I know, he jumped to his demise right in front of my eyes. It was a horrifying thing to witness.
62. A Night You Can Never Forget
I was 16 and was returning home after giving my neighbor a ride to her piano lesson. Ahead of me was a pickup truck loaded with sheetrock. It was piled up so that it was higher than the cab of the truck, and there was a family driving the truck. It was a dad, mom, and two little kids who were in the cab of the pickup truck.
The oldest daughter, who was 10 years old, was given the “honor” of riding on top of the sheetrock to hold it down. Then the nightmare hit. I watched as the wind picked up the sheetrock, and she had a flying carpet for a few seconds before she slammed into the asphalt in front of me. I was able to stop before I hit her, and I was the first to get to her.
Blood was everywhere. She was blowing it out of her nose and mouth trying to breathe. A nurse was the second to come up. She told me to hold her head straight and talk softly to her. Her parents were obviously beside themselves. By the time I got back in the car, I was covered in her blood—face, neck, shoulders, hands, and the summer dress I had on.
I was able to drive home, my friend and I both in shock. I tried to get in the house without anyone seeing me, as I looked like the accident victim. I walked past my mom to go to the shower and asked my friend to tell her what happened. My mom was so shocked by what she saw that she followed me. I got in the shower with my bloody clothes on to try to get the stains out.
I will never forget that day. I should not have seen that tragedy. I watched the newspapers for several days, since this was way before home computers, cell phones, and mandatory child safety seats. She passed away after several days in the hospital. That’s how I found out her age and that she had two younger siblings. Breaks my heart still.
63. Living The High Life
I was just a child, like eight years old, and I went to Calabria in southern Italy with my family for summer vacations. We rented a house for two weeks. Me, my brother, and a friend of ours were playing in the garden when we heard voices coming from the neighbor's garden. We looked out from a hole in the hedge and saw a man with the water hose in his hand, playing with seven or eight unclothed and smiling young women.
Years later and I'm still asking myself who the heck he was.
64. Bad News
I saw the chest X-ray of someone who had six months to live. I was a construction worker then, and I was fire caulking the ceiling of a hospital when one of the wound techs (who was old and tenured) gasped. Whatever it was must have been bad to make her gasp. I looked down. "He has no more than six months to live, if even that," she said.
The X-ray was of a lung, but the masses were so thick and huge it made the screen look almost entirely white. "He has no idea, he’s never even had a chest X-ray before."
65. She’s Still Got It
I was fixing an elderly neighbor’s laptop that had compromising pictures of his wife on the desktop, with the thumbnails at maximum size. It’s like he wanted me to see them. I will say though, she had a bangin’ bod for a woman in her 70s. I think it’s safe to say he thought the same, or I don’t think he would be putting it up there for all to see.
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66. Tragic History
When I was a little kid, we watched the Challenger accident from my yard just outside Cape Canaveral. So obviously, I had to stand and watch it explode. It never should have happened in the first place and was entirely preventable, but that's another story. No one should have seen that, let alone a child. It’s honestly haunted me since then.
67. More Than He Bargained For
This isn’t about me, but my dad. He stepped outside a bar one night on a rainy day to get more something from his car and saw one guy kneeling on the ground holding another dude’s face down in a pothole puddle, with the other guy thrashing wildly. My dad said that instinct took over and he just ran up and kicked the attacker in the head as hard as he could, knocking him out.
He sat with the victim until he left to make sure the dude was ok and didn't try to hurt the now unconscious attacker. Then he made an anonymous 9-1-1 call so that someone would tend to the unconscious guy and left. He said it was the creepiest thing he ever just walked in on, and he never, ever went back to that bar again.
68. Barnyard Boogie
I once inadvertently witnessed my mother and her male "friend" sleeping together in our family barn. This was way back when I was only about nine years old. After that incident, our parents divorced and never spoke with each other again. I'm now 37. It’s funny how time flies, but some moments still stick with you no matter how long it’s been.
69. Eye Witness
I’ll try to paint the scene. It’s a sweltering summer day in a sketchy downtown parking lot. I’m sitting in my car. I see a guy push over a portable washroom with another guy inside. The poor dude was covered head to toe in the contents of a hot, city toilet. I could smell it from my car. This guy obviously flips out and he starts beating the living heck out of the dude who pushed over the toilet. It escalated fast.
He gets the guy on the ground, picks up a huge cement brick, and repeatedly smashes it on the guy’s head. It was a horrific scene. Nobody knew I was there and I had to testify in a court case years later.
70. Gone Too Soon
I saw a man crash his motorcycle into the back of a parked car. He flipped over the car, hitting his head on the pavement, and he died on the scene. Firefighters showed up and sprayed the wreckage down the storm drain. Later found out it was a girl’s father who I went to middle school with. I was only 12 at the time.
71. New Phone, Who Dis?
My wife's stepmom once dated a guy who shared my first name. As a result, she once sent a breast pic to the wrong contact, in other words, yours truly. She was around 60 years old at the time. I instantly deleted the photo, and then took the opportunity to get off my butt and down to the cell phone shop for a new phone and a new number.
I then texted all of my contacts, saying that I had just gotten a new phone number and may have missed anything that they’d sent me in the last four hours or so. I created the perfect excuse for us never to have to speak of even the possibility of something so wrong. But, at the same time, I still haven't gotten myself intoxicated enough to forget it.
72. Time To Turn Off The Screen
A few years ago, a cousin of my female friend got back from Afghanistan, recently discharged. Let's call my friend Lucy, and let’s call her cousin Mike. I didn't know Mike that well, but Lucy and Mike were fairly close with one another. We were using Skype to play Magic: The Gathering with him from a distance, usually with about five or six of us actually there in person.
We're in California, and Mike's in Alabama. Lucy wanted to include him in the fun we'd have after classes and such, so we were trying to figure out a long distance solution to include him. Mike seemed like a nice enough guy. Anyhow, we're midway through a game when Mike says into the camera, "I'm gonna go get another drink, be right back."
We're still rotating turns, so it's all good. The laptop is angled in such a way that it's directly facing Lucy. I can see it at a slight angle from the right, and another friend, Nina, is beside Lucy. A couple of minutes pass. We figure he's using the restroom or what not. No big deal. The next part, I remember almost in slow motion. It's surreal.
Everyone is laughing and socializing while this is happening, and Mike comes back and sits down. I can’t explain why, but I suddenly get this weird feeling, like this deep pit opens in my stomach and my skin feels overly sensitive. My friend across the table looks concerned, and says something like, "You okay?" because I had stopped talking suddenly and must have gone pale.
I didn't answer. I was watching the laptop. Mike was hiding his hands and I didn't see any beer. Nina said, "Hey, Mike's back," and everyone started picking up their cards. Mike says something to the effect of, "Just a sec, I want to show you guys something!" Real cheery like. He then pulls out a pistol and does a sort of salute movement with it.
He then shoots himself directly in the temple with a .44. Queue chaos, screaming, vomiting, ugly crying, frantic phone calls, and a lousy, terrible night all around. Part of me is really sad for Mike, but the greater part of me wants to tell him to go screw himself for traumatizing two friends of mine, one severely so, and subjecting me to it in the process.
He hurt his cousin on purpose as his last act in this world, as suddenly and brutally as possible. Screw you, Mike. But also, RIP.
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73. You Should Probably Start Knocking...
I once saw my mum jabbing a needle into her arm multiple times and proceeding to pass out. I was under the age of seven at the time. Also, I once walked into the bathroom to see my elderly nana on the toilet with her old lady parts staring right back at me. Oh, and I once saw my sister getting intimate with her boyfriend. Bad times. I definitely would not recommend any of these experiences!
74. Numbers Don’t Lie
The CFO of the company that I work for once left paperwork lying around on the printer. It indicated that the director level employees were getting 100k bonuses and making six-figure salaries, more than three times the managers at my company. We were laying people off while these sacks of trash were getting paid big time!
75. The Worst Thing You Can Possibly See
My dad once gave me his phone so I could order something from it, because mine was out of battery. When I open up Google, the first tab I see is a search for: “How to tell your child a loved one is dying.” My mum had been ill for years now and I’ve been in denial about it getting any worse, but seeing this this finally broke me down.
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76. All You Need Is Love
I was a nosy child and man, it came back to bite me. One time, I was looking through my grandmother’s address book without her knowledge. She had little post-its tucked away in random places. I came across a note that was a list of things she wanted to do to be happy. One of them was “Find a man that loves me.” My grandfather had passed a while back, probably eight years previous.
It didn’t make me sad then, but it really does now because she has dementia and can’t remember things that happened a few seconds ago.
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77. Workplace Zombies
When applying for an internship, I accidentally got CC'ed on an email from the CEO to her second in command, asking if they could assign a certain person to be my supervisor even though she was "on her way out." That person did, in fact, become my supervisor for the semester, and I was on my guard the whole time, knowing that they didn't trust her.
It served me well. She left a few months after I did.
78. Bad Timing
When I was in high school, I saw one of my best friend's moms naked. She hadn't expected us to arrive home, so she took a bath and left the door ajar. I was desperate to pee, so I went barging into the bathroom just as she was stepping out of the tub and stretching to reach a towel rack. I was terribly embarrassed and apologetic, but not entirely sorry.
79. Do Not Disturb
I was 14 and working as the turn-down girl in a fancy hotel—basically, I put out the chocolate and laid out the robe. I went to service a room, knocked several times before entering, and saw two extremely flexible people having very enthusiastic…relations. I was a virgin and barely even understood those acts, so I just kind of stared at them for a second before I realized what was happening!
I shut the door and hung a spare, “Do Not Disturb” sign on their door. I hope they didn't see me. I'm pretty sure they didn't; they were, uh, very focused. I've tried to recreate their positions from memory and I've never been in shape enough to do it. Good for them, but jeebus, was I traumatized. Use the security latch on your hotel door, people!
80. Blood, Sweat, And Tears
My mom was going through severe menstrual bleeding for most of my childhood, so I would find blood-soaked pads under the beds because she never got any privacy and she bled so much, she had to change them every hour. All of this while she worked two jobs and held a family of five together. Eventually, a neighbor who was a doctor suggested to my dad something was seriously wrong.
She had a hysterectomy the following month, and dad got his mom to look after her. Grandma shooed my brother and me out of the bedroom where we were playing next to mom, but we sneaked to the window above. Seeing the bandages and the blood and the pain she was in took all the childhood out of both of us. We have never spoken of it since.
81. A True Dog Lover
My aunt is really odd. One day, we were sitting in the living room talking with a number of family members. She was petting her dog and when people were distracted suddenly by something outside, I witnessed her pull a crusty out of the corner of the dog's eye and put it in her mouth. As an eight-year-old, this was rather traumatic and confusing.
82. What She Doesn’t Know…
I went on a road trip with my grandma when I was 15, and my mom let me borrow her suitcase. I’m pretty sure she forgot that she'd stashed an envelope of VERY dirty photos of her and my stepfather. About a dozen, in various acts, with various people and objects. But that’s not even the worst part. My grandma walked in as I discovered them and I was in a PANIC fearing she might ask to see the photos I was looking at.
Thankfully, my aunt distracted her and I was able to hide them away in the pocket where I'd found them. It was quite an awakening.
83. Show Me The Money
At work once, I was waiting for the printer, and there was another job ahead of mine in the print queue. I was curious because it was taking a long time. So I opened that job…and it was everyone's payroll checks! I could see how much our top dogs were making per week. A little math, and I knew their approximate annual salaries. I wasn't supposed to see that.
84. Whatever Floats Your Boat
I found out my karate teacher and his wife are into cuckolding. As in, he let other men sleep with his wife. But it’s how I found out that’s the most shocking thing. I came across a picture online of her with the men in compromising positions, though all their faces were blurred. However, I instantly recognized the room they were in…because it's the same room we had our karate lessons in.
85. Learning About Chemistry
I’m a teacher and was helping my student, a 12-year-old boy, try to troubleshoot his Chromebook and get it working again. I always clear the cache and cookies because that usually helps, but because they are school computers, you can’t clear the history. As I opened up the tab to clear the cache and cookies, I see that his latest Google search was, “How to kiss.” He knew I saw it, and he looked so embarrassed.
86. Extremely Horrific
When I was about nine years old, I was sitting in my mum’s car at a T junction right at the front. I was in the passenger seat. On the opposite side of the T junction was a hill with a bunch of houses on and a path going directly up the hill, which had quite tall fences on either side. I could see a woman walking down the hill with a big pushchair in front of her.
I could also see that her view of the path along the road was obstructed by the fences. She just walked out onto the path, pushchair first, and didn’t see that there was a guy on a bike cycling along the pathway. He couldn’t see her either, as she was obscured by the fence. He swerved to miss the pushchair, and came flying off the bike and straight into the road.
At that exact moment, a truck drove by and it ran straight over his head. Me and my mum saw EVERYTHING. She quickly put her hand in front of my face so I couldn’t see, but it was too late. I can still remember the woman’s screams and seeing the blood splattered on the road. My mum had to stick around to tell the authorities what had happened, as we saw the whole thing play out.
I remember my mum taking me home and buying us pizza, and us spending the whole night on the sofa under the duvet, as it clearly messed her up too. I had nightmares about it for years afterwards, but I hadn’t thought about it for a little while until I started reading some of the other stories here! I hope no one ever has to witness something like that again.
87. Locker Room Talk
In the seventh grade, I was walking out of the locker room. I heard the girl's locker room door open. Me being a human boy, I responded to the sudden noise by looking over to see one of the girls walk out. We made normal human eye contact. At this point everything is normal, but in the corner of my eye, I was somehow at a perfect angle to see one of my classmates with her pants down.
Needless to say, I worked hard to consciously not look in that direction again.
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88. Too Close For Comfort
Not me, but my uncle. I was scrolling through the photos on my phone one day, showing him pictures of my friends and whatnot—and one of the photos I scrolled to was a close-up shot of my breasts that I had sent to my boyfriend a while back and forgot to delete. I was mortified, and I think he was too…Sorry, Uncle John.
89. Be Careful What You Wish For
When I was young, maybe about seven or eight years old, I was at my grandparents’ house one afternoon. I was talking with my grandma and said: “I wonder if there is a website named after me!” She was just as curious as me, so we went on the computer to look it up. I type in my name followed by “.com” and, to both of our horrors, an adult website came up.
90. The Long Road To Recovery
When I was eight years old, I saw my mom have a seizure due to being physically addicted to substances. She was trying very hard to quit, but she was having some major issues. It was a very horrific seizure and I went into shock at seeing it. In the terms of traumatic childhood events, I probably was not supposed to see that, let alone a few other things that were even worse…
91. In The Know
About eight years ago, I came across an email chain on my immediate boss’s computer. It was about a coup some of the directors were organizing against the CEO and owner of the business to remove them from their positions. I found out nine months before it became public knowledge when the owner sent out an email stating he was leaving.
What I didn’t know when I read the original email was that the coup caused a rift in one of the interstate offices that resulted in 60% of the staff leaving that office. Then of course, last year, I got sent an email with everyone's salaries on it. Found out I was severely getting underpaid, so I will use it for my upcoming performance review.
92. Who Says Boomers Can’t Use Emojis
My dad was cheating on my mom with a co-worker. I was looking for a picture to send to my grandma for a Christmas card when his mistress texted him a question about what time they were meeting tomorrow. Curious, I scrolled up and saw a picture of her breasts—oh, but it didn’t stop there. My dad’s response was “daddy likes” with an eggplant emoji and water drops.
I showed my mom the texts right after I finished throwing up.
93. Wrong Place, Right Time
I was definitely not supposed to walk in on my former boss going at it with the woman from the housekeeping agency that our firm used. But I did. I also was not due to receive the 35% raise that came my way the following month. But hey, I did! So I guess sometimes seeing things that you weren’t meant to see isn’t all bad!
94. Dad Never Quits
When I was young, I'd say about twelve or thirteen years old, I got a text from what looked like an unknown number, as no name popped up with it. It was clearly from a man. It said something along the lines of: "I'm just sitting here playing with my you know what, wondering if women play with their you know whats as well."
It was very gross to my young self but nothing too bad. But then, everything got so much worse. A couple of minutes later, I received a text message from my mom saying that the text my dad just sent me was meant for her, and asking me not to tell anyone about it. If she had just kept her mouth shut about it, I wouldn't have known that my freaking dad had accidentally sexted me.
My dad never acknowledged to me that he screwed up, and thank god, the incident never got brought up again. Oh, but that wasn't the end. Unfortunately, I once saw a photo of my dad's private parts. For some reason, he did not delete his photos before giving 12-year-old me his old phone to play with. Rookie mistake, if you ask me.
95. A Terrible Day In The Neighborhood
When I was about seven or eight years old, I watched my elderly neighbor have a heart attack and drop to the ground. His face went completely blue and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, all about a meter away from me. I feel like there was blood too, but I'm not 100% sure about that bit. I had to run inside and get an adult to call an ambulance.
I'm positive that I saw him momentarily pass, but the paramedics managed to bring him back. No child should have to see that, though. It’s extremely messed up.
96. Kicking The Bucket
Back in elementary school, I once accidentally spotted my teacher peeing in a bucket in our classroom’s storage area. Don't ask me why she didn't just use the bathroom. I haven’t the slightest idea. And no, she wasn’t not old. She was a perfectly healthy young woman. I then had to come back into the room for her class a few hours later and pretend that this never happened.
97. Parents Can Have Sleepovers Too
I went to a giant sleepover when I was 8 or 9 for a friend's birthday. He had all his friends over and his parents had also invited some friends over as well. As the night winded down, we all went into my buddy’s room to jam some Super Smash Bros. Fast forward to about 2 AM. Most of the boys had fallen asleep, save for a few of us.
I had to go to the bathroom horribly. I was holding everything in as I was terrified of using other people's bathrooms and making a mess or smelling up the place. Eventually, I asked my friend where the bathroom was. I still don't know if I misheard him or was just stupid and forgot the minute I walked out of the room, but I somehow ended up at his parents door.
I opened it up full force—I will never, ever forgot what I saw next. I found myself staring at his mother in bed with this dude who’d been at the party, while his dad was sitting in the corner with the dude’s wife. I opened the door so quick they didn't even have time to semi-hide what they were doing. So there I was, 9 years old, frozen in place staring at his parents mid-swap with another couple.
I still see their faces to this day. The only reason I know they were swinging as I could see every single one of their faces. They all just looked at me trying to process what just happened. After a good five seconds of dead silence, finally the father yelled to get out and I just shut the door. I stood there for what seemed like hours.
I finally made my way back to my friend’s room, completely forgetting about my full bowels, and just laid down. I laid there all night, wide awake, till 7 AM when my mom picked me up. I never told anyone and NEVER went to another sleepover at my friend’s house or even went inside his house again, in fear of having to see his parents and having that talk with them.
98. It’s All A Lie
My childhood was very abnormal. I slept in a bedroom with my dad, in two separate beds, while my mom slept across the house in her own bedroom. So it was obvious that things weren’t okay, even to young me. He was gone on weekends, and until the early hours of the morning most weeknights. But I only found out the whole truth much later.
I found a text message on my dad’s phone to an unsaved number saying that he would love to be spending Christmas with his “real” family. I was 13. I just wanted to play Snake, man. Even later, an adult with a family and life of my own, I found out that my dad was openly cheating on my mom with the same woman for the duration of their 18-year marriage, and I had a half-sister who is my age.
I’m 90% sure that the text message was to that woman, but I never bothered to ask.
99. A Nasty Surprise
When I was about five years old, I woke up to the snow outside our house finally starting to melt. That’s when I noticed a girl "asleep" in the garden. I went and told my dad. He took one look and his face went white. He told me to go play in my room. Turns out, the girl had been "asleep" in our front garden for about two weeks, buried and frozen under the snow.
I didn't know she was actually a corpse until I was about 16, when I mentioned to my dad, "Remember that girl asleep in the garden?" Dad was like, “You idiot, that was a body." As far as I know, she was in her late teens or early 20s. We lived in a pretty rough area at the time, and she had probably been out partying, sat on our garden wall, and passed out.
100. Fly Me to the Moon
Just got on a flight in London headed to Vegas. Sitting next to my GF, and she wants to show me something she has planned for the trip, so gets out her phone. It opens to the Messages and shows a chat with a guy (I know him) saying how much she is going to miss him and how she doesn't want to go away with me anyway. The doors close on the plane and that was a really fun 10-11hrs...
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101. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
When I was younger, I was at a friend’s house sleeping over and playing video games on the Nintendo 64. We wanted a late night snack, so we went downstairs to get some cookies. And we saw his mum lying on the sofa with another man and kissing him. My friend immediately cried and said: “You’re not my dad!”
Sadly, this was the last time I ever spoke to him because he had to move away with his father shortly after.
102. Outside the Terms of Your Rental Agreement (and Morality)
I worked for a downtown metropolitan hotel for a long time, and I’ve seen a lot I wasn’t supposed to see. Probably the worst was a kid with an old man. I checked this guy in at like one in the morning (not uncommon, because people travel at different times), but he was alone. Like an hour later he asked for something like a towel or blanket.
Anyway, I dispatched our runner to deliver it. Afterward, the runner comes to me and says he thinks something is wrong because he caught a glimpse of someone, and the old guy was trying hard to block the entrance. Since we were supposed to take stuff like human trafficking seriously, I asked our maintenance to cut his power so we would get a call to come up to try and fix the problem.
He does, and I go up with him to apologize for the inconvenience because the guy was also a top tier member. Sure enough, we hear a kid in the bathroom hiding. I tried to ask who the kid was, and the old guy tried everything to shut us down from throwing his status around to bribing. So I called the cops and let them deal with it.
