July 6, 2023 | Eul Basa

People Share The Interesting Family Secrets They Uncovered


Every family has its secrets. From unknown family members to hidden fortunes, sometimes certain details need to be kept confidential for the greater good of everyone else. Here are some of the most interesting family secrets real people have uncovered:

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#1 One Tough Nana

My Nana was kidnapped when she was in her teens and the only reason she made it out alive is that she jumped out of a moving van. She basically destroyed both her knees and has since had multiple surgeries. She still needs to wear braces and use a cane but my Nana is dope as heck. I always knew her as my nice old grandmother but she was a remarkable woman. I always knew her as my nice old grandmother but she was a remarkable woman.

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#2 A Twist Of Fate

My uncle is older than my mom. When they were kids, he would tease her incessantly that she was adopted. She was pretty scared by that. I don't know the details, but he was registering for something when he was around 60 years old and needed his birth certificate. He went to the local courthouse where he found out he was adopted. His adoptive parents (my mom's parents) were both dead by then, so he couldn't ask them all the questions he had.

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#3 A Dark Secret

 I grew up thinking that my grandfather was awesome all throughout my childhood, as kids do. As I got older, I noticed that my older siblings didn't really talk about him, and there was definitely some hidden discourse regarding him. I never put that much thought into it, that is until I graduated high school and spent new years with two of my siblings. Turns out,  he hurt three of my oldest sisters. Screw that guy.

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#4 An OG Cowboy

My great grandfather was a federal judge and also a successful bootlegger. One of the cowboys who had worked on our family's ranch used to joke that the reason he never got fired in the 40+ years he worked for us was because he knew where on the ranch some rival bootleggers are buried. I always thought he was joking until a few years ago while going through some old oil leases I found a letter forbidding any drilling (test or otherwise) or roadwork on a particular half section of the ranch.

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#5 The Half-Sister

I have a half-sister that I didn’t know about until I was 12, and couldn’t meet until I was 19, because her mom did something similar with our dad (we share the same dad). It’s been really tough on my entire family, and really hard for my grandma because she always wanted to get to know my sister. Parents do some messed up stuff!

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#6 That's Messed Up

My mother's sister got kicked out of the house when she was 14 because she was stealing from her parents. When you're poor and one of seven children... yeah, you don't do that. Anyway, she soon got pregnant and had the baby at 15. She gave it up for adoption. That's not the family secret, though.

She found and married a guy in his forties when she was 18, and the guy already had several children, the oldest of whom was around her age. She stayed with this man for over 20 years and had a few kids with him. Then one day, she decided to run away with his daughter. My aunt and her stepdaughter (who is her age) have been together now since I was a very small child.

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#7 Love Will Find A Way

My grandma had relations with a German soldier to keep her brothers safe. She had a kid at 14 and he was quietly shipped off to the German soldier's parents in Germany. A few decades later, her child found her in the US and they developed an awesome relationship. That child was my father. Later on, my father ended a man in self-defense in 1981. He was jumped by two men. I don't see him anymore because he's serving his sentence in prison.

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#8 With Open Arms

I did a 23andme kit and matched with a guy a little younger than me. Absolutely nobody in my family knew my uncle had fathered a child after he and his first wife divorced. My uncle has been dead almost 20 years, but his twin daughters have since met their half brother and he is getting to know our entire massive family.

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#9 Jumbled Connections

My uncle is my cousin. He was born to my aunt, adopted by my grandparents and raised as her brother. According to my mom, my aunt threatened to end herself if she had to have the baby and raise it herself. It was the late sixties, they adopted the baby. Then, a few years later, she got pregnant again and pulled the same stunt, but this time my grandparents wouldn’t adopt that baby. My uncle and cousin don’t know they are actually half brothers.

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#10 An Awkward Situation

My uncle (by marriage) has a sister who had her daughter at a very young age, so the daughter was adopted by their parents. She was raised to think my uncle and her mom were her siblings, my cousin was her niece, and her grandparents were her parents, even though everyone in the family knows what's going on. I don't know if they actually keep that up, but one time we coincidentally met up at a concert with some mutual friends who asked how we knew each other. When I mentioned she was my cousin's cousin, I think things got a little weird.

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#11 No Choice

My grandma had a baby that nobody ever knew about. As she was dying, she kept asking for her baby, and afterward, we found a single photo of a baby that isn't any of our family. Then, my uncle told us she went away for a summer when she was a young adult and it kind of clicked... Heartbreaking. Her parents were really strict and we suspect she didn't have a choice in the matter.

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#12 Wanted In Armenia

My grandpa is probably wanted for something serious in his country of birth. He was born in Armenia sometime prior to WWII. He refuses to explain why but he ended up in France under somewhat murky circumstances. He joined the French Foreign Legion under a fake name. His real first name is totally unknown to anyone that is alive anymore. The last person who knew was my grandma who died about ten years ago. One of the last things she said to me was, "I never did like the fact he picked Jacque as his name."

He was wounded during the war in Indochina and received French citizenship (a clause in the Legion's contract states if you get wounded in the service of France you get citizenship) and got his papers in his assumed name. Fast forward to my early 20s—I'm in the military and stationed in Europe. I asked him if we have any family members still living in Armenia so I could visit them. He insists I never go there or ever try to contact any of them. He died last year.

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#13 No Looking Back

My grandfather had a family that he walked out on when he was younger. I don’t know if he divorced his wife or just straight up was “going to get milk” and never came back, but apparently he just left one day. It was a secret he took to his grave until one day a son from his previous marriage tracked down my aunt, called her, and asked to have dinner (my mom came with her).

There he explained that he didn’t want to disturb our family or cause any trauma or distress, but he was getting older and needed to know about my grandfather’s medical history. He explained that my grandfather was married to his mother whose mental health was deteriorating, and left them because he probably couldn’t take it anymore or something. He did not really have many (or any) real memories of my grandfather.

Obviously, my mother and aunt were devastated. My grandfather served honorably in the Korean War and was a pillar of his community. He was an accountant in a large Italian-American community, and many of his clients couldn’t even pay him. They offered him pastries or whatever they could spare to pay him.

When my grandmother asked him about it, he told her he just couldn’t turn them away; they needed help and he was in a position to do the right thing. He was loved by everyone he knew. He had no enemies, just people who loved him. He didn’t show affection much, but when he did, he did it big.

Now, this is particularly weird to me, from a psychological standpoint, because my grandmother had a father who walked out on her when she was young, leaving her to fend for her ailing mother and siblings.

My grandfather died from cancer almost 10 months before I was born. I am named after him. My grandmother and other aunt have no idea and they never will, because only four people (including me) to my knowledge know, and we have no intention of sharing. It would devastate my grandmother, who never remarried and loved him more than anything.

I have no idea what to think of this man. I want to hate him for what he did, but he was such a great father to my mom and aunts and did so much for his community. There are just two very conflicting reports on his character.

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#14 The Half-Brother

I have a half-brother who my older sister found and contacted, and he had no idea we existed (his mother absolutely knew that his father had another family first, so they kept it a secret from their son together). I'm not 100% sure he believed us. We're sure it's him though since we know the names of him, his parents, and his paternal grandmother, all of which he confirmed.

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#15 Into The Jungle

In the early 1900s, my great grandparents immigrated to the US from Italy. They lived in southern Illinois, great grandfather working in coal mines and great grandmother being a stay-at-home mom. They had three children: two boys and a girl, the youngest child being my grandfather. His brother, my great uncle, was always said to be tall, thick build, a temper and a love of adventure.

When my grandfather was still young, if I remember correctly, under the age of 10 his brother went missing. This was really no cause for concern in the first couple weeks for he would occasionally hop on a train and take off to Chicago or St. Louis just to see the city. Usually, he'd be gone for a week or two and then show back up.

After close to a month, they knew something was wrong, but no one knew where to look. There was no Amber Alerts or missing persons networks to tap into. All they could do was wait and hope he would come back. A couple of months later, a letter showed up, not in the mail but nailed to the front door. It was from a group called The Black Hand. They had my great uncle.

They demanded a ransom, I do not know how much, but being a poor coal-mining family there was nothing they could do. It broke them, my great aunt had a breakdown and spent the rest of her life in an institute. My grandfather would retreat to the woods to be alone which eventually earned him the nickname "Jungle." My grandfather told me this story once. He never looked at me the entire time he spoke. I knew he never told anyone this story besides his wife. My mother and her two sisters never heard this story until I told them after my grandparents had passed. They never knew they had an uncle, let alone, one who was taken by this group.

I haven't thought about that story for a long time now, probably close to 20 years. I wonder, and I know my grandfather always did, what became of his brother. How did he get caught up with them, was he a part of the Black Hand or just another victim? An old family question that will forever be unanswered.

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#16 Hard To Deal

My aunt got pregnant at 15 and dropped out of high school to have the baby. She gave him up for adoption. My cousins, her children from her marriage 10 years later, don’t know they have a half brother somewhere out there. She died a few years ago and now they will never know unless he shows up for some reason. I keep waiting for a phone call from my cousin asking if I know anything.
Apparently, my grandpa blamed my dad for not “protecting” my aunt and keeping her out of trouble and it really messed him up. That resulted in him having a really hard time dealing when my older sister started going down the same path as my aunt.

#17 All Love

My dad recently confessed to my sister and me that he likes to dress up as a woman and go out to bars with other men who enjoy the same thing. He even showed me pictures of himself. It's been bizarre to fully digest it all because it really never occurred to me but I'm actually very relieved that he does that since I thought he was very lonely and didn't have any friends.

He went through a divorce, the death of both of his parents and his company went bankrupt in the span of three years and became very depressed at one point, which I'm pretty sure is what led him to go look for something else in life. I've been a very complicated son and our relationship hasn't been the best lately but I'm very happy that he found a place to feel comfortable in and that he found strength to confide in my sister and myself, I'm also very happy that he knows he'll never be judged by us for the things he likes to do.

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#18 A Tricky Situation

My dad wrote us a letter the night before he died, on his laptop, saying he was gay and that he was sorry. He felt like this was his end. We found it after he had passed while going through his things. My parents were still married at the time, 24 years, but my mom said it just finally made all the pieces click and explained a lot of his weird behavior. She still has a thing against most men and thinks they're all secretly gay, though.

Me and my mom have kept it a secret, and never told any other family members... but maybe one day down the line, after my mom passes, I wouldn’t be opposed to letting some of his brothers and sisters know, especially since his sister is gay as well, and she never handled it the best. I know it’s super shameful for my mom, so I won’t ever mention it where it will come back to her.

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#19 Missed Years

At the age of 31, I found out I had a sister (given up for adoption and raised by another family). My family was all ashamed of her and had erased her from the family history. Guess what? She's awesome and my brother and I are really close to her now! And she's had a good life. Everybody won, in the end, more or less; it just hurts to think about all the years we missed.

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#20

I had a half-brother hidden from me for 20 years. I was a young man at the ripe age of 20 when I received a call from a man looking for a Bob Jones (name has been changed). I said, "Well I'm Bob Jones." The voice on the other line responds, "Well I think I'm your son." I ask if he's looking for Bob Jones III (I'm the IV and share names with my father). The individual says yes and that they found my number in the phone book. I tell them that Bob Jones III is my father, but I haven't spoken to him in a few years. They ask if it's okay to come to my house and meet me. They say they are with their mother and want to talk. I say sure.

During the next 10 minutes, I start thinking that this can't be real and that one of my friends are playing a joke on me. The man arrives with his mother and as soon as I got outside and saw him in the car, I knew this man was my brother. We look identical. Same age, same height, same eyes, same hair color. Everything. It was like we were separated at birth.

I meet his mother and we spend about half an hour talking. Turns out, this man is my half-brother that is one month and 11 days older than me. My father had cheated on my mother (as he had done many times during their relationship) and this was his progeny.

I immediately felt like I was on an episode of the Maury show or Candid Camera. After talking with them, it turns out that we had even regularly played together at my grandparent's house until we were both around 2 years old. My father knew. My uncles knew. My aunt knew. My grandparents knew, but they hid it all from me and my mother.

After they left, I called every single one of them in tears to interrogate them on WHY they had hidden my brother from me for 20 years. I grew up an only child until my mother remarried and had another kid when I was 11. They all knew that I wanted a sibling to be around and play with. WHY did they hide this from me? What good would come from it?

I cursed each and every one of them for their deception and told them exactly how it made me feel and how their trust from me was shattered. I will never forget that day as long as I live. I've since tried to reconnect with the brother that was hidden from me, but he's turned out as flaky as my father was in regards to being in-and-out of my life and keeping promises. All I think now is what could have been if my father's family hadn't hidden him from me all those years.

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#21 Taken Prisoner

My Grandpa served in World War II in the Pacific theater. I'm not sure what he was rank wise though. He was very closed about talking about the war or even his family growing up. Every now and again he would open up about things but it was one of those random things. He's 98 years old so I can't even begin to imagine what he has gone through.

One day my parents and my uncle were visiting him in the nursing home and he mentioned something about the war. My Dad always tries to see what he can get out of him and after pushing he found out that he was taken prisoner by the Japanese. He said the only reason he escaped was by pure chance. I can't begin to imagine what that was like or what he went through.

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#22 Show Me Your Teeth

When I was six, I asked my dad why he chewed so weird. This is an early memory, but I remember he looked at me with a cross between “shut up” and “how did you see that?” Because of something he had never told us or my mom, who he was married to for 13 years, and who was sitting at that same dinner table that night. This was in 1986. They divorced in 1987 for unrelated reasons. She died in 2010.

I noticed he was missing some teeth this year and mentioned he should get dentures. He informed me he’s had full dentures since he was 20. And my mom and us kids never knew, and I’m 38 now. My sister, I think, still doesn’t, and she’s 35.

My dad lost almost all his teeth due to being raised by a mom (my grandma) who didn’t care or take care of him. He only had the four front bottom teeth by age 20. And his dentures don’t fit now, which is how I noticed the missing teeth.

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#23 Only Child

My mom had a child before me that she put up for adoption. I found out when he reached out to me and was shocked that I had no idea who he was. Nobody knows that I know and they are hiding it from me. The only difference is now I notice that my aunt will make a small slip when she's tipsy, saying things like, "Before your mom had babies," even though I'm an only child. She then quickly corrects herself.

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#24 Awkward Confrontations

Not technically a "secret," but a crippling style of relating that I just picked up on. Just this year, I realized this thing about my mom's entire side of the family. They are entirely unable to deal with regular confrontation. Interpersonal issues, large and small, are talked about in whispers behind backs, while face-to-face conversations are pleasant but surface-level...until they aren't, because someone can't hold it in anymore...

After which everyone accepts their apology and understands, "This person said those crazy things in the heat of the moment, and didn't mean them." Really, it was a person unleashing taboo negative emotions. We can't talk about anything negative. Except behind each other's backs. Like, I'm doing right now. I don't know how to connect with my family because of it, and I'm only just now understanding why I've felt this barrier.

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#25 The Truth About Skyler

My nephew, Skyler, was actually born my niece, Skyler. This was kept secret from the family until the kid was visiting my parents, their grandparents, at 9, and woke up screaming due to blood in their sheets. After having a talk with Skyler, my sister and her husband picked them up and cut off communication. We have no idea why Skyler was raised like this, and haven't been able to contact anyone about it.

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#26 The Shoshoni Ancestor

I have a Shoshoni ancestor that Jumped ship and ran in the Oklahoma Land Run. The penalty for jumping ship was death and the Shoshoni never surrendered to the United States, so they weren't allowed to own land. Not a big deal these days, but once upon a time, this knowledge might have caused my family a spot of bother.

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#27 My Father's Struggles

My biological father is responsible for a slew of home invasions that took place in the deep South sometime before I was born. He's a semi-large kingpin (nowhere near cartel levels) that stole valuables from homes when his illegal business wasn't paying the bills. He was nabbed on a domestic violence charge, served his time, immediately robbed a few houses and went off somewhere outside the US. I have no idea where he is, but I hope if he ever returns to the US, he is somehow caught for his remaining crimes.

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#28 A Sad Story

This isn’t really secret, but my grandfather kidnapped his two kids. My mom was 10, and he took her and her sister from my grandmother in California. He was extremely abusive to them. He eventually got remarried. They both eventually got away, separately. My mom didn’t see her mother again until she was about 25.

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#29 The Greatest Favor

My aunt could not have kids. So my mom and dad decided to have a kid for her. After quietly getting pregnant and then delivering the baby, my mom gave her away instantly to her sister without a hint of hesitation or regret. When I found this out, the respect I already had for my mom and dad sky-rocketed to whole new levels!

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#30 Hardcore Grandpa

One of my grandfathers is a Native American. For the longest time, we were told we had to visit them as they couldn't visit us. Turns out he's on the federal no-fly list. Apparently, he's also on a wanted person's watch list. The dude is coming on 80 and still builds boats for fun out of trees he cuts down. So hardcore.

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#31 Dad's Secret

My dad has a secret half-sister that we only found out about recently. She's in her mid-50s, and she started searching out her birth parents, except, get this, my grandmother had been told that my dad's sister was a stillbirth, so she had NO idea she even had another daughter. Crazy. I guess someone (either the birth father or their church) adopted her out without her knowledge.

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#32 Not A Clue

Not many people know this even in my family but this story is kind of crazy. My grandma passed away last April. After going through some of my grandparents' belongings, they found what my parents and my uncle's referred to as "the box of horrors." My oldest uncle on my dad's side found out that my grandpa wasn't really his dad. My grandma had my uncle before she married my grandpa. He never knew it his entire life. He asked my great aunts if they knew and one of them did but did not know his name because my great-grandpa chased him away. What was worse through all this, the second oldest uncle knew about this and never told him. I don't think he ever found out anything. He passed away this year at the beginning of April.

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#33 The Grand Cyclops

My grandfather died a few years ago. He only saw me once and never again since he left me as a toddler alone. Well, during the years after he ran off, he got remarried and changed his ways. His widow got to meet my dad and ask who the photo of a tot was that was in his wallet. I thought that was sweet. Then you find out he was the grand Cyclops to a not-so-DnD related "club" and that previous story leaves you very conflicted.

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#34 It's A Match

I found out in hushed tones from my mom one day in my teens that she had a sister, given up for adoption at birth. My mom tried to locate her, but there's only so much you can do when you don't have an accurate birth date. We ended up finding her last fall from Ancestry.com. Both her and my mom did their DNA test and they came up as a match.

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#35 A Secret Revealed

My uncle didn't die of a heart attack; he died of an overdose. He had schizophrenia I wasn't aware of when I was a kid. When he died, my parents told me he had a heart attack. Then, six years later, on Christmas, a cousin told me it was such a shame that Uncle Steve couldn't be here and how he died, etc. She didn't know I didn't know the truth. I told my sisters. We confronted our parents on the drive home. They revealed to us about his schizophrenia. I was crying and didn't want to hear more. I wish I never said something. But if I deserved to know the truth, so did my sisters.

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#36 Digging For The Truth

My grandmother's sister married a guy. The guy was nuts. He hurt her, then himself. They had like four kids but weirdly he didn't hurt them. The whole family pretended they never existed. The kids were briefly shuffled among family then went off into the system for reasons unknown. No one ever mentions the kids either. I found out because there was a picture of one of the kids playing with my mom and uncle. Then I did some digging.

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#37 The Letter

My mom was ended in a terrible accident. Years later, my sister was going through some of her old stuff and found a letter addressed to my dad. Turns out, she had been cheating on him and was pregnant with someone else's kid. She said she was going to leave later that month and take my littlest brother with her.

It's kind of a good thing she passed when she did. Although growing up with a single dad was hard (he eventually remarried), having the family torn apart through her cheating would have been worse, especially cause I would have lost my bro, who I'm close to now.

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#38 The Cover-Up

My stepdad has a secret family that I found about. My half-sister doesn’t know. I confronted my mom about it and she did not deny it. I told her she needs to tell my sister several years ago but she still hasn’t to this day. I found out by Googling his name and saw other connections somehow but wasn’t sure. I told my mom I had done a background check and she filled in the rest, thus verifying my suspicion.

My stepdad would always disappear for a few hours during holidays and generally was out. He owns his own business so I thought it was always that but it makes sense now that he was really at the other family’s house. He was also overweight, seemingly from having to eat double meals as part of the cover-up.

I still don’t know if I should tell my half-sister. Part of me feels like it’s not my secret to tell, the other part feels like, “Screw that she needs to know.”

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#39 Lineage Issues

My oldest uncle isn’t my grandpa's. My grandma got pregnant by my grandpa's older brother. My grandpa and his brother both went to WWII, but his brother died in the war. When my grandpa got back, his parents made him marry my grandma. They went on to have three more kids, my dad being one of them. I always thought it was weird my dad is named after my grandpa but he isn’t the oldest son.

After my grandma passed everyone was relieved they didn’t have to pretend they didn’t know. Literally, everyone knew except the grandkids. Also, my dad got his high school girlfriend pregnant and they gave the baby up for adoption. I also found this out after my grandma died. I have a brother out there somewhere 12 years older. I’d love to meet him.

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#40 Never Look Back

Not really a secret, but it’s not talked about. My grandpa had four kids and a wife who he left for my grandma. My grandpa moved to live with my grandma in the next town over. I had an idea but no one ever talked about it. My mother vaguely said something about seeing her sister when I was younger, but I don’t really remember.

I work at a hotel and on my first day, this girl asks where I’m from. I find out she’s my grandpa's daughter's daughter. So my cousin and I got filled in how they were shunned and he never visited or even acknowledged them in public. It bothers me because everyone speaks super highly of my grandpa when he just left a family and never bothered with them again.

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#41 Family Thieves

My uncle and his wife had basically stolen tens of thousands of dollars from my grandma. They would apparently make up stories about how they needed it to cover rent or whatever and would come to her for money pretty frequently. A thousand there, a few hundred there... it added up real quick. And poor grandma was getting kinda senile so she always believed them and didn’t remember when she’d already given them money.

They then turned around and used it on illicit substances. By the time my mom and her other siblings realized what was going on, they had taken over $50,000 from her over the course of a few years. When they realized everyone knew, they skipped town one day, completely sudden, and we haven’t heard from them in 10 years.

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#42 Make It A Dozen

One of my uncles passed. He had nine kids (my cousins) that we all knew. On his death bed, one of his kids called to talk with him for the last time. That made 10. I was shown a picture of kid 11 that I never met. And then at the funeral, kid 12 appeared. In the end, he had 12 and a few family members mentioned there could be more. My uncle was a Rolling Stone, a military vet. And he literally worked until his last days to provide for all his kids the best way he could. He married twice. Three kids with the first wife, four kids with the second wife.

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#43 Total Confusion

My entire family found out that my great-grandpa had a second family that he saw regularly. He saw them regularly and that was the weird part because he had zero blood or marital relationship to them after his wife and one-year-old child had died in a car accident in the very early '50s. At his funeral, they all showed up and were confused as to who we were. I guess they weren’t that close though because none of them showed up to the hospital for the three-plus months that he was in and out of it.

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#44 A Real Taboo

Well, after a nice bout of depression and severe anxiety, I found out that I am genetically predisposed to that stuff on both sides of the family. Which, to be fair, when I was going through that stuff, both my parents were very helpful and open about their experience... but man, it would've been nice to know that beforehand.

Funnily enough, the other family secret I know is that a great aunt of mine ended herself. My mom was also close to her cousins, so this isn't some nameless relative, this is someone who was important in my mom's life. Coming from a catholic family, the whole thing is a real taboo, so everyone (including her children), thinks it was a stroke. I don't know how my mom and aunt found out, but they know. I get that it's not really their place to reveal that, but again, it's one of those things that the children should know so as to prepare themselves.

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#45 Incomplete Ties

My granddad who passed away when my mom was 15 had a family before marrying my grandmother that he never previously mentioned. My aunt discovered it somewhat randomly about a decade ago when she was in her early 40s, but my grandmother and mother dismissed it entirely. My aunt has since passed and I have no clue how I could reach out to them. It's just crazy how my mom wouldn't want to know her half-siblings...

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#46 A Harsh Discovery

My mother's family is Welsh, and they used to be very wealthy (which is a bit confusing given what I know about Welsh's history with the English). We had a family estate and everything, I forgot its name but it was recently auctioned. The money ran out around my great-great-grandparent's generation (my mother's paternal grandfather's parents).

One day, I asked where the money had come from, and my eyes just about bugged out of my head when it turned out to be from the slave trade. As I said, I'm Australian—this country wasn't at all involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But nope, I had an ancestor who owned a plantation in the Caribbean that they filmed one of the PotC films on. That was unsettling to discover. Apparently we'd had hundreds of slaves.

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#47 Last-Minute Meeting

I found out when I was 18 that my mother had a son prior to meeting my dad. My dad, sister and I all found this out on the day that we were flying out to go see my then dying stepbrother who was severely injured in Afghanistan. The doctors at Walter Reed didn’t think he was going to make it. We got police escorted to the airport, put on a last-minute flight to Maryland and at the airport is when my sister and I both get messages from our half brother asking for confirmation about our mother. Just another thing in the long list of nonsense I’ve had to deal with from her.

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#48 Revealed In Time

My mother has four older brothers. It came up recently that her oldest brother is actually her half brother. (She didn't intentionally hide this information from me, it just never came up once I was old enough to know.) Her mother apparently got pregnant before she married my grandfather. It must have been shortly before they got married because he was raised as my grandfather's child, and didn't know until he was 40 that the man he thought was his father was not his biological father.

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#49 It Counts

I’m not sure if this counts. A few years before he passed, my grandpa found out that he had a half-sister in Germany. It never bothered me or my siblings, we thought it was neat to have cousins halfway across the world that are our age but it really bothered my grandpa. Now that I’m older I can understand why.

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#50 Stay Far Away

My mother's cousin is a very high ranking member in a really controversial hate group. Like, second or third in command high ranking. He used to send my family their monthly or weekly newsletter but I was never allowed to read it. Apparently, he's tried to convince my mom on more than one occasion to join... Needless to say, I've never met the guy.

[Deleted]

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