Sometimes, soap operas are just ludicrous...but then something so insane happens in your real-life that you start to feel like you're in one. From stumbling onto forbidden affairs and long lost relatives to discovering chilling double lives and eerie household quirks, these people prove that nothing—and we mean nothing—is ever as it seems.
#1 Caught Red-Handed
My boyfriend let me use his iPad so I could watch a Netflix movie. He had his messenger account linked to it, and messages kept popping up on it while I was watching. That’s when I made a disturbing discovery. I watched in real-time as he got his best friend's wife to agree to sleep with him over the coming holiday weekend, with the promise that he'd get rid of me for that weekend so they could get intimate in our bed.
#2 Mom Still Parties
Saw a text blob pop up on my mom's phone that read, "How was that acid trip last night."
This was a few years ago. And I'm 28.
#3 Smile, You’re on Candid Camera
Someone kept trying to break into my brother’s place so he installed cameras. It turned out to be a neighbor who drank too much and got lost. The late-night visits stopped soon after. But then, a couple weeks later he came home and saw a bunch of cops outside of his apartment. Turns out that the drunk guy had gotten killed.
My bro decided to check the footage one last time—and he was utterly horrified by what he found. It showed his other neighbor, who had also gotten harassed by this guy in the middle of the night, ending the life of the guy who kept knocking on my brother’s door. He turned it over to the police, and the neighbor got arrested and went to jail.
#4 Mama of Drama
My mom broke up a close family friend's marriage.We just all of a sudden stopped seeing the family, and when I was 15 I bumped into the daughter who was my age. She kindly explained that my mom slept with her dad.
#5 There’s a Story There
I found a father's day card from another child at my dad's house when I was 11.
#6 The Hurt You Give Yourself
It was about a year after my mom passed away, so I was about 11 years old, and my sister was 13. She and I had a rocky relationship at the time, but we had our moments. When she was at a band competition on the weekend, I was dropped off with her. The time came when she had to perform so she gave me her phone. I went through it, being the nosey 11-year-old sister that I was.
I was expecting to find some exciting eighth grader gossip or a secret boyfriend, but what I did find was not a laughing matter. I found dozens of self-harm pictures. Bloody sinks and bloody words carved into my sister's skin. At the time, I didn't even know self-harm was a thing. I didn't confront my sister about the photos until years later, but I did immediately rethink all of our fights and how we were all hurting as a family. My sister and I are best friends now, and those photos did help me gain the perspective I needed to change our relationship, but they still haunt me.
#7 Consider It a Bonus
Baggage handler here. Back in 2000, I was sorting luggage when I found a weird bag. It was tied with rope, loosely closed and just didn't seem normal. Something felt wrong, but I grab it anyway. As the bag hit the cart, the rope came undone, spilling the contents. At first they stunned me—then they changed my entire life. Lo and behold, there is a ton of illicit substances in there.
So I picked up the few bricks and popped them back in the makeshift bag. As I was placing them in there I found a stash of hundred dollar bills. Not one or two, I'm talking wrapped in bands Breaking Bad money. So being the dumb teenager I was, I pocketed it and had my own bag filled with nearly $25K. The next day I bought a used car, paid my school off, and invested in an IRA for retirement.
Thanks, stupid dealers!
#8 Let It Go, Dude
My ex-husband went off the deep end when I left him three years ago, despite the fact that he was cheating on ME every step of the way. Anyway, I moved 1,000 miles away and began to restart my life. One day, about a month after leaving him, I checked my mail and saw that I had a huge, heavy envelope in the box. When I opened it, I was horrified.
It was photos of me doing allllll the activities of my daily life, but the photos were clearly taken from afar, and without my knowledge. Immediately, I contacted my attorney. It turns out, my ex was hoping to catch me with someone else, because he wanted to try to sue me for abandonment. It was awful, and it took me a long time to feel safe and secure in my new home.
#9 Big Brother House Owners
I'm an inspector, so I'm in and out of thousands of houses every year. Over that time, I've seen a lot, but nothing compared to this one house. I found hidden cameras set up in the attic, all of which pointed into bedrooms and bathrooms. Also in the same attic (it was a big one), was a completely furnished hidden room. Needless to say, the new homeowners were pretty freaked out.
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#10 Famous Last Words
When my father died after a long and painful battle with cancer, a pastor at my mom's church spoke at the funeral. The entire time that she was talking, I wanted to walk up there and punch her in the face. She had the audacity to stand in front of us and speak about how devastating cancer is. If she realized that I knew the chilling secret of her past life, she would never have had the guts to show her face.
That pastor used to attend a different church, but had to leave after she was caught for having faked cancer for two years. Her husband left her and her daughter disowned her after they found out. My mom was the secretary at that church. So she knew, and had already told me. My dad’s funeral was only like two years after that whole thing went down. I would have walked up to the podium and punched her right in the face were it not disrespectful to my parents.
#11 Raised as Their Own
I was looking for some old clothes in the storage part of our house when I found a file folder full of old papers. I casually look them over and discover that I'm adopted. My parents got me when I was just a baby and never told me that biologically, I'm not theirs. Coincidentally, a couple months later my biological sister got into contact with me.
#12 Not Checking Out
I was the front office supervisor at a hotel. One dude taped all the vents in his room, put towels under the door crack, and put the Do Not Disturb in his door. Paid up for five days and asked for no housekeeping. Drank a big glass of Drano. Five days later, we opened the door and one man's rock bottom became all of ours. I'll never forget the smell.
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#13 The Girls That Never Were
When I was 15, I was broke and looking around the house for spare change. I was home alone at the time. I looked in my parents’ room and found a metal box with a pad-lock on it. My curiosity got the best of me and looked around for the key. I found it and unlocked the box. There were letters and a journal inside, written by my mom. Those were what she wrote in for therapy.
It turns out, my mother had had three miscarriages before having me. The letters made me cry my eyes out (I’m a momma’s boy). All three of the miscarriages were going to be girls. She wanted a daughter named Mary Catherine. After she had me, she had to have surgery and was infertile afterward. I always felt sorry for my mother since then. If I get married and have a daughter, I think I’m gonna name her Mary Catherine.
#14 Some Things Should Stay on Basic Cable
A buddy of mine is a hotel manager in a large downtown hotel. They had a sex worker come down to the front desk fully nude, screaming in hysterics to call 9-1-1. She had just woken up in one of their rooms strapped to the bed like it was Dexter's table. The whole room had been draped in plastic.
The John was in the shower when she came to. She managed to wriggle free and ran out of the room. By the time the cops arrived, the dude had left, but the room was still all Dexter-ed up. The security footage could see the guy leave the hotel, but he'd obscured his face on every camera angle. To my buddy's knowledge, the guy was never caught.
Public Domain Pictures
#15 The Chain of Command Just Broke
My boss forwarded me an email telling me to do something. I noticed the email chain had his bosses on it, so I read through the chain. They had asked him to rate all my co-workers and I from best to worse earlier in the conversation.
#16 Not Your Fault
I found out my dad was a paranoid schizophrenic one night when I overheard my grandma praying for him (she thought I was asleep). I was like 16 but genuinely thought that his behavior was the most normal thing in the world since I had grown up with it. I cried myself to sleep that night and then did some research to try to understand.
It was a really hard time, but it just got worse. Me and him started fighting really badly maybe because he got sicker, but maybe because I just noticed it more. Because of our conflicts, my mum finally told him to leave the house, and they had a really messy divorce. I still feel guilty about fighting with him to this day. I wonder if things would be better if I had never found out.
He lives alone now and isn’t allowed contact with any of us—it wasn’t originally like that. My siblings used to go and visit him, and he started electrocuting them so “Nobody could hear their thoughts”—I feel so guilty when I think of him living alone without any family around him.
#17 She Has Her Pros and Cons
I was head of HR for an answering service company at one point in my life. Staff turnover was atrocious and most of the resumes that came through were from people that had zero job history or were chronic job hoppers. Imagine my surprise when Renee's resume crossed my desk. With the exception of a ten year gap on her resume, she appeared to be an ideal candidate.
And then I found the articles from a newspaper about two hours away. That ten year gap? Serving time for kidnapping and murder...with an axe. A freaking axe murderer. Anyway, I hired her and as far as I know, she's still there. Model employee. Strong work ethic. Positive attitude. 10/10. Would hire an axe murderer again.
#18 Mom’s Little Cross to Bear
When I was around 10-11 I went through a really rough patch emotionally. The drugs I was getting for my ADHD started messing with me really bad, and that combined with regular pre-pubescent angst turned me into quite the little monster. I started getting into a lot of fights in school and was generally an emotional wreck.
One night, I was on the couch with my eyes closed, basically being quiet for the first time in months, and I heard my mom say to my brother that raising me was really hard and that sometimes she wished I was just someone else’s problem. I know she was just tired and frustrated, but I’ve never forgotten that, and I’ve also never confronted her about it.
#19 Hidden Weapons
My mom is a visiting physical therapist. She used to work in a small city in the area, with some bad areas, and she had to do therapy for a rather overweight guy who was pretty paranoid about the people in his complex (granted most of us would be too) but my mom sat down on the couch and felt something hard underneath the cushion.
She had the guy get what it was, and it was a stick, with a large knife taped to the end. She had almost sat on the knife too. She asked him if there was anything else like that in or around the area she needed to work in, and he managed to remove multiple knives, makeshift spears, and a syringe-based weapon. He was HIV positive.
My mom discharged him shortly.
#20 The Other Woman Came Sooner Than She Thought
I found out my dad was seeing another woman long before divorcing my mom... I borrowed his phone for a call and found an unread text saying "I can't wait to meet your family I love you" from LZ. Well, what do you know: after my parents’ divorce, my dad is already moving in with his current wife, Liz. I'll never truly accept her in my life, even though she's not all bad and it's really my dad's fault.
But I still get mad thinking about it. My mom is the greatest person ever... and she still thinks they met after the divorce.
#21 Role Reversal
When I showed up for an interview the hiring manager was not there. I was told he was "out sick" but I could interview with his backup. Halfway through the interview the office starts buzzing with activity. Whispers of an emergency were circulating and the "sick" manager's name is part of the emergency. We wrapped up the interview early and I went home.
Later that day I googled his name. He wasn't sick. He had turned himself in that morning for shooting/killing his baby's mother. The bullet also grazed the baby but didn't cause serious injury. I got the job.
#22 redruM
My neighbor once asked me to feed his cat for him while he was out of town. Nice guy, mid 30s, lived alone, ran his own landscaping company. He would sometimes cut our grass for us when he was out cutting his on his huge landscaping mower. So I mean, yeah, of course, I'll feed your cat for a few days.
Bible verses were written in red marker on every inch of every mirror in his house, and there were an odd amount of mirrors. Like, multiple full length mirrors in just his living room, absolutely covered in tiny red Bible verses.
I never really looked at him the same after that.
#23 Hard to Bring an Abusive Ex up in Conversation
Ex-girl. She had a fairly large scar on her back and was incredibly self-conscious about it. She wouldn't even take her shirt off the first time we had sex. When I asked her about it, she said she had fallen from her horse when she was young. Fast forward a little and I'm out finding her a birthday present and have enlisted the help of her friend.
I pick out a sexy singlet and her friend just looks at me like I'm stupid. Apparently the scar on her back, which the singlet clearly revealed, wasn't from a fall, but an abusive ex-boyfriend who had pushed her onto his motorbike’s exhaust pipe and burnt her.
We ended on good terms, and I never told her I knew. I hope she is doing well.
#24 Stone Child
I was working in Africa when the usually very stoic Congolese surgeons called me into theater, gagging. The patient was an elderly woman with a protruding abdominal mass. When they opened it, they nearly fainted. They found that it was a long, long dead mummified fetus which, as a result of an ectopic pregnancy, had somehow managed to both wall off after it died and somehow avoid killing the mother. Her body had encapsulated the alien tissue and over the years, it had slowly eroded her anterior abdominal wall to the point where it finally caused her to have enough symptoms to get something done about it.
It was horrific and the smell was even worse.
Happily, though, the patient survived the procedure and just left the surgical team with a .. memory.
YouTube
#25 I Could Destroy You With a Whisper
My parents are divorced. My father was a pastor who cheated on my mother with a member of his congregation. She took me and left. The families have no contact. Originally, I was used as a pawn by him, and abused until he had his son and left. I was five. Fast forward to today. Through internet sleuthing skills, I’ve managed to find him.
He has four kids and has inherited a couple million dollars from his father. His family doesn’t know I’ve found them and that I could bring up his past if I chose and ruin his life. The kids don’t know I exist. But here's the worst part: My mother and I lived in poverty. I’m disabled, and he abandoned us, and never paid alimony or child support.
I’ve even found his radio programs where he talks about being a good Christian and giving all of yourself to the poor. I could ruin everything and take him to court. It’s my secret.
#26 Somewhere That’s Green
I was about 8 or 9 and my parents were going to be out of town, so they had me and my siblings stay with a family from our church. Once we got to the house (which was really nice BTW), they had one rule: you can play wherever you want, but the basement is off limits. Me being the little jerk that I was, snuck down there the first chance I got and was supremely disappointed to only find rows and rows of plants growing under lights.
Wikimedia Commons, Plantlady223
#27 Sitting on a Time Bomb
I found out my dad has been cheating on my mother for most of their marriage with a large number of different women over the years by following Wireshark tutorials on HackForums as a teenager. We're an upper-middle class suburban family and I have three siblings, my dad does all the work, and my mom is a stay-at-home mom without a lot of payable skills.
Telling my mom would ruin her and the family—they would either divorce or my mom would stay quiet to keep the quality of life for her children. Either one has no positives for me, my mother, or my siblings. My youngest brother is graduating high school soon, and the rest of us have moved out. I have a very large amount of evidence compiled and I'm planning on anonymously giving it to her in a few months.
Wallpaper Flare
#28 The Only Limit Is Your GPA and Imagination
The teacher I was the TA for once told me that instead of a social essay, a person sent in their triple-x-rated fan fiction. It was....way more than she ever wanted to know about that student.
#29 Some Things Are Worse Than Nothing
When my friend was 18, his dad wrote him out of the will before suddenly passing away. The strange thing was that they always got along. It seemed very suspicious. He was then kicked out of the house by his father’s evil wife without a penny to his name. On Christmas Eve, the client went back to get some photos he left there and saw something he shouldn’t have. It was then that he learned just how evil she really was.
He knew where she kept the spare key, so he let himself in. On the way to his room, he saw the step-mom’s phone sitting on a table and as he passed by she got a text message. It read something like, “I’m so happy we got away with it and we can finally be together. He didn’t deserve it anyway.” My friend was convinced that she forced his dad to take him out of the will, then somehow machined his dad's death with a secret lover. He's in law school now and is planning to go into estate law to help people get through problems like the one he had.
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#30 Bird Bites
I always thought my father had a very small appetite, he’d eat a few bites at meals and declare he was full. When I hosted my first big Thanksgiving in my new house with my fiancé, my father put away three pounds of potatoes, a whole pie, and more than half the turkey by himself. My mother remarked how he’d had a bottomless stomach since they were kids.
I was telling my fiancé later that night how oddly the remark struck me considering his track record. My fiancé explained my father was previously not eating so that there’d be enough food to go around for me, my sister, and mother when I was little.
#31 A Real Pain in the Tooth
An old patient came to us with long-term and severe pain in her tooth. The doctor extracted the tooth and put it into a tray. After one minute, we saw what was causing the problem...and nearly puked. There was a grub crawling out from the tooth. This woman had lived with it for at least 6 months. So, so gross.
#32 History Repeats Itself
I was a restaurant manager and the owner hired this guy as a chef without doing basic research (which he did a few times). Anyways, the guy said he had won several awards and worked with celebrities, etc. The guy was a total jerk to everyone on staff. I decided to google him. First hit is a mugshot from a drug arrest. Then it gets even worse.
There are more articles, one about where he lied about getting a James Beard Award from a previous restaurant he worked at. A comment about him owing $25,000 or something to his former boss. The only positive restaurant review he had was from 1990. I came in after the weekend to show my boss this stuff, when I learn he was fired the night before for exposing himself to one of the waitresses.
#33 Clean Them out, Girls
We found out that our cleaning ladies got involved with a smuggling ring and set us up for a robbery that totally emptied our house out.
#34 That Didn’t Last Too Long
A guy got hired at my work when I was in between being contract and permanent, so I never met him. Dude had just left a good teaching job with a quickness, was vague about his reasons for leaving for a temporary, lower paying job with less benefits. He was apparently super normal seeming and very nice, everyone liked him.
Some weeks later he just doesn't come in. Find out that night shift was messing around Googling people and found out teacher dude had been arrested for having absolute loads of inappropriate images of children. The background check hadn't caught it because he hadn't been charged (or maybe I mean convicted) yet. HR fired him immediately. He was in prison last I heard.
#35 When the Cat’s Away…
Last year, when I was 17, I pretended to be a private investigator just for fun. My neighbor gave me ten dollars to go look for his missing cat. I guess he just wanted me to have some fun and I was just fooling around. I was pretty sure I wouldn't find anything. But darn did I ever find something. A very big something.
At the bottom of my street, there was an old abandoned retirement home that had closed a couple of years after I moved in. I went there first and found a blood trail leading into the place. There wasn't a lot of blood, but just enough that it could have been the cat's blood. Case in point: It turns out the building was being used for an illicit substances operation.
After seeing that, I almost pooped myself because I was only going into the whole P.I. thing as a joke. I anonymously tipped off the authorities, who raided the place. Apparently, one of the guys accidentally attacked the cat, who started to wail loudly, and he was scared people would come to investigate. He couldn't bring himself to end the cat’s life, so he dragged it inside and forgot to clean the blood away.
It was one of the most thrilling yet terrifying things that I had ever gotten myself into. But hey, at least the cat lived and my neighbor got her back!
#36 Prove Me Wrong
Some idiot in Nowhere, Kentucky reported a daycare center that they thought was a secret organization. We all thought they were stupid or crazy for doing it. Turns out, there really was a secret organization in the basement.
337 It Was a Happy Divorce
I was using my ex-wife's laptop when all these messages started popping up on Messenger. I'm not proud of this, but I started reading them. I wish to God I hadn't. It turns out she had sent a picture message of a fully packed storage unit to her best friend out in South Carolina. It had furniture, appliances, essentially everything she needed to start out with an apartment on her own. I sat on that for several months, before finally bringing it up out of nowhere.
We were literally sitting on the couch one night and I just turned to her and said, "so I know about your storage unit." It was the last thing she ever expected to hear because she thought she was being sneaky. Conversation actually went quite well though, and we ended up deciding that we were going to file for divorce. That divorce just finalized March 3rd of this year.
#38 More Than He Bargained for
Private investigator here. I was hired to investigate was married to a guy who made a decent living. He wasn't mega-rich, but he likely made around $250K a year. He started to suspect his wife was cheating on him, so we tailed her for the weekend. It was only one weekend, but we quickly discovered that she was selling herself on Craigslist and Backpage.
We caught over 13 men coming in and out of her motel room that weekend and found her ads online.
#39 Go Back Up the Waterspout
I worked at a coffee shop and one of the baristas was cleaning the bathroom. All of a sudden, I heard her scream. She comes to get me, saying I need to take care of a weird looking spider. I love bugs and get kind of excited to catch and release the "weird-looking" spider outside. Walk into the bathroom and it's not a spider—it's a freaking scorpion.
#40 Sister In The Mirror
I used to install Dish Network for a living. I was installing for an elderly lady, who complained that her "sister's" TV always showed the same thing hers did. I had a two TV installation order so I figured that would be OK. I finished the installation and was demonstrating the system when she looked at the full length mirror and complained that her sister's TV was still showing the same thing.
Noped out of there as quick as I could, and left notes on the account in case she called in.
#41 The Missing Link
I'm the eldest, but only because of SOMETHING that had happened to the one before me. My old aunt called me his name, before correcting herself and telling me a bit. When she realized I actually didn't know, she shut up and wouldn't say another word. All I know is that my entire family knows, but they refuse to tell me anything and they tell me to drop it because it was some traumatic event that my parents don't ever want to talk about.
My dad apparently gave my uncle (mom's side) a black eye just for mentioning it, and dad's pretty calm and coolheaded. I'm 19, my brother is 17. He doesn't know, and this will be a mystery until the day they die, and I can dig out the information from someone else.
#42 I Hope You Were Taking Notes
It wasn't me, but my professor used to have his laptop hooked up to the projector up in front of the class. While he was going through a presentation one day, a text popped up on his screen from a woman and all it said was "I have herpes.” He stopped connecting his laptop to the projector after that.
#43 Nailed It
I'm an ER nurse. One day, a man comes in after a car accident, we do a brain scan for safety and find a 3-inch nail embedded in his brain. We ask him about it and get this, he says he has no idea. He admits he was once shot with a nail gun but HAD NO IDEA A NAIL HAD BEEN LODGED IN HIS HEAD. It had been there for well over 4 years.
RobOHara
#44 What a Gross Threat
My mom works at airport security and came home one day looking pretty disturbed. It turned out that she'd been searching baggage when she found this weird extender tool. She asks the guy what it is, and he says it's a "bottom buddy" like it's obvious. My mom says he has to explain why he's bringing it on the flight, leading him to tell her what it's for.
No word of a lie, it's an extender so fat people with little arms can reach their bum to wipe. He told my mom that if she doesn't let him on the plane, the people around him will have a bad time. He then gave her a detailed demonstration about how it worked. Yeah, not her best day on the job.
#45 Change the Combos On All Our Locks
I was interviewing a much older guy for a similar position of mine. Everything seemed okay, and he was our best candidate. Before moving forward, I did a quick google search to only find out that he was fired from his previous job because of stealing $5000 worth of computer equipment. My director hired him anyway. Shocker: He stole from us too.
#46 Like a Scene Out of a Movie
Had a security camera in the apartment I lived in, just above the door. This was a couple of years ago, so no live notifications. The buildings are three stories, stacks of four apartments with two on either side of the floor landings. I lived on the third floor. I am at a friend's place in the sister apartment complex just up the street. Not even a two-minute walk.
Anyways, I had made friends with my neighbors. Nice couple, but weird, and also Mormon. Anywho, my neighbor calls me and asks if I was expecting a friend to come by. I tell him no, and that I am out right now. He says there is a naked guy POUNDING on my door. Like, 28 Days Later angry zombie stuff. Then, while on the phone with my neighbor, the naked guy starts pounding on THEIR DOOR.
My neighbor, for who knows what reason, says, "I've got a gun. I can shoot him. Should I shoot him?" I said, of course not, unless he comes inside. Then I heard the knocking in the background stop. My neighbor said, "He’s gone." Since I was so close to home, I ran back, wife in tow, to see what was happening. Saw my neighbor and said thanks for calling me.
Roll back the camera—poor quality—and see a naked man WILDLY smacking my door, then my neighbors, then leave.
#47 It’s Like I Don’t Even Know You
I found out that the man I'd been involved with for six months had not one, not two, but three aliases.
#48 No Time Like Death to Start Living
My husband's relative died, and there was a gathering at her house after the wake. These two people walked in, and while they seemed odd, I didn’t think much of it—but they were about to ruin the entire day. I didn’t see them for a while, but then I went into the garage to get some drinks and found them leaning against a car and engaging in some pretty vigorous intimate relations. It was absolutely horrifying that they would be so disrespectful—and that I had to be the one to see it. I wish the story ended there, but things were about to take a dark turn.
Another family member who was standing in the kitchen saw what I saw, and I guess she told the widower. The next thing I know there is shouting from the garage and the widower is telling these two people in no uncertain terms that they needed to leave. Apparently, not only were they having sex in the garage, but they were doing lines of coke off the hood of the car. Only a few people who were at the gathering found out what happened, thank goodness.
#49 Dirty Appointment
My hotel used to have a regular who was a doctor and I’m sure he worked with children. He came one night and took a combination of alcohol and pills and killed himself. The bit that always sticks with me is he was wearing a diaper, so he wouldn’t make a mess. I didn’t find him, but the people who did were messed up for a while after it.
#50 Thin Wall, Huge Separation
My fiancée at the time—three months from the wedding—used to use my laptop all the time for social media and stuff while she was watching TV. She comes to me one night and says she thinks stuff isn't working out and that we should talk about whether we should really continue. I'd not felt any problems that I didn't just dismiss as wedding planning/financial stress. So I explained that and she said she wanted to sleep in the spare room that night to think things through, to which I agreed.
I wasn't very happy with it at all, so I decided to go get my device and watch some YouTube before bed. She had her Facebook left open on my user account—completely normal. Then I see a notification from her ex-colleague.
She was live-sexting him with just a thin wall between us. I instantly knew I'd never forgive that, got dressed, quietly snuck away into my car and drove to my mum’s. She didn't even realize I knew for days. Didn't speak to her at all after that. All communication was through her own parents, who were devastated.
#51 He Worked Hard for the Money
My dad was an exotic "dancer" when he was younger, and thinks my mom doesn't know. She was at one of his shows before they met.
#52 A Familiar Face
Being a P.I. is super interesting in a lot of ways, but it can also ruin lives—your own included. A couple of years back, I was investigating something on Adult Friend Finder and discovered pictures of a close friend from high school who I had a massive crush on. Her husband had uploaded pictures of her, including her face, to try to meet women.
A lot of guys will do this, use pictures of their wives to try and set up a threesome, and then tell the other girl the wife wants him to meet with her first. My friend had no idea they were on there. It ruined her marriage and her friendship with me. I didn't care about what she and her husband did in the privacy of their own home, but she couldn't look me in the eye after it.
We hadn't been close after high school but it messed with sort of future friendship, which makes me sad. When I did tell her about finding that stuff, she admitted that her husband had cheated on her in the past, before they were married. I have no idea why she stayed with him.
#53 Maternal Hazard
A laptop that was handed down from my dad to me, and then to my sister, had some disturbing court documents buried really deep about my real mom on it. It was regarding the custody battle and there were numerous accounts of our mom trying to cause physical harm to us. We were too young to remember any of it, but one of them was about how my mom drove our Bronco into a lake with my sister in it. She's wasn't even two at the time.
I always wondered where that car went... both my sister and I have just never said anything, because we know how hard it was and how long it took for our dad to get custody, and the amount of stuff he went through we'll probably never understand.
#54 No Take Backs
We saw someone trying to pry our door handle off with pliers—police say it was to make it easier to break the lock. We woke up, made some noise and that scared the people doing it and made them run. But they decided to come back two more times with more people, both times failed and after the third time, they were caught.
Turns out they were trying to steal our car by breaking into the house for the keys—my mother treated herself to an expensive car that she had her eye on. The thieves had already sold it and thought stealing it would be easy enough. We’ve got all three times saved on our security cameras. It’s really chilling to watch people trying to break into your home.
#55 Family Matters
I'm not a private investigator, but I know someone who was a junior detective. This one case he had was an absolute mind-bender. So this guy had been cheating on his wife (the client), with her brother. Except—she claimed she didn't have a brother at all and grew up as an only child. So naturally, they were really curious to find out who this "brother" of hers was.
When they questioned the husband, he said that the guy who claimed to be his wife's "brother" said that "We've known each other for so long" and "I grew up with her" and all that jazz. At first, my friend assumed it was probably a long lost brother or something, but then when the husband was asked to describe the guy—get this. He described the wife's father.
According to the wife, her father wasn't there during her wedding and was replaced with her uncle instead. The husband hadn’t met him before. He was cheating on his wife with her father! Absolutely wild.
#56 Just Say No, Dad
I found out when my dad was about 19 years old and in the Marines, that he was dishonorably discharged from the military for smuggling drugs across the US and Mexican border.
I just stumbled upon it one day. What is weird is my dad is really anti-drug.
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#57 Cat Food
I'm a firefighter/EMT so it's pretty normal to find a dead body, but one will always stay with me. There was this middle aged guy who lived in his van out in a parking lot somewhat out of town. He never bothered anybody, so the police just let him stay there. It was around the middle of July in Arizona (so about 105-110 degree heat) and we got a call to go check on him. Nobody had seen him for a while, and somebody had complained of a foul odor coming from his van.
We all knew what we were gonna find, but nothing could prepare us for what we actually came across. I opened the back door to his van and a cloud of flies flew out so thick you couldn't see through it. I was immediately punched in the face by the stench of death, and when the flies cleared out we finally got a look at what was in there. The guy had been dead for at least two weeks and his cats had survived by eating the fleshier parts of his body.
I've seen my fair share of dead bodies, but something about a guy who had been in a van for 2 weeks in Arizona summer heat with cats eating his body that just sticks with you.
#58 Secret Identities
Neighbors have security cameras that caught two people outfitted to look like Jehovah's Witness reps that were actually armed thieves. The pair did several burglaries in the area before reports to the police from neighbors caught them in the act.
#59 Parrots Are Just Spies With Wings
I ended up finding out that my (now ex) girlfriend was cheating on me after hearing one of my parrots pick up, "Oh, God, yes, Jim!" in a rather scratchy sensual voice. When he kept saying it, I had to face the facts. I installed a nanny cam and confirmed that my girlfriend and "Jim" were getting busy while I was at work. I dumped her immediately.
#60 All Sliced Up About It
This is going to sound weird, and unbelievable, but I have to recount this tale. The family wanted a private moment with the deceased. We allowed it, and all our staff cleared out, alongside the pastor. Within about five minutes, we hear retching, and dry heaving, and we knock, and ask if everything's okay. But the retching doesn't stop.
So, the staff enters the room, and by God, I'll never forget what I saw. They were eating slices of the body – embalmed slices. God knows how toxic it was. The adults were arrested for desecration of a corpse. The children went into foster care. These were some sick people.
#61 Let’s Pull Out the World’s Smallest Violin
I was hiring for our late night shift (shifts ending at 2am/3am) and she was willing to work anything and looking for about 25 hours per week. This was absolutely what the company was looking for. She had mentioned that she was "grieving for her little boy who passed two weeks ago and needed to do something to occupy her time."
She finished her one day of computer training and stopped showing up. Later in the week she sent me an email stating that she "wasn't ready to come back to work like she'd thought," which was understandable.
My assistant manager and I decided to look her up only to find that she had multiple GoFundMe pages set up for her sob story with different amounts of time that the supposed child had been dead for. Her facebook was full of selfies and party photos. She ended up asking for the job back a few months later and we shot her down pretty quick.
I've recently googled her name and found that all the GoFundMe pages have been taken down and her social media profiles deleted/privatized.
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#62 Memory Trouble Can Happen to the Best of Us
One of my old girlfriends dated a guy who had killed someone outside of the US. He just told potential employers that he "couldn't remember" his address when he was living abroad and so he's been passing background checks with no problems. So employees of a large overpriced electronics store, some of you are working with a murderer who did time in an international prison. At least one, anyway.
#63 This Is Why Math Matters
My mom was cheating on my dad. That’s a huge reason why they split. She very quickly remarried and popped out my brother. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I did the math and realized she was pregnant by her second husband and still married to my father.
#64 That’s Some Family Drama Right There
My grandmother got remarried when my dad was in middle school after divorcing my bio grandfather. Her new husband was a "cool dad" for a while, at least up until my dad and his older brother got into college. After that he started going off the emotional deep end. Their marriage gets real tense. Then, one day, a co-worker quietly pulls my mother aside and says that they saw her stepdad (my grandpa) in public with a much younger man.
The family does some digging around and finds out he had used company funds to buy cars, apartments, etc. for multiple 20-something men (he was in his early seventies). They are understandably shocked, and they all go over to my grandma's house to break it to her. Her response? "Oh yeah, I've known that for years."
She had suspected he was gay before they were married, but nobody talked about that sort of thing at the time or in her family. She knew about the affairs, and she had a public health worker come to her front door to inform her he had HIV, and give her a test as well. She declined to tell anyone this for close to fifteen years. Anyway, they managed to convince her to divorce him, which took ages and ages. So, that's probably the worst secret that's ever been kept in my family.
#65 Unwanted Delivery
I work at a 5-star hotel that is very expensive, where almost all of our guests are billionaires or top celebrities and politicians. One day I was cleaning a room when I found a deceased newborn baby with his umbilical cord still attached.
#66 The Storm Before the Calm
I accidentally discovered the reason why my parents divorced.
I was ten when they separated, and they never really told us why, just that their marriage wasn’t working anymore. I didn’t really care so I didn’t ask, but over the next few years I would eavesdrop on bits and pieces of conversations they had and eventually put the pieces together. Basically, my mom cheated on my dad with my now-stepdad. My mom and now-stepdad worked at the same high-school and my mom had taught each of his kids.
When my dad became suspicious, he put a key-logger on the family computer and her phone and found some suspicious texts/emails/searches, etc. He hired a PI who followed my mom to the airport one day and struck up a conversation with her. My mom took the bait and ended up confessing everything to the PI under the impression it was some random stranger.
I was introduced to my now-stepdad a little under a year after they separated but didn’t meet any of his children or family until a few years later. Turns out he was having an affair as well but was introduced to me and my brothers while he was still with his wife.
#67 Sounds Like an Absolutely Delightful Fellow
This kid, early 20s comes in for a job, seemed normal enough. Google him and he was wanted in another state for stabbing a St. Bernard to death.
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#68 Dude, Gross
My wife dropped my iPhone in a Port-A-Potty toilet. Luckily it has been so used there was a large pile of poo, which gently held the phone above the liquid. She cleaned it off and gave it back to me. A year later I upgraded and gave her my old phone. She insisted on purchasing a new cover even though I had a high-end OtterBox.
I never understood why until one of the kids told on her.
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#69 Raised in a House Built on Snow
I recently found out the reason we were so poor growing up was because both my parents had drinking and drug issues. We always had a house, food, health insurance, clothes. But a few years without Christmas and birthdays happened. We almost lost the house. Turns out my parents had to have been pretty high functioning drug addicts to keep us at all.
#70 Father Knows Best
I have two sisters and our mom died more than 20 years ago. A few years back, my father was going into the hospital for high-risk surgery. The night before he went in for surgery, he told my oldest sister the family's big secret: that he was not really her dad. It turns out that, before they had gotten married to one another, my mom and dad had actually broken up briefly. During this time, my mom had hooked up with some random other guy, getting pregnant in the process.
She told my father about it and the two of them ended up eloping. For whatever reason, they never told my sister and my father promised to keep the secret before my mom passed away. After telling my sister, my father asked her to not tell anyone else. However, she has since talked to her husband, to myself, and to my other sister about it.
My dad has no idea that we all know now. He also has no idea how much I respect him for raising another man's child without any animosity or resentment, and for always loving her like the daughter that she was.
#71 Ex From the East
My dad would always tell my little brother and I about this Russian girlfriend he had when he was younger. What he very CONVENIENTLY left out, however, is that they got married so that she could have citizenship. Thank you Ancestry.com! He still has no idea that I know anything about it.
#72 Was An Evening of Weird Fun Worth the Job Opportunity?
Had a guy apply for an entry level post with us recently. His CV was okay, so we offered him an interview. Social media seemed okay too. He never turned up for the interview.
A couple of weeks later, there's a story about him in the local paper. Turned out that he was living at the local boarding house, and was found in the kitchen one morning totally wasted, wearing nothing but a pair of socks. When a couple of women who also lived there tried to escort him back to his room, he got violent and assaulted them. Given the dates stated in the paper, he didn't turn up because he'd been in jail at the time of the interview.
His resume has now been added to the "do not touch with a ten foot barge pole" section in our filing cabinet.
#73 Netflix and Not So Chill
My ex, and the cheating. She thinks I found out when I looked at her phone, but I knew about two months earlier when she sent me a pic of herself watching Netflix in bed. I don't think she realized that the dude's face was 100% visible reflected in the laptop. After that it was a matter of me being in denial and trying to fix things.
#74 Not the Kind of Work Experience You Were Looking For
Ok not a hiring manager but at the time, I was a makeup artist that was flying to NY to work with a photographer. Right before the trip communication dropped off completely. He wouldn't respond to Instagram or calls or emails. A few weeks later, happened to catch his name in the paper. He had been arrested for planning and filming the assault of a toddler.
#75 Save the Drama for Your Mama
My family has hired P.I.s on three separate occasions. All three of them found massive amounts of infidelity, with two of the three uncovering secret families. great-grandpa died, turns out to have had three wives simultaneously. My grandpa hired the P.I. to figure out the details and clear up the messy inheritance it caused.
Oddly enough, grandpa was on great terms with his newfound half-siblings for the rest of his life. Then, my uncle traveled a bunch to Mexico for work, so my suspicious aunt hired a P.I. to trail him. Turns out, he had an illegitimate family in Mexico. It caused a huge inheritance pain in the butt AGAIN when my uncle eventually died of natural causes.
But that wasn’t even the end of it for my crazy family. My cousin was married to a professional baseball player on the East coast. My folks suspected he was a cheater and hired a P.I. to trail him, turns out to be a rampant cheater for sure, divorce followed shortly. To this day, he's considered an un-person in my family, and no one will tell me what his name was or what team he played for.
#76 Imprisoned By Lies
My grandma got drunk and let it slip that my mom is a convicted felon. She also spilled that my grandfather had an illegitimate child...with my aunt. I put two and two together. My aunt is my mother's sister, my uncle is her son, my mother's brother. And my cousin is my aunt's child, my uncle's sibling, and my mother's niece. It's such a mess. Thank god my mother doesn't know that I know.
#77 Thank You for Your Service
I had a friend that was notorious for one-night Craigslist hookups with soldiers from the local army base. When he died, a handful of men in the military that none of us knew came to the service. His parents had no idea that their son was even gay.
#78 Sounds Worth it
At airport security, I watched a man get really upset about the staff needing to search his bag. After making a huge fuss, they go through his stuff and pull out...a fifth of vodka. No clue why he was so worried about them finding it, but I'll never forget what he did once the cat was out of the bag. He chugged the whole thing, then promptly had a heart attack.
#79 Overdrawn at the Spank Bank
Back in 1997, I started work at a new job and took over the office of a salesman who had recently been fired. I was in IT, using the same computer that had been set up for Sales. My first task was to install all the software I'd need. The computer hard drive was almost full, so I poked around and found a TON of folders filled with dirty videos.
Went to my supervisor, and he said to delete it, warning me that the salesman had been fired for that very offense. Over the next few weeks, I kept finding secret folders on the company's network. Not only had he downloaded enough dirty pics and videos to max out his computer's HD, but he also had the network at about 90% capacity.
When I was done deleting all the folders I could find, the server capacity was less than 50%. Dude was seriously addicted.
#80 Let It Go, Get Ahead
I was working at Best Buy on Black Friday, and there were huge lines to get to the cashier. Later in the day, we got a complaint from one of our patrons about the smell coming from a dryer. We open them and discover the worst possible option: A huge turd, just sitting there. After cleaning it up, we investigated the situation—and realize that not only did some deranged lady take a dump in the store, she then stole a DVD player in the mayhem that was caused when we found the turd. Come on.
#81 It Was Supposed to Be a Surprise!
I found my own severance cheque. Apparently, someone at the payroll company addressed it to me instead of HR. Opened it at my desk and laughed, packed up my stuff and left.
#82 Biding His Time
I live in an apartment unit right next door to an office. They installed a new security camera for their door—which covers a part of mine as well—shortly after I moved in. The office manager knocked on my door a few days after the installation and asked me to come look at something. She pulled up footage of the night before that showed a freaky guy pacing in front of my door for six straight hours! I was asleep the whole time and heard nothing.
Turned out to be a recent ex of a friend of mine. I'd only met him once. Still have no idea how he knew where I lived unless he followed her to my place once as we live close by each other. Cops called, reports filed, and they eventually found him. He had been on a pretty bad drug bend since their breakup from what I heard and has no recollection of being there. Meth is a helluva trip.
#83 Almost Check Out Too Soon
I walked in on my cousin abusing substances. He had a severe addiction for almost a decade. I walked into his room to get my Xbox controller back at about 4 am, and he was laying on the floor white as a ghost with a belt around his arm. I grabbed the syringe and threw it, took the belt off and he was taking about three to five breaths a minute.
After a few minutes, while trying to find my phone to call 9-1-1, his breathing returned to normal, but he was unable to wake up. The next evening, he was finally able to get up and walk around and returned to his normal self. He always claimed it was an accident and just overdid it that night, but just recently he admitted he was trying to end it.
That happened back in 2010, and wasn't the only time he had ever overdosed. He has now been sober for years, is engaged, has his own house, and three future stepchildren.
#84 A Poor Performance
I would see this couple panhandling outside different stores around town. He would be in a wheelchair, and she would push him. A couple of weeks ago, I saw the familiar couple on bikes riding behind a shopping center. Recognized them as the couple. I followed them for a couple of minutes, just to see how he miraculously recovered.
I saw them pull up to a nice home on the other side of town. I’m thinking maybe he got better, and they’ll continue panhandling. Nah. They opened the garage, parked their bikes, and casually strolled in. There was a new Chevy truck parked in the driveway. I talked to my cousin who’s a deputy, and he said really nothing can be done. Technically, it’s not illegal to panhandle in our city and they’re not breaking any laws.
#85 The Remains of The Day
I swear this story is 100% true. So, in ninth grade English class, our teacher assigned us to group work for the day so she could chill out and grade papers. She had a “teaching assistant” who was another student at our high school. We will call him "Tim.” He was either a junior or senior at this time? So we're all working (see: messing around) at our tables, and Tim comes over and starts talking with me.
So, we’re on his phone looking at some fire 2013 memes, when a kid walks up and asks Tim a question about whatever dumb worksheet we were assigned. For whatever reason, Tim goes to help this student and leaves his phone with me. So of course, ninth grade me goes straight to his picture folder to see what’s up. So, what do I find? Nudes? Embarrassing pictures from last year’s Christmas party?
No…Tim's phone was harboring much darker secrets. Inside an album with an all-too appropriate name were over 300 pictures of various poops in toilets. Thick poops, small poops, chunky poops, diarrhea... it was all there. I just kept scrolling down and down and it was just all poop. I was honestly just in shock, and as soon as Tim came back I couldn’t just pretend I didn’t see.
I had to know. "Dude. Why do you have so many pictures of poops on your phone???" "Oh, I, uhh, those are all mine...I send them to my friends as a joke sometimes. Nobody’s ever seen that before." And that was it about that. Long story short, I found the poop folder.
#86 Burn After Spending
Leaving work late one evening, I saw the HR director and CFO in a dark office shredding papers—no, that's not a euphemism. I didn't say anything but quietly walked on down the hall. Two weeks later, we were raided by the SEC and several people were charged with cooking the books.
#87 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.
#88 A Miscarriage of Privacy
When I was about 16, I was snooping in my parents' wardrobe. Found a diary written by my mother when she was 14, from the year 1970. Read some beautiful and brilliantly written entries about meeting and dating my dad, who was 16 at the time. I had to read a little between the lines in some slightly later entries as they were written with such flowery language.
In one such entry, all of a sudden, she discloses that she's had an abortion. It was performed by my grandfather, who was an anesthesiologist. She never told anyone.
#89 Inches From Death
Had a game camera out once and I had a neighbor who would just walk through my property—I didn’t care, the place is pretty and there’s no back fence. But I kept having sheep go missing so I set up a camera. The camera caught my neighbor walking by, then like 30 seconds later a mountain lion walked by, stalking him.
It apparently never attacked him, but he had no idea how close he was to that thing.
#90 Brother From Another Mother
The other day I was looking for my old passport when I found a few of my Dad's old visitor's passports. Now, my Dad is older than most (he's 70, while I’m a teen), so imagine my surprise when, listed under "children" in the passport, there's the name of a kid born in the 1970s. The best part is that the name isn't on his other passports from later on, so I guess I accidentally found out I have a (dead?) half-brother.
#91 Santa Is Stuffing Someone Else’s Stocking This Year
I once walked into my dad's van while he was hooking up with a woman who was not my mom. My dad had a drinking problem. Mom took me and my brother to go looking for him because he was supposed to be buying Christmas presents. We found his van at a bar. Mom sent me to look inside the van to see if there were presents in there.
I looked into the back and saw my dad's bare bottom as he was plowing some chick. He turned over his shoulder, looked right at me, and said in the evilest voice, "Get out." This was 20+ years ago now and I still get emotional thinking about it. I still remember the entire thing so clearly.
#92 The Elephant In the Room
I was helping my mother-in-law clean out her closet. It was all jokes and laughter until I pull out an unopened massive adult toy. We were both paralyzed for a moment before she slowly took it out of my hands and mumbled something about it not being what she thought it would be like, and that she ordered it online. She then backed out of the room and threw it in a cupboard. We then proceeded to clean the rest of the closet. I desperately wanted to tell my significant other about this awkward event, but decided to spare him.
#93 All the Glitters Isn’t Capital
I found out that a relative who everyone believes to be filthy rich—and always throws extravagant parties, put his kids in expensive private schools, sends his wife shopping and loves fine dining—is broke and close to declaring bankruptcy. He's in deep debt and he hasn't paid his bills in months from what I could see. He owes a loan shark too. Now, every time I see him post an invite to my mom, I cringe at the thought of him owing more money. My mom knows, even though I never told her—she just knows.
#94 Sometimes, One Guy Can Ruin It For Everyone Else
I was supposed to go to my wife’s high school reunion, until we got a call saying not to come. I was so confused—until I found out the disturbing reason why. It turns out that at the previous reunion, five years earlier, one classmate got creepy and began to stalk another one. Expecting that he’d never show up and that he’d calmed down in the last five years, the reunion organizers had invited the creepy guy.
That’s when things began to spiral out of control. He started posting threats on social media; they were so creepy that even after they changed the venue, they eventually had to just cancel the event outright.
#95 Disappear This Miss, Please
My old boss always cheated on his wife. Then, one day he calls me to get to his house ASAP. I was not ready for what I found. There’s a passed-out naked woman and vomit everywhere. He’s still wasted and mumbling that his wife is on her way back from vacation early. As I'm walking his heavily intoxicated girlfriend out, he yells for me to grab the party bag.
The only bag is a Dopp kit. I grab it, jump in my car and drive off. Dropped her off and came home to open the bag—I couldn’t believe what I found. There was a TON of illegal substances in there. Turns out the boss' wife was getting home a day early and he needed to cover up his, uh, wild weekend when she was away. Yeah, I got the special treatment from my boss from then on out.
#96 Friend Bear
I saw my baby babbling on the video monitor, using sign language to say "fun” but then "don't like." I was alarmed—but I never could’ve prepared for what I found when I entered her room to check on her. I asked her who she was talking to, but all she kept telling me was “friend” and “bear.” Finally, I got fed up and demanded to know who “Friend Bear” was—and her response gave me chills. Even though she couldn’t speak well, she managed to say, very clearly with the most serious expression, “No name, no name, shh.”
Well now I am well and truly freaked out so I tell her to ask "No Name Friend Bear" to go home because it is too late to play and I did what any good loving mother would do. I gave her a pacifier, went back to my room, turned off the monitor entirely and hid under the covers in my room where my good and loving husband would protect me from nameless invisible bears.
References: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Source: Factinate
