Every family has secrets—but your desire for the truth can sometimes unleash a Pandora’s box of dark discoveries. Here Redditors unearth some of their family secrets that are so shocking, anyone reading will wonder if they can really “handle the truth.”
1. Two-Timing Trickster
I had an uncle who was a railroad engineer and worked the Terre Haute, Indiana, to Danville, Illinois line. He never took a day off from his one day there, one day back route. At his funeral, a strange woman came into the funeral home with some older children. No one knew who she was.
Finally, my grandma introduced herself to the woman and asked who she was. The woman said, “I’m Mrs. So and So. I’m here for my husband’s funeral”. It turned out that my uncle had two families, one in Terre Haute and one in Danville. I didn’t find out about this until I was an adult.
My mom, grandma, aunt, and sister kept it a secret for decades.
2. No Luck For These Irish Lads
Part of my mom's side is very, very convinced they're Irish in all the American "kiss me, I'm Irish" ways. My grandparents took a trip there and spent a lot of time at a local pub, getting to know Irish singers and poets; my cousins have very Irish names, etc.
I took a few ancestry tests to nail down the rest of my mom's side, and realized there was something weird going on. There was not a single percent Irish in any of them.
The family name, which is common among Irish-Americans, is actually a Swiss surname that got translated at some point, according to the genealogy trace I also had done. My now-deceased grandparents wanted their ashes spread in the Irish Sea, and my mom and her siblings are planning a big trip to do it.
I'm taking the secret to my grave.
3. Swinging Singles
My dad's biological father is his adopted father's brother, so, his uncle. His biological dad and his girlfriend were both underage, and she ended up having a kid. In order to keep it hush-hush, she had the kid and gave it to her boyfriend’s brother, who was of age and married. My dad didn’t know this.
In addition, my sister is only my half-sister because my parents would swap partners. My mom got pregnant when she and my dad were trying for a baby, but somehow she got pregnant by someone else instead. My dad was somewhat aware of it, but the real father doesn't know this, nor does my sister. It gets even crazier.
They lost all contact with the guy. Then, when my sister turned 20, she moved out to go live with her husband in a new state. She got a job and moved around within the company. She became great friends outside of work with her boss, who just so happened to be her biological dad.
Freepik, wayhomestudio
4. Bait And Snitch
I was used as a test dummy to see if my uncle acted inappropriately with children. My family was suspicious, but instead of doing anything responsible, they decided to set me up as bait. I was only a toddler, so they figured since I couldn’t remember, it wouldn’t matter.
They had him babysit me for a couple of hours and recorded it. I was never supposed to know, but one day, my aunt spilled the beans to me by accident.
Freepik, @ user3802032
5. Say Goodbye To The Old Country
My great-great-grandfather moved from Romania to America and got married to another Romanian immigrant shortly after he arrived. Once they married, he insisted they start using "American" names, only speak English in public, never return to Romania, and refrain from communicating with family in the old country.
When my great-grandmother—his daughter—was a teenager, the rest of the family made a disturbing discovery. Turns out, he'd actually abandoned his first wife and three children in Romania.
He left them in extreme poverty when he came to the States and married my great-great-grandmother. He was apparently a heavy drinker and paranoid all the time. His mental health suffered a lot as he aged, so I'm assuming guilt was factored into that.
Oddly enough, my great-grandmother went on to become a matchmaker through her Orthodox church by helping families with young female relatives still in Romania connect with families with young men in the US to arrange marriages so they could come Stateside.
6. The Lie That Led To A Broken Heart
My great-grandma told my grandpa that the Jewish girl he liked was taken to a concentration camp when in truth, they fled. The consequences of this lie were devastating.
My grandpa met my grandma shortly thereafter, and they got married. But apparently, my grandpa still talked about this other girl from time to time, that she was the one who got away and how awful it all was. Many years went by, and my aunt and dad were born.
My grandpa was walking around town and met the girl from back then that he had liked. He was totally shocked and found out that he had been lied to for all that time. My grandpa got sick pretty soon after that incident and passed when my dad was only five years old.
My grandma later once said she believed he passed from a broken heart.
7. Safe Passage
My Welsh great-grandmother had a passage booked on the Titanic in 1912. She ended up not going because she "fell ill". It turned out it was actually an out-of-wedlock pregnancy that gave her such bad morning sickness she couldn't go. She lost the baby and came the following year, in 1913, and met my great-grandfather.
She only told my mom, who she helped raise during the summers, who then told me. Great-grandma getting knocked up saved an entire branch of our family tree!
8. A Painful Past
I always wondered why my grandmother hated my aunt—her older sister. She was a staunch Christian woman who even owned a church with her husband.
My aunt did a lot for my grandma while she was really sick, so when my grandma told me that she didn’t want my aunt anywhere near her during the last days of her life or at her funeral, it confused me. I asked why, but she just made it known very firmly she didn’t want her around.
My grandma raised me. We were best friends, and I was the first and favorite grandchild. All my cousins even told me after she passed, they all knew I was the favorite because of the unbreakable bond we had.
So, when members of the family started coming up to me asking why my aunt wasn’t allowed near her my grandmother’s bedside or at her funeral, I said I didn’t really know. I just knew I would make sure my grandma’s last wishes were fulfilled.
During my first job ever in high school, my boss was my grandma’s best friend from when they were in middle school through high school. They had a falling out because my grandma went down the wrong path shortly after high school. They never got back in touch again, except for the occasional hello at the store.
We crossed paths not too long ago, exchanged our memories of my grandma, and talked about what I was doing. She then asked, “How were you able to keep a straight face around your aunt after all the fake Facebook posts she puts up about your grandma after what she did?"
I knew my aunt had done something when they were younger, but it was never disclosed, and I never pushed further. I could have never guessed what it actually was. She told me my aunt inappropriately touched my grandma when she was between the ages of 10–13, and my aunt was 14–17. But that wasn't the worst part.
She would even let a couple of her boyfriends have their way with my grandma when their parents were away working. I cried for my grandma. She wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t deserve that and all the pain that she carried with her until her last breath when she was only 68.
Her friend thought I knew because of how close my grandma and I were. At that moment, it all made sense why my grandma acted the way she did around my aunt and why my aunt always tried to do everything for her to make up for what she had done. I told her not to tell anyone, and she hadn’t until she told me.
I blocked my aunt and almost that entire side of the family. I was already in no contact with my biological mom and dad. I will never tell a soul because I know that if this came out, it would cause an upheaval in that little town because my aunt is a very respected woman there.
She knows what she did, and she will have to live with it knowing it still inflicted pain on her sister until the day she passed. I know she will go to her grave with that, and it will always be in the back of her mind how she ruined her sister’s whole life. I imagine my grandma haunting her, and I smile.
I hope my grandma finally got the peace that she always deserved.
9. This Secret Was Put To Bed
My grandfather passed when I was 17. The part I am not supposed to know, which my mom—who has never been able to keep a secret in her life—told me, was that he didn’t pass of natural causes.
He waited until his social security check arrived for my grandmother to cash, and then took a bottle of pills and drank a bottle of booze. My grandmother found him like that and then called my mom to come over and help her put him into bed so that she could tell everyone he passed in his sleep.
He was old, therefore no one did an autopsy or anything.
10. Speaking In Tongues
My grandmother immigrated to North America from Europe in 1970 and did not leave Canada until she passed in 2017. Until the day she passed, everyone who knew her family or otherwise knew that she did not speak English. She only spoke her mother tongue. She couldn't read, write, or drive, and she didn't get out much.
The majority of her life was spent indoors, taking care of us grandkids before and after school and church. When she suffered a fall in 2007, she was hospitalized for a short time and given pain medication. My mother was with her in the hospital and left the room for a few minutes to grab a cup of coffee.
When she came back, she couldn't believe her eyes. My highly medicated grandma was having an entire conversation in English with one of the medical staff. She was perfectly fluent. I'm the only family member that knows other than my mom. The medical staff found it hilarious, though.
As soon as she sobered up from the pain meds, she up and down denied that it ever happened and stuck to that story for the next decade.
11. The Truth Hit Me Hard
My cousin was born handicapped because my uncle hit the daylights out of his wife throughout her pregnancy. I was not aware that my uncle was so awful. I realized years after my cousin’s birth that her handicap was not "biological" and that my aunt didn’t have any fertility issues; she had miscarriages because of my uncle.
My mother hid all this from me because she knew that I would never talk to my uncle again and that I would tell the whole family the real truth.
12. She Was A Freak In The Sheets
One of my mom's cousins was committed to an asylum and sterilized. As a kid, I was told it was because she had some type of genetic malformation; hence her mother couldn't take care of her. As an adult, I discovered the real reason, and it was so much sadder than what I was told.
Her mother walked in on her daughter's college apartment to find her engaging in incredibly mild role-play—she was on a leash. That was all it took for her mother to completely destroy her future. I've never even met her or know what her face looks like, but I truly feel for her.
Freepik, cookie_studio
13. No Cause For Alarm
The night my dad “came home early from work and accidentally set the alarm off," my house was actually being broken into. My mother confronted the intruder while my father rushed home.
She put my siblings and me in the room with our older brother and told us she just wanted to make sure none of us were startled if the authorities were automatically called but to absolutely not leave the room.
14. Burn Granny, Burn
My grandma burned down the family home back in the 80s because my grandpa was a lush and a cheater. He sobered up and never cheated again. The few times the situation was talked about, my family said that it was supposedly an electrical fire. However, I heard them arguing one night when I was a kid.
My grandmother yelled, "I'll burn this house down too". My grandma is a savage.
15. Brothers For Life
My older brother might only be my half-brother. About ten or so years ago, I went out drinking with my dad for his birthday. He got hammered and told me that when he and my mom first got together, she was still in a relationship with a really terrible guy.
She got pregnant around the time that she left him, so there's about a 50/50 chance that my older brother is the other guy's biological son. I asked him if he had ever thought about getting tested to find out and he said, "No. I don't care what any test says. That is MY son".
He also got emotional at one point and told me he really regretted talking me out of going to school for what I originally wanted to do in favor of what I do now. Later on, he punched the glass out of a jukebox because he thought it would be funny. The whole night was a roller coaster.
The next day, he seemed to have no recollection of telling me that shocker about my brother, and I never brought it up again. I'll never tell my brother, and I'll never tell my parents that I know about it. As a side note, it would explain a lot. My brother and I don't even look related.
We always just shrugged our shoulders whenever friends asked us how we could be siblings when we looked so different. I feel the same way my dad does; he's my brother, not half-brother, no matter what any test might say. I'm at peace with the fact that I'll never really know for sure.
16. A Bad Investment
My dad has cheated on my mom with several different women over the years. They stayed married, as divorce was looked down upon in our culture. But the affair was actually crazy.
He would literally fly to a different part of the country "to see his investment property" every now and then, in reality, he was going to see his old secretary who lived in that house.
He built a house, and because she was struggling to get by financially, he "felt bad" and offered to let her live in it with her two kids from a different marriage. So, his secretary, who used to work for him, lived in one of his houses rent-free. That was the reality.
Then one day, when he was sloshed, he told me that when he passes, his will has the house split 50/50 between that lady and me. I didn’t even know how to react or respond other than realizing I would need a lawyer in the future as she and I don't get along.
17. A Tale Of Triumph
My great-grandma had dementia in her last years of life and completely forgot English. She would mumble and confess things in German, and eventually, my grandma and I learned some really dark stuff about her.
It took a lot of time and a German-to-English dictionary to decipher what she was saying. We found out that her oldest son's father lost his life during the battle of Stalingrad while she was pregnant with him. This was her first husband, and he passed in September 1942.
She then married his brother after giving birth to her first son. She soon became pregnant with her second child, a daughter. When husband number two went to fight for the Gestapo, he lost his life during the battle of Kursk in July of 1943.
Great-grandma then gave birth to her daughter and married her third husband—husband number one and number two’s cousin. She and her third husband were expecting child number three—my grandmother—when he went to fight in the battle of Hurtgen Forest.
He passed in November of 1944 and was her favorite husband, apparently. At that point, there were no men in the area who would marry her, as she was considered cursed.
With three children under the age of four in tow, my great-grandma managed to sneak into the United States, specifically Los Angeles, during the last few months of WWII. She never gave us complete details, but we figured she probably bribed, slept with, and somehow wormed her way out of all that nonsense.
Upon coming to the US in 1945, she married the man my grandma and her siblings thought was their dad. But this was no fairy tale either. It turned out he was majorly gay and paid my great-grandma to be his beard. He passed of congestive heart failure in 1960, and my great-grandma never remarried.
Somehow my grandma, great aunt, and great uncle all have birth certificates stating they were born in the United States and that husband number four was their father. We have no clue how great-grandma pulled that one off.
18. The Big Squeeze
My mom lied to a man and told him that I was his son. She frequently coerced money from him by telling him she needed it to raise me. I found out when he showed up with gifts shortly after I had moved out on my own. He had hired a private investigator to find me after my mom refused to give him my contact info.
He apologized for not being in my life and cried while telling me he was losing his life to pancreatic cancer and that he didn't want to go without meeting me. I asked my mom about it, and she told me she told him that so she could get money for illicit substances after she left my dad.
DNA tests confirmed that he was not my father; I tested myself against the man I knew to be my biological dad. I only ever met this man that one time. I took the gifts because it was such a surreal experience, and I didn't know how to tell him anything other than that I forgave him.
My mom is the only other person who knew this happened.
19. An Indiscretionary Tale
My dad had an affair with my mom’s childhood best friend. My mom knew about it, they had worked through it, and later had me. But there was something she didn't know.
Apparently, I also have a half-sibling that was placed for adoption. It is possible my father doesn’t know either. The half-sibling found me on Ancestry dotcom. A few quick medical history exchanges and that was that. There was no further contact requested. I respect their position and plan to never tell my parents.
Freepik, YuliiaKa
20. Jackpot!
I was the sole winner of a major lottery and never told a soul. I lived somewhere where you could stay anonymous after a win, so I did. Nobody in my family knows. I didn't change my lifestyle or anything. I kept the same cars, bikes, etc. I just make sure my family is taken care of, especially my son.
They just think I'm good at business and investing. I keep multiple brokerages for different asset classes and just show them the small accounts if needed. I celebrate Christmas by donating to charities and hope to build a new school.
21. Solid As A Rock
My great-grandpa isn't related to us. He met my great-grandma when she was a teen. She had been taken advantage of by a traveling salesman and became pregnant. As a result, her family tossed her out. My great-grandpa couldn't have kids due to his being tormented in a Japanese prison camp during WWII.
He married my great-grandmother and raised my grandma as his own. My great-grandma told me when she had dementia and forgot it was a secret. After I found out, I asked their daughter—my grandma—and she confirmed that she had known this to be true since she was a young adult.
Even though my great-grandpa wasn’t blood, he was the bedrock of our family.
22. Image Was Everything
My grandpa didn't want any of his grandchildren to know that he was behind bars for three or four years for fraud. The thing is, he was also a victim of the same. The guy he was doing business with used checks without funds and put all the machines in my grandpa’s name.
The other guy left no trace of his actions in the whole business, so then the entire mess fell on my grandpa. He didn't want us to know because he didn't want us to be aware that he had been locked up. He thought it would ruin the image we would have about him, even though he was innocent.
Even after knowing that postmortem, we still love him as much as we always did.
23. Her Flame Went Out
A great aunt on my mom's side supposedly passed from an unknown illness at age 25. I found her death certificate—and the cause of her demise made my blood run cold.
It listed the ingestion of kerosene as the cause. I learned from an older relative that this aunt had discovered she was pregnant and didn't want to be. She was a very vain person and was afraid the pregnancy would ruin her body and her looks.
She had heard from some idiot that drinking kerosene would cause an abortion, so that’s what she did.
24. Family History
Nobody had the details right, but my paternal great-grandfather took the life of the son of an officer in St. Louis in 1901 when he was just 17 years old. He ran away from home, ended up in Omaha, and changed his last name.
I ended up confirming all of this using Ancestry dotcom and Newspapers dotcom. They called it an accident, but he and his brother were troublemakers. Not only that, but street gangs were in abundance in 1901 in St Louis, one of which went after enforcement officers and their families.
There were a number of articles telling what had happened. He also lied and told family members that he was an officer. He never was; he was a security guard for a produce company. Furthermore, his mom more than likely had an affair with a neighbor boy, making my great-grandfather “illegitimate”.
Using census records from 1880, I was able to come to this possible conclusion. It’s all a mess, but I’m determined to get to the bottom of it.
25. He Was Rockin’ At The Casbah
Before my maternal grandfather passed, he told me that he had fallen in love with a woman in Morocco while he was stationed there. He considered going AWOL so that he could stay with her, but the threat of being thrown behind bars persuaded him to come home.
So, I’m apparently the only person in my family aware that he had an affair while overseas. Knowing that weighs heavily upon me at times. I guess I may have some family somewhere in Morocco.
26. Secret Sister
My dad had a daughter before I was born and never admitted it to anyone in the family. He was basically on his last legs when he admitted it to me. I was able to track down my half-sister a few years back, and we were able to meet.
However, she was very emotional about the whole thing, and she ended up backing out at the last minute. I have since left her alone.
27. Preserving A Memory
A cousin of mine lost his life in a motorcycle accident. He was a loving dad to two children. I was asked to hack into his computer because his grieving widow could not access pictures and emails. I found a secret email account. He'd been using it to message his mistress.
This was five days after his passing, and his inbox was filled with messages saying, “Are you ok? What is going on?" She was unaware of his passing. So, I wrote her an email explaining with a link to the obituary and newspaper article. She came to the funeral but didn't say anything. She introduced herself as a co-worker.
I removed all evidence from the computer before giving it back to the widow to preserve the memory of this guy to his wife and kids.
28. Secret Society Shakedown
My great-uncle essentially ran a secret society in my hometown for many years with his “friends” and even some of my family members. They would take advantage of a lot of people and run away with the money they managed to make.
This went on for many years until the government came looking for money that he owed when he took out a loan to build a massive bar and grill. From there, the whole thing came crashing down. To add insult to injury, my grandfather—his brother—was the acting Mayor at the time and had no knowledge of this.
To say that stuff “hit the fan” would be the understatement of the century.
29. Love Child
My dad had a “kid sister”. She lived with and took care of my grandmother until her passing. Many years later, I found out that she was actually the child of my grandfather and a young woman he had met at a bar.
The young woman later married my uncle and rehabilitated her image by becoming a church lady. It made me respect my grandmother so much more. My grandfather left her alone with six children, yet she took in his “love child” and raised and loved her as her own.
30. Way Off Target
My grandfather owned a B-25 plane and shelled Haiti in 1968. The CIA hired him and was supposed to hit the Head of State’s house. The only problem was that he missed and dropped the missiles on the Head of State’s parent’s house. Oh, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
He also proceeded to land, break into multiple banks, and fly back to turn in the money, which at the time only amounted to $8K.
31. Patriot Games
My maternal great-uncle worked for the Canadian department of defense during the Cold War and passed from a "heart attack" while stationed in Germany. When my mom told me this, I pointed out that it was very possible that he had a hit put on him because it actually isn't that hard to make it look like someone passed from a heart condition.
My mom dismissed the idea pretty quickly. My grandmother was a nurse at the time and went to ID the body because her sister didn't have the strength to. In private, I brought up my theory and asked her what she thought. She didn't say anything, just nodded, but she gave me this really knowing look.
His passing wasn’t really talked about in the family, but I found out at my grandfather's memorial that I'm the only one, besides my grandmother, who knew his secret.
My paternal great-grandmother was taken advantage of in Belarus, her home country, and became pregnant with her assailant’s baby when she came to Canada. So, my great-uncle was, in reality, my grandfather's half-brother, and his biological father was some dirtbag in the Russian army.
His mom told my great-uncle, and he told me when he was on his last legs. I don't know if anyone else knew, but if they did, they never said anything. When my paternal great-grandparents came to Canada, they were put into internment camps.
I only found out because my great-aunt got sloshed and went on a rant about how the Canadian government wants everyone to forget about residential schools and various kinds of internment camps they ran and supported.
32. Out Of The Picture
My step-father’s great-grandfather and uncles were part of the Gestapo and escaped Germany to the US before the end of WWII. But we found out in an upsetting way.
We uncovered a black and white photo album of them together in their SS uniforms, with many pages of photos from around Germany and France. It was found after the passing of one of my great-uncles. One of my aunts was so mortified she snatched the album, and now no one will talk about it.
33. He Kept On Truckin’
My uncle was married about eight times and had two kids. However, after he passed, we found out that, apparently, he had seven kids from different relationships we didn't even know about.
He was a truck driver in the 90s and drove all over the US. He had affairs with different women in other states. We found out about the other kids from Ancestry, and I have since met a couple of them.
34. Grandma Spilled The Beans
My grandmother on my dad’s side became pregnant when she was 15 years old, years before my dad was born. She got a back-alley abortion because my great-grandfather would have made her keep it for sure. She told me when she got REALLY tipsy a few years back. My aunt and I are the only ones that know; even my dad doesn’t.
35. No Escaping The Truth
When my grandmother was 16 years old, my grandfather bought her from her mother. She escaped once, and my great-grandmother came back to live with them to ensure that she would never escape again. My grandfather was 30 years older than my grandmother, and he had a whole other family that lived in a different country.
36. Committed To Finding The Truth
My maternal great-grandmother attempted to off my grandfather shortly after he was born. She was committed to a state asylum for the rest of her life. My grandfather was given up by his father and sent to live in a boys' home and was told his mother lost her life during childbirth.
I discovered all of this while working on my family genealogy. I was able to get my great-grandmother's admission records, and she was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. I can't even imagine the life she lived while in an institution during the 1930s–1950s.
In addition, my maternal grandfather was secretly married and had a daughter before he married my grandmother. I only found this out after a 23andMe DNA test matched me with my cousin, and we found their marriage records.
Sadly, my mother never got to meet her sister since she passed several years prior to this discovery.
37. Jeepers, Creeper
Someone in my family tried to sleep with a friend of mine. He groped her, and when she went home, he kept calling my friend to ask if he could swing by to get busy with her. He was married and had two kids. No one knows except the friend, me, and of course, the guy himself. A few days after that happened, I confronted him.
I was pretty young at the time, and he was ten years older than me. It was a messed up situation to be in at that age. He was crying and kept asking me to keep it a secret. I told him he was a major jerk and needed to apologize to my friend for putting her in that situation, and that if I ever saw him in such a situation again, I'd throw him under the bus by telling his wife.
38. Locked Up
My aunt and uncle took my cousin out of high school and kept him at home for the rest of their lives because he was a paranoid schizophrenic. He used to have violent episodes and hallucinations. They were ashamed of him and never spoke about it to anyone. I didn't find out until I was in my 30s.
I haven't seen him since I was 15, and it is possible he may no longer be alive. His parents and sister are deceased, as well. I am guessing he has had to live in an institution for a long time. What a horrible way to exist.
39. What’s In A Name?
My aunt and uncle couldn’t have children, so they had a friend give them her child. They paid the doctors on the spot to change the names of the parents on the birth certificate so that the boy would be their child legitimately without having to go through adoption.
It was as if he was born to my aunt and uncle, even though he wasn’t.
40. Two-Time Tattler
When I was ten, my cousin passed away. I was told that he was a victim of manslaughter, but when I was 14 years old, my brother slipped up and told me that he actually took his life. I accidentally spilled the beans, not once but twice, to two cousins.
They were brothers, and I had assumed that the one who I had told first, then told the other. They were in their 30s and had been lied to for 20 years.
41. My BFF’s Dad Was A Serial Creep
My sister slept with my best friend's dad in our house. My dad walked in on them and flipped his noodle. All the adults tried to hide it, but I eventually figured it out. The younger me blamed my sister for causing all the rifts, but the older me knew it was my best friend’s dad who was a creep. This wasn't the last time he acted grossly.
He ended up cheating again and got some other young girl pregnant. His wife, who was extremely religious, had the side piece move in and helped raise the kid. It was an odd situation, for sure.
42. He Was No Hero
My grandfather was a Montfort Point Marine. He fought in WWII when they allowed integration. He also fought in Korea as well. He was one of only two gunnery sergeants to make it from his platoon in the Chosin Reservoir. He literally survived by pulling his partner’s body on top of himself to keep firing.
The Netflix documentary The Chosen Frozen was about him and his comrades. He lived to be 98 and passed in 2007. He was buried with high honors in Quantico MB National Cemetery. However, he was also guilty of touching children inappropriately, and my big brother is, in reality, my uncle.
My grandmother adopted him, and an “aunt” was actually his child from his wife’s baby sister. My mother and aunts are extremely mentally and emotionally disordered as a result of his actions.
43. Dishonored At Discharge
My mom was always told that her granddad lost his life in WWII from a head injury. Many years later, she did some genealogy only to discover that he didn’t pass then.
He had been discharged from the service due to mental illness—psychosis of some kind—and my mom’s grandmother was so ashamed of him that she did the unthinkable.
She had him placed in a sanitorium. He lived there unvisited and ignored until he passed in the 90s. My grandmother didn't even know if he was still alive either then. My mom was so angry to find out she could have visited her granddad well into her 20s if she'd known about him.
44. Ring Of Truth
My dad hocked my mom's engagement ring in order to get us kids presents for Christmas one year. My mom thinks that my cousin took the ring and has blamed her for it for 30 years. My dad confessed what he did to me when he was tipsy at the family campout years ago, about four months before he passed.
45. What A Gem!
My grandmother's wedding ring is fake. My grandparents are very religious and Catholic and have been married for almost 60 years. They told me last year that when they got married, they didn't think it was actually going to work out, so they didn't spend money on a real ring. I don't know why they told me or if anyone else knows.
46. The Godfather
It always was weird to me how my ex’s parents had such a happy-looking yet extremely resentful marriage. My ex mentioned several times how sad it made him that his dad continually did things that were to his mother’s disadvantage and disappointment. They were painful for him to watch.
His dad would drive hundreds of kilometers and move mountains for the children, or rather, at least for his sister. For my ex, I am not so sure. It dawned on me that his father did these things on purpose and sabotaged the happiness of his wife. However, I just could not figure out why.
I also always found it weird how everyone in the family looked like they were related, except for my ex, with his thick head and his crooked tooth. One day, he spoke about his godfather who lived in Canada. After his godfather’s wife—his mother’s best friend—passed, he decided to move there and live in solitude.
He spoke about him very highly, how they had such a good relationship, and so on. Then, he sent me a picture, and suddenly it all made sense. His godfather had the same thick head, the same forehead with the same type of wrinkles, the same eye shape, the same chin, and the same crooked tooth.
To this day I am 100% convinced his godfather is his real father, and they probably all know—except for my ex and his sister.
47. Little Orphan Granny
My grandma was raised in a Catholic orphanage under the pretext that she had lost both her parents and siblings during the Spanish influenza outbreak. But the truth was even sadder.
It turned out that she and her dad survived, but her dad didn’t want to take care of her, so he left her at an orphanage in Brooklyn and moved to Europe, where she started a whole new family.
48. Done Like Dinner
My paternal grandmother hated my mother. One day, she called my mom and asked her to come over and pick up a casserole that my grandma had made for us. When she got there, my grandmother had taken her own life—and the note she left was chilling.
Among other things, it said that she wanted my mom to find her that way. She was, shall we say, a messed up lady and one of the meanest people I've ever known.
My mom didn't want people to know because she didn't want that kind of attention. My dad didn't want people to know because he didn't want to give my grandma any level of satisfaction. So, just me, them, and maybe one other person knew what actually went down.
Everyone else thought she was just an old lady who was depressed about her recently deceased husband.
49. Paranoia Will Destroy Ya
My mom lied about how my dad passed. My brother and I were told he had lost his life to cancer. He wrote us each a letter stating his goodbyes, and I still have mine. When I turned 18, the horrifying truth came out.
He lost his life in a murder-suicide with his wife—my stepmom—and her lover, who was also his psychiatrist. It turned out his wife was cheating on him with his doctor. My dad had manic bipolar depression. He was prone to extreme anxiety and paranoia when he was off the correct medication.
The doctor purposely prescribed him medication that worsened his paranoia. My stepmom was the one who initially had the idea about the doctor prescribing the medication in the first place. When he found out about the affair and all the evidence, his already broken mind completely snapped.
He blasted them both and then himself.
50. The Ultimate Sacrifice?
My parents divorced in the mid-60s when I was four years old. Being a broke, single, 26-year-old woman with four children and no family support, my mother married a disturbed, insecure man, most likely out of desperation. It was a terrible mistake.
For the next four and a half years, he terrorized my mother, myself, and my siblings. He was particularly terrible to me as I was my mother's favorite. I was given punishments that were impossible to complete and led to further punishment, physical and emotional torment.
I feared for my life 24/7 as there was no rhyme or reason as to when his explosive anger would erupt. One day my mother went missing. A half-hearted search found nothing, and we were told that she had run away and that if we were good, she might return.
A week or two after her disappearance, my stepfather promptly forged her signature on a second mortgage on the house my grandparents had given my mother, took the money to buy a landscaping business, and went on to destroy several more families. Two years later, my mother’s jawbone was discovered.
We weren't told that our mother was gone until about a year later when my sister confronted our biological father, and he reluctantly admitted it to us. He told my sister, who was about 12 years old at the time, "Don't tell your brothers and sister".
My brother had several volumes of jaw-dropping evidence that would shock any logical person to conclude that my stepfather offed my mother and buried her in the woods above our house. The official report concluded she took her own life, even without a body being found. But when her jawbone was discovered, it was determined she had been buried.
Tucked inside all this incriminating evidence was a statement from a neighbor saying she saw our mother walking up into the woods on the day of her disappearance. I'm of the belief that it's very possible my mother took her life so that our biological father would be forced to take us back.
Perhaps for her, this intervention was the only way she thought possible to keep our stepfather from inevitably harming me any further. This is something I cannot share with my siblings as it would destroy their long-held beliefs about what happened to our mother.
Sources: Reddit
