You might think that you know everything about a person, but as these people learned, you just might find out that you were horribly wrong. When their loved ones passed away, all their secrets finally came out. They tried to take their chilling double lives and shocking betrayals to the grave, but the truth just couldn't be hidden anymore. Get ready to dig deep and uncover the untold tales that escaped tight-lipped tombs.
Family Secrets From Beyond the Grave
1. The Felon Granny
It's disturbing in a way: My great grandmother went into the military after committing a crime, and in the military, she confessed to a judge. He punished her by extending her military contract and forcing her to serve in the war. I never knew what happened until way after she died when I asked my dad about it. My jaw dropped when I learned the truth.
There was a man in her neighborhood who was touching kids and going after boys. My grandma beat the snot out of him when she saw him try to lift two boys.
2. The Victim
All the lies unraveled after my grandfather died. My mom finally admitted that when she was a kid, he'd touch her. I was pretty shocked, especially since my mom didn't seem to carry any kind of baggage from it, though of course I don't know what went and still goes on in her head. Something that made sense though was how she always made sure my brother and I always slept in her room whenever we stayed at Grandpa's place, which wasn't too often.
We were never alone with my grandfather, and we never had a warm or loving relationship with him. He was cold to us and we never really got attached to him, and we visited him maybe once a year. I think my mom felt obligated to have a relationship with him for some reason, but she was always very protective of us and my brother and I were never victims of his.
3. Bad Grandpa
My grandfather killed one of his co-workers when they were installing power poles on roads in Alaska before it was a completed town. He was investigated but they couldn't prove it. I guess he did it because the guy wouldn't pay a $5 debt owed for liquor brought in. My grandfather was a horrible human and he got away with everything.
Until he ended up with colon cancer that he didn't get checked out and he died of cancer weighing about 78 lbs. Alone.
4. The Cheater
My sister’s fiancé died very suddenly and very tragically from a heart attack. She was 20, and he was 23. It turned out that he had an underlying condition. In the months following his death, she found out he had been cheating on her basically since the start of their three-year relationship. Some women were long term and knew about her, others were just casual one-night stands that probably didn't know.
She kind of went off the deep end a little, because now she was not only mourning a man she loved; she also had to deal with this fact without being able to ask him for answers. Silver lining though; she ended up dating and marrying one of his good friends. They sort of bonded in the aftermath of his death. He is the best thing that ever happened to her and vice versa.
They will be married for three years this summer.
5. Paranoid Delusions
I had a brother who had some paranoid delusions (FBI, CIA following him, spying on his apartment, etc.). My brothers and I tried to get him help and he would just have no part of it. After a few years, it seemed like it had gotten better. He stopped bringing it up and we felt like it must have just passed. After he died, we found his journal and it was just horrifying.
Right up until the night he died, he detailed all of the torture that they were inflicting on him. I can't go into much detail—it's hard for me to write about. Briefly, he believed that they were using some type of focused energy beam. They focused on different parts of his body at different times. Every noise that an appliance made was proof of electronic surveillance. Every bump on the wall or person walking in an adjacent apartment was a message from either the "bad" FBI agents or the "good" FBI agents.
It was just incredibly disturbing to read what an awful life he was living inside his mind while acting relatively normal outside.
6. Hidden Truths
My mom was raised by her mom and her stepfather, who touched her inappropriately. Where was dad? He died when she was 11, or at least that's what my grandmother said. This would have been around 1961. Flash forward to 2015 and my sister is doing genealogy work on the family. She finds out my biological grandfather not die in 1961, he died in 2005. But it gets worse.
He had five more daughters, one of which he gave the same name as my mom. So, my mom got cheated out of a potential relationship with her dad by her liar of a mom (who moved and remained hidden from her ex, my mom's real dad). My grandmother moved down to Texas from Virginia to stay in a nursing home and to basically make my mom and dad's life terrible.
We went to visit one weekend and she came over for dinner. I dropped the facts on her that we'd figured out she'd been lying for 50 years. She then had the nerve to act offended. My dad told her to shut up.
7. The Siblings
I have nine siblings. We all share the same father. I only knew about seven of them until my dad died. I found out that two of my "cousins" were actually my brother and sister. My father had cheated on his then-wife with her sister. So those kids were born out of wedlock. When my mother passed, I figured out that my sister (whom I thought we shared the same parents with) was fathered way before they met.
My only full-blood sibling is my twin. I'm only close to him and my sister. The other half-siblings get along well with us but we are not close.
8. A Mother’s Greed
My friend's mom killed her husband. She had taken a $200k life insurance policy out on him six months before he died, and he died from not taking his medication that he'd taken no problem all of his life. My buddy was away for the weekend so he wasn't home when it happened. After his mom died, we found out even more: She'd taken a life insurance policy out on my buddy at some point too, and she'd also forged his signature to sign over $100k my buddy's dad had left to him.
She robbed my buddy blind and he had no clue. She took his inheritance from his grandma too that he'd had no clue about and gave a big chunk of it to her friends/his godparents who used it to buy a beach house... She also faked illnesses to get prescription drugs and had little books filled with info on what she'd sold and how much she'd made from selling them.
9. The Spy
I went through a nasty break up with my oldest kid’s mom that lasted several years. We were never married and she was crazy as heck, so she told the hospital she didn't know our kid's father just so she could have leverage over me. You know, like a sane person does. Years later and after several investigations into child abuse, she lost custody.
Over the next several years, we kept getting oddly specific complaints about things going on in my house and my daughter and her step mom specifically. Dumb stuff like matching clothes or details about how we do time out. Then my mom died. When we switched her Facebook to memorial mode, I saw that she had been talking bad about me for years to my ex and was essentially spying on me for her and twisting information.
I'm guessing it's because she felt bad for a mother that lost her kid, but it was still a jerk move. It's been two years and I still refuse to visit her grave with my siblings; I haven’t shed a tear for her since.
10. The Patriarch
My grandfather passed away last spring. I found out he’d been verbally and sometimes physically abusive to his four sons, and verbally abusive to my grandmother their whole marriage. My grandmother had been making plans to leave him with my father and uncles' help when he fell and broke his back, so she stayed with him until he passed a few months later.
All of this was hidden from myself and the rest of the grandkids. My mom quietly told me a few days after the funeral. I’m concerned she only told me because my father may be doing the same to her, but she denied it when I asked.
11. The Other Family
I had a cousin who died a few years ago. I went to his funeral and was walking around hugging his wife and kids and giving them my condolences when a lady and two teenage boys walked in. Nobody knew who these people were, so of course, my great aunt asked. She claimed to be his wife and the two boys were his sons. Turns out all those week-long work trips he'd been taking weren't actually work trips.
They were trips to see his OTHER family.
12. The Boozer
My grandma (Dad's mom) was one of my favorite people before she died when I was 14 years old. She was extremely sweet, generous, and gave good advice. My brother and I stayed with her and were alone with her all the time, and she never mistreated us or in any way acted unusually. I found out only a couple of weeks ago at 33 years old that she was a severe alcoholic who would get drunk almost daily.
My dad said she would beat him and his brothers when they were kids, and as adults would still say severely psychologically abusive taunts while grinning at their faces. I never had even the slightest idea.
13. The Inheritance
When my grandma died, we discovered that the entire family was willing to screw over her daughter for a bigger slice of the inheritance by going to court with a bunch of accusations. It was just like Hollywood drama, but worse because it was real life. They all had the same (rehearsed) story, so guess what the judge decided... I'm not the type to be greedy for inheritance; my father is worth millions and I don't care if I never see any of it.
The guy is a jerk and I'd rather be self-made. But the family tearing itself in half for $500k? Bunch of idiots.
14. The Autobiography
My grandfather never talked about his life as a teenager; all he told me is that he was raised on the island of Java in the 1940's even though he was German/Dutch in origin. When he passed, he left me the autobiography he wrote for after his death. Apparently, his father was a radio engineer for the Dutch government building long-range radio stations.
He and his siblings were attending a boarding school in the Black Forest in Bavaria. His parents came to visit and discovered he had been forced into the Hitler Youth, and so they grabbed the three siblings and took them to Java. All was well until the Japanese invaded. The Japanese invaded Java and immediately made a beeline to their cottage, as their reconnaissance had told them my great grandfather was a radio engineer.
The Japanese then proceeded to take their family hostage in order to force him to build radio stations to support their invasions. My grandfather was separated from his family at the age of 16 and placed in 6 different prison camps over the course of the war. In 1945, at the end of the war, he was at a prison camp outside of Kyoto.
He was 6'3" (1.9m), 22 years old, and weighed 83 pounds (37.6 kg). The day that the emperor of Japan surrendered and bowed to the Americans, the Japanese army was ordered to surrender to the nearest, highest-ranking Westerner. As my grandfather was the oldest person in his camp, he ended up in charge of the camp and its 300-troop garrison for three days until the US Marines arrived.
He wrote that he had spent those three days trying to travel to see Kyoto since he had been living outside of it for over a year, however, the Marines arrived one day before he was to go there. He was taken to the USS Missouri to be on deck as one of the witnesses to the signing of the Peace Treaty, and then taken to the Philippines to a US naval hospital to try to get him healthy again.
It was there he developed a life-long love of pancakes as that was what they fed him in order to get him back to a healthy weight. I had never known any of that until I read what he left me.
15. Running from Demons
My friend was wealthy and successful; he had it all, and then one day, he told us the awful truth: He had stage 4 cancer. Passed shortly after that. I went to his funeral to find that he had actually taken his family's entire inheritance, ran away, went AWOL and started a life in our country. That's when I had met him. I didn't know about his past.
His elderly parents and sister were distraught upon knowing this dude had married a foreigner and their money was stuck in a lawsuit with no sight of a resolution. It's tainted my memory of him, I used to think he was a generous dude and kept a low profile because of wealth; now we all know he was running from his own demons.
16. An Aunt’s Love Story
When I was 14, my aunt died very suddenly. She was only 37, but she had a lot of health problems (obese, substance issues, alcoholism, etc.) As a family, we tried our best to encourage her to get healthier, but disappointingly, she never listened to us. None the less, she was always happy. Smiling, laughing, and always complimenting me and saying how much she loved our family.
I never understood why someone with such cheer and utter happiness could end up in the situation she was in. While I was spending the night with a distant cousin of mine, we got into a deep conversation about my aunt. We both spoke our feelings about the death, including my confusion for why she had so many problems.
My cousin looked at me with an “oh no, you don’t know?” kind of look. I asked what happened but she hesitated. She asked me to not tell anyone I heard it from her. I said of course and pushed her to tell me. She explained how when my aunt was about 17, her mom (my grandma) had just gotten married to another man.
His brother (let’s call him T) was very close with my aunt. Apparently, they went out to ice cream and looked at fancy cars that he promised to buy her. When my cousin was telling me this, I was confused, because it’s just an uncle and niece type of thing. Why is that so bad? Well, one night, my aunt had to spend the night at T’s house while her parents worked graveyard shifts.
My cousin didn’t exactly know what happened, but it was heavily implied and speculated that they slept together, or even worse, he assaulted her. This was because, after that night, my aunt asked to spend the night over and over again. She basically begged to see T every day. T and her parents eventually got tired of it and said that she wasn’t allowed to go over there again.
T never acted the same around her. He ignored her at family events, didn’t take her out anymore, and never brought her up or even talked about her in conversations. After that, my aunt struggled to find a real boyfriend and even tried experimenting with girls. She never knew what real love was, and it was obvious that it bugged her. She had been played with by this tool and left in the dust.
She eventually got a husband and had a kid, my favorite cousin that I love oh so much. But life wasn’t kind to her. And I guess drinking her life away was her way of coping. It hurts to think that she passed thinking that she was nothing but a waste, when in reality, she was a blessing to everyone who came in contact with her.
I wish I could tell her how much I love and appreciate her.
14. The Godfather
My mom’s cousin died when I was seven. My mom and him were extremely close, he was even the godfather of my little sister. She took his death pretty harshly. I was always told he fell asleep at the wheel. What I found out as I got older was that he had been on and off various substances. He took the wrong concoction and ended up passing out at the wheel while driving.
My mom doesn’t like to talk about much understandably. I just found it so shocking that he had this completely different side to himself that no one really knew.
15. The Mistress Part 2
My father had this secret mistress and when he passed, she had the nerve to show up at his funeral. It was really terrible, but not as terrible as all the stuff we found out later. It turns out that my dad paid all of his mistress' bills, including her college bills for when she went back to school in her early 30s.
The college thing really hurt my mom as she always wanted to get an education for herself but there was never money, or so my dad said...
16. The Garden
There was a woman in my town, and after she died, people were clearing her garden and found what they thought was a model skeleton. Yeah, it wasn't. It was her husband, who went mysteriously missing in the mid-90s. Apparently, she was fairly well-liked in the town and she told everyone her husband ran away with another woman.
She had a really well-kept garden with hard-to-grow orchids, etc. and put a lot of care into it, but was very secretive about it and wouldn't let visitors in there because they might "trample the flowers".
17. Bad Nana
My nana always gave me a kind of uneasy feeling when I was around her—and I didn't adore her or anything, but I definitely thought of her as just a regular old lady up until her death. Then, after she died, my mom confessed to me. My nana used to be a religious zealot, so much so that she would scream at her for hours for having her fly down, or wearing slightly-tight jeans, because she was "inviting the devil" or something.
She would take my mom and her brother into the backyard and force them to brutally beat each other with sticks. And when my mom's brother was killed in a car accident, my nana openly mocked him at the funeral, stating he deserved to die (because he drank underage, I think? Not while driving, he didn't drive drunk. Just... in general).
She was a monster. My mother had to run away at 18 years old. My nana only "calmed down" when my mom had kids, because she'd wanted "grandbabies" and being the forgiving person my mom was, she let her back into her life, on the promise she never did to us what she'd done to her. My mom may have forgiven her, but I haven't.
She didn't really change, on the inside... and looking back I can see just how much my nana's abuse shaped my mother's life/mental health for the worse, how she never ended up recovering in the end. Awful. I wish I could tell my mom what I know now about trauma and all that. I wish we could really talk about it now that I'm an adult, but it's too late for that now.
18. Family Drama
My cousin, only a few months older than me (in her mid-30s), died tragically in really unexpected circumstances. We weren’t hugely close, but it was a real shock and has really messed up her immediate family. About six months after she died, I found out that my police officer brother had randomly pulled her over and breathalyzed her. She was well over the limit.
She had drunk driving charges brought against her. This was about a year before she died. But because she and her family are kind of stuck up and “perfect”(not the type of people to accept that they might be alcoholics), they tried to claim my brother made the reading up because of a (non-existent) family grudge and tried to have him charged with misconduct and fired.
It wasn’t successful but it made his life pretty miserable for a while. Her family don’t know I know, but you can imagine that I’m pretty conflicted over telling them how messed up they are versus recognizing the impact her death has had on them and not adding to their troubles.
19. The Work Incident
I've never actually told anyone this. My dad passed away about 20 years ago when I was 15 years old. He worked putting in skylight glass for big buildings like malls and stuff. Anyway, according to the details, one of the crates on the forklift was tipping and he tried to stop it; no one came to help and it crushed him. That's what we kids were told...
It wasn't until three years ago I found out through a guy Dad worked with that no one was even there on the job but said guy and my dad. They were closing up shop. My dad had been discussing things like suicide with this guy. When the guy turned his back... my dad shot himself in the head. There was no forklift accident. He wasn't crushed.
The guy made it look that way so we kids would end up with an inheritance and a lump sum payment. I freaking cried for days. Thank you Clark, for setting all that up. You didn't have to change our lives for the better. But you did.
20. The Arsonist
My uncle on my mom's side went missing around January 7, 2000. When my cousin Adrian went looking for him, he found him in his closet with a belt around his neck. After that, everyone pieced it together based on weird conversations and his behavior, that it was my uncle who had set fire to my family's apartment's front door about a week prior, December 30, 1999.
That fire left my family psychologically and physically scarred—and my mother dead. Apparently, my parents were fed up with giving him booze-and-smokes money.
21. The Gift of Debt
After my father died a few years ago, we learned that he had taken out about $40k of loans in my name. We share the same initials (and surname obviously). He forged my signature, and kept on applying for loans and credit, got approved and never paid a single dime back. Seeing as he was the main contact, no-one ever called me to ask me why I wasn't paying my debt... so only after he died, we got contacted by institutions informing us that my father owes them money, just to find out it was actually on my name...
So now my credit record is screwed due to years of payments not being made and I need to pay back all of these loans. Fun times, right?
22. The OG Hot Priest
My grandfather had an entirely different last name than we thought, and he was actually a bad boy Catholic priest! After he shacked up with my grandmother and had a bunch of children with her, he just never told the rest of his family. They thought he was living the chaste life. Um, nope.
23. The Journal
My mom passed 15 years ago, but I only found her rehab journal a few months ago. In it, she talked about how she was in love not with my dad, but some guy she met at a gastric bypass support group. I'm not sure if my dad ever read the journal and found out, but him and his husband are living the life now and I'm definitely not going to bring it up.
24. The Linguist
My grandma died last year, and after the funeral, the family congregated at my grandpa's house to spend time together. My aunt asked me about my studies and I talked about some research I was doing on the Gaelic language. My grandpa, sitting in the same room, piped in, "Oh, I spoke that with Grandma and Grandpa [his parent’s names] back in the day" and I just kind of stopped and asked him if he was serious.
He was, and apparently none of my aunts or uncles had known either and were just as flabbergasted. He'd never spoken a word of it around them for 60+ years. Apparently, he didn't speak it because my grandma worried that if they knew he wasn't totally integrated to American life (AKA English), they might not have let them adopt my mom, aunts, and uncles.
25. The Matriarch
We always thought something was up with my nan. She always kind of shunned any females in the family. Her sons and grandsons were like gold to her. Wives and granddaughters were treated like rubbish. Wasn't until she died a few years back that it came out that she had been abusing her sons and possibly some of her grandsons.
One of my uncles ended up going to prison for assaulting all three of his children, two sons and a daughter. Tore his family apart. When my nan was dying, our uncle never left her side; he organized the funeral and seemed more cut up over it than anyone else. He was the favorite son. Totally gives me the creeps.
26. The Betrayal
She had been cheating on me all throughout our marriage. When the shock subsided, it was replaced by rage and betrayal. I lost it and I just started destroying and trashing everything of hers. The only thing I didn't destroy or throw away was her urn. I gave that to her parents. I seriously thought about flushing her ashes down the toilet, but I decided not to.
I completely got over her in record time.
27. The Grandparents
I recently found out that my grandfather did not treat my grandmother very kindly. He died about 18 years ago, and my grandmother died about seven years ago. Recently, I was talking to my dad (who always knew about how his dad treated his mom) and found out that he always put her down. On top of that, he always insulted her and my aunt.
I guess he wanted a son but was not too pleased when their first child was a daughter and their second child who was a boy was stillborn. I guess he blamed my grandma for that as well.
28. The Lazy Step-Dad
My stepfather was getting more and more tired, falling asleep during the middle of the day, sneaking off for a nap... really ticked off my mother and I. We were helping him renovate a house at the time and we didn't appreciate him always dozing off. A while later, he got diagnosed with bladder and kidney cancer, which had already spread too far to be treatable. We only really realized after his death last spring that he was tired all the time because his cancer was already slowly killing him.
I didn't always get along with him, and I regret a lot of things I said to him. I just thought he was being lazy, I never thought he'd be dead within three years.
29. The Second Eldest Aunt
After my grandad passed, my great aunt told me that he was responsible for the death of their baby sister. She said that when he was young, he picked the baby up, but because he was so small, he dropped her and she hit her head. When we went to clear out the house, we found a ton of family documentation, including birth and death certificates for the family.
It turns out the little girl died of whooping cough. I was like, what? It turns out that my aunt let my grandad go to his grave believing he was responsible for the death of his baby sister. I can just never get my head around why.
30. Disturbia
A neighbor was a somewhat off guy who nobody really liked, but he was not hated either. He died well into his 70s of natural causes. A young couple bought his house and every item in it, because his relatives did not want to clean it up. They discovered surveillance cameras everywhere, watching the whole street—which is highly illegal in Germany. And that was just the beginning.
Finally, they found a room which was hidden behind a concealed door. This room contained lots of surveillance documents and loads of Reichsbürger propaganda, basically a far-right conspiracy. He was one of them; prepared to retake Germany from the usurpers of the German Reich.
31. Ignorance is Bliss
I had the best grandpa growing up. Like the typical movie grandpa. He was perfect. He spoiled us like crazy; great corny jokes and he always had crazy silly stories. He always saved the day. Just the best man I knew. After he passed, one of my aunts told me and my little sister he had cheated on my grandma with her own sister multiple times. We never knew.
I wish she never told us.
32. The Second Life
My grandfather was Polish. He fought in WWII in the Allied forces after escaping to occupied Italy. Later, he came to the UK and met my grandmother, with whom he had an unbelievably troubled relationship, and five kids. He died when my dad was 14. My dad and his brothers found some old projector films in the attic. One of them changed everything.
It was a slideshow that appeared to depict my grandfather in a suit, next to a woman in a wedding dress, standing at an altar. The guy had been married already, in Poland. We don't know what happened to his first wife, but now we know why he was estranged from his Polish family.
33. The Mother-in-Law
My grandma died when I was 10 years old. It took a decade but my mother and my other grandma (my mom's mom) have started opening up for the first time about what a terrible jerk my grandma was. She was apparently the worst mother-in-law for my mom. My mom and dad got married at 21 years old because my mother got unexpectedly pregnant with me.
Apparently, my grandma visited my mother before the wedding and asked her to please not marry my father in church, because if you get married in church, that marriage is before God and you can only do that once. My grandma wanted her son to keep that marriage before God "for when he finds the real love of his life."
There are many more stories like this about her and I was baffled.
34. Psycho Granny, Qu'Est-Ce-Que C'est?
When I was about 31 years old, I found out my maternal grandmother, who practically raised me, killed my grandfather. I was doing research trying to build out a family tree and wanted to find out about my grandfather who died about four years before I was born. We never really talked about him or how he died. I found an article about his death in 1978 and had found a corresponding police report number for an arrest of my grandmother in the same year.
I didn’t immediately put the two together, but once I did, I put in a FOIA request for the case file. Apparently, my grandfather was in ill health, had a few strokes and needed A LOT of assistance; assistance my grandmother grew tired of. One day, he was sitting in his chair and she just snapped and stabbed him numerous times, killing him.
She was arrested, tried, and eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity. She spent some time in an institution, only to be let out in 1981, the year before I was born, to move in with my family. As she lived in our home, she basically raised me from a child. She was the sweetest lady in the world and this SHOOK me.
When I asked my dad if it was true and how he could let her alone in our home with me as a child, his response was, “Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, you turned out alright.”
35. No Love Lost
My father died in the fall of ‘09. The day after the funeral while singing his praises, it turns out he completely disowned my siblings and myself in his will. Imagine being three children, paraded around by your uncles, telling stories about the "good times," to then be told that he didn’t love you and you would receive no financial support. We were devastated.
Our mother was there, as she always has been. She is our rock. At that point, that’s when my sister and I decide to completely cut off our father’s manipulative side of the family.
36. Grandma’s Good Graces
After my mother passed away, at the wake, her oldest sister screamed at their father (my grandpa), “It should’ve been you!” Granted, she was grief-stricken and he’d been ill, so she could be forgiven. But then my grandma said something even worse. She went, “Thank God it wasn’t Mary.” Mary is my mom’s second oldest sister, who was the favored child of all my grandma’s other children.
37. Back from the Dead
My grandmother had three brothers fight on the Eastern Front in WWII. A fourth brother was 13 years old, and a mandatory member of the Hitler Youth. He was conscripted to fight in Berlin against the Soviets. They gave him a gun, put him in an apartment building to fight, and a few hours later one of those Soviet rocket trucks came down the street and unloaded rockets.
Seeing this, without firing a shot, he dropped his gun, walked outside and surrendered. 20 years later, after my grandmother's family had already had a funeral for him, he showed up back in town unexpectedly. Somehow (he has not explained to anyone how he did this) he escaped from a gulag in Kazakhstan and came back to West Germany.
He's still alive, and he didn't let the town take up his gravestone. His stone says 1932-1945 because, as he put it, "Werner died in 1945, the man I am now was born in 1945."
38. The Death Certificate
I lost my father when I was 10 years old, and I was told he had a heart attack. Fast forward eight years; I was applying for a passport and needed parental documents. My mother was out of town so I went through the documents cabinet to get his death certificate. As I read it, I burst into tears. He died of HIV. It broke my heart, but my mother has always been kind to me so I decided to not tell her that I knew.
This was ten years ago and she still doesn’t know that I know.
39. Dad’s Secret Life
Before he went into the army, my dad was, um, kind of wild. He was bi and secretly dated men, and he blew thousands of dollars 0n Hustlers-esque nights out. But the biggest revelation was that he had an affair with a married woman who was separated from her husband. When he came back on leave, she had their illegitimate son. He decided not to pursue anything with it since he was young and enlisted, and she had reconciled with her husband.
So, I've got a much older half-brother out there.
40. Past Friends
For this story to work, it's important that you know my name's Alice. So when my father died, I was sitting around at the wake, just kind of thinking to myself out loud. I told my mother, "It sucks that I never got a chance to meet the other Alice." My mother was like "What are you talking about?" So, I told her that our father, her husband for the past several decades, named all three of his daughters after three of his ex-girlfriends.
All I know about the ex I'm named after is that she had red hair. My sister confirmed this and said she knew about it too. My mother just sat there dumbfounded, but she found it amusing in the end and was not hurt by it at all. It was just my father's way of being kind to past friends.
41. The Ally
After my nana’s death, I found out that her marriage to my papa was a complete lie. It turns out that she only married my papa and had three kids with him all as a cover story for him being gay. This was during a time of LGBT violence in America. The kicker is, they really pulled off the married couple routine and I think they were genuinely compatible and happy together.
42. The Hypocrite
I found out that my father (at least in part encouraged by my stepmom) had been fraudulently using my social security number on a variety of loans and credit cards. I'm a junior, so nothing was red-flagged for most of this stuff, apparently. I still am trying to clean up a certain amount of the messes he made, though things have tailed off since he's been dead for over a decade.
I still struggle with the fact that the man who preached honesty and integrity to me as a child, and who beat the ever-loving heck out of me when I transgressed even slightly, would do something like this. I realized after his death that he was both a narcissist and a bit of a sociopath, but still... it's hard to reconcile at points.
43. The Missing Magazines
My brother died in a car accident when he was 16 years old. My mom shut the door to his bedroom after his funeral and no one could bear to pack up his belongings. After about a year my dad decided it was time to clean up the room, donate some stuff and decide what to keep. Me and our oldest brother were asked to do it, my parents just couldn't.
I had been going in his room throughout the year, dusting and vacuuming and sometimes watching TV on his bed (not going to lie, I would talk to him in there) so I was ok with it. So, we get started cleaning up; it’s a slow process because we are looking at everything, talking etc. We get to cleaning out the closet, and my brother is pulling down books, and starts busting out laughing and crying.
He starts pulling down a bunch of hidden playboy magazines that our brother had been stealing from him. Not a huge bombshell, but our brother was pretty shy and quiet, not the sneaky kind that would steal. So, when my big brother’s playboys went missing, he assumed it was his idiot friends. It provided some comic relief we needed.
44. Missed Moments
My father talked about how he was there with my mom for her last dying breath. It wasn't true. My brother-in-law (who was abusive and crazy) was searching for his wife (my sister) because she had been away from the house too long. He called my father in a freak-out-panic trying to figure out where she was, assuming that she was somewhere cheating.
While my father was trying to calm him down, my mother passed away. When my father came back to my mother, she was gone. When my brother-in-law died a few years later, I was surprised that my father didn't seem that upset. Before my father died a few years after that, he told me why. I was in my mid-30s.
45. The Mistress
I received a phone call from my late husband’s girlfriend the day of his funeral. She was phoning his cell phone which I had turned off while he was in the hospital. She told me that my husband had been paying her rent for the last year. The bank had recently foreclosed on our house. I had no idea he was unfaithful to me, but she knew all about me.
46. Didn't See That Coming
One of my good friends was shot last year. He was one of the nicest guys I knew, he always called everyone he knew, checked up on them, made sure everyone was okay and was really supportive of everyone. Move forward a week or two after his death, and someone was arrested due to a murder that happened a few days before my friend’s.
Turns out the guy who was arrested was the cause of multiple crimes (yet he had perfect alibis for everything); except we later found out that my friend was working for him and was getting paid 5-10k per person. No one saw it coming but everything soon made sense...
47. Great-Grandpa's Secrets
When my great-grandma passed away last year, we found a photo album she had hidden in a closet. It was full of photos from WWII, and the images were utterly haunting. We don’t know for sure because she never talked about it, but from the photos, it looked like my great-grandpa fought for the Germans and they lived quite the lavish life during the war. We do know that my great-grandpa was captured in France and when the war ended, they came to Canada.
Neither of them ever talked about the details. My mom and I tried googling my great-grandpa’s name, although we suspect he changed it when coming over. We found records of his brother who died in battle but none of him. As someone who loves history, I found it very interesting. For all we know, they could have been forced into joining.
Although my mom feels that they both supported that party just from what she remembers of their personality and the odd comments they would say.
Public Domain Pictures
Sources: Reddit,
