Some dark histories are better left buried. These Reddit tales show how a short conversation with mom or dad can turn your entire life upside down. From secret siblings to hidden family fortunes, some of these stories are downright tearjerkers. Be warned: after reading this, you may want to tell your parents to keep their secrets to themselves.
1. Stain Of Glory
When I was little—maybe five or six—my family stayed at my uncle’s house one night. My sister and I were snooping around and we found a framed t-shirt with a massive stain on it. We asked my uncle why he had a t-shirt framed with a stain on it, and were told it was from a milkshake. We were young enough to believe that.
When I was like 15, I was told that the stain was actually from when my uncle was on a date one night. A thief grabbed his date's handbag, so he ran after the guy. He did not know the thief had an accomplice who was hiding around a corner. The accomplice emerged and knifed my uncle in the neck. My uncle nearly lost his life that day but is thankfully still around and being very cool to this day.
2. Dad Checks Up On Daughter
When I was 20 years old my brother let me know that I was adopted. Everyone in the family—I'm the youngest of five—knew and kept it a secret. It turns out my mom and birth mom are distant cousins. My birth dad was in a biker gang and he and my mom both had addiction problems and had absolutely no clue how to care for a baby.
After I found this out, I saw some pictures of my birth dad, I was shocked. Turns out I recognized him. He was a regular in the restaurant I worked at the year before I found out about being adopted. He was always very kind to me and told me he knew some of my distant family but left it at that. It turns out he wasn’t there for the food, he just wanted to see who his daughter was and know that I was turning out ok.
3. Try The Gentle Cycle Next Time
When I was eight, I got a cat named Toes. She was a big, fluffy, gray, long-haired kitty with white feet. A really sweet kitty. I went away to visit my grandparents for the weekend and when I came home, my mom broke the news to me that Toes had been hit by a car and passed. I was terribly upset, but mom took me to a shelter and we adopted a new kitty almost right away.
Many years later, when I was probably 21, my mother called me and sounded very upset. She said she had something to tell me. It turns out that Toes had not been hit by a car that weekend. He had, instead, climbed into the warm clothes dryer to sleep and mom didn't see him and loaded the dryer with a blanket she had washed. She then found Toes when she opened the dryer an hour later.
4. Landlord Disappeared
My dad's mom and his grandma, my grandmother and great-grandmother, stepped in and arranged to move my family—dad, mom, me, and my two siblings—into a ranch-style home in a nice suburb. They also arranged for my dad to attend night school to become an electrician. He previously worked at golf courses in the clubhouse or pro shop.
My mom worked in various retail jobs when us kids were very small. My folks had always rented, and the house we were staying in was a rundown shack with a terrible landlord. So, my dad's mom wanted to help us improve our lives. They wanted our family to have a chance at homeownership and just a generally better quality of life.
When I became an adult, mom revealed to me that, as they were getting ready to move, they were quite far behind on the rent. They were stressing about how they'd pay it back on top of the new house payments. Well, that is until the landlord suddenly stopped harassing them. No more phone calls, never showed up at the door again. Just gone.
So, my parents just kinda shrugged it off, eventually forgetting the debt. The truth was absolutely horrific. It turned out that the landlord had fallen down a well and perished before he was found. Mom and dad eventually heard about it a couple of months after we moved into the new house. It turned out the next of kin couldn't locate the rental agreement, so couldn't prove anything as far as the back rent.
5. Serious PTSD
My dad always had weird behavior around toy pistols and stuff like that. He seemed to be afraid of them. It was only when I was 18 years old that my mom decided to tell me the reason. My dad was 15 years old and he was hanging out with a bunch of friends at one of their houses. Everyone was having a good time until the worst thing imaginable happened.
The kid whose house they were at suddenly went upstairs, grabbed his father's pistol, and came back down calling everyone's attention. He then put the pistol to his head, squeezed the trigger, and collapsed behind a couch. They all thought it was some sort of sick joke at first until they looked over the couch and saw his body and the blood.
I'm amazed how my dad turned out to be such a great man having to experience something awful like that at such a young age, but according to him, it's something that never left him either. He still has nightmares about it and gets really uneasy in movies and TV shows when they show someone getting shot in the head.
6. A Stranger In The House
The secret is not revealed yet, but when I was in college and my parents got divorced, my dad gave me all the information on what to do if he passes. He told me where things are, and had me go to his bank to sign a document for access to his account after he passes. When we were leaving the bank, he looked at me very seriously and said something so ominous—I'll never forget it.
“Your mother is not who you think she is. Everything you need to know is in my deposit box.” I have no clue what he could be talking about—he never elaborated—and my mom laughed it off when I told her about it. Guess I’ll find out one day.
7. She’s Not My Daughter
When I was 24 years old, I went with my father to have our wills and other important documents updated. That is when he told me that if he passed, "someone" may come claiming to be his daughter, but that it wasn't true and instructed me on how to properly defend his estate from such an event. He wouldn't give me any details though, and I just dropped it.
Then, about a year ago, the supposed daughter found and contacted me on Facebook. I didn't respond at first, because I thought it was some junk friend request, but they also contacted my mother, who verified that it was who they said they were. So, yeah, I had a short conversation with her through Messenger. She sounded honest enough, but I was cautious and skeptical.
That’s when I brought it up to my father, who got really really mad and told me the following...
Basically, my father moved away from his dysfunctional, poor family in Florida to Texas where he had a job lined up. He was out on his own and finally making money, though not much. I don't know how he met this woman, but they did get together and got married within a short time. She was quick to move in and share everything with him.
The woman soon got pregnant and my presumed sister was born. My father loved her. In fact, I recently found pictures of the two of them together, and he was definitely happy. Then "something" happened. From my father’s rantings, I can piece together that his wife took almost everything he earned, ran up a lot of credit debt, and that sort of thing.
When he complained to her about it, her family started threatening him. To quote him, "they were the type of people, who would show up at your work causing trouble, and destroy your car as they left, just because they didn't like you." Now, by this time his daughter was almost three years old, and besides these supposed events, they had been living happily the entire time.
Surprisingly, it was his wife who started the divorce. Her family had money, and my father—who was alone—did not, and they went hard on him in false accusations. My father was still fighting though, but when it looked like he might "win", they claimed that his daughter was not his and how his wife had always been sleeping with some other man.
It was apparently convincing enough that my father still believes that to be true to this day. There was never a paternity test—as far as I know, anyway—but my father apparently signed away any claim to be her father and he wasn't ordered to pay any child support. But that wasn’t the last we heard of her. No, not at all.
According to my mother, his supposed daughter would show up at our house or apartment alone occasionally, trying to talk with my father, even once on my 9th birthday—though I don't remember her. However, that strikes me as a little odd, as she couldn't have been more than 12 years old at the time. I guess someone would've had to know where we lived and driven her there.
We are still friends on Facebook, but we kind of have an understanding that we may or may not be brother and sister. The only way we would know for sure is to have a sibling paternity test, which could let us know within a reasonable probability, but not for certain, unless my father participated too. And we pretty much decided that we couldn't put him through that as he seems to be very traumatized by whatever happened back then.
She is a mother and has a caring family now though. Supposedly, her mother remarried, then something happened to her mother, who's no longer in her life. Her step-father took her in, and she hasn't had any contact with her biological family. I suppose that is part of the reason why she wanted to get to know my father, he is the only one she knows that could be her biological father.
8. Quick Clean To Save Feelings
When I was a kid, my dad built an animal enclosure for our bunnies, guinea pigs, chinchillas, and hamsters. One morning I went outside and saw the enclosure was moved to the dirt and all the animals were gone! It looked like they dug under the gate and ran away. I thought that’s what happened but over 10 years later I was told the truth.
My mom told me that some psycho teenagers opened the cage and let their dog loose and it destroyed all our animals. She said that on that fateful morning, she and my dad had to quickly clean all the blood and body parts before any of us woke up. That’s one of the reasons we moved. I wish I never knew that.
9. And They Did Not Live Happily Ever After
There was a story growing up about how a local prince wanted to marry me and offered things like cows for my hand in marriage. When my father passed I went to my home country and met cousins I had not met before. It turned out the Prince was actually the president of my country's son, and it wasn't an offer, it was a demand.
We apparently snuck out of the country because, once I was of age, he was determined to make me his wife—bear in mind, I was a toddler. My mom eventually filled in the back story. The company my dad worked for had to smuggle us out of the country. My life was so exciting when I was six.
10. A Pay It Forward Secret
My Grandparents had moved the family around a bit before settling down here in Hawaii when my parents were very young: Mainland US, Europe, and Africa. One day, my siblings and I went over to my grandpa's house and there was a gentleman there who I've never seen before. He seems familiar with my grandparents and seems like an old foreign university acquaintance.
After dinner, this stranger takes me and the other grandkids aside privately and sits us down. We were all like "What's happening and who exactly is this guy?" Then he just erupts into tears. He then goes on a massive rant about how amazing my grandfather is. During his travels, my grandfather was teaching English to children in Nigeria.
While there, the village "assigned" him an unpaid laborer to take care of the day-to-day chores. The laborer did things around the house like doing laundry, defending my dad against snakes, and making sure my toddler father didn't step into a trail of army ants. Anyway, that laborer had a bunch of kids. Apparently, my mild-mannered anorexic-looking grandpa has spent the last 40 plus years sending money to this laborer.
The laborer used the money for his kids and it helped send them to school and college. Now, the eldest son—who was the stranger we were talking to—is a doctor with a family of his own. I was kind of amazed. My Grandpa had kept that close to the vest for over 40 years. Talk about humility.
11. Father Drains Account
My dad used to take all of my Christmas and birthday money—my brother’s too—for our “college fund.” He told us we wouldn’t have access to the account until we turned 18. The day before my older brother’s 18th birthday, our old man drains the account and buys a new car—for himself. He told us that was always the plan and that if we wanted to go pay for school we’d better go get jobs.
Please never do this to your kids. It will probably contribute to trust issues, but I wouldn't know. I can't afford therapy.
12. Homewrecker Revealed
My mom's parents divorced not long before I was born, then two years later my grandfather remarried a woman I’ll call Patty. Then, my biological grandmother passed, so, when I was growing up, my grandfather's new wife, Patty, was basically my grandmother. Now, Patty is a little weird. She means well but tends to put her foot in her mouth and ask people weirdly personal questions. Still, she's family, so whatever.
Except, growing up, my mom and her two siblings hated Patty. When I was younger it was kind of minor, just occasional snide comments behind her back, but as I got older it became increasingly clear that they couldn't stand the woman. It was always so odd to me—yeah she was a goof, but whatever, lots of people in our family had quirks.
Then, when I was in my 20s, my grandfather passed. As I was sitting down with my mom, going over some old photos of my grandad, there was a picture of Patty that my mom immediately made a rude comment about. I finally asked, "Why do you guys hate her so much?" My mom looked at me, confused, then realization dawned on her. "Oh, we never told you, did we?"
So, it turned out that the reason my biological grandparents got divorced was because my grandfather had been cheating on my grandmother with Patty. This had been going on for more than a decade before the divorce. My mother and her siblings didn't hate her because she was weird, they hated her because she was a homewrecker.
It seemed kind of unfair to me that they directed all their hate at Patty since my grandfather was just as, if not more, guilty, but I guess that's what people do. The funeral I think actually kind of gave my Mom and her siblings a chance to put those bad feelings to rest, because after it, they all started being a lot nicer and more civil towards Patty.
13. Best. Dad. Ever.
This secret was revealed to me not when I reached adulthood, but when I was still a child. You see, when I was young, my father bought me a baby doll which I loved very much. In fact, I still have that doll now and I’m 28 years old. But there was something about this doll I never knew until one day, a month after my father’s passing, my mother told me a secret that floored me.
Apparently, when my dad had bought me the doll, he actually bought three other identical dolls and didn’t tell me. His plan was that when the one I was using had gotten damaged, he’d secretly replaced her with a new one. He did this three times and I never knew. I’m surprised I didn’t even notice when he switched the dolls.
So, my dad kept that secret from me and had planned to reveal it on my wedding day. He’d also kept the old dolls and was going to return them to me. Sadly, he passed before he could reveal it to me himself.
14. Babysitting Boss
My mom regularly says things without thinking and will reveal truths she forgot she told me about. When I was a kid, her boss would babysit me at her work so she didn’t have to get daycare. He would always put on the Horton Hears A Who VHS and let me look through his rock collection. He was great and we thought of him as family. So, when he passed from illness after we moved, I was very bummed.
A few years later, I was at my mom’s house, and something reminded me of him. I mentioned him to my mom and she says: “Oh yeah, it’s so crazy that he took his own life.” I told my mom that she was wrong, that he’d gotten sick. Then she told me the truth. They’d lied about his illness and he’d actually hung himself. It was very sad that someone who brought so much joy to my life was going through such a struggle and I never knew.
15. Game Console Bubble Burst
My mom and dad were in high school when they had me. They were broken up and on bad terms before I was even born. My dad moved to California for the Marines and school. I stayed in the South with my mom. My grandmother—my dad's mom—stepped in to fill the void my dad left and helped my mom raise me. My dad was the classic estranged father.
I'd maybe see my dad for a few days every year or two, but by the time I was close to becoming a teenager, there'd be years between visits. When I was younger, I always had him on a pedestal even though I hardly ever saw him or spoke to him. But I could always count on hearing from him when a new game console came out.
I've been a huge gamer my entire life, so my dad would always buy and send whatever the newest console/gaming innovation was at the time. It's always been our thing, starting with a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Gold all the way to the PS4 Pro. Even over the last few months, he had been talking about getting me the new Xbox.
My grandmother passed last month, so I've had to see and speak with my dad a lot more than usual. He told me he had been having trouble finding an Xbox but assured me that it would happen once everything settled down. I was talking with my Mom afterward and I mentioned the conversation in passing. She couldn’t help herself...and spilled a secret that broke my heart.
She told me that my grandmother had been buying everything for me and my dad was just taking the credit.
16. A Secret To Protect
When I was a kid, I used to be friends with the woman next door, who was about 20 years old. I’ll call her Anne. Anne was my best friend because she would read to me, or play with me or take me for walks. One morning, I woke up and her dad was at my house and gave me a painting she made. Then my parents told me that Anne had to move to another city for work and she left me the painting to remember her.
Sometime later, we moved to another city, but then we returned, years after when my dad passed. I was surprised that Anne’s dad and sister were still living there. They told me the horrible truth about dear Anne. Anne hadn’t moved for work, she’d perished in a car accident back then. They decided to lie to me because they didn’t want to hurt me.
Public Domain Pictures
17. Heroes Aren’t Perfect
When I was 16, I got my learner's permit and I decided to test for my license at 17. I had just gotten my motorcycle working and wanted to be able to ride it, but I needed the driver's license portion to attach the endorsement to. Once I had my license, my mom told me that I got one free call: she didn't care what state I was in, or how messed up I was. It didn't matter, she would come pick me up no questions asked.
About a month after that, I got a call from her at like 9 pm and she said she went out with a few friends and accidentally drank too much and needed me to come get her. Because she gave me one free call, she figured that she should also get one free call. This was weird because she never drank while growing up. She had one bottle of something or other on the top of the fridge and it was there since I could remember.
I said sure and took a bus out to the restaurant, so I could drive the car back. While in the car she started to tell me about her night with friends and how nice it was to go out. I could tell that she definitely had way too much by how she talked. Then she said something that I will never forget.
"Alice, you were my biggest mistake. I had you hoping to save the marriage with your father, if I had known children were career enders, I wouldn't have let my family push me into having a child. I would have focused on being happy instead." Then she kind of mumbled a bit and fell asleep. I was upset but I managed to get home safely and carry my mom to her bed.
I spent the night with a pack of razors thinking to myself that if I did something bad, it would only make her sacrifice a waste. The next morning when she woke up, she asked me what happened the previous night and I told her she called me from the restaurant, so I took a bus and drove her home in her car so she wouldn't have to go back to get it. I was thanked and she told me that I was the best kid ever.
About a month later, I asked if she ever regretted having children and she told me her kids were the light of her world. And that's when I realized: The secret she revealed to me is how we as a society treat ourselves and others. We avoid hard conversations and we avoid owning up to mistakes. We shy away from grief and sadness and topics on negative emotions make us uncomfortable.
It's far easier to just lie and pretend nothing is wrong than to acknowledge the feelings we have. We hide in ignorance and thrive in recklessly abandoning honesty. I also learned that growing up, our parents are our heroes. She survived 2008 with multiple kids, working in the housing industry. I always considered her my hero, and I still do. But I also learned that day that heroes aren't perfect.
18. Dissing Kathy
When I was a kid, my dad would take my brother and me to a woman named Kathy’s house. Kathy would buy us computer games and stuff so, of course, we loved her at the time. The weird thing was that my mother really hated Kathy and I never understood why. When I turned 18 my mom told me the secret about Kathy: She was having an affair with my dad.
Weirdly, Kathy ended up marrying my dad's best friend. As an adult, I was never nice to her and my dad would give me grief about it. I finally told him that I knew about her and that mom had told me everything. He just said, "Oh, alright then." He never gave me trouble about it again.
19. DNA Test Reveals Secret
For no good reason besides curiosity, my sister decided to take a DNA test to get some insight into her ancestry. She got her results back and had zero percent Italian—even though our dad is 100% Italian. My sister didn’t confront my parents right away and instead decided to wait until I took the test and received my results.
Four weeks later, I got my results back and sure enough, I also had zero percent Italian. The test actually identified my biological father, who isn’t my dad. My parents finally revealed the secret when my sister intentionally let it slip that the two of us were waiting for our DNA results. I’m 38 and it had never once come up. However, my parents' reasoning completely shocked us.
My parents had had fertility issues and went to a sperm bank. I’m honestly not sure they ever would have said anything.
20. Secret Saint
My grandfather was a small business owner who everyone always thought of as extremely frugal due to growing up poor. Later, we found out he spent a significant amount of money on charitable causes and helped a lot of his employees with financial and in one case trouble with the law. This was a positive secret, but it was definitely a secret.
21. Visit Cut Short
When I was seven, my dad lived in a different country for work and so my eight-year-old brother and I went to visit him for two weeks. Well, we were supposed to stay two weeks, but I recall not staying over a week. Other people from my family came to get us late at night, and after a day or two, we flew back home.
No one told us why we were going home early. Once we arrived home, my mom and a lady from the school sat us down at the kitchen table and announced that our father had passed. My mom told us that it was due to some medical reasons or whatever, but it’s only years later that I found out the truth.
When I was 21 or 22, my father’s son from another marriage, who I’d only seen as a kid, suddenly came back briefly into my life. He told me that my dad had actually passed from gunshots while he was at work in his office. So, my mom didn’t actually tell me herself, and when I told her that I knew, she was upset at my stepbrother for telling me the truth about my father’s demise.
22. I’ll Take Cherished Moments For 200
When we were young, my parents would sit with me and my sister each night and we would team up, boys against girls, and play Jeopardy along with the show. We had the best times. Of course, I always won with my dad, but we let my mom and sis win every now and then. Great memories of my childhood were made. We would laugh and get mad and taunt each other.
I later found out that my parents had been getting high before each show—every night for years. I think they were having more fun than I was.
23. Two Massive Shocks
Around when I was 14, my dad sat me and my brother down and revealed that we had an older half-sister. I thought he was joking at first, but essentially before he and my mom got together he had a relationship with another woman. When he broke up with her, she immediately moved away and blocked all contact. What my father didn’t know was that she’d been pregnant when they broke up.
So, this wasn’t my dad waiting until we were old enough to know, he actually found out around the same time we did. My half-sister messaged him through Facebook and revealed she was his child. This was a massive shock for him, and then he got another one: he also had a grandchild from her—aged two.
24. Waiting For The Big Reveal
My mom has a secret that I feel I should have been told about when I became an adult, but that conversation hasn't happened yet. A long time ago, I learned that she had a different family before she had ours. Apparently, she just up and left them. No warning was given to them from my understanding. Some point thereafter, she met my dad and started a family again.
I figure she had to have been divorced to marry my dad, based on state laws, but I don't know. I have questions for sure, but because she has never mentioned it, I haven't either. Since we're really close, I'm hoping one day she'll share that story with me. But for now, I know what I know.
25. Burial Goes Awry
A relative had a horse when I was little and I thought it was my horse. One day it passed and was buried. I wasn't told at the time what really happened. It turns out, when they dug the hole, they didn't dig it deep enough. They didn't realize this until the horse was in the hole with all four legs sticking stiffly out the top. They came up with a solution—but it was absolutely brutal.
They cut the horse's legs off with a chainsaw.
26. Class Trips Cancelled
My mom was a teacher and she one day moved my sister and me to the same school where she taught—no reason given. She also gave us no reason for why the other teachers were always so bitter towards us. It felt really weird and uncalled for. It was, however, my father who, years later, finally told us the reason why we were so hated at the school.
He told us that my mom used to swipe all the money for school trips. Apparently, there was a big scandal between all the teachers, but we had no idea. The worst years of my life—finally explained.
27. Secret Life
I learned all kinds of family secrets after my dad passed. I guess my mom thought it was now okay to let loose some stuff about my dad. My mom told me that when she and my dad were dating, my dad liked to smoke weed. This rocked my world because he was super uptight and strict. It turns out, he actually planted a couple of plants at my mom’s parent’s house and they never knew it. But that was only the tip of the iceberg.
I also learned that when my parents were engaged, my dad had an affair. My mom ended up beating the woman up and then broke the engagement off with my dad. He came to my grandparents every night for months begging my mom to come back to him. She eventually gave in.
28. Wonderful Secret Revealed
My son is 20, but until recently I didn’t know him. His mother just told him about me in December. Nobody knew I was his dad, even me. It’s strange that I lived 20 years not knowing I had a son. It's been six months and he's the greatest thing I've ever done. He's smart, in the armed forces, and we have a wonderful relationship.
Had he not pressed her about it, she would have never told him. I'm so happy I can hardly contain myself most days. Words can't describe my emotions.
29. Missing In Action
After my dad passed, my aunty casually brought up one Christmas that my dad had gone missing for two years. This happened when he was twenty and nobody ever knew where he went. One day, he just reappeared "looking like Jesus" and never explained where he went or what happened. He then continued on living his life, and literally no one ever mentioned it again so I never got to ask him about it. So wild.
30. Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner
My parent’s secret was that I had a much older half-sister. Apparently, my father had got some girl knocked up in high school. Her parents didn't like him and thought they were too young to raise a kid, so they just packed up and moved. He knew she existed, but never tried to locate her and just moved on with his life.
After I was in college, my half-sister had contacted my dad and they got together. Well nobody bothered to mention this fact to me until I came home from college for Thanksgiving and this strange woman was sitting at the table and my dad said, "Meet your sister."
31. The World Had Different Plans
My mom passed while giving birth to me, but I just found out something else a few months ago. Apparently, I had a twin sister that also didn’t make it that day. She wasn't really strong enough to survive—I think I took all the good stuff inside. It would be cool having a mom and a twin sister but the world had different plans I guess.
32. Straight Laced Dad Was Not
When I turned 18 my dad told me how he’d spent the better part of 10 years as a drug smuggler. Mostly coke and weed that they would get in South America, put on small planes to land somewhere in the Caribbean, and then move to Florida on super-fast boats they’d only run at night. He didn’t tell me all the insane stories I’m sure he had, but he did tell me a couple.
He was stuck in a bar in Colombia for an entire day during an attempted coup and how more than once they traded munitions they’d taken from the FARC for drugs. This was all especially crazy since to me because he was pretty much the most straight-laced dude alive.
33. Personality Lost
So I broke my femur when I was two years old, and although I’d always known about the injury, I learned something later that really surprised me. When I was 16 or 17 my parents told me that the injury kind of changed my personality. I guess I used to be super talkative and extroverted (at least for that age), but after being surrounded by doctors and nurses for days and weeks on end, apparently, I kinda closed off. And I’ve been that way ever since.
I’d always thought I was an introvert from day one, but I guess I originally had a different personality. I’ve slowly become more outgoing over the last few years, but it’s strange to think that I could’ve been a completely different person in that regard.
34. Blackouts Explained
The secret I got revealed to me was that my mom tried to miscarry me so she wouldn’t have to get an abortion. Years later, she is very jealous that I am leading the life she always wanted. I’m educated, childless, and I’m climbing the corporate ladder to success. She frequently takes it out on me in passive aggressive ways.
I’m just glad the drinking and drugs she did while pregnant didn’t seem to have a lasting impact on me: other than maybe the fact that I black out extremely quickly whenever I drink.
35. Lie Was Not A Lie
When I was a kid, my dad accidentally ran over a raccoon with his car. It had a young one with it that wasn't hit, so we adopted the baby raccoon. We adored it, but we were not at all equipped to care for it. There was no lock or cage that could stop this thing. It was very clever, strong, and curious. It got into cupboards and ate food and trash, and we'd find its turds in the most random places.
One day my dad sat me down and told me that my raccoon had "gone to live on a farm." I was old enough to know what that meant, and I was heartbroken. But just a few years ago, I was telling this story to my husband and my dad interrupted me and said that he literally, actually gave my raccoon away to a work acquaintance of his that had a farm and a lot of wooded property.
The raccoon had become so accustomed to humans it constantly broke into the man's house and ate his food, and got enormously fat, and lived a long ornery raccoon life.
36. Don’t Count On It
My ex-boyfriend’s parents were textbook narcissists, so the more they talked something up, the more of a lie it was. When the oldest sibling started prepping for college, he asked about these famous college savings accounts they all supposedly had. The parents' response was an increasingly aggressive "stop asking about money, money isn't everything, you're 17, you don't know anything."
The dad got hammered one night many years later and admitted that the seed of their big lie was something like: grandma slipped the parents $50 once and suggested they open a savings account for the kids' education. Their narcissistic tendencies ballooned that one little exchange into grand promises of free rides and all the help they'd ever need come 18.
37. Half Brother Visits
When I was 13 years old, my parents were forced to reveal a secret to me. It turned out that I had a half-brother I didn’t know about. They had adopted this guy when he was a baby, but I didn’t even meet him until I was a teenager. If that wasn’t bad enough, the reason they had to tell me about him was much, much worse.
So, my half-brother had become an officer of the law and he’d arrived at our house to take away my father. He didn’t keep in touch, and I don’t blame him.
38. Bottomless Jar
When I was younger, my brother, sister, and I used to take change out of our dad’s change jar. Not much, like maybe a dollar each to get something extra at lunch. We always thought we were so slick. He passed almost 12 years ago. Last year, my mom told me he would get change on his way home from work “for the kids to take”.
39. To-Do List Done
It wasn’t that much of a secret but a tidbit my mom let slip right around the time I got engaged. We were out to dinner and she'd had a few drinks. We were talking about my fiancee's (now wife) upcoming birthday and she snickers. Of course, I asked her what was so funny. She says, "Nothing. It's just a weird coincidence."
Now I was super curious and made her tell me. She said: "Her birthday is the day you were conceived." I then got the full story of how my dad, who had been called out to deal with issues stemming from a huge snowstorm, came home for about two hours in the middle of being away for almost a week straight. Shower, laundry, and apparently making babies were on the to-do list.
40. They Played The Field—A Lot
I was a teenager when my parents revealed that my dad had been married before. Twice. And my mom had been engaged four times and broken it off every time. The family was always saying how amazing my parents’ relationship was and I just thought they were complimenting them. But turns out they were low-key shocked that they stayed together. They’ve been married almost fifty years.
41. Chucky Got Chucked
My sister and I used to play with a doll. We named it, talked to it, and everything. One day the doll disappeared and we were very upset. Many years later my mother told me the truth: she’d thrown it away. She did this because she saw the horror movie "Chucky" and the doll looked just like the one in the movie. My mom had freaked out and couldn't sleep until she threw my beloved sweetheart away.
But yeah, I had to hide that I was upset when she told me because I was a teenage boy in a country where they're obsessed with masculinity, so I couldn't say "oh this makes me really upset." Instead, I just stopped talking about it. I'm actually 25 now, and still miss it and feel bad about it. Maybe that's why I've never wanted a child because I lost one at a very young age and can't do it again.
42. What’s In A Name?
I’m not going to share my actual name because it's not a common one with a very specific spelling. I've heard other variations of it, but not the way mine is spelled. I was told that my father "made it up" when he was naming me at the hospital. The first letter of my name is the same as his and I just assumed he wanted to go along that route. Why my mom didn't have a say in anything, who knows.
I'm now in my thirties, female, and I recently found out the truth about my name. My sister told me that I was actually named after my dad's ex-girlfriend. I'm not mad about it, but it's so crazy to think that after all these years this is what the truth is. My parents don't know that I know. To be quite honest, it would make sense why I felt like my mom favored my sister over me because maybe I'm a reminder for something not so good for her.
43. Truth About Pills
When I was a kid, I took medication for my ADD for a short while. The problem was that my teacher noticed I was falling asleep in class and was out of it almost all of the time. She said I was almost a zombie compared to my usual self. It was so bad my mom cried herself to sleep over how it changed me. When I was back to my normal old self I asked why I stopped taking them, and she told me the doctor accidentally prescribed me sleeping pills.
I brought it up as an adult and was told the truth. It almost sounds like the "fix" was to make me non-functional.
44. Hypocrites!
My parents didn't let this secret out, but my uncle did. He told me how both of my parents were titanic stoners. They pounded sobriety into me for close to 20 years, sometimes literally. Because of this, and to this day, I neither drink nor smoke anything. Not too much later, I found out that my dad still indulges on golf outings using a THC vape pen. He's in his mid-60s.
45. Supernatural Secret
About a month after my dad passed, a letter just appeared in the house and I read it. Was shocked to discover that it was from a woman who claimed she’d had a child with my dad. This was apparently before he got together with my mom. The letter was just her telling him that the girl wanted to know my dad and wanted him to go to her high school graduation. It had been sent years and years ago.
I couldn’t believe that I found it. It was just so random. So I asked my mom about it and she confirmed that he did in fact have another child and always felt guilty about not being in her life, but that her mother was really difficult and irrational and he didn’t feel like he could be around because of that. He did pay child support.
Not long after that, my dad’s sociopathic sister tried to tell us about this child in an attempt to shock and hurt us. Luckily, I now knew all about it so my aunt’s little evil plan backfired. I’ve always wondered if my deceased father somehow guided me to that letter, so it wouldn’t turn into a big shocking ordeal.
46. Do As I Say, Not As I Do
My parents raised me in a Southern Baptist Church and pushed the whole True Love Waits/abstinence thing on me when I was a teenager. This wasn’t a big deal, since I didn't date anyway and if I did, I didn't want to have unsafe relations and mess up my life with an unwanted pregnancy. Two decades later, mom admitted she and dad actually hadn't waited until marriage.
Not an earth-shattering revelation, but kind of funny in a way.
47. She Was A Baby Mule
When I turned 18, I got a letter from a distant aunt and uncle wishing me a happy birthday. I hadn’t seen them since I was a baby, but there’s hundreds of pictures of them and me together when I was little. They used to babysit me a lot and take me on vacations with them. But then my mom told me something unbelievable.
Apparently, this uncle and aunt would use me to smuggle things. I guess they said it was super easy to smuggle just about anything with a baby. At one point, they literally hid drugs in my diaper.
48. Investigation Leads To Secret
I was told my whole life that my dad’s life ended because of a car crash. When I was in middle school, I accidentally found some documents that said that he was inebriated when the accident happened. So after that, I hated him with a passion and to this day, I can't drink. No one in my family ever said anything against it.
Well, a couple of years later, I was in college and had to do an investigative report of my choosing. I decided to get to the bottom of whatever happened to my dad. So, without telling my family, I contacted friends, ex-teachers, and ex-coworkers and began putting the story together. My dad was a young and brilliant architect that began working for this dude with a huge company in my city.
Apparently, my dad was very capable and hardworking and was on very good terms with the boss. The boss wanted to make him a shareholder in the company, but apparently, this got in the way with some plans the boss’s son had. After a fight with his dad and a totaled car, the son got cut from all the proceedings of the company. And the most upsetting part? The son blamed my dad for it. Long story short, he got my dad done in.
After I started investigating the events of that night—a February 14 no less—I discovered a ton of inconsistencies. For example, my family never got to see the body. Also, the autopsy had already been done when they notified my grandparents, which is against the law in my country. But the worst inconsistency was about the passenger in my dad’s car.
The passenger was a friend of my father’s and it was he who called in the emergency after the crash. This same friend was supposedly at the party where my dad was said to have gotten so hammered. I found out that this friend couldn’t have been there—according to his wife he had a stomach bug that night and was bedridden.
Finally, I managed to track down one of the nurses that attended him, and what she told me changed everything. My father didn't lose his life in the crash: he had a bullet wound in his head. The doctor knew, but was paid to keep his mouth shut. I finally confronted my mom and grandma about it since they were the only ones that knew the truth.
They never told my grandad and the reason they never told anyone was because this dude told my mom that if anybody ever found out, the child (yours truly) would be in trouble. So they never told anyone. I went to school with the daughter of this maniac, I still have pictures of her at my birthday parties.
49. He Liked To Watch
My mom recently told me that she was three months pregnant at their wedding. They were married for 45 years but might not have married at all had my mom not been knocked up. My mom almost left my dad 13 years into the marriage until she got pregnant with my brother and changed her mind. But that wasn't even the craziest revelation.
I later found out that my mom had a lesbian affair with our babysitter...and my dad used to watch.
50. Numbers Added Up
My mother told me a big secret when I was 24 years old and it’s a really bizarre story. It turns out that when I was three, I appeared to her in a dream and told her some lottery ticket numbers. Well, she woke up, went to the store and bought the tickets with the numbers I’d told her. She ended up winning $20 million USD.
Not only did she not tell me for years, but she also didn't save anything for me: for college or a new car, nothing. She mentioned it casually when I was 24 as if I'd always known—it blew my mind.
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