People do messed-up stuff every day. But there are some moments that go way beyond that—those scorched earth, burn all the bridges moments that can tear friends or family apart forever. These Redditors came together to share their stories of the most awful, appalling things that they’ve seen other people do…and they’re seriously jaw-dropping.
1. All In The Family
My sister set up a GoFundMe to help my mother with bills and the like while she was undergoing chemo for multiple myeloma. They got about $10k when it was up. Everyone thought it was so wonderful. Then the disturbing truth came out. So, my sister got the money directly deposited into her account, then took her daughter to Atlanta. They tried to get her on The Voice. That didn't work out, but my sister partied the whole time.
Then she came back, and “realized” that the money she had spent was from my mom's GoFundMe. So my mom is distraught and angry, but they come to an agreement where my sister will pay her back this money over time, so long as my mom doesn't press charges. She signed a contract to this effect. Like three months go by, and my sister just stopped paying.
My mom gives her three more months while practically begging, but no money. Eventually, my mom finally calls the authorities on my sister, and they charge her. My sister then reaches out to the entire family who then call and tell my mom how much of a piece of trash she is for having her own daughter charged. They get my mom’s grandkids to call and beg their granny to drop the charges, yada yada yada.
So she drops the charges, not wanting to be ostracized from her entire family for the rest of her (short) life. She never saw a penny from my sister after that either. And this is why I will never acknowledge my sister's existence, ever again.
2. Great Expectations
My aunt and uncle are rather wealthy farmers. They have spent the last several decades building up new divisions of the business for their kids to run and eventually inherit. One of the big expansions was going from simply raising beef cattle to handling the butchering and selling the meat themselves. Anyway, for the butcher shop, they built a beautiful million-dollar shop and sent my cousin's husband to butcher school to get all his licensing.
He would be the operations manager while my cousin would be the bookkeeper. They never did a thing to earn it, and were essentially handed a golden ticket. Big mistake. What happened next is a little complicated, but after a few years, my aunt and uncle started getting negative feedback about how the place was run. When they spoke to my cousin's husband they offered him more money, thinking it was a motivation issue.
They were already overpaid and could afford their own million-dollar home. The husband made a snarky retort that he already makes that much. That raised red flags, they ended up looking at the accounts and things seemed fishy. They went to the business after hours and took the bookkeeping files. The husband found out—and his reaction was chilling.
He drove to their house to essentially scream at them in rage. In the end, it turns out they had embezzled over a million dollars by cooking the books. They got kicked out of the family business (with no repercussions and a fat buyout bonus) and generally have little to do with any of the family. My aunt and uncle have made attempts at reconciliation because they want to see their grandchildren, but have been thus far rejected.
It's insane because they were handed everything and it still wasn't good enough. They were going to inherit the business and they blew it.
3. The Mole
My buddy was raised by a single mother and had a young sister named Bella who had a different father. His sister’s father dated his mother for a while before they eventually split because this guy was terrible. There was this other kid in our school and I guess his dad was friends with Bella’s dad. This kid started hanging out with my buddy a lot, going over to his place to play video games, etc.
About six months later, my buddy’s mom was in court because Bella’s dad wanted custody. They called this kid from school in as a character witness and he essentially told the court that my buddy’s mom was a horrible mother, smoked all the time, and didn’t take care of the kids. I know her well and she does everything for her kids. I have the utmost respect for her as a single mother.
We found out that this kid from school’s dad told him to become friends with my buddy so he could be used as a character witness to help take my buddy’s sister away. I don’t know whether I was more disgusted by the kid or his dad for telling him to do it. The funny thing is, even with that testimony, Bella’s dad was such a mess in the courts they still gave custody to my buddy’s mom.
We all hang out now, and it’s crazy to think my buddy’s little sister could’ve been taken because of these lying jerks.
4. Race To The Bottom
My former stepmother drained my father’s bank account within minutes of his passing and only gave back what she didn’t waste on Amazon packages once we called her out on it. To add insult to injury, we froze his accounts and there was evidence that she tried to draw out more than she put back immediately afterward, which means that she had intended to overdraft his account and leave my sister and I with his debt.
We’re currently in the process of selling his house, which she wrecked shortly before we made her vacate the place, and are still trying to pay off his mortgage. But that’s not the most deranged part. She then tried to make a claim to his estate by claiming to have magically become pregnant a week before we lost him, despite the fact that they had been together for over a decade.
My sister managed to get her to send an ultrasound photo she claimed to have, and it turned out that she had paid $30 to a website for a stock ultrasound photo that she had edited fake information onto. It’s been about five months since we last had contact with her—but who knows what other tricks she has up her sleeve.
5. The Devil Made Her Do It
My six-month-old nephew had a SIDs "episode". He stopped breathing and the only reason he's alive is because my mom obsessively checked on him while she was babysitting. She and my brother managed to bring him around and then they went to the hospital. My mom was understandably freaked out by this—finding her first grandchild turning blue and all.
So she called her sister for emotional support. What her sister told her was terrible. She said, verbatim: "Well, you just need to get Satan out of your life”. Up to that point, I'd told my mom for YEARS that her family was emotionally and mentally abusive narcissists. THAT is what it took for her to finally believe me and cut them out.
Now that it’s 11 years later and my mom is gone, those same jerks have the nerve to act like they have no idea why Mom stopped talking to them.
6. Save It For Biology Class Next Time
There was a decomposing cat body stuck between a fence and a wall next to the gym in my school. If physical education was our first lesson, we had to wait in front of the gym until someone fetched the keys. My friend Jason went to fetch the keys and left his bag. This horrible classmate, Toby, used two sticks to pick up the cat’s body, opened Jason's bag, and put it in—but that wasn’t the worst part.
Jason hasn't noticed anything until we were in the locker room. He opened the bag, saw the cat’s body, dropped the bag, and the cat fell apart. That's when a soup of rotten insides, crawling with larvae, splashed to the floor. It was definitely one of the most messed up things I’ve seen a person do.
7. Can’t Unlearn That
So, I used to work for this company back before smartphones were a big thing. People would text or call in questions, and "guides" would look up answers for them online or even sometimes call a business to ask the question for them and text back their answer. We'd get requests for phone numbers, addresses, operating hours...stuff like that.
Sometimes, they'd ask ridiculous questions and things obviously meant to shock guides. But this one guy...He would call in and ask when specific daycares in and around a specific city took out their trash. And he wanted to know if they threw diapers out separate from the other trash. I don't remember how it all came out, but it turns out this guy was going through daycare dumpsters and making what he called "squish dolls”.
As in...he stuffed used diapers into baby clothes and, I don't know, he cuddled with them or some weird thing. He even had an online blog with pictures of his creations and would describe how they felt and smelled.
8. This Goes Way Beyond Mother-In-Law Jokes
My 69-year-old mother-in-law shacked up with multiple men while her husband (my wife's stepdad) lay in the hospital, dying of a brain tumor. She refused to visit him unless prompted by my wife and even then, only if we'd take her. She’d spend the entire visit asking how she's supposed to pay the bills when he dies, while he drifted in and out of consciousness.
She was incredibly mean before he got sick anyway, but while he was in the hospital, her behavior was sickening. She then refused to take part in any funeral planning whatsoever, leaving it all to my wife, who really struggled through the loss and just needed some love from her mum—but she just didn't care. However, she still cried and got all the sympathy at the funeral and wake.
Now, she tells everyone how badly she was treated by the deceased and how he left her destitute. She's never worked a day in her life or contributed to their bills. I hate this woman, but I had tolerated her until this.
9. Like Apples?
My ex-wife cheated on me with another guy two days after our honeymoon. Prior to that, we had lived together for eight years. For two of those years, I worked double shifts to afford a big wedding, since it was her dream. Well, karma came for her in the end. She’s married to a huge loser now, with two bratty, awful kids. I’m married to an awesome woman, with two fantastic kids.
I wonder how she likes them apples.
10. True Colors Exposed
A close friend of my mother's (we'll call her Maureen) was having an affair with a person who was also married (we'll call him Patrick). Patrick's wife, who we'll call Caroline, was quite mentally unstable. She was suffering badly from depression because Patrick was quite abusive and was constantly cheating on her. It was sad.
Despite him being a serial cheater, Maureen was sure that it was "true love," and was completely committed to the idea of the two of them eventually divorcing their respective spouses and moving in together. Patrick was obviously dragging his heels with this, but the relationship lasted for one disturbing reason. Both Patrick and Maureen were nasty people who delighted in tormenting Caroline.
Patrick would constantly gaslight her, and Maureen would hint and always hang around but make it just deniable enough that nothing could be proven. With Caroline's history of mental illness, nobody believed her, figuring that she was still paranoid and accusing Patrick because he had cheated before. Patrick had convinced everyone he had changed, of course, and all of this combined to make Caroline look absolutely psychotic.
Patrick and Maureen continued this behavior for over a year, absolutely tormenting this poor woman. One evening, my mother gets a phone call from Maureen, who seems to be in a state of shock. She asks my mom to come over, because she just got the news that Caroline has taken her own life. My mam rushes over, expecting Maureen to be in a state of absolute guilt and regret.
Well, she was in for a horrible surprise. When she gets there Maureen is laughing about it and says Patrick is coming over soon. My mom, who was not a very nice person herself—after all, she knew about this and said nothing—was finally disgusted enough that she ripped into Maureen and left. Over the next couple of days, the story comes out.
Caroline’s teenage daughter had found her. Even more tragically, Caroline had timed it to ensure that neither of her children would find her; completely unexpectedly, the daughter had returned home early and gone looking for her. In the following months, Maureen broke up with her husband and filed for divorce. She and Patrick purchased an atrocious new-build suburban house together.
Patrick actually convinced Maureen to put the whole thing in her name. But, there was some sort of truly twisted justice. They lasted a few more months, and then Patrick started ghosting her, cheated on her, and left. Maureen's husband and teenage sons had cut contact with her. At first, the sons still maintained contact, but when it became clear that Patrick disliked the younger son and was turning Maureen against him, both brothers left to go live with their dad.
Maureen was left with hundreds of thousands worth of debt, as the house was in her name. On the one hand yeah, she got played by somebody who I'm pretty sure is a legitimate sociopath. On the other hand, she still played with a woman's life and celebrated her being "out of the way," so I have absolutely zero sympathy for her. I think Patrick brought out her true colors because normal people do not do that.
11. Scorched To Unscorched
I once had a girlfriend come visit me for a four-day visit at my grandmother's house when it was full of family. It was during the summer when we were both in college. We go for a walk right after she arrives—and she drops a bombshell. She breaks up with me. I'm thinking, "Wait, what”? She just got there! What am I supposed to do with this person for four days around my family?
I went on a full-court press to change her mind or at least get an explanation. It was out-of-the-blue. Eventually, it came out that on the way to the house she had sat next to a woman on a train and had a conversation with her that caused her to conclude she should break up with me. She never articulated any concrete reason why, though. It was like she told the woman she had some doubts (who doesn't?) and the woman said, trust your feelings and that was that.
I thought for sure that was it—but the story didn’t end there. She did change her mind. We had a great weekend, and we dated for another six months or so. Eventually, she broke up with me again, and this time I was like, yeah, fine. I think she was trying to get me to change her mind again. She acted a little obsessed with me for a few months after I accepted it so quickly.
I was done, though.
12. When You Assume…
Back in the day this kid I knew was on Xanax and stole one of his neighbor's SUVs. We lived in the type of neighborhood where people just left their keys in the ignition. I was walking back to my other buddy’s house from his house and was pretty messed up myself, so when he drove up next to me in an SUV offering to drive me the rest of the way, I didn’t think much of it.
His parents and sisters had multiple cars so I just assumed it was one of theirs. After I got in, I obviously asked who’s car it was. That’s when I found out the truth. I was like no way, man, and tried not to touch anything. I got out at my destination and that was that. About 30 minutes later, me and another friend hear sirens blaring down the road.
We start calling our friend and his mom. No one knows where he is at. The next day, we finally get in touch with him. He hid and slept out in the woods because after he dropped me off he went off-roading in the SUV and ultimately left it on some train tracks. A train came and hit the SUV, causing all this fire and mayhem. Can’t imagine what those neighbors had to say to the insurance.
13. Don’t Mix Business And Family
My dad ran a small but successful business for over a decade, but when my eldest brother started working with him he ruined us to the point that he almost made us homeless. After he left us high and dry, my dad had spent three to four years trying to do damage control but ultimately had to sell the business for less than half its worth.
To this day, my eldest brother has never apologized nor has taken any responsibility for his actions. I have zero respect for that jerk.
14. The Cycle Continues
My uncle is a real piece of work. The scummiest human being I believe I will ever know. The most messed up thing he's done is actually a cycle that he's repeated far too many times; start a family, then run. He'll convince these women he's a good guy/has changed/is a victim/was in the wrong place wrong time or whatever, gets them pregnant, and leaves once the baby is out.
And then, after he leaves, he's always desperate for money, so he does something awful to family members to get out of there. He’s stolen my dad's identity, opened new credit cards, attempted to transfer the bank card to his name and drain it. He’s taken a business loan with his first son, taken it all, and dipped. To top it all off, sometimes he goes back to the women after the kid is popped out to manipulate them into hooking up with him again.
He’s been behind bars so many times I’ve lost count, and I wish that he would just sit in there and rot. Every couple of years, I have reached out, saying they're part of Aaron's family with so and so and they want to meet their extended family, and we're like who? You hate Aaron? Yeah, us too. Welcome to the family. I know three freaking Aaron Jr's with different moms named after the same jerk.
To my knowledge, he's up to five families. Three of those have two kids. Zero of those are kids he's raised. He's currently "missing," so following the cycle, he's gonna pop up again soon, with some woman, either pregnant or with child, and be like OMG I got my life together fam! Come here, let's be friends. Then he’ll do some slimy stuff to try to get money from someone.
15. Catfishing With Fire
Two friends I had in high school created a catfish account on Facebook to lead people on. They found a few pictures of some girl and began messaging people in our classes. When they told me about it, they were pretty excited and bragged about having guys from our classes go to the mall thinking some girl was waiting for them.
Well, one day they told me they had been talking to one of our close friends for a few weeks and I found it to be pretty messed up, because he had told us that he had met some girl he was pretty interested in. I told them it was a messed-up thing to do and was told that they didn't want me to tell him because they had a "date" set up for him.
I ended that friendship right there and immediately let him know what they had done.
16. Short Con, Long Sentence
My brother became a con artist and bamboozled millions of dollars from everyone he could, including retired older folks and our parents. But he got what was coming to him. He finally got caught when he was trying to make up a fake charity tournament with a famous celebrity as the guest host, but used a deceased attorney’s name to sign off on the fraudulent contract.
He got 11 years behind bars. My family has never been the same after all the harm he has caused hundreds of victims.
17. He Steals From The Poor And Gives To Himself
I worked for a non-profit that worked with underprivileged kids. One of my coworkers was caught stealing lots from the organization. Mind you, this was a very small non-profit, where we were constantly low on funds. A lot of workers would even put in their own money to make sure the kids got everything they needed, and this happened quite often.
He did lots of other questionable stuff, but that was the big thing that I couldn’t ever forgive him for. He then went on to work with other non-profits and “volunteer” places, where they would continue the same behavior. We know lots of the same people and I know he uses the “I work with underprivileged kids” as a pick-up line to get people to like him.
18. Bad Grandpa
When I was 18, I was living on my own and dealing with horrible depression and anxiety. At the time I was working and trying to finish high school, and things were pretty stressful. But despite all that, I decided I was ready to try and rebuild a relationship with my father, who I hadn’t spoken to in four years. I thought maybe some of the issues we had before were that I was immature, and the separation of my parents was still fresh.
Things were going okay for a few months. We did Thanksgiving together and it went well. Then it all blew up in my face. After finally seeing a doctor for my issues, I told him that I needed his help paying for medication for my problems. It was $50/month and because I was still on his health insurance he would get 90% back. I just didn’t have the money at the time, and I was struggling to pay my own bills.
He said he couldn’t afford it. Then he said if I convinced my mother to stop getting alimony, he could afford to pay it. I said I couldn’t do that, and decided I would just have to suffer or figure out a way to pay for it myself. Cue my stepsister coming in. What happened next broke my heart. She said to my dad that she needed money for a new tattoo.
He gave her $300 on the spot. I walked out of the apartment and haven’t talked to him willingly since. My son and one of my stepsibling’s kids ended up in the same school 15 years after the tattoo incident. The last time we spoke was to tell him if he tried to talk to my son ever, I would call the authorities. He had walked up to my kid and introduced himself as his grandfather.
My son didn’t even know the man existed! That was a messed-up thing to do to a six-year-old.
19. The Bad Dad Club
I am a member of the Bad Dad Club. My dad cheated on my mom and she found out on the day before their wedding. He vowed to never do it again. Years later, multiple women contacted her in various ways to show that they were his mistress…a few who were pregnant. At some point, he packed up his luggage and moved out to live with his mistresses while my mom raised a child by herself during post-partum recovery.
To this day, he wants to be a part of my life and live normally. He still doesn’t understand why it’s unforgivable.
20. Put Her On A Watchlist
I was friends with a girl who was obsessed with babies. You know how some girls really like horses? She was like that, but with babies. Not kids, just babies and toddlers. She was only friends with me because I babysat a lot. Later, I found out the disturbing truth about her. She would take used diapers out of the bins in the lady’s bathroom.
21. Stranger Danger
A distant cousin of my spouse went to a shopping mall in Canada and tried to kidnap a four-year-old girl in the 90s. She took the girl to the bathroom, cut her hair, and dressed her in boy's clothes. Luckily the mom noticed the child was missing minutes after she was taken, and security locked all the exit doors to search the store. They found the child with the kidnapper, waiting to leave the store.
22. Nearer The Church, The Father From God
I have no idea if there's even a term for this. But my brother preys on women who have no self-esteem at churches. He'll move to an area, join the local church, and pick out lonely women. He convinces them that he's a great guy, in love, and wants to start a family. So they'll have a baby, but after about maybe two years, they find out who he really is.
That’s usually the time when he just leaves and abandons them. Then moves on to the next unknowing victim. He's done this to at least six women in five states that I know of. Best I can tell, he has at least seven children that he has never paid a cent for or taken care of in any way. And he’s married a new woman at least twice while he was still legally married to other women.
I've worked with two of the women to try to get him prosecuted, but the DA always says it's a civil matter. Although failure to pay child support can be criminally prosecuted, they won't. We get the same story every time that it's very difficult and "just not worth it" once he's left the State.
23. You’ve Gotta Have A Lot Of Balls To Put That
A former friend faked having testicular cancer. People in the community gathered donations for his “treatment”. He spent any cash they got on himself. He even used his sickness to gain the affection of women; including a woman I was dating. He wound up angering a very well-known biker gang—and also, a whole fire department.
Shortly afterward, he and his wife disappeared one day, never to be heard from since.
24. My Best Friend’s Girl
I know this guy. He and this girl get together for a while and have a kid together. Eventually, they break up, but share custody. When the child is about five or six, the mom begins a relationship with the dad’s best and oldest friend. A few months in, she skips town with him and stops paying for childcare, including taking the kid to speech therapy lessons.
This continues for almost a year. The guy I know, the kid’s dad, files for sole custody, and gets it, not only because she doesn't show up to contest it, but because the mom's own parents speak in favor of him. Then his old "best friend" starts complaining that nobody wants to hang out with him or invite him anywhere. A few weeks later, the mom finally reappears with the best friend.
They made a disturbing announcement. She begins telling everyone that they are expecting a child. No mention is made of the one she just tossed aside. To this day, the "best friend" claims to have no idea why everyone is upset by him and his relationship. This was supposed to be mainly about the friend, but typing it out, I guess the mom actually looks worse.
Oh well. A bad situation all around. Super trashy.
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25. His Casa Is Her Casa
My stepfather’s ex-wife is a mess of a person, so I could tell a few stories about her, but one, in particular, is pretty bad. After she left my stepdad, she moved in with a guy and had a son with him. She had custody of the three kids she had adopted with my stepdad in addition to this new child. After they were together for a few years, I want to say five, they broke up.
The messed up part is that she kicked him out of the house and when they went to court, she won and was able to keep the home. The boyfriend had to find a new place to live. Now, this house originally belonged to the boyfriend. It was passed down in his family and he had asked her to move into the house. So this guy got into a relationship with her and lost almost everything because of it.
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26. The Cultural Divide
Once upon a time my grandfather, grandmother, and mom’s three siblings wanted to open a bar. Now my mom and dad had just gotten married, and my dad actually gifted my mom’s family a good chunk of their start-up money. He’s said he wanted to make a good impression, and it was almost all of his savings at the time. My dad is also Chinese, and the culture usually is that family takes care of family.
But every time my dad chimed up, gave them advice, or said, “Oh, I really don’t think it’s a good move,” he got a shush foreigner, this is how we do it in America. I think it’s important to note that now my dad literally helps merge and start companies. But ignoring him wasn’t their worst mistake. None of my mom’s family know anything about business.
They invested heavily right off the bat and hired a terrible manager that siphoned money from them. Their business failed and they went into bad debt. And what did they learn from all this? Not to trust Chinese people, because they’re sneaky, and my dad shouldn’t have given them money, it was too much pressure. They called my dad horrible slurs and blamed everything on him.
I also just found out a few years ago, that they told all my cousins that the only reason he made money was because he was involved with the mob. I kid you not, my brother saw my cousins one summer and they all asked him if my dad was in the mafia. He responded “What the heck? Of course not? Why would you think that”?
They responded: “How else does a Chinese man make money”?
27. Double Crossed
Maybe 12-14 years ago when I was in my early 20s, I knew this group of people that were friends of friends. This group was mixed with really rich people (like beyond anything I had ever seen) and very well off but totally messed up people. One of them was this super-attractive dude. I’m talking 10/10. Every girl who saw him swooned.
He was raised in a good family that was decently well off but not rich. Well, said dude was a total piece of work and all he wanted was to marry a rich girl and never work. One of his female friends was SUPER RICH. Her parents own a company that most people have heard of. So they came up with this plan where they would get married so her family would give them a lump sum of money as a wedding gift and buy them a house.
They did this. But there was something that she didn’t know. One day, she returned home to find he was gone and had taken literally every dime from the bank account. Man literally fell off the face of the earth with all of that money.
28. Weaponized Incompetence
My first girlfriend’s mother was a secretary in a medical department. She’d been working there for years and years, but when she couldn't come to grips with the new medical system for inputting patient data, she came up with a seriously disturbing plan. Instead of putting them in the system, she threw away incoming patient files.
This eventually came to light when patients were inquiring about needing care and were told (by her) they didn't need it, and some of these patients asked up the chain and management found out. A lot of people fell through the cracks and I don't think they were ever tracked down or got the care they needed. This was for a hospital department, let's call it physio, and a lot of patients were immigrants.
They didn't know what standards to expect, or came from places where they hadn't had any prior care and badly needed to catch up, etc. What followed was years of this woman using hospital bureaucracy, rules, and close ties to the department head to navigate the system and drag out the process of being fired. That added up to two years or something close to it.
For that time, she remained in the department, kept working, and got paid. She heavily persecuted and terrorized coworkers, to try to get them to side with her and not testify or say anything against her. But that’s not all. She also threatened an acquaintance of mine who worked in the department. One day, she asked: “Have you heard about people putting antifreeze in hotdogs and throwing it to dogs in backyards”?
Just a while later, she added: “I have access to office files, I know where you live, and I know you love your dogs”. Yeah…put two and two together, and that’s a heinous threat.
29. The Imitation Game
My former aunt, who I no longer associate with, held a vigil for my sister who was in a fatal car accident that took the lives of everyone in the car but her. The former aunt received gifts from those who showed up to her home and the media showed up. When they interviewed her, she told them she was my sister's mother, and operated under that guise to receive gifts on my sister's behalf and for media attention.
She received cards and money, which were never returned to my parents or my sister. She kept all the money and gifts for herself. She did all this while my uncle was in prison for embezzlement. To this day she denies any wrongdoing. And my uncle actually defended her—until he learned she was cheating on him while he was in prison.
30. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire
I'm not sure how messed up it counts as, but when I was eight, my best friend who lived down the block from me played a lot in a treehouse in his hard I'd helped build—well, as much as a kid can. It was a castle-type thing and had a top room that could only be entered from the room below via ladder, and had windows looking out.
One day he got a hairspray bottle from his mom and pilfered some matches and was lighting leaves on fire and spraying them for the little fireballs it made, I didn't want to be doing that so I went up to the top room and read comics. After a while, I heard his back door close and looked out a window to see him going inside.
I didn't think much of it at first—but then I made a terrifying discovery. Smoke was drifting up from under the boards and it got hot. I went to look down the down ladder and saw the hay in that little room completely ablaze and had no way to get down and out the normal way. I ended up squeezing and jumping out the window and getting his mom.
He'd claimed to have gone in for a drink and didn't know the tree house was catching fire but somehow cried to the firemen and got them and his mom to believe it was me who brought the matches and made him play with the fire and hairspray—that is was all my fault. After a few mandatory fire safety classes, I stopped talking to him.
Instead, I went to hang out with another kid across the street, which only led to more problems. My former friend tried chasing the two of us down with an aluminum baseball bat. After that, people finally believed it was him who burnt down the tree house and he ended up getting put into counseling. Never saw him after that.
31. He Was Pumping Something Other Than Iron
Back in the early 1980s, my dad claimed to be in the gym at least five days a week. In reality, he was juicing with some really dangerous steroids to help give him the appearance that he was in the gym that often. He was actually running around with multiple women and just using the gym story as a cover. It all blew up on him in one fell swoop.
The steroids were too much for his system. He almost suffered multiple organ failure—he wouldn’t have made it. The doctor he was seeing that was giving him the steroids was already under investigation. Somehow, my father got flagged when he went into the hospital and he got caught up in a federal investigation that almost landed him behind bars.
But it was the entire concept that still just boggles my mind in its level of underhanded behavior. Take steroids, not necessarily for the gains, but as a cover so that you can use gym day as the perfect opportunity to cheat on your wife. It's so paradoxical. Bodybuilding and representing peak masculinity?? He was acting in a way that screams, "Look at me”!
And it was all used as a cover story so he could bang some other women without other people finding out and try to keep it all hidden. I still laugh about it 40 years later.
32. Desperate Times
This guy I knew and his partner had bought a building for 600k. Fast forward four years later, the building is worth 1.2 million. The guy’s partner needs money badly as his son was a recent victim of a horrific car crash. He didn’t make it. The guy I know tells him, yeah, we can sell the building. They get it listed, find a buyer, and agree on the price.
It all seemed so simple—but it was about to get ugly. On the day of the closing, the guy who needs the money badly comes to the closing. The other guy does not show up. He calls the partner and says, “I changed my mind I don’t wanna sell”. They meet the next day, and at this point, the partner is so desperate for the money, that he accepts just 300k to walk away from the property.
The poor guy got stiffed 300k in equity. They were also first cousins.
33. Taking It Out On The Wrong Person
When my daughters were one and two, they were visiting their “father”. I put father in scare quotes because he was anything but that—but he was their biological father. I was headed out of town with my family and he called me and said that the one-year-old had gotten into my pills and was throwing up blood. He was calling me all sorts of names on the phone but refused to take her to the ER.
I just knew something was off. My dad, who is a retired law enforcement officer, called 9-1-1. They got in touch with him and told him to take her to the ER and we would meet him there. When we got there, there was no blood on her clothes or the car seat. She was in the clothes I dropped her off in. We got her changed into a hospital gown and they proceeded to pump her stomach.
So I stayed there while my family went out of town. While we were in the hospital room, he called security and said I threatened him—I did not. It was such a horror show the entire day. I felt so bad for my little girl, who got something done to her that didn’t need to be done. He did it all to get back at me. I don’t know why he didn’t get in trouble at all.
It still upsets me to this day. He has no contact with them. At all. My girls are 15 and 17 and thriving! I’m so glad we all got out of that whole relationship.
34. Fake Friend Exposed
I gave my broke friend a job. He was my absolute best friend since I was in fourth grade. I wanted him to be the best man at my wedding. He swiped $2,500 dollars from me and acted like it was no big deal. "It's not fair you get all this money when I'm broke”. That's what he said to defend himself. This happened two weeks ago and he is avoiding me like the plague.
It's not even about the money, it's about the principle.
35. Bad Decisions
I know a guy, Stefan, who was married and had a daughter. Stefan and his wife divorced on good terms and stayed in contact for the sake of their daughter. Stefan was an active parent in her life. Stefan then met Hannah. Hannah had never been married before and resented the fact that Stefan had been. She resented Stefan's relationship with his daughter and felt like all of his attention should be on her.
That’s when she made a chilling demand. She told Stefan that they could only move forward if Stefan disowned his daughter. He did that. Hannah and Stefan got married. Now they have a son in high school and it is as if Stefan has no other children. Hannah talks about how engaged of a father Stefan is, how good of a Dad he is etc.
All the while, this guy has another kid that Hannah made him stop talking to. For context, both of these people work in education. Hannah works with children with special needs while Stefan works in administration. So, yeah, there is that.
36. A Special Kind Of Evil
Growing up, my parents ran a business in a building they rented from a guy that owned a ton of commercial properties. In my early 20s, both my parents got cancer within months of each other and I dropped out of college to help run the business and support my family. One day when I dropped off the rent cheque, the landlord threw it back at me and said he would only accept payment from my father.
He was well aware that my father was dying and would never be back to work. I put the cheque back on the man’s desk and walked out. Days later, my father received flowers at the house. The delivery guy insisted that he deliver the flowers directly to my dad. We were in for a horrible surprise. It turned out that it was a process server.
The landlord that had been paid every month for 26 years literally had my father served on his deathbed. I told the landlord he was a piece of trash and that I was moving the business. Before the end of the month, the landlord came to me to apologize and told me if I needed some extra time to get equipment out of the building it was okay. I didn't trust the jerk and made sure everything was moved.
On the first of the next month, the locks on the building were changed and there was a bailiff notice on the front door. That’s when I realized it. The old man had tried to get me to relax and take extra days to move so that he could legally seize the company equipment. The really messed-up thing was that my dad had always treated the guy with respect.
I don’t know if it was greed or some strange jealousy or what, but to intentionally send a process server to a man in his final days is a special kind of evil.
37. A+ Work, Team
I work in an old folks' home. I was the senior staff on shift one night and I heard arguing in the TV room. I went to see what was going on and heard a loud smack. I saw one of the staff hit one of our dementia patients. She saw me and started getting defensive and saying that the patient hit her first but the thing is, I’ve worked there way longer than her.
I know that the patient might have dementia, but they’re not aggressive. I rang the manager and she came. The person got fired. Her husband was angry and said they will sue us. Other staff was yelling at me for not being supportive. Another staff called me a snitch.
38. Fishy Behavior
I was out fishing on my friend's boat. He caught a small fish (kelp bass) and then started to gut and clean it immediately, which I thought was kind of weird. He was very experienced and I'm not, so I just figured he knew what he was doing and not to bother him. He then proceeded to ask me if I dared him to eat the fish's heart. I figured he was just talking smack so I said yeah.
He cut the fish's heart out, yanked it out while it was still beating, and swallowed it in front of me. He went on to explain, saying it was a tradition or something. I might just not know this tradition…but it seemed off to me.
39. Cut Out The Cancer
My ex-best female friend slept with a man, who was my friend too, with three kids. It eventually ruined his marriage and he left his poor wife with three kids. It was a complete horror show and I was used as an emotional sponge by her to vent out. I went with it for a few months—but then I couldn’t take it anymore. I thought, forget it, these people are dragging me down as well with their garbage.
So I wrote her an email and blocked her from all my social media and contacts. Best decision I've ever made.
40. Every Feud Begins With Kay
My brother got a Kay Jewelers credit card, bought a bunch of stuff, and used my phone number and address as the contact information. So I kept getting calls and letters since they can't find him. I don’t talk to him, so I can't even help the collection agency out and give them his real address, since I don't even know it. He has also used my long-gone grandfather’s name to sign up for things and not pay as well.
I have no idea how he hasn’t been sued or ended up behind bars.
41. The Scam Is Coming From Inside The House
I was getting out of the army and had saved up over $70,000 for a home for my family. My mother got my banking information and took every penny for illicit substances. Then, when I tried suing her, the rest of my family disowned me.
42. Actions, Meet Consequences
My ex-husband hid a camera in our bathroom and recorded my friend undressing. As you can imagine, this led to our immediate divorce!
43. Revenge Isn’t Always Served Cold
A guy that I knew back in college found out that his girlfriend was cheating on him, so he took a dump on the windshield of her car while she was at work.
44. Who Do You Complain To When HR Is The Problem?
My first boss was banging the HR lady. Well, his wife also worked at the same place. She found them in their car on their lunch break in the middle of it. The wife immediately turned tail, marched inside, and got both of them fired on the spot. I felt truly sad for her, but I admired her for that power move. I hope she's doing okay now.
45. Privilege Rears Its Ugly Head
A group of people (boys and girls) who I had gone to school with had partied hard one night. After drinking a lot for many hours, they thought it would be a good idea to race. One of the cars lost control and hit a pole and splits in two. The girl who was seated in the front passenger seat…well, it wasn’t pretty. A person in the back seat had broken his leg so badly that he has a piece of metal in his leg now.
In the end, the driver's father was rich enough to remove his “precious” child's name from the reports about it. Even worse? Those jerks still drink now.
46. Tell Me How You Really Feel
When I told my mom that my wife had a high chance of dying on the operating table the following day, she said, "Good, you should never have married her anyways”.
47. The Devil’s Love Triangle
I worked with a guy who alienated his whole family—and the reason why was seriously disturbing. He slept with his son's long-term girlfriend. Like, his son's first love. And then? He told his son like it was no big deal. He told us about it at work, and said his son was being a bit of a wimp about it. We then watched his life fall apart as both his kids cut him out of their lives.
It was so bad that the dude only found out he became a grandpa when his older daughter sent him an email with no pictures. As you can imagine, sleeping with his son's girlfriend was the worst thing that I'm aware of that he's done—but I can definitely say that, generally speaking, he was a horrible person.
48. There’s A Special Place For People Like This
I work for a gardening company and we have guys come and go on the regular. One guy we'll call Mike worked for us for a while and built up a relationship with one of the customers, Wilfred (name changed to protect the innocent). Anyway, Wilfred was around 90 years old and a veteran of WWII. He was also completely blind.
He had this old BMW sitting in his cluttered garage, the thing looked like it hadn't moved in a couple of decades. The car was his pride and joy in his younger days and he would tell anyone who would listen about how he used to drive himself and his wife to the local town to go dancing. Mike told Wilfred he would take the car home and fix it up and bring it back when it was all sorted.
It was decided if he could get the old girl purring again, Wilfred would pay Mike a pretty penny. But that’s not what happened. What Mike actually did was drive it straight to a scrapyard, sell it for scrap value then lie through his teeth every time Wilfred asked about it. No, he wasn't fired. So yeah, I think that's the most disgusting thing I have seen anyone do. Steal from a blind old man.
49. Blood Isn’t Always Thicker Than Water
My friend was in her final year of university. She had strong grades, and a really great internship lined up with a place she dreamed about working at. It almost certainly would have led to a great job. Well, that is, until her parents faked her younger brother's passing on the day when she had three finals back to back to back. The reason behind it all was seriously deranged.
They wanted to test whether she cared more about her family or her career, supposedly. She raced home in panic and grief, getting plane tickets and flying across the country, trying to get deferred exams on short notice. One of her profs, who helmed two of those classes, required a certificate. Well, she couldn't get it, since her brother was alive and well.
She didn't get to graduate because of that, at least not in that semester, and she lost her dream internship. Thankfully, she got a good job after graduating half a year later, though not nearly as good as the one she lost out on. Since then, she's largely cut her parents out of her life.
50. Cheaters Never Prosper
My dad cheated on my mom for a year and hid it. He got fired because it was with a co-worker, but he told us all he got laid off. We all spent a year feeling bad for him and trying to help him out...Meanwhile, he was sneaking around using his severance money to take his mistress out on little trips and stuff. It's the worst thing anyone I know has ever done, and it was from the guy I should be looking up to.
Sources: Reddit,
