" At his funeral , my female parent ’s family asked them who they were , and a clustering of them show up and enunciate they were his children . "
It’s easy (and reasonable) to think we know all there is to know about someone close to us. But everyone has secrets, and sometimes, they’ll take those secrets all the way to the grave. Recently, redditoru/OldCarWorshipperasked ther/AskOldPeoplecommunity toshare the shocking thing they learnedabout someone after they passed away. Here are the wild secrets that were uncovered.
remark : This place contains honorable mention child abuse , domestic violence , and pregnancy passing .
1.“My mom had two kids she put up for adoption before she married my dad. 23andMe opened that can of worms.”
2.“I had a great-aunt who never married. I just thought she was a lesbian. Turns out, she had a 40-year affair with a priest. They were supposedly ‘madly in love.'”
— u / MrsWalter9818
3.“That his entire life was a complete lie. He had great military stories and even gifted us his military sword, which we found out later came from a pawn shop. He was never in the military. His life stories of travel, adventure, and people he met while working as a bodyguard were elaborate and fascinating to listen to. None of it happened. On his deathbed, people came out of the woodwork, including his adult children, and informed us that he actually lived his life as a dangerous conman, conning everyone he knew throughout his lifetime, and lives were lost.”
4.“My uncle was gay. His wife knew. They hung out with his boyfriend all the time. We just thought he was a really close family friend.”
— uracil / Opandemonium
5.“My sister and I knew an older couple. The wife was always seemingly in ill health. She eventually passed away, and the husband confessed to me that both husband and wife were never married as they were, in reality, brother and sister. The wife/sister was on the husband/brother’s health insurance at work. Both had the same last name.”
6.“The reason my cousin was never talked about in the family for decades was because she was in the witness protection program. Didn’t see that one coming.”
— u / Munchkin - M
7.“I had to go through a colleague’s office after they died. I found evidence of an affair in a small lockbox. I shredded all of it.”
8.“When I was young, it was important to become something — an engineer, a doctor, a writer, etc. My aunt’s kids were always excelling at something. My brother, sister, and I were average kids who stayed out of trouble, didn’t do drugs, never got arrested, etc. My mother was always impressed with my cousins’ many achievements and sometimes commented that we could do better and be like them. Well, you guessed it, it was all lies. They lived on the other side of town and had terrible grades, got in trouble, etc.”
" When they got older , my cousins were regularly in trouble with the jurisprudence . My founder rented an apartment to one of them . The shit bag cousin quick sold the new appliances and supplant them with free gadget citizenry give away .
He move out , and while we were make clean the flat ( he did n’t sleep with we were there ) , he started breaking in by prying a window open . He was coming back to slip peter my male parent had in the apartment .
All the shit come up out about them when his lying mother died . My brother , sister , and I dwell in the shadow of his mother ’s lies . "
— u / GadreelsSword
9.“My grandfather had an entirely separate family. At his funeral, my mother’s family asked them who they were, and a bunch of them showed up and said they were his children.”
— u / Sufficient - Union-456
11.“My paternal uncle’s former mother-in-law killed my maternal great-grandfather in the 1950s. She was part of high society. She was also a person with alcoholism. My great-grandfather was working on a bridge; she was driving drunk and hit him. The powers that be decided that because she had young children and lots of money, it would serve the public interest if it was deemed a hit-and-run with no suspects. Case closed. My mother and I found out about it at my paternal grandmother’s funeral. Evidently, it was an open secret on that side of the family.”
12.“I knew my step-grandpa was in WWII, as were many of our grandparents. I didn’t know he was a B-17 pilot who got shot down and hid out in a French farmhouse from the Nazis until he was rescued.”
— atomic number 92 / HarveyMushman72
13.“When my mom was in the hospital giving birth to my brother (eldest child), my father had buggered off to Colorado to be present at the birth of his other child. And yes, my mom and dad were married when my brother was born. Who knows how many half-siblings we have out there?”
14.“My great-aunt was a nurse in a mental hospital in the 1920s, and she fell in love with a guy who was being evaluated to stand trial for murder. She helped him escape, and they ran off to Florida but were eventually caught. My aunt got off pretty easy, but he got the death penalty.”
— uranium / p38 - lightning
15.“Not after, but a year before her death, I learned that my 98-year-old great-aunt had been married to her 47-year-old female caregiver for a DECADE. They’d been best friends for 25 years and married for 10. I have a great-aunt who is five years younger than me! My 98-year-old great-aunt had been married to my great-uncle for 68 years and had four children, and she never really considered herself a lesbian; she just considered it to be as simple as ‘love is love,’ no labels required for them. It’s a beautiful thing. I’m so glad I learned that my great-aunt was a total badass before she died so I could honor her as such during her last year of life.”
16.“Through doing genealogy, I found a kindly gentleman who was my fourth cousin in the UK. He was a retired teacher and refused to get a computer, so we corresponded through the mail. His letters were brilliant and laced with really clever humor. I came to adore him. After a while, he kindly offered to research my English family history for me, and I gladly accepted the offer. He lived in the same city my family had originally come from. A few years later, on a trip to England, I got to meet this man. He had never married and had a deformed leg due to one of those old-time diseases, but he drove me around to see where my ancestors had lived and was fun and interesting to be with.”
" I was lamentable when he died a few years later . I had save his alphabetic character and an oil painting he had done , and I continued to more or less idolise the man . However , a couple of year subsequently , I received a content on Facebook asking if I bang my relation ’s whereabouts . I respond that he was beat .
The person wrote back that he was dreary the man was all in because he wanted to see him go to prison house . It turn out this new contact was a former student , and the ' decent ' instructor used to impel several boys in his car to play ' game . '
Everyone wanted to report him , but they knew no one would believe them . They would have ended up getting in big trouble and likely getting thrown out of the prestigious secret school .
This man had been traumatized , and eventually , all these years later , he had gained the braveness to go public with what my relative had done to many unseasoned boys . I do n’t make out if he would have been jailed , but his reputation would have been deflower , and he would never have been able to face the world again . Sometimes , you just never can assure . "
— u / Shoddy_Stay_5275
17.“My father’s cousin served six months in jail in the mid-’50s for stalking Oscar-winning Italian actress Anna Magnani while she was filming in the US. He had hundreds of photos of her squirreled away.”
18.“That my mother’s best friend’s sister died from a home abortion and not pneumonia. She became pregnant by her uncle at 13 and decided that she had to abort, so my mother and her best friend performed the abortion. She collapsed in school a couple of days later and died after going into a coma for two weeks. I learned my mother blamed herself entirely for the sister’s death. It made sense because I don’t know if I ever heard my mother laugh out loud.”
— u / Cannelope
19.“My grandfather shot my grandmother. It grazed her cheek. There was a trial; he went to jail. I never knew this until both of them had passed — it was a big family secret. They had already divorced and remarried, which is when they had my mother. They never spoke about it.”
mention : Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity .
If you are concerned that a tyke is experiencing or may be in risk of abuse , you may call or text theNational Child ill-usage Hotlineat 1 - 800 - 422 - 4453(4.A.CHILD ) ; service can be provided in over 140 language .
If you or someone you know is in prompt peril as a result of domestic violence , call 911 . For anonymous , secret assistance , you’re able to call the 24/7National Domestic Violence Hotlineat 1 - 800 - 799 - 7233 ( SAFE ) or visit with an advocate via the website .
