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.
Note: This post contains mentions child abuse, domestic violence, and pregnancy loss.
“My mom had two kids she put up for adoption before she married my dad.
23andMe opened that can of worms.”
“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 was never in the military.
None of it happened.
“My uncle was gay.
They hung out with his boyfriend all the time.
We just thought he was a really close family friend.”
u/Opandemonium
5.
“My sister and I knew an older couple.
The wife was always seemingly in ill health.
The wife/sister was on the husband/brother’s health insurance at work.
Both had the same last name.”
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.”
My aunt’s kids were always excelling at something.
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 law.
My father rented an apartment to one of them.
The shit bag cousin promptly sold the new appliances and replaced them with free appliances people gave away.
He was coming back to steal tools my father had in the apartment.
All the shit came out about them when his lying mother died.
My brother, sister, and I lived in the shadow of his mother’s lies.”
u/GadreelsSword
9.
“My grandfather had an entirely separate family.
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.
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.”
“I knew my step-grandpa was in WWII, as were many of our grandparents.
u/HarveyMushman72
13.
And yes, my mom and dad were married when my brother was born.
Who knows how many half-siblings we have out there?”
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.”
u/p38-lightning
15.
They’d been best friends for 25 years and married for 10.
I have a great-aunt who is five years younger than me!
It’s a beautiful thing.
“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.
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.
“I was sad when he died a few years later.
I replied that he was dead.
Everyone wanted to report him, but they knew no one would believe them.
They would have ended up getting in big trouble and probably getting thrown out of the prestigious private school.
Sometimes, you just never can tell.”
u/Shoddy_Stay_5275
17.
He had hundreds of photos of her squirreled away.”
“That my mother’s best friend’s sister died from a home abortion and not pneumonia.
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.”
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911.
