Many deathbed confessions are bombshells that leave aftershocks to those who hear them. For some, these final words before passing on are so haunting that they’ve been documented for the internet to see.
Some of those are part of this Reddit thread asking, “Which is the most haunting deathbed confession you know of?” A few of these are revelations of illegitimate children and second families. You may also read stories of murder admissions from decades back.
Especially if you’re in the mood for something sad or shocking, this one’s for you.
This post may include affiliate links.
My grandfather on his deathbed leaned over, and with all his remaining energy told me that he was in fact the person that let the dogs out.
I am not going to die on my deathbed, my normal bed will do.
When I was in hospital, the guy in the bed next to me just asked to stop taking his meds as he was ready to die. Last thing I heard him say was "There's no one waiting for me at home, so I'm going where they are."
Wasn't really a shocking confession, just a lonely and heartbreaking one.
This post hit home with me. Sometimes, I wonder if I'll feel like that when it's my time to go
Same. I'm introvert-ish and not good at making new friends (meeting new people stresses me out), so whenever someone in these "How did you get so old" interviews says that contact with young people keeps them young I'm all "oh, well, this'll suck for me if I get that far"
Load More Replies...That's what's wrong with living a long life, all of your nearest and dearest have already passed and there's no one left to go home to.
My grandmother confessed to me that I'm adopted.
What haunts me is that her dementia was so bad that she legitimately believed I didn't know. For context, I'm Korean, my sister's Mexican, and our parents are white. I spent the last few hours with her letting her act as if she were breaking it to me gently and promising I wouldn't be upset with my parents for not telling me (even though they had and it was kinda hard to miss).
That’s hard, but I think it was very kind of you to listen to her “confess” something you already knew. Dementia is a horrible disease, but sometimes it’s better to let them believe what they believe and not try and argue with them. Obviously there are exceptions, but in this case it was kind not to argue and allow the grandmother to believe she did something good before passing away.
When my great grandma was in hospice (kidney failure) towards the end she started having, for lack of a better term, hallucinations as the toxins had built up in her bloodstream, and the nurses told us to just go along with whatever she thought she was seeing so long as she wasn't in distress. Luckily it was primarily her talking to her mother and her husband and nothing bad. But dealing with someone who has dementia or is otherwise not fully in the current reality is kind of like improv in the "yes, and" sense of it. Go along with what they're saying.
Load More Replies...You are such an amazing human allowing your grandma to tell you this though you already knew. Dementia su cks, my dad is 77 & has had dementia for 10yrs, since I found out I was pregnant. The thing that pulls my heart strings is when I take my 10yr old daughter to visit him after school, his eyes light up & she is more than happy to just sit there, listen to his life stories & helps him with his dinner.
I think it's lovely that the grandmother, in that moment, saw through the visible differences to the truth of the loving family relationships that were as real as biological family. I have a good friend who is half Indian and half French, and when her French grandmother was succumbing to dementia she forgot her granddaughter, but never forgot her racism. My friend had to endure a lot of panicked moments along the lines of, "What is that brown woman doing in my house?!?". This story is much happier.
A girl I know had her grandma confess to poisoning her first husband because he had hit her. Fair enough.
My granny has made claims that she hired a hit man for my grandfather. However, he was never unalived, so we're unsure if it's just her weird way of joking or if she just hired someone incompetent.
A family friend that I knew when I was a child confessed as he was dying that he had used an assumed identity of a dead friend for his entire adult life. He was a Jewish child in Germany and there was a program in the UK to accept 10k Jewish refugee children from Europe. He was slightly over the age to qualify, but a younger friend of his was murdered by the Nazis and he took the opportunity to steal the identity of this other boy. He escaped to the UK and eventually moved to North America, started a family and lived out his life. He never told anyone, including his wife who passed away long before he did, because he was afraid he would be deported back to Germany, even many decades later. As he was dying he finally told his children.
Agreed. Now let us not create nazism in this country, now that we know half the population wants it or is too stup** to see it staring them in the face.
Load More Replies...Dubious story - the Kindertransport was very strictly controlled. Each child had to be financially sponsored and have somebody waiting for them in the UK. The chance of some random Jewish kid slipping through is very slim especially as the Nazi regime was very strict on paperwork. Upper limit was 17 years old. On the other hand, if he was Jewish and escaped the Holocaust good luck to him.
My wife is a CNA in a nursing home. She had a resident who was formally a delivery (OB) nurse in the 70s and 80s.
When she was on her last few breaths, my wife was leaning in to her face to clean it, and she whispered in my wife's ear, "When I was a nurse, I switched babies around"
I'm not sure what's worse, knowing that one child may not be your child, or that this woman could have done it MANY times.
HQ: Why does America have baby rooms where all the children lie together? In Holland the baby never leaves moms room (unless in case of an emergency of course).
I don't know how it's now in the US, but definitely things were different in the 70' where I come from (European country).
Load More Replies...Yeah, that one is disturbing enough that you would want to follow up with the nursing board, or something. I mean, YIKES.
Load More Replies...What does OB stand for? I asked that question so many times, but never got an answer. Internet research doesn't work out, as it depends on the most used language in search and on the location too. Thats Austrian German in my case, located in Austria. Looking up OB brings me to the most common tampon brand and other not related stuff. So PLEASE someone enlighten me!
"Obstetrician" ist die lange Version von OB und bedeutet Geburtenhelfer, man nimmt einfach die ersten beiden Anfangsbuchstaben :D Ein OB GYN wäre also ein Geburtenhelfer UND Gynäkologe!
Load More Replies...Maybe it is because I'm not a native speaker, but that was a very difficult text to understand.
The dying woman used to be a nurse who helped with birthing. In the US, newborn babies have their own secure room together for medical observation, bathing, etc. The dying woman confessed to swapping the babies' identities and giving them to the wrong parents to take home.
Load More Replies...wow- what would you do with that information? find out where she worked and tell everyone or leave everyone at peace ????
Grammar pedantry ahead: formally -> formerly Seeing stuff like that in a sentence feels like my brain has stubbed its toe...
My wife's grandmother called her husband over to her and said something along the lines of. " I've hated you for decades. You are a racist controlling bastard." She died a few minutes later. He went down to the cafeteria and got lunch.
Too bad she couldn't have found her freedom and some happiness earlier in life.
Laws were set up against her doing that. And these same laws are going to be returning to the USA soon enough. Women are possessions
Load More Replies...That proves very well that hating somebody is like drinking poison and hoping that this other person dies
Load More Replies...
My stepfather requested to see the two other families he had that nobody knew about on his deathbed. Boy was that fun.
How do people have the time or energy for that business? TWO extra families? Jeez.
OMG ikr right!!! Like, yeah it's deplorable behavior, but dang I can't help but admire that kinda energy
Load More Replies...The father of a friend of mine had three families too, with the official one not knowing about the other two who knew of each other and knew he was married with children. My friend was one of the official children, and when he was a kid went camping with his family and was puzzled hearing his father's voice calling the names of other children, none of which was his sibling. He was very young and didn't think much of it. Long story short, the three families ended up living all together in a sort of hippy style. The last girlfriend of his father was a daughter from the second family, they were partners for many years until his death
There was a couple where the wife got some mental illness where she wouldn't go outside the house. This went on for years. Eventually after counseling she made a little progress and agreed to go to the drugstore one night. She went in while her husband stayed in the car. While she was in the drugstore, someone walked in, shot her in the back of the head and walked out. She died immediatly and the shooter was never caught.
For years everyone thought it was some insane paranormal thing, like she somehow knew that being out in public would lead to her death etc...
Many decades later, the husband admitted on his deathbed that he had hired someone to kill her because he could not take her mental illness anymore.
She still may have created a self fulfilling prophecy though. If she hadn't had the paranoia he would not have been able to "not take it any more". OR, it was a convenient excuse because he was looking for a way to kill her from day dot and her sub conscious knew it? Crazy to think about either way.
Sometimes you have to wonder which way is kinder and which is cruel; keeping them alive and miserable, or ending their suffering. Unfortunately, they may not be in a state of mind to make that decision themselves. For those who develop such issues later in life, I guess it’s a good idea to think about this—-like when you find out such conditions run in your family—-and set up arrangements for it before you’re unable to. I know it’s not pleasant to think about, but it does make sense.
Well, if she had wanted to die, she could've done it herself. Instead, she was actually being brave and traveling outside her comfort zone. She didn't choose to die, she was shot in the head by someone her husband paid off because he didn't want to deal with her anymore. That's not euthanasia. That's homicide.
Load More Replies...That seems like it would have been way harder to coordinate than a home invasion gone wrong or something
My grandpa whispered something cryptic right before he passed. He said, "The garden gnome... it was always him," and then just closed his eyes forever. It's been ten years, and I still get chills thinking about it. I mean, what garden gnome? Why him? I never even got to ask.
Ever since they began advertising travel websites I've been leery of them!
Load More Replies...Oh I want to go like that! I'm going to think of something weird and cryptic for my last words.
Did OPs grandmother have a previous boyfriend whose nickname was garden gnome?
A little mystery to death is a beautiful thing. I read that for a sum of money, you could hire a man to dress in solid black, wear sunglasses, a hat and carry an umbrella to a loved one's funeral. He would stand somewhat away from the grieving family and everyone would be wondering who he was. He would silently slip in and out without uttering a word.
Seem's pretty obvious to me he would be referring to moving a gnome around the garden to try and make the kids think it's alive/magical and create some wonder, no?
My grandfather revealed that my mother was not his only child. In the 1950s, when his longtime best friend was unable to impregnate his wife, my grandfather spent a week (A WEEK) in a remote cabin in the Ozarks having sex with this guy’s wife in order to give them a child. He said they had sex over 20 times. His friend even walked in on them once having sex on the kitchen counter after he drove down for the day to check on them - no phone at the cabin. Well, the week of sex worked and she got pregnant. The couple then moved out of state to start a new life as a family - to this day it is their only child and she’s not aware of her biological dad. The only communication my grandfather received from them afterward was a letter giving confirmation the child was born a healthy little girl. He never saw his friend again, but stated he often thought about that cabin in the woods.
Kind of related, I remember a story where a guy had some three or four kids already, and his friend was also having issues conceiving - they had tests that said the wife was able, but the guy wan't. Since in vitro was expensive, they "borrowed" the guy that had lots of kids already and and let the sex commence. After a long time and no conception, the "donor" was tested and, surprise, was also infertile - his wife had used a "donor" as well!
"but stated he often thought about that cabin in the woods" I bet he did... I would too! That's just gold.😎
Granddad went into details with his grandchild about the sexual encounters?
Not neccessarily. It says "revealed", not "revealed to me". Maybe gramps told his daugher (OP's mother), or his wife, or a nurse,...
Load More Replies...The couple basically vanished from OP-gramp's life, and he never knew his other child. All obvious dirty jokes aside: I wonder if the two weeks of reproductional activity on his side and the gain of a child on the other side were worth losing a "longtime best friend", and whose idea it was (friend or wife).
People do crazy things to have a kid, so I'm not inclined to judge, but I get why they wouldn't want to stay in touch after that. I've heard variations on this story many times. What I don't get is why they thought intimacy was necessary. Why not just, you know, donate genetic material.
Load More Replies... My grandpa disowned my aunt just 24 hours short of kicking the bucket. He cried and you could see how bad it felt, but as he called it, a last act of justice he should have done many decades ago.
One of my aunts outed another one of my aunt as a lesbian in the 80s, gay aunt lost her job, lost her friends, was banned from many places and pratically had to move town to rebuild her life (it was a 40k people town back then and she moved to a larger urban center).
If that was not enough, she done a miriad of other evil deeds along the years. I've never seen my grandpa cry, but he wanted to do it himself, not trough a will, as his last deed as a parent.
The whole speech of a dying man delievering justice is something that haunts the whole family to this day, 10 years later.
It was heavy.
My great-great uncle admitted on his deathbed that he wasn't actually related to our family, he'd spent the last 40 years in the US using one of our distant relatives citizenship papers since they looked close enough and in the 1920's that was really all you needed.
He didn't kill the real uncle or anything, the guy had just decided America wasn't for him and went home. This dude was like "Hey, since you aren't wanting to go back, can I have your papers?" and that was that.
Not haunting at all, but my family doesn't have very many death bed confessions, so it's still technically the most haunting.
My godfather wasn’t biologically related to our family (most godparents in our family are relatives). He’s long passed now but I called him family (and still do) much more easily than I do my blood relatives. They suck. He was amazing.
I can't prove this, but am pretty sure that most godparents are NOT biologically related -- often they're dear friends who are important to the parents.
Load More Replies...This doesn't make any sense. So the original guy had family in the US but decided he didn't like it here and went home. Since he didn't need his citizenship papers he gave them to someone else who could use them. So far, so good. But then what happened? This new guy just shows up for the next family gathering and the whole family doesn't recognize that it is a different guy? Or did the first guy never make contact with the family to begin with so they just accepted this new one? But why would the new one even make contact with the first guy's family? And how could he be accepted as a great-great uncle if the first guy was a "distant relative"? Can someone make this make sense, please?
Dad died when I was twelve. Grandpa died in my twenties. Nothing too crazy. My grandpa did however look up in the corner of the room and said my dad was there to get him. Passed away 40 minutes later in his sleep. Thank god for hospice, and F**k cancer.
You are 100% right. I prayed when my Dad was failing that The Lord would send angels to grab his hands and help him over. When I got to the home he was already gone. the little nurses aide told me he sat up and reached out as though someone was grabbing his hands and then passed away with a smile. Sent chills down my back and also peace.
Fork cancer! And knife and every single other thing in the kitchen! Including the kitchen sink! Mom died suddenly almost ten years ago. But still it is no longer than a few months away
My school teacher told the class abpit the time his father in law was on his deathbed. He told the family to “check the walls”. Nobody knew what he meant until they did some renovations years later and found gold ingots in the walls.
Not really haunting, but still crazy.
The picture shows someone sanding walls for a smooth finish. Sanding, with a sandpaper disc. Not scanning. So once again a totally unrelated picture. Thanks BP.
I know this really shouldn't bother me as much as it does but it reeaalllyy bothers me when the pics don't match the posts!
Load More Replies...When my dad died we found some silver bars in an old paint tin in the shed
Is a person allowed to own gold ingots like this nowadays? Where did they come from? There should be some type of markings on them. Need to see where they come from, make sure they weren't stolen.
Hopping to higher above, when their relatives said it was the Garden Gnome..should have checked that gnome dude for gold :)
Wasnt really shocking just sad. They were relieved to have an excuse to die. He said he should have killed himself when he was in high school and it would have saved him from "all of this"..
Hoping that was just the meds/pain brain talking. But not everyone has a happy life.
This will definitely be me. It’s like an intrinsic knowledge that this will happen to me if I don’t do it myself. I have no plans at the minute to do it myself though, because I’m just spiteful enough to want to see what b******t is next
Tamra & I care about you DasiyBee. There's always a new toe to stub or fingernail to bend backward so never give up hope. :p :)
Load More Replies...I like to say that smoking is suicide with the world's slowest bullet. I never realized just HOW slow that bullet would be. I've been a smoker for over 30 years, and this year decided I really want to quit. I someone who really has been there and done that, I understand the sentiment, but if I could offer advice: give up smoking. Not worth the money. My mantra now is "It won't make me stronger, braver or better able to face the day." Just know that the cigs give you nothing. Everything you need is already inside you, and even if life may seem painful, hopeless, pointless, etc., there can be help, and things can get better. Don't worry about people and places and things that you can't change. Just enjoy what you can. I hope things get better for you.
Load More Replies...
In the 70s there was an unsolved murder of a teenage girl in my hometown and some beloved guy from the community allegedly confessed to the murder on his death bed. It's just spooky to think that even the nicest people may be monsters.
Ted Bundy worked as a suicide hotline operator. Was apparently very helpful & kind to those calling in during their darkest, scariest moments. He just so happened to also be a serial killer
Bundy used to babysit my dad's friend when she was little, she actually said he was a good babysitter to. Crazy to think about.
Load More Replies...Murderers don’t look like murders otherwise they wouldn’t be able to lure victims.
I think the saying goes..... "It's usually the nicest people who have the worst demons."
The problem is that people think it's always a "monster". You can point out all the 'normal' looking murderers and rapists, people refuse to accept that such crimes are committed by normal appearing people. Probably because then they would have to accept the monster in themselves. In the end this protects the sadistic criminals, but people don't care, they want their "peace of mind", and if 6 year old Maisie gets raped because of their indifference, well, it's not them, right?
Seemed pretty straightforward and clear to me. Girl was murdered in the 70s in OP’s hometown, guy with good rep confesses to it (allegedly) on his deathbed.
Load More Replies...My sister works in a skilled nursing facility and she had a retired cop tell her about the child rapist he and other officers beat to death after they arrested him. He told her they brought him in for questioning and he “wasn’t an issue anymore after that”.
And if they picked the wrong guy? It happens you know. It does happen.
Load More Replies...one of my stepbrothers {not the one that lived with my step mom at the time and helped her try to kill me.... dad got around} got kicked and sentenced for beating the sh*t out of a child rapist with other cops, he got like 10 years, i was about 10 when he got out, and he almost got put away again after finding out that while he was in there and I was in the orphanage at the time {mother passed away, they didn't find my father till I was 11} that some of the workers in there did it to me and took my eye when I fought back {good news the guys that did it, died in prison about 14 years ago so that's good and it's been almost over 30 years
If there wasn't a written confession, with irrefutable evidence to back it up - its just vigilante justice & murder.
Geez was her uncle Hank Voight? He makes Elliott Stabler look like a choir boy.
An electrician I apprenticed for told me about the time he was pulling cable in an attic and found a revolver under the insulation.... with five loaded cylinders and one spent casing.
He called the cops, they were able to close a 40 year old cold case, but the perp was in a nursing home on O2 so they just let him run out the clock.
I hope they charged him post mortem then, having the case officially closed can help families heal
You can't charge a dead person with a crime. It leaves them with no opportunity to defend themself.
Load More Replies...
Reading these is crazy. all my grandpa said on his death bed was "can someone turn off that smell" after i opened my breakfast burrito.
You chose the death bed scene to eat a breakfast burrito? Ladies and Gentlemen. We have a winner #20 is truly the AH.
A "death bed scene" can last hours or even days. My grandpa stayed alive nearly a week after the hospice doctor gave him hours (we're pretty sure he was waiting for my uncle so he could say goodbye since my uncle wasn't able to get there as soon as the rest of us).
Load More Replies...My mother kept saying "Turn off the TV." It wasn't on. She just didn't like my talking.
Not really this but my mom was raised in KY where all the miners and coal operators were in conflict in the 1930s and on and she told about some older man who had worked for the coal company and had presumably done some bad stuff on their behalf. Car bombs, shootings, I don’t know. As he lay dying in the hospital years later the coal co. had someone sit in his room 24 hours to be sure he did not do any deathbed confessions. Creepy as hell I always thought.
Thanks, I was picturing something like a bacta-tank full of lube, and while this is cool, I was wondering what it had to do with the story.
Load More Replies...Because in the 19th and early 20th century that sort of thing was common. They would hire Pinkertons to basically act as a private army to break the unions. It wasn't legal per se, but if you were attacking unions (ie communism/marxism/anarchists/whatever scary buzzword you want to use) no one in authority was going to care. Workers' Rights and anything else that lowered profits made off the backs of the poor was inherently bad. Any of this looking scarily familiar?
Load More Replies...
One of my uncles confessed to having two other children with another woman. He thought he was going to die from COVID and I guess he felt he needed to come clean. He didn't die. That was back in 2020 and there's still a ridiculous amount of drama happening over potential inheritances and whatnot.
EDIT: Yes, it absolutely *is* hysterical he got a second chance to live after admitting to having a second family.
No, my uncle is not a bad person as far as I know. We never interacted much because his English is bad and my Mandarin is atrocious.
My great aunt was a spinster until late in life. She started a preschool in the 1930s in Beverly Hills, and upon retirement sold the property for a great amount of money. She met and married an older fellow, an elder in the Christian Science church. He became terminally ill but since he had no health insurance and didn’t believe in Medicare, my great aunt went out of pocket for his care. Drained her assets. Fine, her choice. On his deathbed he confessed to her that he had been sleeping with his church secretary for years. Hey, Uncle Herman: F**K YOU.
This one reeks of BS. I can't believe that an elder in the Church of Christ, Scientists would have ANYTHING to do with medical care. The whole ethos is about curing through prayer - which is a whole different load of BS - parents have let their children die rather than see a doctor. So, BS on this one.
I'm not that sympathetic. She made poor financial decisions. If she'd refused to fund his care unless he had Medicare coverage and used it first she could have avoided this. Either by him having to use Medicare or by finding out a user he was sooner. 'I don't want to use the available insurance ' isn't a reason to use your money on someone else's care, no matter their relation to you.
It's so sad that people confess these horrible things and leave their relatives with these devastating feelings after their deaths because of it. Selfish to the end. They have a clear conscience at the expense of someone else's well being. I'm sure you could argue they have the right to know the truth but I wonder if it's worth it.
A friend told me that his mother's last words was that she never cared about him and was sorry she had him.
Why, because she felt as she felt and didn't lie? F**k the "a mother must love her child" myth.
Load More Replies...My husband had a similar experience. His mother is dead and I'll never forgive her for the damage she did to my husband. She drove everyone away from her to the point that it was a gardener who found her after 2 days dead.
My uncle, who was the oldest, admitted he passed on going to University so my other uncle and mother could.
Only my father and me were told, and we keep it a secret still as we just don't want them to feel bad (he passed away a couple years ago, but it was very sudden and unpleasant).
This seems to be common in the older generation, older siblings leaving school to work so that the younger ones can.
My father told me that he had loaned his brother money to pay for one of the brother's sons college tuition. My father and his brother are both gone, and I'm almost certain the money was never repaid, but my cousin will never know (though he could easily afford to pay it, if anyone was left alive who knew how much it was).
My grandfather had pretty terrible dementia and he kept making deathbed confessions as he knew he didn’t have much time left. They were often about witnessing a murder and not telling anyone, but each time he confessed to us the details changed. It happened a couple of times a day over the course of his final week. We finally figured out that he would watch the local news and hear about these things happening then would think he had actually witnessed them.
One good reason to take any deathbed confession with a pinch of salt. Even without dementia or drügs the dying mind can do funny things. We've all had bizarre and vivid dreams at some point, imagine having one of them and not realising when you wake up...
My grandma had a severe infection and her mind went off the deep end for a while. She confessed to all kinds of things that were untrue, and she also thought ninjas were trying poison her and the FBI was listening to her through her bible. She does not remember any of it, thankfully, and since for some reason she believed that I was the only person who she could trust, no one else had to listen to her ravings. Some were ... really unhinged.
Load More Replies...My grandmother did the exact same thing. And it was horrific for her, because she was riddled with guilt that she "witnessed" these things and never told anyone. At one point she even "admitted" to killing her grandfather. It was heartbreaking.
Now compare this one with the above one where the cops beat the supposed “child rapist” to death. People are very often wrong, even about things the are “certain” about. I have actually heard a local cop, talking to high school kids, that people who are furries all eventually become rapists.
A friend of mine said his granny kept saying she had lunch with all these famous people. She was watching T.V. and was so demented she thought they were there with her.
When his dementia got bad, my grandpa kept talking about his ancestors, but adding details to the stories that he never said before he had dementia. Things like one of them stealing a bible and having to leave the country and meeting her eventual husband in England or Ireland and him helping hide her. In reality, she was sent to Australia on an orphan ship during the famine in Ireland, and he was sent as a convict. They didn't meet until he worked off his sentence and moved form Tasmania to Victoria, where he met her.
I have heard hospice nurses hear deathbed confessions about murdering people all the time. Very sad and disturbing.
i have a friend who is a hospice nurse and she said the same. one her worst was an old man who said he was seeing ppl he knew were dead. right before he died he told my friend the ppl he had been seeing were all the ppl he killed. he said names one after another until he passed. she still wonders if he said the whole list of names or not before he died.
I did Hospice but never heard any of that. As a nurse in recovery I had a man admit he was screwing his daughter's best girlfriend. When he was returned to his room the wife, daughter and girlfriend were there .I just ducked my head and left.
Nursing home nurse here. I had an old guy who was dying suddenly grab my hand and tell me that I had to call the police because he had killed her. Her who, I asked. He was Scottish and had an atrocious accent but went on to tell me that he had killed a woman when he was younger and he wanted me to tell the police. I reassured him that I would take action and he died shortly after. I never did call the police. I had very little info as, like I said, I found him hard to understand and I really didn't get enough to give the cops something concrete to go on. I will add my brother is a cop and an ex was a cop so I have a fair idea of what can and can't be used.
I mean, if he had given you a name of the victim, sure. Though we have very small hamlets here, and given he said "when he was young" they may have had only that one missing case in the span of years. I always think of the victim's family, they might wonder to this day what happened to their relative.
Load More Replies...
One of my great uncles, someone I barely knew. I could count on one hand how many times we actually crossed paths.
But on his deathbed, he asked for me. The only thing he said to me was that he was sorry.
I won’t pretend that his death hit me hard, but those words have stuck with me over the years. Why would he apologize to a 13-year-old who was practically a stranger? My mom says he was likely sorry for not being there for me, but I don’t know why he’d feel that way. No one ever expected him to make time for his great nephew. The few times we did meet, he was distant but kind, just like a stereotypical elderly man would be.
Maybe it’s not as dramatic as some other people’s stories, but even now, in my twenties, I still think about it sometimes.
Maybe she doesn't remember what he could be sorry for. Maybe he did something to her when she was too young to remember. Cynical, I know, just wondering though.
I’m guessing there is more to the story that you don’t know about. Perhaps he’s sorry for something else?
There was an ongoing land dispute in the family and my grandpa just before dying told me that the whole land is mine on his will. 8 years later i still haven’t tackled or talked about it yet.
I'll try to break this down: Grandfather owned land, entire family was fighting over who should get what of that property. Grandfather gave it all to grandchild, who hasn't told rest of family.
One would think that this would've been settled 8 years later. In the US, probate can be lengthy, but not that lengthy.
Load More Replies...According to Reddit the probate went pretty quick and the grandchild got the property but most of the family doesn't talk to him. Most of the family thinks and he himself thinks he should divide up the property the way the family wants to but they were so vicious about it he still hasn't brought it up 8 years later.
How could they not know? Wills become public records after probate (at lease in the US). If they expected to be mentioned in the will surely they would looked up the will sometime in the last 8 years. Or they could just look up the property dead and found out who owned it now.
I think OP meant that there was a major fight about the land amid the family. He got the land and he has not worked up the nerve to do anything with the land or make any decisions at all. It is just sitting there waiting for his decision
"My grandpa murmured, 'I hid a wealth... in the...' then he simply nodded off. Still wondering if he intended for the yard or if his sense of humor drove one last swing.".
I hope I can remember this when my time comes!
Load More Replies...
I have a friend "B" who served a church mission in Mexico, one of his prospects "Oscar" was interested but never committed to getting baptized. Shortly before B was to transfer to another area, Oscar was very sick and dyeing. While they were visiting him one last time they were encouraging him to be baptized so he could be saved (not trying to get preachy. It just pertains to the story). Oscar kept refusing, and they finally asked him why. He confessed to them how he was a hit man most of his life, and he killed a lot of people for money. When he got older, he retired to this small village, Mexico, to live in peace. The way B told me the story Oscar may have hinted he was also in hiding.
Agreed, but how is this related to the above story?
Load More Replies... Not mine
Mother ran a nursing home growing up. From ages 5-10 I spent every weekend with residents. Because I was a kid, residents often confessed stuff they thought I wouldn’t understand. Two stick out. One funny, one not.
Women was dying, maybe about 96. Even had her last burst of energy/life where she thought she was “better” (this is common). A Black delivery man came with some flowers. After he left she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “I can’t believe I’m dying without having been with a colored man.”
Second one was while I was reading bible verses to a resident, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to drop that baby in the well.”.
The 96YO basically implying she had been with one of every kind except for colored male is kinda bizarre. She sounds like she was a collector and couldn't catch 'em all.
Load More Replies...My family is from the south and a bunch of generations ago owned slaves. One night the uncle killed both his brother and his wife and pinned it on the slave family. All of which were hanged. On his deathbed, he confessed to the murder.
Father thought he murdered a woman when he was teenage little s**t.
I asked for name and he told me and I looked it up on smartphone and found out and was dead but she died in September 11th attack not when my father beat the s**t out of her in the 70s.
It was a weird sense of relief that he didn't directly murder someone but also acknowledge he was a woman abuser who thought he legitimately killed.
It was weird but the priest gave him last rights are I confirmed to him he didn't murder anybody.
Catholic blessing (? is that the right word?) for people to be absolved of their sins before death so they can get into heaven.
Load More Replies...
One of my aunts confessed to my mom that she slept with my dad and gave him herpes. We all knew but she didn't know we knew.
That’s the mom - how do you think she knew all along?
Load More Replies...
Anders Aastad from Hemne, Norway:
On what he thought was his deathbed with smallpox he confessed to his wife that he had been having sex with their horse.
The wife contacted the local priest to give salvation to her husband.
Aastad recovered and the priest instead went to the local policeman with his confession. Aastad was sentenced to death and burned alive in 1723.
Edit: It was described as a “slow and dreadful execution” in the local newspaper.
Edit 2: the horse was also sentenced to being burned, but since it is very hard to make a horse stand still over a burning fire it was killed first and then burned.
Clearly it tempted the man! It must be of Satan! /s
Load More Replies...They're not supposed to, no. Maybe this guy thought that it was worth the consequences to break that confidentiality though
Load More Replies...
A woman confessed to her husband of almost 55 years that the 3 kids they have, out of those 2 are not from him.
Oh wow, well that would be a heavy bow, especially since the kids and him would have to cope with that realization.
So cool, that bp censors pretty much everything and puts a picture of two black kids above THAT story! Can NOT stop giggling...🤭
Was visiting my grandmother in hospice, and her roommate was an old man. My grandmother took a nap, and he and I got to talking. He told me about how he used to lynch black folks back in the day in Alabama. I left and brought it up to the nurse and she said something along the lines of "Oh, he says things like that all the time. It's the dementia". I reported it to the AL State Bureau of Investigation, but never heard anything about it.
I’m not sure if this fits here because it wasn’t a confession although it is a bit haunting to me emotionally. Just before my grandfather passed he had lost a good percentage of his senses and speech was the one he had the most trouble with but he was still trying to communicate. Being the oldest granddaughter I was with him and tried communicating with him the most. What’s haunting is to this day I still don’t know 95% of what he was trying to say to me. The 5% I do remember was meaningful so I wish I could’ve understood the rest.
My mother in law had a brother who was a medical doctor. He actually sent another sister, without her consent or her knowing what was gonna happen, to get a hysterectomy (uterus removal) when she was 18 because "she shouldn't be a mother". Everybody knew.
Fast forward 50 years my mother in law has cancer. Her brother came to visit her on her deathbed. He left went home and had a heart attack. And died. I'm 100% sure she told him to rot in hell for what he did to their sister.
...we need more details, why was it deemed that this young woman "shouldn't be a mother"?? ETA of course it's NOT okay to do such drastic surgery on someone without their knowledge/consent, but heck if I could've had a hysterectomy at 18 I would have. I still want one. I'm mentally unwell and have had struggles with substances, had a couple suicide attempts. Had a child at 19. I pray all my illnesses aren't passed on to her. But I can say she's already doing WAY better than I was at her age. Sorry for the rant, but just giving an example of how sometimes such forms of birth control are just, idk, better for all humans involved
Most likely 'eugenics' - ie, she had a mental disability/impairment (as opposed to a mental health one.)
Load More Replies...
Old ex gendarme in france, he was "le grêlé" notorious serial killer of the eighties. It was a few years ago.
"Death bed" is a bit of a stretch here. From what I read on Wikipedia (yes, I know...) the serial killer was already suspected to be a policeman. In 2021, nearly 25 after he last was active, 750 cops got letters, summoning them for a DNA test in five days' time. His wife reported him missing three days after getting the letter. His body was found dead from súicide the day the testing was due, in a flat he had rented. He left his "deathbed confession" in the súicide note. DNA tests later confirmed the fact.
For decades I was told my father's first wife killed herself.
A few days before he died, he told me he murdered her -- gunshot to the heart.
I still have the pistol.
It was not me, but my former boss told me that when his father was on his deathbed, he told my boss that he had been unfaithful for the majority of his marriage. This came as a surprise to my boss. He asked my boss if he could keep that secret from his mom and sister, so they would preserve their memory of him as a loving husband/father. Not going to lie, felt kinda weird that he would share such a deep moment.
What a díck move on the father's side. As the son I might have kept my tongue to avoid any more distress for mom and sister, but that father definitely didn't deserve the slack he was given. "I neeeeed to disrupt your life by telling you what as AH I am - but don't tell the others. I want them to like me still, and not be held accountable"
This. He was too much of a coward to face the consequences of his actions in life, but probably wanted to "feel better after getting clean" when he had nothing to fear anymore. Burdening his son with it.
Load More Replies...I think maybe he wanted to keep the memory, for the sake of his family and not the father. Still, something like that weighs on you. I bet he felt like he needed to tell SOMEONE
He probably needed to get it off his chest. Something like that could really weigh a person down.
My mother confessed to killing my father moments after he passed in the hospital. Couldn’t get proof but she said she put d***s in his drink.
Must be ducks. All these feathers in the drink. What a horrible way to die!
My MIL once told us that her husband murdered her mother. This was half a century ago. She couldn't prove it bc mil was old and senile and this was before lots of new forensics.
Used to work for a shady swimming pool builder, owned by a real tough New York character. When he was dying, they sent a priest for his last rights. Apparently he started confessing things. The priest then had a heart attack.
This isn’t a confession per say, but my grandad killed himself by shooting himself in the head. But he actually lived for days after, completely out of it, barely moving and making indistinguishable noises. Near the end, my mom decided to play him Bruce Springsteen. He suddenly sat halfway up, grabbed my mom’s arm and look her in the eyes for a few seconds, and then fell back. We all think that was his last moment of real consciousness, and his way to say he saw sorry.
English is not my main language but i'm pretty sure it's last rites and not last rights.
my adopted mom passed May 22, 2023, she was out of it the last few days, 3 days before she passed she was up walking making food, even me food! and then she sat down and got tied, the next day she was sitting then folded on herself, and couldn't get her to lay back, I called a hospice nurse {we had home hospice as she wanted to go at home, and after we got her laid back and pain meds.....she just looked up and was gone.... the nurse looked at her and i went ver and told her.. she has gon...... as i said she was gon, no longer then 5 mins..... my phone rang.... on it said "mom" was calling, the nurse is n the middle of covering my still cooling mom, and we see moms phone across the room not on, not touched, yet mine still ringing, we look at each other and i grab my phone and i....... Click it off turned to my mom's body and says "Holy F*ck mom! Call "brother's name/or sister's name" I already know you died!" the nurse looked shocked as i laugh and told her, that we were all >>>>>>>
"spooky" and she was the kind of person to tell me something I already knew..... but i still wonder what would have happened if I had answered that phone call..... Then just a few months ago my aunt{who lived with us but at my moms, death was in the hospital} passed away on July 4, 2024, the day she passed she told me she felt bad, in a way she knew she was going to go, then she was gone, I went over to her, and slapped her a few times, pounded her chest a bit{cpr}, and surprisingly.... she was back, she asked what happened, I told her she died but she was back, she shake her head and said she needed to finish something first and the next time she lays back shes going, and she grabs her notebook, shaking hands and writes out a note and making calls calling the family, everyone gets there within 2 hours after she "died the first time" and she tells the m she loves them, makes her sister promise to help me and then everyone kinda just waited, my sil was with me as everyone went >>>>>
Load More Replies...I appreciated the variety in these. Some of them were just really cute, like the grandmother very seriously confessing to her granddaughter about being adopted when she already knew and would have known all of her life. One was horribly chilling -- the baby swap one because YIKES -- and then some were kind of standard issue "killed someone, no one knew..." and you never really know because what if they were just raving at the end? But it was an interesting read.
Too many of these are debatable or just unbelievable. Just post firsthand stories, not stories people heard that are obvious myths
If someone said they'd heard it with their own ears, you'd probably say they were lying anyway
Load More Replies...English is not my main language but i'm pretty sure it's last rites and not last rights.
my adopted mom passed May 22, 2023, she was out of it the last few days, 3 days before she passed she was up walking making food, even me food! and then she sat down and got tied, the next day she was sitting then folded on herself, and couldn't get her to lay back, I called a hospice nurse {we had home hospice as she wanted to go at home, and after we got her laid back and pain meds.....she just looked up and was gone.... the nurse looked at her and i went ver and told her.. she has gon...... as i said she was gon, no longer then 5 mins..... my phone rang.... on it said "mom" was calling, the nurse is n the middle of covering my still cooling mom, and we see moms phone across the room not on, not touched, yet mine still ringing, we look at each other and i grab my phone and i....... Click it off turned to my mom's body and says "Holy F*ck mom! Call "brother's name/or sister's name" I already know you died!" the nurse looked shocked as i laugh and told her, that we were all >>>>>>>
"spooky" and she was the kind of person to tell me something I already knew..... but i still wonder what would have happened if I had answered that phone call..... Then just a few months ago my aunt{who lived with us but at my moms, death was in the hospital} passed away on July 4, 2024, the day she passed she told me she felt bad, in a way she knew she was going to go, then she was gone, I went over to her, and slapped her a few times, pounded her chest a bit{cpr}, and surprisingly.... she was back, she asked what happened, I told her she died but she was back, she shake her head and said she needed to finish something first and the next time she lays back shes going, and she grabs her notebook, shaking hands and writes out a note and making calls calling the family, everyone gets there within 2 hours after she "died the first time" and she tells the m she loves them, makes her sister promise to help me and then everyone kinda just waited, my sil was with me as everyone went >>>>>
Load More Replies...I appreciated the variety in these. Some of them were just really cute, like the grandmother very seriously confessing to her granddaughter about being adopted when she already knew and would have known all of her life. One was horribly chilling -- the baby swap one because YIKES -- and then some were kind of standard issue "killed someone, no one knew..." and you never really know because what if they were just raving at the end? But it was an interesting read.
Too many of these are debatable or just unbelievable. Just post firsthand stories, not stories people heard that are obvious myths
If someone said they'd heard it with their own ears, you'd probably say they were lying anyway
Load More Replies...
