Researchers have identified 36 common secrets, and they range from infidelity to job dissatisfaction, from romantic desires to criminal behavior, and from having had a traumatic experience to pursuing an unusual hobby.
At any given time, the average person keeps about 12 of them. And while we would like to take some of the big ones to the grave, that's not always possible.
Created by Reddit user SailoLee92, there's an online thread where people have been answering the question "What disturbing thing did you learn about someone only after their death?" Here are some of the most upvoted stories.
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At my great aunt's funeral, everyone was talking about how sad it was she didn't have kids. My grandma told me that it was because she'd gotten pregnant in the 40's out of wedlock and had a coat hanger abortion. The resulting infection rendered her sterile.
Keep it safe and legal, folks.
I went through a nasty break up with my oldest kids mom that lasted several years. We were never married and she was crazy as hell so she told the hospital she didn't know our kid's father just so she could have leverage over me. You know, like a sane person does. Years later and after several investigations into child abuse she lost custody.
Over the next several years we kept getting oddly specific complaints about things going on in my house and my daughter and her step mom specifically. Dumb s**t like matching clothes or details about how we do time out.
My mom died 2 years ago and when we switched her facebook to memorial mode I saw that she had been talking bad about me for years to my ex and was essentially spying on me for her and twisting information. I'm guessing it's because she felt bad for a mother that lost her kid but it was still a d**k move. It's been 2 years and I still refuse to visit her grave with my siblings and havent shed a tear for her since
I received a phone call from my late husband’s girlfriend the day of his funeral. She was phoning his cell phone which I had turned off while he was in the hospital. She told me that my husband had been paying her rent for the last year. The bank had recently foreclosed on our house. I had no idea he was unfaithful to me but she knew all about me.
Woman in my town, after she died, people were clearing her garden and found what they thought was a model skeleton Yeah her husband went mysteriously missing in the mid 90s...
So I have just said to Mr Auntriarch that after we've gone we should get someone to bury Charlie the skeleton in the garden. He said no, board him up under stairs. You can see why I married him
My BIL died in an accident, and his wife found out by going through his phone that he was sleeping with several other women. Many of whom were pretty close in our "friend group" and some were also married. It was quite awkward and got pretty messy.
I was witness to a similar experience. It got messy when the truth came out, but after the dust settled everyone managed to repair their lives to a better version.
My nana always gave me a kind of uneasy feeling when I was around her, and I didn't adore her or anything, but I definitely thought of her as just a regular old lady up until her death.
Then, after she died, my mom confessed to me that my nana used to be a religious zealot, so much so that she would scream at her for hours for having her fly down, or wearing slightly-tight jeans, because she was "inviting the devil" or something. She would take my mom and her brother into the backyard and force them to brutally beat eachother with sticks. And when my mom's brother was killed in a car accident, my nana openly mocked him at the funeral, stating he deserved to die (because he drank underage, I think? not while driving, he didn't drive drunk. just..... in general), that he was burning in hell, good riddance........ ect,,,
She was a monster. My mother had to run away at 18. My nana only "calmed down" when my mom had kids, because she'd wanted "grandbabies", and being the forgiving person my mom was, she let her back into her life, on the promise she never did to us what she'd done to her.
My mom may have forgiven her, but I haven't. She didn't really change, on the inside......... and looking back I can see just how much my nana's abuse shaping my mother's life/mental health for the worse, how she never ended up 'recovering', in the end. Awful. I wish I could tell my mom what I know now about trauma and all that, wish we could really Talk about it now that I'm an adult..... but it's too late for that now,,, (EDIT: for those wondering, my mother has also passed away. that's what I meant by "it's too late for that now")
Learning about my mother’s trauma also taught me a lot about who she was as a person and played a large part in me forgiving her for things in my childhood I had held onto resentment for. Sometimes, you don’t even really know the people you think you know best.
My buddy's mom totally killed my buddy's dad. She had taken a $200k life insurance policy out on him 6 months before he died, and he died from not taking his medication that he'd taken no problem all of his life. My buddy was away for the weekend so wasn't home when his dad died. After his mom died, we found out she'd taken a life insurance policy out on my buddy at some point too, and she'd also forged his signature to sign over $100k my buddy's dad had left to him. She also faked illnesses to get prescription drugs and had little books filled with info on what she'd sold and how much she'd made from selling them.
Had a cousin who died a few years ago. Went to his funeral and was walking around hugging his wife and kids and giving them my condolences when a lady and a two teenage boys walked in. Nobody knew who these people were so of course my great aunt asked and she claimed to be his wife and the two boys were his sons.... Turns out all those week or two long work trips he'd been taking weren't actually work trips it was trips to see his OTHER family.
After my father died a few years ago, we learned that he had taken out about 40k of loans on my name. We share the same Initials (and surname obviously). He forged my signature, and kept on applying for loans and credit, got approved and never paid a single dime back. Seeing as he was the main contact, no-one ever called me to ask me why I wasn't paying my debt ... So only after he died we got contacted by institutions informing us that my father owes them money, just to find out it was actually on my name ...
So now my credit record is f****d due to years of payments not being made and I need to pay back all of these loans. Fun times right
I never understood how a parent could do this to a child. We had some hard times when mine was little, but doing anything to hurt her future never even occurred to me. Some people really aren’t born to be parents.
Maybe not disturbing, but after my nanas death, I found out that she married my papa, had three kids with him all as a cover story for him being gay. This was during a time of LGBT violence in America.
The kicker is, they really pulled off the married couple routine.
When my neighbour died of old age her adult children were organising her funeral. Her husband had died many years previous. A woman arrived from England upon hearing of her death. It turns out she was their sister. Their mother had had her when she was a teenager and gave her up for adoption. They kept up regular correspondence up until the mother died. No one knew. Her other children were shocked. I’m not even sure if her husband knew.
Her children were really upset that she never told them. On a positive note, I think they all keep in regular contact now. This is Ireland by the way, so there was huge stigma at the time about having children outside of marriage.
I'm glad it ended positively, altho maybe the mum should've told her adult children, esp as her husband had died?
My grandpa had stashed what would be worth millions today and proceeded to convince his family they were poor and had almost no money. His family lived in poverty while he lied to them all.
Windfall! Don't contest the will or the court could tie the money up for over a decade.
I had a brother who had some paranoid delusions (FBI, CIA following him, spying on his apartment, etc). We (my brothers and I) had tried to get him help and he would just have no part of it. After a few years, it seemed like it had gotten better. He stopped bringing it up and we felt like it must have just passed. After he died, we found his journal and it was just horrifying. Right up until the night he died, he detailed all of the torture that they were inflicting on him - weird s**t that I can't even write in here. It was just incredibly disturbing to read what a tortured life he was living inside his mind while acting relatively normal outside.
Edit: Many people have asked me to go into more detail on what he wrote. I can't go into much detail - it's hard for me to write about. Briefly, he believed that they were using some type of focused energy beam to torture him. They focused on different parts of his body at different times. Every noise that an appliance made was proof of electronic surveillance. Every bump on the wall or person walking in an adjacent apartment was a message from either the "bad" FBI agents or the "good" FBI agents.
The poor sick brother had to hide his illness, which generally helps said problem to grow, so that his family would stop trying to fix him rather than accept him. Such a scary and lonely existence.
Schizophrenia isn't a matter of "accepting." It's not a personality quirk or a mental disorder; it's a degenerative brain disease. Saying his family needed to accept it instead of trying to help is like saying someone needs to accept that they have cancer instead of treating it.
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This doesn't sound like everyday paranoia, this sounds like schizophrenia.
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My nan had something along these lines. Was convinced that there was a secret factory in the small row home next door to her. Kept hundreds of notebooks over 30+ years of their comings and goings, of the noises coming from their flat, of when they brought groceries into the house. It consumed her life and made her difficult to be around. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and commited a few times after she spent all night banging on the party wall with a heavy metal pan. Poor neighbours.
I know from experience, sometimes it's easier to tell a lie of omission rather than sharing the truth. Most people don't want to hear the actual truth even if they say they do.
My BIL had this mental disease. It started with shrooms and meth and cults, then antidepressants. He never recovered, and ran away to the wilderness.
That for the first few months my mother was pregnant with me the entire family thought she was dying from an ovarian tumor. She was 41 and it was the 1960s, her doctor at the navy hospital just assumed she was too old to get pregnant.
Family friend that passed was having sex with young male prostitutes, had his wife hooked on drugs that he provided with his doctors license, and had spent all of their money even though they had been rich so that they were destitute and his wife and kids had no idea. She lost the house a month after he died unexpectedly. She and her kids are doing fine now. She's recovered and remarried.
My grandparents were horrible to my mom. Telling her she deserved other kids hitting her or not believing her when it happened, telling her "Good, I'm sick of you anyway" when she threatened to run away, physical abuse, spending as little money as possible on her, NEVER showing any kind of affection, etc... I never knew them that well and I'm kinda glad for it tbh.
An old, rich man my mom use to run errands for not only offered her $5000 to sleep with him, but he also told her he couldn’t wait till I was 18 (I was younger than 12 at the time) and tried to make an arrangement to pay for my presence once I was 18.
She had been cheating on me all through our marriage.
When the shock subsided, it was replaced by rage and betrayal. I lost it and I just started destroying and trashing everything of hers.
The only thing I didn't destroy or throw away was her urn. I gave that to her parents. I seriously thought about flushing her ashes down the toilet, but I decided not to.
I completely got over her in record time.
I had the best grandpa growing up. Like typical movie grandpa. He was perfect. Spoiled us like crazy great corny jokes always had crazy silly story’s. always saved the day. Just the best man I knew. After he passed one of my aunts told me and my little sister he had cheated on my grandma with her own sister multiple times. We never knew. Wish she never told us.
I once had a friend whose dad died.. and he never really talked about it but he was pretty troubled. Every year on his death date, they would have a celebration of life party. He invited our friend group one year and we were all excited to be there to support him. Turns out his dad died in a car accident involving a drunk driver. The dad was the drunk driver and also killed the family he hit.
My great grandfather had a whole other wife with 7 children he told no one about.
My uncle on my mom's side went missing around January 7, 2000. When my cousin Adrian went looking for him, he found him in his closet with a belt around his neck. After that everyone pieced together, based on weird conversations and his behavior, that it was my uncle who had set fire to my family's apartment's front door about a week prior, December 30, 1999. That fire left my family psychologically and physically scarred and my mother dead. Apparently my parents were fed up with giving him booze-and-smokes money.
one of my good friends was shot last year, he was one of the nicest guys i knew, he always calls everyone he knew checked up on them made sure everyone was okay and was really supportive of everyone.
move forward a week or two after his murder someone was arrested due to a murder that happened a few days before my friends. turns out the guy who was arrested was the cause of multiple murders (yet he had perfect alibi’s everything) except we later found out that my friend was working for him, was getting paid 5-10k per person. when my friend got murdered it wasn’t a random shooting. it was a revenge hit. no one saw it coming but everything soon made sense
I’m glad everything son made sense because this entry doesn’t make a lot of sense; a very confusing read.
Nothing terribly exciting but I found my mother's rehab journal a few months ago, 15 years after she drank herself to death. Guess she cheated on my Dad with that guy from the gastric bypass support group who she brought around to our family functions quite a few times. Not sure if my Dad ever read the journal and found out, but him and his husband are living the life now and I'm not going to bring it up.
Good for dad!! No reason to rain on his parade now, nothing can be done about it so I wouldn’t see any reason to tell him either.
That my grandfather beat my grandmother, to the point of causing miscarriages, and that he also beat my older uncles.
Of course, I was only 6 when he died (lung cancer), so it makes sense I never would have heard that stuff before now.
When my great grand mother died my grandma introduce her half sister to the family. Apparently my great grandpa had an affair... the funny thing is at that she went to school with my grandma. No one wanted to tell my great grandma though.
My grandma (dad's mom) was one of my favorite people before she died when I was 14. She was extremely sweet, generous, and gave good advice. My brother and I stayed with her and were alone with her all the time, and she never mistreated us or in any way acted unusual. I found out only a couple weeks ago at 33 years old that she was a severe alcoholic who would get drunk almost daily up until her death. My dad said she would beat him and his brothers when they were kids, and as adults would still say severely psychologically abusive taunts while grinning at their faces. I never had even the slightest inclination- and this is coming from someone who grew up with an alcoholic step dad and a near-alcoholic mom.'
Well I was told by my grandma that on her father's deathbed they found out he had a secret family with another wife and kids and they found out because both family's were at the hospital. He was living a double life pretty much, he sounded like a s****y person.
My uncle found out at the deathbed of his "mother" that he was adopted and really belonged to my moms family (who were cousins to him until then)
That my aunt that was stealing from my grandmother. The aunt was withdrawing money of of my grandmother's bank account even after she died.
The aunt said my grandmother had a gambling problem but there was no way my grandmother could leave her house by herself. (that was why my aunt had access to her bank account).
Means i dont have to see my aunt again which i am happy about.
Apparently my grandfather's sister is actually his sisters daughter AND apparently their dad was the father.
I really hope the 2nd part isn't true. I think my pa died having no idea what his father had allegedly done
Not necessarily disturbing. My mom’s cousin died when I was 7. My mom and him were extremely close, he was even the godfather of my little sister. She took his death pretty harshly. I was always told he fell asleep at the wheel. What I found out as I got older was that he had been on and off drugs. He took the wrong concoction and ending up passing out at the wheel while driving.
My mom doesn’t like to talk about much understandably. I just found it so shocking that he had this completely different side to himself that no one really knew. Unfortunately neither me nor my sister remember much of him, but my sister is very close with his mom (our great aunt), who basically took the role of her godparent in his stead. I think it’s nice that my sister now has someone to share the brighter side of her godfather’s life.
My ex best friends mom found out that her deceased father of 76 years was a murderer. After going through some of his belongings, hidden in the corner of the room, underneath the bed.... was a mutilated woman's body stuffed inside a suit case. Apparently the story was he was quite the "professional" ladies man and got into an argument with a prostitute. And instead of being civil about it he just killed her.... My ex best friends mom was absolutely mortified and had to seek therapy after the gruesome discovery.
My father-in-law had a secret love child, we are not even sure he knew about them. He has been dead for 11 years, we found out about this person two years ago.
Just out of curiosity, am I the only person who wouldn't want to meet secret siblings/relative? Like if one of my parents had a kid from an affair, I would not want to meet or know anything about them. Don't get me wrong, I know it wouldn't be the kid's fault, I wouldn't be mean about it, I would just want for us to keep living our separate lives.
When my father died, I was sitting around at the wake, just kind of thinking to myself out loud. I told my mother, "It sucks that I never got a chance to meet the other Vampedvixen." My mother was like "What are you talking about?" So I told her that our father, her husband for the past several decades, named all three of his daughters after three of his ex-girlfriends. All I know about the other Vampedvixen is she had red hair. My sister confirmed this and said she knew about it too. My mother just sat there dumbfounded, but she found it amusing in the end and was not hurt by it at all. It was just my father's way of being kind to past friends.
I would definitely NOT be amused if I found out my husband named our daughters after his ex’s.
My great-uncle was gay. When he died, my mom and aunt were going through his things. My aunt picked up this porcelain egg that opened up. She was confused by it's contents. When she asked my mom what it was, she told her it was pubic hair. My aunt threw it down and ran out of the room screaming. The man collected 3 different colored pubes and kept it by his bedside.
Found out my grandfather was wearing a toupee for most of my (and his) life that I had known him. Only found out about it when we were going through old photos and my dad remarked about it. Never saw him the same in photos again.
More of a cool one. The day my grand father died, his brother in law tells us : "Waw, at least, i can tell it without breaking my promise. See kids, during the second world war, your grand father came in the middle of the night pale as a ghost telling he has done something stupid." Turns out grandpa was caught red handed sabotaging a railroad by two german soldiers. Since he was wearing his national railway work uniform, he managed to convince them he was trying to fix it. When the train derailled, he promptly knocked off the two soldiers (he was quite a boxer as well as a carpenter) and ran away. He confessed to his brother in law who remain silent about it for about 5 decades. Wild times. For those wondering, it was a merchandise train.
Well that was depressing. How can so many people lead double lives? Do the guilt and lies not consume them at some point?
I want to know how they found the time. I find one life exhausting.
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Stuff like this REALLY makes me not want marriage or romance AT ALL. People are extremely disgusting and cruel and for what? Self-gratification, because they are upset at their partner? It so weird how people can have the time and money for this type of stuff. Whoever is watching over me, please do whatever you can to make sure I stay single for the rest of my life because this ain't it.
Not a disturbing secret, but a really cool secret. After my Grandma died, my Dad was going through her things and found a US ARMY driver's license for 2 1/2 ton trucks that showed she worked for the government during WWII. NEVER told ANYONE! Nobody had any idea. I guess my grandma really took that "Loose Lips Sink Ships" to heart. I love to imagine my Grandma as a young woman driving a gigantic "deuce and a half."
I'm a secret lemonade drinker. I'm a trying to give it up but it's one of those nights.
Too many of these were a major brain burn….very difficult to write out some stories I guess.
My Papaw was the best papaw in the world. Always took us to McDonald's, gave us handfuls of quarters for the arcade, kept his cabinets stocked with our favorite candies, cookies & pop tarts, our favorite ice creams in his freezer, & a whole shelf of nothing but different sodas in his fridge. He was a friend to all, including the neighborhood kids, had a magnificent garden, & was always willing to pick us up and take us out or bring us to his house, or to lend anyone a helping hand. He was super giving, to all. Everyone loved him. Never did or even said a bad thing, to or about anyone, myself & my sister included. And no one ever had a bad thing to say about him. He was wonderful. Then I found out, as an adult, years after he'd died, that my step-grandma, who he'd been married to when I was just a toddler, several states away from us, had divorced him because a preschooler down the street from them had told her mom that my papaw had...SA'd her. She said he'd touched her in a very inappropriate way. It shook me. /1
I'll never know for sure if it was true. From what I know, immediately after the accusation was made, Papaw and Granny divorced, and he moved back to our home state. I do have to wonder, considering all the kid-friendly food he kept stocked, and the fact that the neighborhood kids were always welcome at his house anytime, and welcome to the treats he had, even when we weren't there (though I don't think they actually came over that much, when we weren't, but they did sometimes, and their parents loved him too). And also the fact that I don't know why a four year old would lie about something like that, or how she would even know to, unless she was already being abused by someone else. But like I said, he NEVER acted inappropriate in ANY way toward me or my sister. And none of my friends ever acted uncomfortable around him at all. So I try to remember him for the amazing person he was to me. It's the only way I can keep my sanity. But it definitely changed the way I think about him, and it definitely tarnished his memory for me. /2/End
Load More Replies... More of a cool one. The day my grand father died, his brother in law tells us : "Waw, at least, i can tell it without breaking my promise. See kids, during the second world war, your grand father came in the middle of the night pale as a ghost telling he has done something stupid." Turns out grandpa was caught red handed sabotaging a railroad by two german soldiers. Since he was wearing his national railway work uniform, he managed to convince them he was trying to fix it. When the train derailled, he promptly knocked off the two soldiers (he was quite a boxer as well as a carpenter) and ran away. He confessed to his brother in law who remain silent about it for about 5 decades. Wild times. For those wondering, it was a merchandise train.
Well that was depressing. How can so many people lead double lives? Do the guilt and lies not consume them at some point?
I want to know how they found the time. I find one life exhausting.
Load More Replies... Stuff like this REALLY makes me not want marriage or romance AT ALL. People are extremely disgusting and cruel and for what? Self-gratification, because they are upset at their partner? It so weird how people can have the time and money for this type of stuff. Whoever is watching over me, please do whatever you can to make sure I stay single for the rest of my life because this ain't it.
Not a disturbing secret, but a really cool secret. After my Grandma died, my Dad was going through her things and found a US ARMY driver's license for 2 1/2 ton trucks that showed she worked for the government during WWII. NEVER told ANYONE! Nobody had any idea. I guess my grandma really took that "Loose Lips Sink Ships" to heart. I love to imagine my Grandma as a young woman driving a gigantic "deuce and a half."
I'm a secret lemonade drinker. I'm a trying to give it up but it's one of those nights.
Too many of these were a major brain burn….very difficult to write out some stories I guess.
My Papaw was the best papaw in the world. Always took us to McDonald's, gave us handfuls of quarters for the arcade, kept his cabinets stocked with our favorite candies, cookies & pop tarts, our favorite ice creams in his freezer, & a whole shelf of nothing but different sodas in his fridge. He was a friend to all, including the neighborhood kids, had a magnificent garden, & was always willing to pick us up and take us out or bring us to his house, or to lend anyone a helping hand. He was super giving, to all. Everyone loved him. Never did or even said a bad thing, to or about anyone, myself & my sister included. And no one ever had a bad thing to say about him. He was wonderful. Then I found out, as an adult, years after he'd died, that my step-grandma, who he'd been married to when I was just a toddler, several states away from us, had divorced him because a preschooler down the street from them had told her mom that my papaw had...SA'd her. She said he'd touched her in a very inappropriate way. It shook me. /1
I'll never know for sure if it was true. From what I know, immediately after the accusation was made, Papaw and Granny divorced, and he moved back to our home state. I do have to wonder, considering all the kid-friendly food he kept stocked, and the fact that the neighborhood kids were always welcome at his house anytime, and welcome to the treats he had, even when we weren't there (though I don't think they actually came over that much, when we weren't, but they did sometimes, and their parents loved him too). And also the fact that I don't know why a four year old would lie about something like that, or how she would even know to, unless she was already being abused by someone else. But like I said, he NEVER acted inappropriate in ANY way toward me or my sister. And none of my friends ever acted uncomfortable around him at all. So I try to remember him for the amazing person he was to me. It's the only way I can keep my sanity. But it definitely changed the way I think about him, and it definitely tarnished his memory for me. /2/End
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