Folks Are Spitting Out Their Family Secrets That Aren’t For The Faint-Hearted And Here Are 37 Of Them
Interview With Expert
The biggest problem with keeping secrets isn’t that you have them, it’s the fact that you have to live with them. Around 97% of people have a secret at any given time, with the average person hiding around 13 secrets. This also tends to run in families with people keeping important or shocking information, sometimes for generations.
One day the cat has to be let out of the bag, and these netizens did just that. They finally let loose all their juicy family secrets for the world to know.
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My parents got divorced when I was about 3 years old. I stayed in contact with my mother but my father got full custody, as mom apparently relinquished custody because of her financial situation and claimed she made the difficult decision of giving custody to my dad for the sake of us kids, because he could provide a better life for us. "The most difficult sacrifice she ever made". On several occasions my mother would also get drunk and lament her life and say something to the effect of, "I never should've left your father. He was a good guy, he didn't deserve that. We would've been happy."
I had heard variations on it a bunch of times, so one day I decided to share it with my dad. I was in my mid-20s at that point. My dad, who at no point in my life *ever* discussed the divorce or my mom, replied,
"She said that?"
Yeah.
"I left her because of her alcoholism and d**g use and how she was always drunk during the pregnancy and while you were little. Kids deserve a safe home to grow up in."
I later got that verified from my maternal grandmother. Apparently everyone knew but never bothered to tell me that my dad was the one who left mom because she was an [addict] and an alcoholic, and she didn't have to "make the difficult sacrifice of giving dad custody because he could provide a better life for us", the court straight up gave dad custody after a court battle where my mom was deemed unfit to be a parent because of said substance abuses.
For about 20 years, I'd thought my dad got dumped by my mom but turns out, he was just a really good parent and made the right choice for us kids.
A good enough person that he never told his kids about that d**g use or brought them into that, he let her keep up the illusion.
My mom's family is Appalachian mountain folk. l have Native American features.
So l asked my mom. And got told vehemently that I'm 100% white.
So after my mom died l was going through stuff. Found out that not only was her grandmother (my great grandmother) Cherokee, but my biological father is also.
I found a wonderful picture of my tiny Cherokee ggm standing hand in hand with my incredibly tall Welsh ggp. I treasure that picture. .
When my parents got married it was because my mom got pregnant with my brother. (That’s not the secret, everybody has always known that). Mom’s parents practically kicked her out of the house. My dad had already left for the air force (he had to fly back for a quickie wedding after basic). This was the early 1960’s so still a bit scandalous. Mom ended up moving in with her new in-laws so she could finish her last year of college before joining my dad in Texas and later Japan.
20- some years later, everyone was preparing for my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. ( moms parents, the ones who kicked her out for getting pregnant without being married). My grandma got real upset and said, we can’t celebrate 50, we’ve only been married 49 years. This was a shock to everyone because my mom’s oldest brother was 50. Turns out if they had gotten married my grandpa would have been kicked out of high school, so they hid the pregnancy/baby until he graduated. After enough time had passed they just told everyone the earlier date.
Even though they did the exact same thing, they couldn’t bring themselves to show any sympathy for their own daughter in that situation.
At first I read that as her Mom gettig pregnant BY her brother and it freaked me out for a few minutes. lol. Sad story though.
In this list of secrets, you’ll find some of the deepest and darkest family secrets that the household members learned only recently. According to Harley Therapy, “in general we keep secrets because we are trying to protect those we love, we are afraid of being judged, or because we feel scared and ashamed.”
Some secrets are small and won’t really affect the other members of the family, whereas other confidential matters might be more insidious, such as affairs, violence, and illegal activities. Bored Panda interviewed Brad Shore, LMFT, to get his perspective on family secrets and why people keep things hidden for generations.
My fathers brother killed 4 girls when he was in high school. My father was the one who found out and told the police.
At age 43 I learned I had a half sister. My father had an affair and she was conceived after my brother was born, but before I was.
She reached out to me, and is a lovely human. We have been in contact ever since, have traveled together, and I have visited her several times.
I'm glad this story went to a happy place. The others have been dreadful.
One of my great grampas and his brother killed their abusive stepdad, chopped him up with an axe, put him in weighted down coffee cans, and dumped him in a river.
It came out as a deathbed confession.
Brad Shore, the expert we interviewed, states that "there's often a lot of confusion about what's appropriate to share (or not share) with 'outsiders' regarding what's occurring within one's family. I think it's a combination of factors — on one hand there's a cultural, religious, socioeconomic, etc., component to this, and on the other hand there's a familial component that's related to the overall mental health of every specific family."
"The psychology of shame supports family members in remaining quiet for decades because shame involves some sense or belief that I (or the entire family) is fundamentally flawed. Once shame settles into the family dynamic it can be extremely difficult to break its hold. Its 'hold' involves deep-seated feelings that I (or the entire family) is somehow flawed, immoral, permanently broken, unworthy, guilty, dishonorable, etc. And then these feelings lead to behaviors to control, conceal and cope with the shame," he also added.
My defacto uncle (he and my aunt never married but have been together since well before I was born, with a few hiccups) has a child with another woman. It became common knowledge when the girl was 6 and was starting to understand the situation.
At first it was a bit scandalous but she's been welcomed with open arms by my entire family, including her half-siblings' maternal grandparents, she's treated the same as all the other kids her age. Her half-sister (my cousin) has a daughter the same age and they're best friends, go to the same high school, totally inseparable, technically aunt and niece haha. She comes to all our family events and she's an awesome kid, we're all stoked to have her in our family!
This was such a sweet story, its great to see people being their best and what happens when you're good to a child in that situation.
My dad was into finding out about family history so I began digging around. He always was told his mother died of “blood poisoning” well I got the death certificate and she died from a botched abortion in the 1920’s. I didn’t tell him because he would’ve been so sad. She died when he was 3-4 years old. Awful.
My great aunt was a nurse supervisor at a mental hospital in the 1920s. She fell in love with a guy who was being evaluated for a murder trial. She helped him escape and they went to Florida. But the police caught up with them. My aunt got off easy, but he got the electric chair. I found all this in a newspaper archives while working on family history. Showed it to my mom and she admitted it was all true.
Families might hide different types of secrets. The first and most common type is individual secrets, which are usually kept by one person from the rest of the family. These might involve simple rule-breaking or things the secret keeper feels anxious about. The second type is internal family secrets, which are usually kept by two to three members. Sometimes, they are intergenerational and can create rifts between parents, children, and grandparents.
Shared family secrets are the third type and usually something a household keeps from people outside the family. They can be about simple matters like traditions or jokes or more overwhelming and sinister things as well. Every family has a right to privacy, but it’s important to keep matters confidential in a way that doesn’t affect or harm another person.
My aunt didn't lose her teaching job due to budget cuts like she'd always claimed. Turns out she had never had a valid teaching license to begin with, regularly had affairs with the dads, and embezzled PTA money!
My great aunt was an [escort]. Her husband, my great uncle was a john.
I guess this wasn't super shocking to the older generation or her siblings. But to my age group, we just knew her as a sweet old lady and my uncle as a gruff but kindhearted old man, so that was sort of a strange thought.
My mother is kid #7 of 10. My aunt (kid #4) who was born in 1945 did her DNA and found out that she has a different father from everyone else. She was devastated. There was always rumor that there was an affair but nobody talked about it. She has so many questions but nobody's alive to answer her.
Some of the most shocking types of long-held secrets are usually about people’s ancestry. With the increasing popularity of genetic testing, people have delved into their family history only to find that they aren’t genetically related to their relatives or that there are many other members that they were never told about.
These shocking revelations can destroy the channels of communication between parents and children and ruin family cohesiveness. Ancestry and genetics are touchy subjects and it’s understandable why some people don’t want to reveal the truth behind them.
That my dad's little sister wasn't really his little sister. It was his sister's baby, raised by his mom. The girl didn't know until she was 21.
My sister and I found out in our mid/late-20s that we had a full-on brother. Our dad got our mom pregnant in high school and cause it was the 60s it was all hush-hush and she went to do her senior year “with family” and just quietly came back to town. They ended up getting together for real in college and no one knew - not their life-long friends or even my uncle. Our brother had a good childhood with his adoptive family, but he was always curious about his birth mother so he wrote her a letter. He sure was surprised to also come to meet his dad and two sisters. Crazy thing is he didn’t live too far away and we all look extremely alike. Would have been weird if we’d have bumped into each other otherwise.
My uncles are infamous criminals who killed multiple people. I thought they bred dogs.
They could be dog breeders AND serial killers. They're not mutually exclusive.
This kind of cloak-and-dagger stuff might seem like child’s play but research on secrecy has found that secrets can hurt their holders. In fact, it can lead to reduced life satisfaction, poorer health, and lower quality of relationships. This is in part due to the stress and anxiety of keeping things hidden. It’s also because of the shame, isolation, and feelings of inauthenticity that might plague people.
Keeping family secrets also creates a toxic environment that can hurt members of the household and make people feel guilty or resent one another. A surprising fact is that constantly keeping things hidden can also make it harder to carry out everyday physical tasks, which means that the burden of keeping secrets is so heavy that it can take a toll on one’s daily life.
We found out after my grandfather died that none of his seven children with my grandmother were his, and that they all likely had different fathers.
The reason my aunt and uncle never had kids was because my grandparents pressured my aunt into have an abortion before she got married, *because* they weren’t married, and due to complications wound up sterile. Ah. So that explains the constant tension.
We found out Grandma's secret ingredient was actually just store-bought marinara sauce. Our family dinners will never be the same.
Psychology Today states that there are certain questions you should ask yourself before revealing a family secret, so that you know you’re on the right track. They are:
- What’s my intention behind letting this secret out now? If it’s out of spite or to punish someone, it’s better not to follow such impulses.
- Is it the right time to share this news? The wrong time to spill secrets is during parties, celebrations, or joyous family events.
- Is my mindset correct to share this secret? If you are going to tell someone the information because you are angry or fearful, it’s best to wait till the intense emotions have died down.
- Am I sharing this secret with the right family member? You should share it with someone you feel safe with and can trust.
The best time to reveal a long-held family secret is when you have truly processed the information, and you feel calm and composed. Opening up because of impulsive and heavy emotions isn’t a good sign.
My mother was Catholic.
After eight kids she would "go visit family" when she got pregnant.
The Catholic church would take the baby and re-home it with a "barren" Catholic family.
I met a Greek Catholic brother. He looked like all of us but had a Greek name and Greek parents.
This is a slightly better(or less bad) than other stories I've heard on BP that involved rivers, etc.
About a month ago, my mother-in-law's 88 year old sister revealed on her death bed that her husband's best friend was actually the father of all 4 of her children. Her husband was an abusive grade A jerk by all accounts. While everyone was shocked, no one was saddened by this news.
I don't know why it's taken me to wonder: Is a MIL's sister your aunty in law?
I found one out myself. In My great great grandfather spent years in prison for volationing of the Comstock act. Anthony Comstock himself testified in 1904 at the trial that it was the largest collection of pornography he had ever seen.
Lol damn grandpa.
For FYI .... The Comstock laws are a set of federal and state laws that banned the mailing and distribution of obscene, lewd, or immoral materials. The laws were passed in 1873 under the influence of Anthony Comstock, a moral crusader who wanted to suppress sexual information and expression. The laws also prohibited any information or items related to sexual health, sexuality, abortion, and birth contr.
Pretty much everyone’s family history is marred by weird occurrences and filled with odd stories. It’s just that some people have slightly juicer secrets that they keep hidden. Luckily for you, these netizens decided to tell all and risk the wrath of their family. Is there any deep dark family secret you’ve always wanted to share? Unburden yourself in the comments.
My mom was having an affair with a schizophrenic dude she met in a bar, got pregnant and just let her husband believe I was his my whole life.
When she was sick in the hospital and looped out d***s she starting mumbling on about my dad not being my real dad. 23andMe test later and secrets out!
... ok but what does the guy being schizophrenic have to do with anything? ._.
My great great grandfather was a huge financial success in the 1920’s, owned a bunch of businesses, pillar of the community type, half the town worked for him. Built himself a huge mansion at the edge of town with all the modern conveniences. Lost everything in the stock market crash of the Great Depression, went out on his front porch, sat in a chair and blew his head off with a shotgun. Everybody was involved in covering it up, not just the family, but the local authorities and the newspapers too. His obituary even said that he had died of natural causes, though the whole town knew better. It was passed down as legend for generations that he had died young of natural causes, though no one ever mentioned why the family was suddenly poor. I found an entry in my great grandmother’s diary long after she had passed where she wrote about the whole episode.
The stock market is one of humanities' worst creations.
My mom might not actually be my biological mother. I’m a surrogate baby and was told my entire life, even though my mom didn’t birth me, I am 100% biologically my parents kid. Well I’ve been wanting to get one of those 23 and me things done cause I thought learning more about my family could be cool but my mom was SUPER against it (she kept referencing the golden state killer as her argument for the government using my DNA against me or someone else in the family and I was like “??? Mom they caught a serial killer I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing??” Also she’s not a conspiracy nut in ANY OTHER WAY than specifically this, so I thought her reaction was very odd). Anyways, I was out grabbing a drink with my dad a few a weeks ago and I was like “hey btw why is mom so weird about me getting a 23 and me test??” And he explained that *actually* donor eggs were in the mix because my moms eggs weren’t taking so there’s about a 50/50 chance I am NOT in fact biologically related to my mom and my moms a bit freaked about me finding out.
I don’t actually care, my mom is my mom 100%, I’m just curious about my genealogy. I also wanna have kids eventually and would very much like to know if there’s anything I should be looking out for. Not a super dramatic thing (I mean I guess it is to my mom but not to me). I’m not traumatized by this, and actually it kinda makes sense cause I look exactly like my dad, but the few features that aren’t my dads aren’t my moms either. I don’t look like her side of the family at all. The only thing my mom and I have in common is that we’re both blonde but my dad is also blonde so.
I love my family because of who they are, not because of shared DNA.
My great great grandfather was killed by my great great grandmother because she was having an affair with the sheriff and my GGgrandfather said he was going to kill the sheriff. My GGgrandmother shot him in the street and everyone assumed it was the sheriff. There was no proof and no "witnesses" so no-one was ever charged with his murder. My GGgrandmother told my great aunt on her deathbed. Also after all of her children had passed away. She said she still loved the sheriff. And would've done it again.
Side note. The sheriff died from a fall the next summer so after all that happened my GGgrandmother she spent the rest of her life unmarried. She was 102 when she died.
Just found out my missing paternal grandfather was murdered back in the 80s.. he was a scumbag but I'd occasionally try to find out about him because I knew my dad needed closure. He'd been chased out of town by the mafia for running some fraud scheme. I thought it might have to do with that but it turns out he just pissed off some guy at a bar and took one too many bricks to the head.
Fyi.. it did not give my dad closure... He just graduated to feeling family shame... We're working on it..
Poor dad, I really hope he's getting therapy to help process his trauma and loss.
My grandmother called the cops on my grandpa for domestic violence. He was arrested. During his trial, he was sentenced to either jail OR he could join the military.
He joined the Navy and was stationed in New York. While in New York, he met another woman, got married to her (while still being married to my grandma), and had an entirely new family.
After his discharge, he came back home and resumed life with my grandma, never to speak to the New York family again!
And as an added twist, when he got back home, he was surprised to find he had a new 2 year old daughter. This was a shock since he had been gone for around 5 years. As far as I know, my aunt's real father has remained a mystery.
(I don't know an exact timeline, but this was some time in the 40s, or possibly early 50s. My mom was born in '56 and, by then, all the dust had settled. She didn't know any of this story until she was an adult).
It always struck me that people prone to violence would be quite handy in the military.
My mother did 23 and me and found that she matched with an unknown niece who looked exactly like her older brother. Her brother had an extramarital affair and had a baby without his knowledge. He passed away some 30 years ago when the baby was around 10.
The story was always that my two cousins were adopted and not related to each other even. People sometimes would ask them if they were twins. They would say "Nope, we're adopted."
Somehow it got out that their bio mom was their younger aunt. The older sister adopted and raised both girls as her own. Younger aunt/mom got married and started a family before all this came out too. It was a wild journey.
I have heard this is common in Catholic families. They hide the illegitimate pregnancy and someone in the family adopts the child or pretends it is an older married family member's child. This was in the early 80s so I guess it was possible to get away with it.
I know this is unrelated to the story, but AWW, THAT CORGI!!! 💙 💙
I found it and spilled it! It doesn't effect anything other than family history though.
Lets call my dad's family name LittleFly. It's the approximate english translation.
I was researching the LittleFly family history on Heritage. I knew we came from France, but that was it.
I followed back no problem until the early 1800's. Then, I found an anomoly.
There was a man and women who had children together. The man's last name was Bell (made up, can't remember), and the woman's name was LittleFly. Half the kids had the LittleFly last name and half had the Bell last name. What?
Turns out, Mr Bell was married to a completely different woman. They had no children together. Mr Bell and Ms LittleFly had like 5 or 6 kids together while the Bells were still married.
From what I can tell Ms LittleFly lived in the same house as the Bells. This wasn't a wealthy family, either. The best I could figure, they gathered reeds from the swamp for fires. Mr Bell may also have worked on the ferries? I'm not sure. It's all in French, I'm not French, and my Heritage subscription has run out.
So! Our family was borne of an affair! I now don't know if I should follow the Bell line or the LittleFly line.
We found out after my grandpa died that he had another kid with a woman he met before my grandma. Idk if he ever knew he had a kid. The offspring showed up on one of those ancestry gene websites and said he was open to meeting family so some of the older cousins went out hunting with him.
All this was spilled to me at my cousins wedding two years ago and I guess people in the family had known for a few years. My parents never told me and they still don’t know that I know.
My great-grandma was a Russian mail-order bride during the cold war. She got over, alone, on a boat. She left her Canadian buyer for a Ukrainian farmer and never told anyone she was Russian again (communism lol)
Pretty sure she was a witch lol.
Holy s**t I comment on these all the time and never get a response so here is an edit to answer some questions:
1. My grandma died when I was about 6 years old - she already had dementia at this point. I lived with her when I was a small baby for the first year of my life and remember nothing. She came over in the 1910's and my grandparents were born in the 1920s. As a kid my dads parents were 50 sand my moms parents were 70s. Both my moms parents (her mom the woman in the story, was my grandpas mom) both died when I was 18. I am in my 30s.
2. She lived in a care home, that is the only that I remember. She could say my name and give my money. She was a farm wife, in a very rural area that was very Ukrainian/Russian, so not much need to learn English as she wasn't trading or buying.
3. No one talked about her early life because she didn't. The only part anyone every found out was being a mail order and leaving, like I said - she changed her identity when she moved. She left everything about herself back in Russia (white Russian is what they called us, didn't even know I was Russian until both my grandparents died lol)
4. I think she's a witch because I was told so by mediums and always knew she was special in my heart. My Russian family is said to look over me at all times. I've survived about 4 near death experiences, and I mean bleeding out as people stare in horror. Also, a lot of weird stuff has happened in my life and to my brother - almost like we were battling a darkness ;) maybe a curse? Lots of crazy family folklore but at the risk of this sounding like a creative story, I digress.
Do some research on Indigenous people in Russia and "witch craft" lol. A lot of cool practices and beliefs that were destroyed by the catholic church.
PS. my nick name was Owl when I was born.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/130913
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Russia
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/witchcraft-and-magic-in-russian-and-ukrainian-lands-before-1900/
AFAIK whatever destruction of traditional witchcraft took place in Russia: coming from that area the Catholic church is unlikely to be the culprit. People there are mostly Russian Orthodox, they don't follow the pope.
We did an Ancestry DNA test, and found out my dad has a half sister. Turns out Grandpa had been seeing her mother on the side for probably more than a decade, and also had at least one other long-term affair.
When I was a kid my Dad spent time in prison. I didn't find out why until he was arrested again. He was caught with CSAM on the work computer of the business he shared with his friend and got taken down, but he blamed his friend and got a reduced sentence.
The second time it was because he was basically running his own To Catch a Predator sting. He was going into chatrooms pretending to be a teenaged girl, sending ransomware to people who interacted with him, and blackmailing them to fund his trips to Thailand. One of the people caught in his sting went to the police and he got a few years in prison, and it turned out my father had CSAM on his computer again anyway.
I also found out more recently (and less horrifyingly) that my mom was adopted when she was a kid. She talked to her biological father a few times when I was a baby and tried to get in touch with her mom but she wanted nothing to do with it. She's now in contact with her older half-sister but they haven't met in person.
My brother was on a TV show called Top Cops. Real life police stories. Anyway, after it aired he got a phone call from a woman in California (we are Canadian) who recognized our unusual family name. She told him that she was the illegitimate daughter of my grandfather on my Dad's side. News to us. Anyway, my Dad had already passed as did his parents, but it was an interesting story.
When my dad's mom was on her death bed she confessed that 4 of the 12 kids bio dad was actually their uncle!
This just came out about a month ago when my sister did a 23 and me. My grandfather on my mother's side was supposedly born and raised on the reservation, 100% native american.
Well my sister did a 23 and me a while back and it had 0% native american in her results. She started doing a little digging, and found out our grandfather was not only born some place completely different than he said, but also 10 years earlier. This has left my family completely confused because neither my grandfather or grandmother are here to sort this out any longer, or explain why this dude shaved 10 whole years off of his life and lied about being raised on the reservation. He also had very native american features, some of which I've inherited, which also leaves me wondering a bit. lol
I did ask my mom (jokingly) if she brought the wrong baby home from the hospital when she brought my sister home, but she insists that is not the case. lol.
It could be true, your ethnicity results are based on what proportions you inherited from each ancestor. The granddad could either be partially or fully native American, but if none of that DNA went into the mum's egg then they'd show as 0% native.
And here we have some excellent examples of why I don't believe in 'the good ol days'.
They were "good" for white cisgender heterosexual males that could get away with anything and have it hushed up by society. Just not for anyone else.
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This is a tame one. My aunt (mom's sister) and her husband were married for like 2 years, had my female cousin (FC), then divorced. They got back together a year later, remarried, had my male cousin (MC). But they never told their kids about the divorce and remarriage, even though we were all at their second wedding and FC was 3 and also there. So one day FC and I are discussing family and I go, "That was around the time your parents got divorced..." FC goes, "WHAT?!!" So I had to explain. FC went home and asked her mother if it was true. Her mother confirmed it but was VERY unhappy with me for "spilling the beans" even though no one told me it was a secret. So... forward about ten years and MC and I are discussing blunders we've made. I go, "Well, it's like that time I told your sister about your parents' divorce." MC goes, "WHAT?!!" Yeah. I did it twice. I told him not to tell his mom I blurted it out again, and that he had seen the (2nd) wedding pics in our album instead.
And here we have some excellent examples of why I don't believe in 'the good ol days'.
They were "good" for white cisgender heterosexual males that could get away with anything and have it hushed up by society. Just not for anyone else.
Load More Replies... This is a tame one. My aunt (mom's sister) and her husband were married for like 2 years, had my female cousin (FC), then divorced. They got back together a year later, remarried, had my male cousin (MC). But they never told their kids about the divorce and remarriage, even though we were all at their second wedding and FC was 3 and also there. So one day FC and I are discussing family and I go, "That was around the time your parents got divorced..." FC goes, "WHAT?!!" So I had to explain. FC went home and asked her mother if it was true. Her mother confirmed it but was VERY unhappy with me for "spilling the beans" even though no one told me it was a secret. So... forward about ten years and MC and I are discussing blunders we've made. I go, "Well, it's like that time I told your sister about your parents' divorce." MC goes, "WHAT?!!" Yeah. I did it twice. I told him not to tell his mom I blurted it out again, and that he had seen the (2nd) wedding pics in our album instead.
