Sharing secrets with friends and loved ones can be a great way to strengthen relationships. Trusting someone with hidden information about yourself is an incredibly vulnerable thing to do, but it can be worth the risk if it deepens the bond between you two. However, it can also backfire, if your confidant decides to spill that information on the internet for countless people to read…
Below, you’ll find some of the wildest secrets that Reddit users have ever been told. From confessions to crimes to family secrets that have been concealed for decades, we hope you enjoy reading all of this juicy information, pandas. Feel free to snack on some popcorn as you scroll along, and be sure to upvote the information that you find most shocking!
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A friend in the year below me at school mentioned that he's not allowed to do sexual education "for religious reasons". Fine, fair enough.
"My family," he added, "taught me everything I need to know already..."
The look on his face told me I shouldn't respond yet.
"...with, uh... practicals."
His parents were abusing him, together, and dressing it up as "sex ed". He lost his virginity at 11, to his dad.
I pointed out that that was insane, f****d up, and a serious, serious crime. He agreed to go to the police about it. Two brutal years later they were locked up, he spent the rest of his childhood in foster care, and by all accounts grew into a wonderful young man.
Well done for getting him to report it. They could have attempted it with other kids, and you and your friend made sure it went no further. Even though he had to suffer to make sure he was the last.
So I'm 37 and my dad calls me and says "Can you come over tomorrow? I need to talk to you about something." We'd just gotten back from a family visit that involved my aunt and uncle raving about their senior living community in Phoenix, and my parents are roughly that age, so I figured they were gonna sell my childhood home. Not a huge deal, but definitely not something you wanna drop on me by accident. No no no.
Instead I get there and my parents sit me down and say to me, "Fourteen years before you were born and before we were married, we had a son. He was adopted by a family in Sweden and he'll be here in half an hour." Cue the longest, strangest two hours of my life.
Someone confessing a murder. I'm a nurse and she was recovering from being unwell and it triggered her PTSD to be immobile in bed. When she was 11 she pushed her uncle down the stairs after he sexually abused her. She'd only told her husband. She was in bits- thought her illness was God punishing her. She needed a lot of TLC.
Uncle got exactly what he deserved. I hope she's gotten help and some healing.
It was me. I mentioned that my mom, my daughter's grandma was coming to visit.
My then five year old was shocked to the core: "IS GRANDMA your MOM???"
I didn't know it was a secret.
My whole life growing up, my dad told me my mother was a drug addict and didn’t want me. When I was 21 I met my mom for the first time and as it turns out, my dad kidnapped me when I was 4 and she never knew where we went. Yup. I should be in therapy. Both are dead now and my dad and I never reconciled after I found out.
I was like 5 so it was less jarring, but I went to my grandmother’s house, ostensibly to show off the first tooth I ever lost (I was so excited lol), and there was an old man there I’d never seen before. My mom and grandmother were basically like “Tada! This is your grandfather!” I was just like ok, I guess he just fell from the sky and now I have a grandfather ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
When I was a teenager I learned the full story, which has a pretty wild component. My grandparents were very Catholic, like truly didn’t believe in divorce. And my grandmother, as wonderful as she was to have as a grandmother, was a very hard person to have as a wife or mother. So my grandfather had an affair. My grandfather and mother had a close relationship, and his mistress was jealous. I assume she saw my mom as the reason my grandfather wouldn’t leave his wife (they could have been childless, neither would have been willing to divorce). So she started stalking my mom. Would call the house and her work and hang up or whisper weird shit and threats in the phone to her, etc. My mom got suspicious, eventually found out, and told my grandmother. Both were pissed as hell. My grandmother kicked him out, and both of them cut all contact with him. This happened like 10 years or so before I was born.
But here’s the wild part: HE LIVED NEXT DOOR THE ENTIRE TIME. My great uncle (grandmother’s brother) lived right next to my grandmother, and my grandfather moved in with him. It must say a lot about him respecting boundaries, because I never heard him or caught sight of him whenever I was at my grandmother’s or my uncle’s house. Although I imagine it was really hard for him. My uncle’s windows looked right into my grandmother’s yard. I can’t imagine what it’s like to watch your children and grandchildren exist right under your nose and not be able to talk to them.
Anyway, at some point, they all decided to reconcile. The day I met him, he had already moved back into the house. And I’m glad, because he was amazing. He passed when I was 8, but in those three-ish years he became (and remains to this day), one my favorite people on the planet.
My brother had his appendix out when he was about 13. 5 or 6 years later he confessed to me that he made it all up to get out of doing some homework. He made all the right noises at the doctor's surgery who sent him to hospital, where he fooled them again.
After the operation he says the surgeon spoke to him and said it was odd because there wasn't any inflammation. I am amazed that in the days before the internet he knew where his appendix should be.
He is 50 next year and my parents still don't know...
several months after my mom passed my aunt decided to tell me that my mom had given a baby up for adoption when she was 17. somehow he had contacted my aunt several years ago wanting to meet his birth mother but my aunt decided to play gatekeeper telling him my mom was ill (she had dementia but was still functioning several years ago) and she didn't think it was a good idea.
why did she even tell me? It's too late. I can't ever get answers to my questions. I tried a DNA website hoping to find him but no matches came up.
in my moms last few months she kept asking where the baby was and calling a name I did not know. at least that makes sense now but I feel bad that I kept telling her there's no baby and we don't know anybody by that name.
When I was 11 I had a friend reveal that her step mother was abusing her.. she made me promise not to say anything to my mom or any other adult. I agreed, we had weekly therapy sessions with a guidance counselor if you wanted it so it was my day to go and I just felt like I needed to tell… so I did. The counselor ended up reporting it and CPS got involved and my friend was made to live with her mother. She was so angry at me for telling but I felt it in my soul that I should. We are still friends to this day.. both of us 29 years old.
I had a patient who, on his deathbed, confessed to sexually abusing minors while he was a soccer coach for many years. He said he had no idea how many, but it was in the hundreds and he wished he could go back in time to do it again. I walked out and threw up.
That a majority of people from my Dad's side of the family "borrowed" money from my great grandmother and never paid her back. I'm talking like 10-20 thousand dollars each person. My uncle, my Aunt, my Grandmother, my Great-Uncle, Great-Aunt
Apparently when she died they all fought over the remaining stuff in her house, and what money was left over.
My Dad never asked for money. Never asked for anything. And after she died, all we got was her Van.
That actually leads into another secret. That Van was then handed down to me, as I had just gotten my license as a teen. It was a good van. Heated seats. Good speakers. TV in the back. seats went all the way down. Hot boxed that van so many times, got lucky in there as well. I loved that van. Then I learned that my Great Grandmother didn't actually die in her living room like I had been told. She died in the driver seat of that van. Just died while putting it in park one day. I feel very weird when I think about everything I did in that van now.
I was a bridesmaid for a friend, who had problems with her MIL. I went to have a chat with MIL, after her brutal verbal attack at friend, while at the bridal shop. I found out that MIL was raped by her FIL & BILs multiple times and her husband supported this. MIL wanted to brake the engagement, after she overheard her husband, BILs & sons talking to the groom about sharing friend with them and groom told them that will consider it.
Sounds like there needs to be a hammer put to foreheads at the next family reunion. Accidently, of course.
My aunt murdered her second husband to marry her third, then she made the kids go to the lake and campground where their dad died every single summer for vacation.
My cousin just dropped this bomb, like, “oh yeah, my mom isn’t a good person and I wish everyone would quit acting like she is.”
Now that's just sick Imagine being the kid and finding out that your favorite (probably) place to just go chill is the very same place your father died. Oh and who killed him? That's right your very own mother! Now i'm wondering what happened to the first..
My brother owns a restaraunt that has an old school counter service. Same customers every day. Very popular place. This one guy, a city worker came in every work day religiously . One day he finishing his lunch calls my brother over and tells to call the Prosecutors Office. He admitted to killing a classmate in school 20 years prior. My bro said he was casual as could be . Just said it was time to be accountable. You never know.
Better late than never. The family and friends of the victim can finally have closure.
That he watched his son die of an overdose and didn’t do anything to help. He told me that his son had battled addictions for many years and that he had called an ambulance in the past when his son had overdosed, but that he thought it was better this time to “just let him go since he made his choice”.
My mom used to like to drop things on me casually amidst a normal conversation. I called them Mama Bombs.
One Christmas after my dad died, over breakfast she said, “Well, back when Stephanie and I were sexually involved…”
It took a minute to sink in and it was like a series of puzzle pieces clicking in my head. So many things made sense.
Stephanie was her close friend from work. They were both married to men. Stephanie was a good 30 years younger than my mom. My mom had never mentioned romantic feelings or relationships with women before. They were both in pretty lonely marriages and for a time made each other very happy.
Literally just happened to me. I have an almost two year old son with my ex girlfriend of over 4 years (we broke up not long after he was born). Come to find out she cheated on me throughout nearly the entire relationship with at least 5 different people and was even cheating on me well into her pregnancy. I am absolutely devastated and should probably get a paternity test.
My friend from uni hid her pregnancy, had the baby, and gave it up for adoption without telling anyone. I regularly saw her throughout the pregnancy. She didn't really show or put on weight and only found out she was pregnant herself at 7 months. One day, I noticed she was at the hospital as she had left her location on snapchat. I messaged her in a panic, asking if she was ok. She brushed it off as visiting a friend. I found out three years later from a mutual friend that was the day she gave birth. I had actually caught up with her for drinks 2 days after she had the baby. I had absolutely no idea that she had literally just given birth 48 hours prior
Rape victims often go on denial including evidence like pregnancy. I hope she got some resolution to it all if my guess is correct
I had an old girlfriend who was coming to Florida and wanted to hang out with me and my wife, she brought her mom, who I knew pretty well. A great dinner, drinks, fun stories, then when my ex went to the bathroom, the mom told me she (the ex) was dying of cancer. (I had No idea). It was sad, but yet felt so good she wanted to hang out. She died within a year. We were probably 35 years old at the time.
I never knew how upsetting it would be to hear someone died of cancer until I was diagnosed myself. It was caught early and I have a good prognosis but i can’t know for sure
At the start of this year, my mom got drunk and let it slip that I was adopted. At 30 years old that was and is still a trip.
My wife and I went to the hospital so my wife could have an ultra sound. Found out she was going to have twins. As we were leaving we passed an open door and I saw my cousin sitting on an examination table. WTF. He had just been diagnosed with cancer. It ended up that the day the twins were born, my cousin passed away.
In the 70’s, my cousin died in a car crash that caught fire. I was very afraid that he was awake and felt the fire. My parents said he died immediately and didn’t suffer. My mother was on hospice at home in 2011. She told me the firemen were trying to open the doors and My cousin and the other teens were screaming for help when the cars caught fire. There were no survivors and my Aunt was never the same. It wasn’t until after his death that the jaws of life were distributed to our rural departments.
Similar story here in Montana. Early 90's, woman and 3 kids crashed. Van caught on fire. All of them died.
My grandfather was telling me about his father. My great grandfather was abusive and threw his wife around til she was incapacitated and dragged her out onto the lawn in the middle of a blizzard and locked the door. The 6 children were too young or didn't dare help her or say anything or they'd be next. She ended up dying in the walkway during the storm so he spun a story of her falling and must've locked herself out. The same douche also accidentally burned their first house down because he was tossing lit matches at the family cat for fun. The cat caught fire and burned the whole house down.
It was much easier to get away with s**t back then.
I was not told this secret but stumbled upon it after someone’s death. My wife is an only child and her parents were married for 30+ years. I’ve always known that they didn’t actually get married until a month or so after she was born, but they were dating and supposedly engaged for several years prior. After he died suddenly I was doing a family tree online and discovered that at the time of my wife’s birth, he was married to another woman in a different state. Their divorce was finalized shortly before he married my mother in law. I know my wife doesn’t know this and I’m pretty sure my mother in law doesn’t either. I’ve decided to keep it to myself to spare them any pain.
Perhaps the reason why it took so long for your parents-in-law to get married. Your MIL may have been aware, you never know.
I found out my mother and father were not divorced. He never existed. She had a one night stand, found out she was pregnant, bought a wedding ring, changed her name, and told the family that she had gotten married. She made up excuses every time she went to my grandparents house as to why her husband couldn’t also be there to meet them. On the 3rd visit my grandfather told her to never wear that ring in his house again, and when is the baby due?
I’m 53.
My now ex best friend told me she has stolen over 100 things from me over 10 years
My mother told me that my now deceased step-father told her of something he did in his youth. He got into a car accident and the old lady he ran into died on the scene. The first responding police officer told him to leave, that the old lady had lived her life and he was just getting started. So he got off scot free for killing an old lady with his vehicle.
I feel that his self entitlement in life probably started there. He ended up later in life robbing a store, holding hostages, and then got arrested. While out on bail he took his own life.
spoiler alert: this was a Fallen situation (1998 movie about a host-hopping demon/evil spirit)
Grew up thinking my dad who was a fisherman had drowned. Went on a cruise in my early twenties with family. Mom revealed that he had been murdered by a new crew member for a paycheck. He skipped town the next day and the local cop who hated my dad over something trivial didn't do jack shit.
My great grandma recently revealed to me that, when my great grandfather was on hospice twenty years ago, due to leukemia, she got tired of caring for him and irritated by how many people were at the house that she turned off his oxygen and "sent him to rest with the good Lord."
She has been diagnosed with dementia at some point within the past few years, so I don't know how true this is, but I will never look at her the same 🥲
Around 6 years ago my mother got a urinary tract infection. She had struggled with alcohol addiction for a number years prior to this and the infection messed with her memory. When I was in the hospital she kept saying in front of everyone that she knew she had complained a lot about my stepdad but she hadn’t wanted me to kill him. The nurses had absolutely no idea what to do so I assured them that I hadn’t killed him. He was in the same hospital on a different ward due to a heart condition and one of them went to the ward with me to see him and prove that he was alive. The only reason they didn’t call the police straight away was because she claimed I had shot him. We live in England. Guns aren’t that readily available to a 43 year old mother who spent 12 years looking after her disabled parents. We lost him almost 2 years ago. I love my mum and she obviously has no memory of what she was saying so I remind her every so often that if anyone gives her grief I’ll sort it 😂
A friend revealed she was the product of incest..between father and daughter...so father was father but sister was mother and mother was actually grandmother
When the family tree turns into some sort of family branch. I seriously doubt this was in any way consensual
My buddy in college told me when he was little he was playing “bungie jumping” with his cousin. His cousin wrapped a rope around his neck and hung himself. Story still scares the s**t outta me.
An old friend burned her house down, with her husband and three kids inside. Got her family out *just in time*. She was on a new antidepressant and had a mental breakdown in middle of the night. She faced 83 years in prison after the arson investigation and was only sentenced to 6 months (no prior record). Her husband killed himself, by arson, while she was in jail. The detectives still investigated her, her cell mates, and her family. Her kids were with their grandparents when he killed himself. She's been out for a decade now and is living a normal life.
My boss told me his mother has dementia, and that he feels like he's experiencing it, too.
Hearing your boss say "I might have dementia.." to you in private is real weird. Especially coming from such an aggressively confident man. He seemed so deflated and sad. In the past 5 years he's gone from being a super fit 50 year old that you'd never guess was 50 to looking like he's 70.
He might not be, honestly - caring for someone with dementia CAN make you feel like your own mind is going.
I found out at 10 years old that my dad is actually my step dad, funny thing he found out that day too
Husband and I recently learned that his kid's grandfather (mother's side) is a convicted serial killer. That was... fun?
Given the caliber of his exes I would have thought this was a lie; however, the mother was interviewed for a documentary about it. Needless to say, kiddo slept over at our house while the interviews were taking place... they are way too young to process that kind of clusterfuck.
I worked with a very sober and intelligent woman with a background in biology. Once when she was drunk at the company Christmas party she told me about a very intense experience with a "UFO-ish" object when she was younger. A multicoloured, shimmering and incomprehensible thing that hovered above her for 30 seconds and gave her sensations of information she couldn't make sense of. She swore me to secrecy and admitted to having needed a lot of therapy after. Her story was quite believable.
I had a random gal who was buying some furniture from me tell me her deepest secret. Apparently her and her four siblings were in a continuous fight over the cremated remains of their father, and she had possession of them. I guess all except her agreed to equally distribute them among the remaining children. However when it was time to share the remains she gave her siblings her deceased dogs cremated remains instead! I guess her dad is in her closet. When I tell you I gasped. I asked her if she thought she’d ever tell them and she said yeah some day. But she fully expects them to never speak to her again.
I don't understand why one would do this. Is there a cultural component that made having the ashes important?
Not a secret i guess but when I was 16, my Mom announced at dinner that her sister was coming for a visit next week. I dropped my fork and said “YOU HAVE A SISTER?”
When I was 18 my parents sat me down and told me I had a half brother and half sister halfway across the world from my dads previous marriage that I knew nothing about. There was a picture of them on the wall in our house and we were told they were our cousins from Australia.
For a time, we kept a gravestone in our front yard. Since it wasn't Halloween, I asked my mom why we had it out, and she told me it was for my miscarried older brother.
I was chatting with a detail cop, and he happily told me that he sold all the drugs he confiscated near a CVS in town.
My grandfather was adopted. I was trying to figure out some genealogical stuff and couldn't get dates to line up so I asked him about it. He hemmed and hawed and misdirected and finally my grandmother actually told me for him while he practically broke down in tears. I've known my grandfather my entire 40 yrs of life and I've never seen him get that emotional. It's a secret I was not expecting at all and that he is deeply ashamed of.
If your grandfather is adopted HE has no need for shame. I hope he realises this.
I found out my parents weren't married when I was 14, and my parents had a massive row after my dad was caught by the police with a prostitute. My mum blurted it out to me along with the reason why they were arguing. I'm 50. Up til then, they pretended.. when my Catholic secondary school asked for a marriage certificate as part of my screening for the school, they sent a letter to the priest confidentially.. I still got in. Explains why from birth until 11 a Catholic nun would visit my parents every weekend, probably to ensure my soul was intact, lol.
not married = soul in mortal danger. paying a prostitute = your soul is dandy so long as it’s not adultery
I'm 56 now but at some point in my early 40s while driving with my dad he says "you have a half brother somewhere".
I have a friend who presents as euphorically happily married who told me recently that the reality is she married her second choice and that it will forever silently hangover and haunt the relationship. She said she wishes she had just been alone until she found somebody new all together. Not the most shocking, but the most recent shocking thing someone told me.
Dude with my last name pings me on Facebook and says he's my half brother. Dad denies it and says the mom lied to her son and to the world. But he was obviously busy back in the day.
If only there was a way in modern medical technology to determine who's telling the truth.
Don't know if it's the most shocking secret but the most recent secret that's been let slip anyway.
My (25F) nan (73F) accidentally told me about how my mum (52F) disappeared for two weeks a few months after I was born, she just up and left one day, didn't tell anyone where she was just that she wasn't coming back. She of course came back and apologised to my Dad(52M), they divorced 7 years later, no shock there.
Not angry that she left, angry she came back. Horrible, disgusting thing to think I know but she was never mentally stable enough to have children and she made the conscious choice to have two, it was selfish. I love her but I was her parent more than she was mine.
Edit: I'm getting a lot of comments about how I should cut her slack because she was probably hit with post-natal depression. I understand that completely.
I just didn't know that this is when she started to spiral out, I thought it was either when my brother was born or when the divorce happened but it just unlocked a whole load of toddler crazy memories. So idk just hurt that almost everyone let it go on my entire life, not just a part of it.
So before people also bring my Dad into this, after the Divorce he tried to get custody of me and my brother, then tried again after she was committed for the 2nd time but he had no money so that's how that went. My Dad told me that she wouldn't let us go because she couldn't bear to be away from us and that he understood that, just would always hate her for it.
It also sucks realising how different your life could've been if the woman that loves you more than life wasn't so selfish.
(My brother knows nothing about the custody thing, he already has no relationship to my mother, my family is super f****d up)
I bet she didn’t know when she chose to have kids that this is how her life would turn out
The mafia called my grandparents to threaten harm against my mother because she ripped them off.
My entire life I thought I was an only child only for my dad to admit that he’s had children with other women. He never said who but I could have bio siblings out there and I also apologize for my dad being terrible.
Casually dropped they’d killed someone then got really quiet about it. Like, sad quiet. Sounds like there was a case surrounding the ordeal but could never get them to talk about it more and I didn’t want to push.
There is a support network for people who have killed someone and have deeply regretted their actions ever since. It was started by a woman who hit and killed a young boy when she was backing out of a driveway as a teenager. She says she has thought about that boy every day of her life since then.
I had to stop reading this article part way down. There are just so many horrible things that happen in the world, and some days I am better off not knowing specific details . . . . 😔
It's scary that there are psychopaths out there that don't/ won't ever feel bad about the awful things they've done.
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An only child, I spent my life thinking my father had always wanted a son. I was never a sporty gal, but he desperately tried to get me to play soccer, softball, darts, you name it. On my 18th birthday, Mum blew the door off the family closet. Dad had been married before he met Mum. In fact, his then wife was pregnant when he left her and his TWO SONS to be with my Mum. She later had a son, so he had three boys. Three half-brothers I never knew about (years later, long after my parents split, he remarried the first wife and the boys made it clear they wanted nothing to do with me, nice, eh?). Oh, and Mum had a sister we never talked about as she had mental issues and ended up taking herself out as a teenager.
I'm sorry your half-brothers don't want anything to do with you. Why are they angry with you? You didn't do anything wrong. They should be angry with their dad instead. He is the one who created a situation where they got a half-sibling. On the other hand, if they are angry at you simply from being your father's child then perhaps you're better off without them.
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My cousin was raised in a fundamentalist Christian house. No alcohol, no smoking, no R-rated movies, no sex, and no kissing before marriage. Almost as repressive as the Duggar cult, but not quite. I want to state that he is a really wonderful person; loving, kind, generous, and genuine. He didn't find "the one" until he was 32 as he has always been pretty shy around women. On the night before his wedding, he requested a nice dinner with my husband and myself. We are very secular, worldly, and agnostic so it was a bit of a surprise. We took him to a very expensive steakhouse and he asked to have a bourbon; he then said it wasn't his first one before telling us the story of how he lost his virginity to an escort 10 years earlier just to "get it over with." That wasn't the shocking part. After his second bourbon he shared that the experience confirmed what he'd always known: he is gay. Bless his heart, he married a controlling harpy and they now have 2 kids. I feel so sad for him...
That is indeed very sad. Sad that his religious indoctrination makes him feel forced to live a lie.
Load More Replies... I had to stop reading this article part way down. There are just so many horrible things that happen in the world, and some days I am better off not knowing specific details . . . . 😔
It's scary that there are psychopaths out there that don't/ won't ever feel bad about the awful things they've done.
Load More Replies... An only child, I spent my life thinking my father had always wanted a son. I was never a sporty gal, but he desperately tried to get me to play soccer, softball, darts, you name it. On my 18th birthday, Mum blew the door off the family closet. Dad had been married before he met Mum. In fact, his then wife was pregnant when he left her and his TWO SONS to be with my Mum. She later had a son, so he had three boys. Three half-brothers I never knew about (years later, long after my parents split, he remarried the first wife and the boys made it clear they wanted nothing to do with me, nice, eh?). Oh, and Mum had a sister we never talked about as she had mental issues and ended up taking herself out as a teenager.
I'm sorry your half-brothers don't want anything to do with you. Why are they angry with you? You didn't do anything wrong. They should be angry with their dad instead. He is the one who created a situation where they got a half-sibling. On the other hand, if they are angry at you simply from being your father's child then perhaps you're better off without them.
Load More Replies... My cousin was raised in a fundamentalist Christian house. No alcohol, no smoking, no R-rated movies, no sex, and no kissing before marriage. Almost as repressive as the Duggar cult, but not quite. I want to state that he is a really wonderful person; loving, kind, generous, and genuine. He didn't find "the one" until he was 32 as he has always been pretty shy around women. On the night before his wedding, he requested a nice dinner with my husband and myself. We are very secular, worldly, and agnostic so it was a bit of a surprise. We took him to a very expensive steakhouse and he asked to have a bourbon; he then said it wasn't his first one before telling us the story of how he lost his virginity to an escort 10 years earlier just to "get it over with." That wasn't the shocking part. After his second bourbon he shared that the experience confirmed what he'd always known: he is gay. Bless his heart, he married a controlling harpy and they now have 2 kids. I feel so sad for him...
That is indeed very sad. Sad that his religious indoctrination makes him feel forced to live a lie.
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