It’s not all sunshine, rainbows, and delicious cookies after a homemade dinner when you’re part of a family. There are some… secrets there, in the nooks and crannies, behind smiles and twinkling eyes. Growing, spreading in the shadows. Or locked up and hidden away out of fear that somebody might accidentally stumble upon them. Most of them are shocking. Very few are pleasant. And often, once they get out, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.
Reddit users shared the family secrets that were finally spilled out into the light of day after user u/AbsoluteHavoc asked them to in a viral thread on r/AskReddit. The thread got over 70k upvotes and more than 18k comments. The secrets revealed there are quite jaw-dropping and some of them are far from pleasant. So be warned, dear Pandas! Scroll down if you’re feeling brave.
I reached out to redditor u/AbsoluteHavoc, who created the original thread about family secrets, to get their opinion. They were kind enough to answer Bored Panda's questions in detail. You'll find my full interview with the author of the thread below.
This isn’t the first time that Bored Panda has written about deep and dark secrets. When you’re done reading through this list, we invite you to take a peek at our earlier articles right here (family secrets) and here (babysitter secrets).
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My uncle served in Vietnam. While over there, his troop found a baby that had been orphaned or abandoned. My uncle was shipping back to Australia soon and wanted to adopt him, but my aunt said no. My uncle's troop found a family to raise the baby, and that's the story the whole family knows. The secret is that my uncle and some other guys from his troop stayed in contact with the family and the kid, sending them money every month to help raise him and then to help him go to university. Eventually they helped him and his adoptive family move to Australia in the late '90s.
The author of the thread, u/AbsoluteHavoc, opened up to Bored Panda about what inspired them to ask the question about family secrets in the first place. "I wanted to make a thread on r/AskReddit that would gain some insight from a lot of people, but also to allow people to voice their opinions on family matters that they thought were shocking and surprising, and how it made an impact on their lives and their family lives," they told me.
"I had no idea it would end up getting over 70k upvotes. I was surprised by the number of people who had stories to tell and how the community positively responded to each one," they admitted that they were caught completely unaware by the fact that their thread resonated with so many people.
In the redditor's opinion, whether or not someone chooses to divulge their secrets to their partner or family is up to them and "can be beneficial both ways." On the one hand, openness can lead to trust; on the other hand, some secrets would ruin any relationship if revealed.
My grandma didn't drive. I thought she couldn't, but it was just never discussed. One day, no one would take me to the store. Finally I said I'd just ask Grandma, and my cousin chimed in with, 'Grandma can't drive.' But Grandma said, 'Oh, you bet your sweet ass I can drive. They just don't let me!'
"Years later, my mom explained that during Prohibition, Grandma bootlegged alcohol for moonshiners. She was so successful at it that when the moonshiners were finally busted, her license was suspended by the state. Later in life, she was told she could petition for it back, but it came with an admission of guilt or some such. She told 'em to go to hell.
When I was 5 years old (1988), Santa Clause left a Nintendo on our front porch. It was wrapped in newspaper, and my parents had no idea who gifted it to us. My dad, particularly, tried to figure it out. He was always suspicious that it had been a family friend. It was by far the best gift of the year, and we played it all the time throughout our childhood.
My dad died in 2004.
Last Christmas, my mom explained that she was the one who had bought it and surreptitiously placed it on the porch. My dad really liked to be in control of things and had forbidden the purchase. She knew better. She didn't tell a soul for 30 years.
"Keeping secrets, especially involving family, can hamper communication and relationships that are crucial. It can also put a lot of strain on relationships and people may think that revealing family secrets will ruin the relationship they already have with others."
I asked the author of the thread whether they think that every single family has secrets that they wanted to stay hidden. "I think most families aren’t without a story. And within that story, there are possible secrets and controversial things that families want to keep hidden because they think it benefits the family as a whole by not coming clean about the issue," they told Bored Panda.
My grandmother recently died. She was famous in our town for her amazing cooking and catering. Notably, her gravy was absolutely amazing. So delicious. She had a heart attack several years ago, and her near-death experience convinced her to share some of her secret recipes with me — all except her gravy recipe. When she died this spring, I was going through her pantry and found an entire bucket of KFC gravy mix. She was literally using KFC gravy mix as a base to make her incredible gravy. Huge scandal.
My father died when I was 17. During the viewing, a young lady and her boyfriend showed up. She was probably two or three years older than me. Nobody recognized her, so she was asked why she was there; she stated she was there to see her father. My siblings and I were naturally confused; our mom just stood there shaking her head, and my uncles asked her to leave. She left crying in her boyfriend's arms. Our mother explained that our father had an affair years ago and that was our stepsister. I never heard any more about her, never learned her name, and have never met her. I would like to meet her and apologize for my family. Seeing her rejected and crying because she couldn't even attend a viewing for her dead father bothers me to this day.
Half sister, not stepsister And if the mom knew, why didn't she stop the uncles from chasing her off? It's not her fault that their dad had an affair.
Came here to say this. All of it. But I imagine the Mom hated the half-sister. Somehow this seams to be the norm. Poor girl
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Yeah similiar situation happened to my friend but the dad wasn’t dead he was at work! My friend was 5 and a lady and a child came to door. The next thing my friend knew he was being introduced to his 4 1/2 year old sister! The woman that dropped her off was a social worker! My friends mom took that little girl in and raised her as if she was hers. They are early 40’s now and everyone still has a beautiful relationship!.. well the mom and dad ended up getting divorced some years later and are both happily remarried! To me that’s how you handle a situation like that! In my opinion moms a badass!
I really hope that they can find her one day. Maybe hire a PI or even check on the DNA testing websites sometimes they have places to indicate your looking for relatives.
Surely you could try to find her via social media?! (I know this is from reddit but the post is archived)
I hope you find her. My dad had at least 3 kids that are my half siblings. I only found about one when I was going through his photo album and found a pic of kid who looked just like my son. I asked him who it was and he just gave me a goofy grin. I wish I knew he was but dad is long gone
it doesnt matter if the dad was a cheating pig he was still her dad and she was still his daughter regardless the cicimstances. shame on that family.
damn wth who cares if she is a product of an affair she is still allowed to se her own father
When my paternal grandfather died, the federal government reached out to do a state funeral. He was a colonel, so we didn't question it. Then the funeral came and they went ALL OUT! Huge procession, people showing up who are really big names, like heads of departments, senators, retired senators, people from the CIA — it was nuts, and we were all super confused. Turns out he was a key dude in the OSI during World War II, and when the OSI splintered into the CIA and Secret Service, he went the Secret Service route. He wasn't on the White House detail but instead worked in a covert office that dealt with counterfeiting and currency. For whatever reason, he told no one about all his work, and the only person who knew (my grandmother) was sworn to secrecy.
"Every family has some type of obstacle they don’t want everyone else to endure, even if it involves other relatives. I think the number of answers and responses helped me learn something. I learned about the variety of problems that these people have gone through and how some of these issues can range from minor to major. Overall, I think r/AskReddit is a great platform to ask insightful questions and allow people to share their stories," they said that the thread that they made and the responses it got has been a very educational experience.
Earlier, I spoke about trust, transparency, privacy, and keeping secrets with certified relationship coach Alex Scot. She explained to me that there’s a difference between privacy and secrecy and we should be honest with our loved ones about the things that directly affect and impact them.
Alex told Bored Panda that we should imagine ourselves in the position of our partners or family members when considering whether or not to share something with them. Transparency is vital in romantic, as well as in familial relationships.
My mother had a child when she was a teenager, and she had given him up for adoption to a family. After this, she went to college, got her degree, married my father, and gave birth to my 4 siblings and myself. ~30 years after giving her child up for adoption, I remember her getting a phone call and immediately locking herself in her room. I was about 12 at the time. I remember feeling scared because I could hear my mom crying, but she didn’t want to see anybody or talk about why she was crying.
On an evening later that week, my parents sat each of us kids down and told us about my mom’s past and explained that my half-brother had reached out to my mom wanting to meet her and get to know her. My dad had known ever since he and mom were dating in college, and I believe my oldest sister had been told previous to this point. But the rest of my siblings and myself and all of the in-laws on my dad side (my grandma, aunts, and uncles etc.) didn’t know about this part of her past. We are fairly religious/conservative, so it was really shocking at first.
My mom then flew out to the state where my half brother lived with her sisters and met him. Both my mom and my half brother were both very nervous about the whole thing, but by the end of their trip meeting each other, they got to rebuild a relationship. After a bit of time, we (my siblings and I) got to meet him too.
Fast forwarding to now, he’s since moved to our same state and we see him much more frequently. He’s in all of our family pictures, we see him occasionally for holidays and birthdays, and we all see him as part of our family. We’re a very close-knit and extroverted family, while he is much shyer, so at times he’s can be a bit more distant than we would like, but we give him his space. I know my mom stays in close touch with him, and we love it when he’s able to make it for family dinners and whatnot.
Back then, I was the youngest and (up til then) the only boy in my family, so I loved learning that I had an older brother. Now that I’m an adult, I sometimes get his old clothes because were roughly the same size. He’s got good taste too so I really lucked out haha. I love that this family secret was spilled and that we were able to welcome my brother into our family and have him in our lives.
Oh man. I got a gooder.
my aunt met a fellow in germany and after some conversation found out that they had grown up in the same small town in Canada. The world is after all, a small place. So they keep going further down this childhood rabbit hole until realise that this guy is actually my aunts long lost half brother. As it turns out, my grandparents had a bit of a polyamorous thrupple going on shortly after they immigrated in the 50's but around the time my aunt was 6 the whole thing fell apart and the third partner took her kid, cut off all contact and apparently moved to germany. Rather than explaining things to their remaining 3 young children my grandparents opted to tell them that there had been a terrible car accident and that the other mom and son had died.
And so my aunt and her sisters mourned and went on with their lifes with vague memories of another brother and aunt who had died when they were very young... untill my aunt met him in a bar in hamburg 36 years later.
Amazing. I like the saying, "If you don't want any one to know, don't do it."
After my mom died, I found out the real story behind my parents' marriage. She came to my father's country to visit some of her relatives. She met my father, and after just one week, she asked him to marry her so she could stay in the country. My father accepted because he had no one else and his parents were pressing him to get married already. But the highlight of the story is that over some time, the two of them fell in love.
Well if it’s meant to be it’s meant be, me and my husband of 20 years lived 2 blocks from each other and never crossed paths
"If it can affect your partner or family, there absolutely should be transparency. Whenever in doubt, put yourself in the other person’s shoes and ask yourself what you would like if you were in their situation," the relationship coach told Bored Panda.
"If it wouldn’t impact them, then you have the option of keeping it to yourself. The difference between privacy and secrecy is that secrecy has a sense of shame, guilt, or knowing that your partner or family member wouldn’t be ok with whatever took place,” she said.
I started having problems with my teeth. Spontaneous abscess that resulted in multiple root canals. My dentist did some looking into what the cause might be and found some really odd abnormalities with my incisor roots and nerves. When my next appointment came up, he was really quiet for a bit before verbally stumbling about. It turns out that what was happening with my teeth was a classic sign of inbreeding. I brought it up to my mom and she was like, 'Oh well, yeah, didn't you know?' Of course I didn't know! Turns out that not very far back in the family tree, several of my relatives decided that it was a good idea to get married to one another and no one bothered to mention it.
this is kind of messed up, but my parents told me my mom had a bad back because i pushed on her spine during birth. this was what i thought all my childhood. i think i was in my teens when my older brother told me my dad pushed my mom during an argument and she fell and had to have surgery.
I thought I ruined my moms back my entire childhood and those SOBs let me believe it :(
We went to my grandmother's for Christmas dinner, and my uncle drank too much. He kind of hinted that he had an affair with my mother. A couple of months and two DNA tests later, we found out my sister is actually his daughter. My dad never spoke to his brother again. And of course, my parents got divorced. And I needed a lot of therapy...and chocolate.
Once broken, trust is difficult to rebuild. Relationship coach Alex said that it’s “always a challenge” to reforge ties that were broken. Time, apparently, doesn’t heal all wounds equally.
"For smaller offenses, it will take less time, but for larger offenses, be prepared to be overly transparent for a time and hire a therapist or coach to walk you through the process. Trust takes consistency to rebuild and consistency equals effort over time."
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 is so wholesome. My mom and dad were divorced when I was really young and I don't even feel very accepted by his family.
My aunt wasn't my grandfather's child. He met my granny when my aunt was a very sick infant; she had polio and wasn't expected to survive. My granddad married my granny so she could get on his insurance and move to an area that had proper medical support. My granddad loved my aunt as if she was his own, and I never knew until she went to her bio dad's funeral when I was a teenager.
My sister cheated on her husband throughout her entire marriage to the point that all three of her kids have different biological fathers.
Last week, I discovered that my dad died two years ago and no one bothered to tell me. I'd been looking for him. He was a drifter and I'm his only child. I stumbled across his headstone on findagrave.com while digging through Ancestry. His marker was labeled 'Beloved brother.' My aunts and uncles are pieces of s**t...I'm not hard to find. I don't even know how he died.
After I was molested by my uncle, it came out he had done this to another one of my sisters and my family covered it up, particularly my mother. Now I know why my sister didn’t like how close my uncle got to me when I was younger.
How tf does a mother cover this up and allow this man to be near her children again???
My cousin is actually my sister. Apparently my mom got pregnant really young, and her much older sister adopted my sister and raised her as her own.
My grandfather was an atomic soldier. Instead of sending him to fight in the Korean War, they sent him to Nevada, where he witnessed the mushroom cloud. After that was over, he was ordered to march to the detonation point, where he was unwittingly exposed to high amounts of radiation. Luckily for my family, my grandpa is now in his nineties and the rest of us are cancer-free and fairly healthy, but this is medical information that we really should have known earlier!
I see a lot of stories about people finding out that who they thought was their parents weren’t the people raising them and this one is a little bit different.
My dad always thought his father who raised him wasn’t his biodad and the father thought the same. He was treated terribly by his father because the father was told he couldn’t have children and my father was born prematurely (but at a healthy weight). So, everyone assumed my grandmother had an affair and got pregnant with my dad. It was to the point that after my grandmother died, my grandfather failed to even mention to his new wife that he had a son and grandchild (me).
Years later, my dad gets an AncestryDNA test for him and me. He find out that his dad was actually his biodad. It was shocking and sad.
Found out my grandma had a baby as a teenager, and my great-grandparents forced her to give him up for adoption. Forty years later, he found us.
My fathers brother killed 4 girls when he was in high school. My father was the one who found out and told the police.
Ever since I was younger my grandmother on my mom’s side would always behave strangely at dinner. If you were looking at a dinner menu , she would see what entree you were looking at and say, “Wow that sounds good! Can I split that with you?”
Same thing with appetizers, drinks, literally everything. “Hey wanna try my soda?” It always struck me as odd and some what annoying because I don’t like splitting food. She would creepily watch as you ate your food and didn’t take a bite of hers until you swallowed yours.
She became estranged from my family several years ago for a multitude of reasons (gambling, asking for money, harassment, and her overall past history of abuse against my mom when she was growing up). I then asked my mom why my grandma always behaves so strange at dinner. Well turns out my grandma is paranoid that her food will be poisoned. She refuses to take a bite of food or drink until someone else “tested” it first. It creeps me out to think that she theoretically thought the food was poisoned and had ME try it to make sure it wasn’t. Waiting intently to make sure I didn’t drop dead or have some sort of reaction after taking a bite. Love you too Grandma!
This is years ago, and I only got a few rough details, but my baby mama's dad wound up getting caught in a sting trying to purchase a teenage girl. He had a separate apartment all set up, transferred the funds and when he went to the "delivery" meet, was arrested by the feds.
After my mom’s mom passed away, a severely-disabled, wheelchair-bound man attended my grandmother’s funeral.
It wasn’t until that moment that my mom learned this man was a brother she never knew existed, who was born mentally-handicapped & had been institutionalized since his birth.
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 four of her children. Her husband was an abusive jerk, by all accounts. While everyone was shocked, no one was saddened by this news.
My mother often had stories like:
"At your age, we got up at 4am to work on the farm, after the job, we went home to have lunch with your grandfather, then we walked 10km to go to school, and when we were back , we used to work in the field in a tractor until it was 6pm to go and cook dinner for your grandfather."
And me like "Yeah but ... he didn't work the farm with you in the morning?" and she was changing the subject.
I learned in Easter that my grandfather was alcoholic, got drunk every night, didn't get up in the morning to go to work, or was in fake jobs to lie to the family and go to drink, while the children had to go. in elementary school and manage a farm.
Then he was in prison because he touched the neighbour's children.
When he got out of prison, he took out a loan of $ 30,000 in my grandmother's name, and ran away with the money.
Then he died a few years later.
My grandmother bought herself an used Ford LTD, and no one cried at the funeral. 30 years later, I learn who my grandfather was.
I always had an Aunt Candy. I never knew why we called her that when her real name was Karen. Turns out Candy was a prostitute and my uncle was her #1 customer. They later married and she kept the name Candy for some odd reason.
My grandmother had an affair with the gynecologist who delivered my dad. We learned about this after she died when we found some of the letters they exchanged.
Found out my uncle is actually my brother. My mom had him when she was young, so my grandparents raised him.
My great-grandma was Cherokee. I took a DNA test and have no Cherokee ancestry. (I have questions.)
My great-great-grandfather was exiled and banned from Missouri for being a sheep thief.
My uncles are infamous criminals who killed multiple people. I thought they bred dogs.
Every true crime fan on this thread is now speculating about cases involving killer brothers
The scars on a elder family member's wrist where not from a botched suicide. They were from her mom trying to 'protect' herself and her kids from the approaching red army. (That was at the end of WW II in Germany). This made it so much worse.
Was the mom going to kill herself and her children to avoid being tortured by the red army? I just looked it up, the expected sexual atrocities were what the red army, the Soviets, were known for.
I only just recently heard about this, but my grandmother had gotten a little drunk with my dad and brother a month or so ago and started talking about our great uncle Ferber (not sure on the spelling), but from what I heard he apparently killed quite a few people and buried them on some family-owned land in a swamp.
My dad passed away 2 years ago. He and my mom were married for 34 years. He was a good dad and husband, I have no ill-memories of him.
Just found out that for the middle 10 years he was living a double life and had many mistresses on the side.
Now my whole childhood feels like a sham. I don't know what was real and what was fabricated.
My mom cheated on my dad with my now-stepfather. I knew the divorce was in 1996, but my mom and stepfather started dating in 1995. On my 18th birthday, my stepfather confessed to me in private that they had an affair and he still feels awful because he feels like he broke up the family. Some years later, my stepmother told me that my mom actually kicked out my dad without telling him why. She just 'needed a break.' My dad later found out through the landlord that my stepfather had moved in.
My mother is kid number 7 of 10. My aunt, the fourth kid, was born in 1945. She looked at her ancestry and found out that she has a different father from everyone else. She was devastated. There was always a rumor that there was an affair, but nobody talked about it. She has so many questions, but nobody's alive to answer her.
The nanny I had when I was younger was actually my dad's attempted sister-wife.
My dad fathered a child in high school. His side of the family knew, as did my mom. We found out, years after he died, that we have a half sister.
Relative did not just fall off a bridge with her baby, she jumped. It seems obvious in hindsight but they reported it differently both in the news and to younger family members.
My parents 'had' to get married. They always told us they got married in 1961, but it was 1962, three months before my sister was born. What's amusing is that my father was an accountant who was insanely fast with math. Whenever he was asked how many years they'd been married, he'd be off by one. My mother would correct him through clenched teeth, and then my father would nod and agree.
When my sister was diagnosed with cancer and her survival chances were low, it inevitably came out that she wasn’t my sister. My parents must have felt like we should all know the truth, just in case. She survived her treatment and will always be my sister.
I apparently have an older sister that lives on the other side of the country.
I tried talking about it with my family and they said I was "airing dirty laundry".
I'm just like "a human f**king being isn't dirty laundry".
My great grandfather didn't die of cancer.
He died from complications after being shot when one of his businesses was being robbed. Maybe. He also spent a lot of time in Atlantic City. He also had a lot of partners in the Teamsters and other unions in coal country. Also, everyone called him "smiling Tony' but his name wasn't Tony.
He died in the 60s, long before my time, but when my great grandmother died 20 years ago, a very old guy showed up to the funeral in a white suit and all of the oldest people in my family kisses his hand. When I asked, no one knew who he was.
My grandfather moved his family away from central PA in the late 60s and disconnected from all of this but, there it is.
When my dad was about 18 he got into an argument with his younger brother (my uncle, bit of a dick now, about 15 at the time) ended the argument by telling my dad that his dad wasnt his biological father.
He confronted my nan and the truth came out. The worst part was the whole village knew but not my dad.
Mad respect for my grandad though, he married a woman who already had a child in the 50's. Something which was quite controversial back then.
My uncle by marriage had an older brother who had a different father. The dad married the mom with a son already (in the '30s) and then had my uncle. Everything was fine until the dad died decades later. His will showed that he had disinherited the first-born because he was not a "real (family name)". I think everyone was absolutely horrified, not least the adopted son.
Oh, another one. My mom’s side of the family are farmers. One particularly dry summer we were playing around with fireworks in a pasture and accidentally lit it on fire. Luckily there was an industrial hose attached to the well nearby, and we were able to turn it on and douse the flames before it got out of control.
We didn’t tell anyone until 10 years later, when it came out to my parents and my aunt and uncle. My uncle, who farmed the land, burst out laughing and told us that it must’ve been not long after that he was at that property and obviously noticed the burned grass and askew hose. He put 2 and 2 together, but didn’t say anything because he figured kids were being kids, and we probably learned our lesson.
It's my wife's family, but it goes like this:
A great aunt was one of the family's only survivors of the Holocaust back in WW2. Other than her, were her brother and sister one of which grew up to be my wife's grandparent. (I can't remember which. I never met them.) The siblings were much younger then. So, they didn't remember much.
Well, the great aunt ends up writing a book about her experience fleeing the country to escape the Nazis. In it, she details the death of several family members during a march through a blizzard. Real dramatic stuff.
Well, it turned out many years after her death later, my wife's dad gets a letter from one of the dead relatives. It turns out the great aunt didn't like the two family members who "died" in her book. They had just parted ways at some point during the escape.
She wrote them out of the family in her book and took the secret to her grave. Fortunately, their last name is very unique in the world, because of how many of them didn't survive the Holocaust. So, once the "dead" relatives started searching the U.S., they popped up right away. This happened about 3 years ago, I think.
Hungarian grudges are legendary.
Grandma admitted on her deathbed that her maiden name wasn't Asher (English), it was Oscher (Jewish). Confirmed by DNA testing my dad.
That my cousin called cps on her parents because her mom was upset that she was out for two days without picking up her phone or calling/texting. She told cps that her parents physically abused her.
Her dad was jailed for some time, her mom sat with the police for hours, her little brother ended up traumatized, & our grandparents became sick with worry, then she admitted that she lied two years later because she wanted to get out of the house & get all the money that was in the accpunt in her name but didn't want to wait until she was 18. (The b**** was 17 year & eight damn months. Here you can open a savings account for your kid(s) & put in a certain amount of money every month which will be given to them the day they turn 18).
I punched her in the face for it.
My Dad was married before he married my mom and i have a sister out there that nobody speaks about or will answer any questions
When my mother fell ill, I took over her finances and found thousands of pounds of gambling debt on her credit cards.
Turns out my grandma had a secret affair and my mom is an illegitimate child.
This completely shattered grandma and mom's relationship until gran passed away about a month ago.
Also apparently I'm a quarter Iranian.
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.
Great grandparents’ 60th anniversary party at hotel ballroom with cousins/2nd cousins who hadn’t seen each other in years. My mom and I were talking to my grandfather.
Mom: Wow. I haven’t seen Chuck, Fred, and a Claire in years.
Me: no kidding. When do you think we’ll get a group this big back together?
Mom: Gramps’ bday is in 6 months. We’ll see some people then.
Me: 6 months? Isn’t it his 60th?
All: ...
Gramps: Huh. I never thought about that.
My grandfather was 60 when he realized his parents had a shotgun wedding.
We found out my papa had a gambling problem and put my gram in a lot of unknown debt when he passed away. I'm talking secret home leans, unpaid taxes, the works, and my gram had zero idea of any of it. Thankfully all of their kids are well off and were able to pay it off for her and set her up for life, but she had a hard time coping for a while.
My mom's mother was actually her grandmother while her oldest sister was in fact her bio mom! Apparently my mom's bio mom got pregnant at 18, unwed, and her parents covered it up by sending her away until she gave birth and pretending they had a new baby. Her dad was a military officer and this was in the 1940s so it was considered really shameful (thus the cover up). My mom had no clue because no one knew, the ones who knew didn't tell her, and her birth certificate was falsified. How did this all come to light? In 8th grade, I had to do a family history project. My mom called some of her relatives to help me out. One of her cousins, who is much older, accidentally let some information slip, which led to my mom suspecting the circumstances of her birth/identity. My mom confronted her bio mom (who I knew as my aunt) and it was upsetting for them both. Her bio mom was shamed and told to keep quiet about the whole situation by her parents, while my mom was raised by parents who treated her horribly (my mom always said that growing up, she felt like she was unwanted). Now, my mom feels relieved because her childhood makes a lot more sense now. She and her bio mom were always close, and were raised as sisters, and fortunately they are speaking again and my mom visited her last week!
Not unlike Jack Nicholson's story. He was raised by his grandmother, told she was his mother, and that his birth mother was his sister. I think some fact checker for Time Magazine, which was doing a story on him in 1974, asked him about it.
When I was in my early 20s I got a very distressed call from my mother.
It turns out my uncle (married for many years and father of 3 adult children) was in the hospital for trying to commit suicide.
He had tried to commit suicide by overdosing on his antidepressants.
He was on antidepressants because he was depressed that he was HIV+.
He was HIV+ because he had been having sex with male sex workers.
Everything was kept hush hush and my uncle and aunt remain married to this day, 10+ years later. I don't have contact with my family anymore for other reasons so I haven't seen my uncle for over 5 years but I'm glad HIV medications have come such a long way.
My mom and dad were addicted to crack before they had me - my mom did crack while pregnant with me.
My grandfather actually just learned this before his death in 2017. He was given his middle name after his mother’s father, and he had always signed his name proudly with his middle initial.
Shortly before he died, he learned that his own grandfather had gone missing for a decade of his life. Turns out he was in prison for raping his daughters (excluding my great-grandmother, who was the oldest.) My great-grandmother knew about this - and passed along her father’s name to her son anyway.
My grandfather didn’t get the chance to legally drop his middle name before he died, but he stopped signing with his middle initial.
I was planning to pass down my grandfather’s middle name to one of my children, but I never got the chance and regretted it. I’m glad I didn’t now - my grandfather was a good man, but I don’t care to pass down anything like THAT.
After my grandfather passed, we found out he had fathered a child when he was posted in Italy during WWII.
He never knew. His mother intercepted any letters from the Italian girl. He came home, met and married my grandmother and had 4 children.
I forget who in the family found out and how. It's crazy to think we have a whole Italian family out there!
Edit: Went to sleep and woke up to crazy notifications!
Thanks for the awards. To clarify I'm in the UK, not that it's relevant to the story.
My oldest aunt is 77 so this 'kid' would be at least 79 by now I would think. We've considered doing the DNA testing but some family members aren't comfortable with how those companies could use the information.
It's a really sad story, but if his mother hadn't intercepted the letters, I wouldn't exist. It's a weird place to be in emotionally!
My great aunt had a secret kid that she adopted out, before she got married. Told everybody a couple years ago while she was working on finding him, he's a great part of the family now.
My mom and older brother are not biologically related to me. My bio mom died sometime after I was born, leaving me, my sister, and my dad behind. My brother was the one that told me. My parents never told me because they wanted to protect me from the truth, but my brother thought that was a bs reason for me to not know. I don't know if my parents know that I know the truth, but I don't want to bring it up either.
My wife's mother's family (in rural Iowa) had a schism within the family around inherited farm land. So growing up, when she visited grandma for two weeks in the summer, she never knew about 2nd - 3rd cousins living in that small town. My wife found out when we started using Ancestry and tracing family. Not a huge secret but interesting long standing family feud.
Not really a family secret. This happened in the 60s or 70s. One of my mom's like 2nd or 3rd cousins shot and killed his father. The father was a raging alcoholic and very abusive to his wife and the son, especially when he was drunk. The father came home drunk one night, started abusing the mom, and son had had enough and shot his father, killing him. The guy spent a few years in prison for maybe manslaughter or something. I think he lives a fairly normal life now.
A cousin in my family had been secretly stalking/harassing another cousin for like 3 years, to a really bad degree. He eventually admitted it, however didn't face any consequences.
Never gave any good reason for it at all and didn't even know the other cousin very well, he just randomly decided to start doing it. A lot of family was in denial over it because he seemed like a nice guy.
One of my cousins started „liking“ me for whatever reason. At first there was nothing, and then I had a girlfriend and suddenly for some reason she decided to like me and want me as a boyfriend? Maybe some weird jealous reflex? We were never even anywhere close. And since then due to other family issues happening, involving her father stealing money from his mother, I didn’t see her again in 15 years.
My great grandmother wasn’t actually Mexican but rather was adopted by a Mexican family from a Chinese family who was being kicked out of Mexico when railroad construction was over. She always had more typically Asian features but only spoke spanish and it was never really questioned. 23 and me is a hell of a thing.
My grandmother was my grandfather's babysitter for his first wife.
That my uncle was married for ten years... when we read his wife’s book obituary in the newspaper. He never mentioned getting married, and he hasn’t mentioned her passing since. We always knew that he liked his privacy, but dang...
We recently found out that around 40 years ago my grandfather had a 7 year long affair with a woman in his church who was also married. During this time he had two children with this woman and they never told anyone about. She pretended that those two children were that of her husband despite them not looking anything like him.
How we found out was rather interesting. A couple years ago I had gotten one of the 23andMe DNA kits to figure out what my ethnic background looked like. My aunt and uncle had done the same about a year ago as well. Once you get your results from 23andMe, it also will show you any DNA matches you have with relatives.
A couple days after Christmas, a woman had reached out to my aunt and uncle asking to speak with them because 23andMe was telling her that they were her half siblings and that I was showing up as her nephew. Coming from a very strict Catholic family, this was very confusing and concerning to her. They ended up meeting and pieced together everything and then approached their parents about it who at first denied it, then came clean about the affair.
It's been pretty hard on the family. For the longest time my grandfather was too stubborn to even apologize to the family and my grandmother for all the pain he's brought, but he finally did. Shockingly enough my grandparents are still together despite all of this coming to light.
Why are people so surprised when a couple stays together despite adversity?
Grandpa was a serious Nazi German war criminal.
I grew up in a Mexican family and have 2 younger cousins. My aunt married another Latino guy who basically looked white. The oldest child was a girl and came out looking exactly like her dad- full stop. The second was a boy and came out looking like.... his mom? Maybe? He was dark dark. Like, I’m half-Black and this kid is darker than me. But his mom was pretty brown as well. So we thought nothing of it. Kid looks like his mom.
Well fast forward 16 years later. They’re divorced and hate each other. The daughter was always treated like a princess- the boy was rather spoiled too but very much sought out his dads approval- which he just wasn’t getting. He couldn’t figure out why. He’s acting out, getting in trouble, running with gangs. Boohoos about his dad all the time. Well ‘dad’ had enough and flat-out told him, ‘you’re not my kid. You’re mom is a hoe, and I don’t know ‘who’ your dad is’. He even was kind enough to offer up a paternity test. His mother never said s**t about it. She took the ostrich approach and hoped it would go away.
We know now his dad was a Pacific Islander- and while there IS one who has always been a family friend for many years, he took a paternity test too and was completely cleared. So the mystery remains on who she cheated on her ex with. She says she doesn’t even know.
Biological dad or not, that man was a worthless excuse for a human being. You don't punish the child.
Due to 23&Me, my Dad learned that his recently deceased father was not his biological father.
It wasn’t a situation related to my grandma cheating either, it was a sperm donation. So, they knew this was the case his entire life.
Pretty crazy they never told him, his parents did not pass until he was ~65 years old.
Talk about a curveball.
Tbh if it was donor sperm they probably thought there was no reason to tell him, except for maybe family medical history which might not have been necessary either if there were no health problems.
Right after my grandma passed away, we found out she had a secret son she gave up for adoption (thanks ancestry.com!). Crazy thing is, my wife just found out she has an uncle nobody ever knew about from her dads side! (Thank you 23andme!). These ancestry sites are wrecking things lol
Heh. I missed the sarcasm, thought it was true joy at expanding family, until that last line ...
My grandad was born out of wedlock and was raised by his auntie who already had 2 daughters. His real mum had to live in the same house as her son and pretend she was his aunt. The family have always had suspicions but it wasn't confirmed until my grandad was 72, at which point all the family that had the truth were dead.
Found out that one of my cousins was really my aunt.
My maternal grandmother married my grandfather. My grandfather slept with my grandmother's sister(my great aunt). My great aunt gave birth to my cousin/aunt.
I tried to keep the explanation short.
One week before my younger sister's wedding, my dad decided to call myself, both my sisters, and my mother (his ex-wife) to meet at his house for something "very important he needed to tell us." We all thought he had cancer or something. We were very worried. Once we were all there, he sobbingly confessed to having a 5 year old son living in the town next to ours, which means the kid was conceived and born while my parents were still married. He claimed he didn't know for sure that the kid was his, and he had only recently gotten a DNA test. He showed us a picture of our half-brother. He looks EXACTLY like my dad. My mother was devastated.
My maternal great grandmother did not like Norwegians and went to her deathbed insisting she was full-blooded Swedish. My father is half Norwegian, so he and my mom got a lot of flak from her. It was mostly in good fun, but it could get to my dad. After she passed, my grandfather (her son) revealed that she was a quarter Norwegian. So my father, the “half-breed”, was no more Norwegian than her own father.
I was 35 when my mother finally admitted to me that she'd been lying about who my birth father was. She waited until after I'd reached out to his other children and we all thought we were siblings.
He later confirmed I wasn't his.
She refused to tell me who my biological father really was.
My grandma had a daughter she gave up for adoption before she married my grandpa and had their 4 kids. The daughter found my family through distant cousins or something and my grandpa was like “Cool! More family!” But my grandma wants nothing to do with her and told my mom and aunt that they aren’t to contact the daughter until she dies.
Don't be too quick to judge Grandma. If there is a hidden trauma that the bio-mother doesn't want to relive, and doesn't want the biological child have to live with either, she may think it's kinder not give to the biological child the chance to ask her any questions, and it may be something she cannot bear to talk about. Maybe it's better to be able to tell yourself the story "I tracked my bio-mom down, but she never wanted to meet me, and didn't want the family to either. I guess she was just really embarassed by having been a teenager pregnant out of wedlock." What if the alternative is something horrific? Would you want to know the "truth" if that truth is "bio-child of a rapist and his teenaged victim?"
My grandparents are first cousin’s... an uncle on the same side of the family is in prison for the assassination of a presidential candidate(family still says he was framed and is innocent)
My mother had an affair, then lied to police about my nan selling medication. Lied to my dad's workplace about drink driving. Then tried to use a school permission slip to get my dad to sign the house over to my mum and give custody of us kids. Well, I didn't know about the trip so my dad didn't sign. Everything went bat s**t.
So turns out one of my cousins was actually a different aunt child but she couldn't/wouldn't raise him so another aunt adopted him to keep him in the family. Only my mother and her siblings knew this until his biological mom was dying of cancer and they decided to reveal it. It was really s**tty. Especially because he has a biological sister that was little more than a long distant cousin. He was around 24 when this all came out.
Find out, around when my dad turned 60 he had an older sister. Found a whole slew of cousins we never knew
My grandpa's death as ruled as a suicide in the 50s and my mom was likely the last to see him alive when she was 5 years old. My family was still insisting he accidentally fell asleep with the car running while the garage was closed the when I learned about it.
That my great uncle (by marriage, I'm not blood related) was a drunk and abuser. He abused his kids and his wife, and rarely had a job. If not for my grandmother, chances were my cousins would've starved because way back in the 60s and 70s, they were elite. To go to welfare and admit he was such a colossal dick would've been catastrophic to "the family reputation". They were also hardcore Catholics, so no divorce.
So my grandmother bought her sister and niece and nephew food, hosted all the holidays, for years.
After she passed away, my great aunt wanted nothing to do with us, probably because of that "secret".
My great-grandfather was a forger, he was imprisoned for 5 years in his early 20's. He must have suffered a great deal while inside because he refused to talk about it. A few years ago my grandfather was contacted by some BBC researchers asking if his father was still alive and if he was willing to talk about his experiences in the war. My grandfather explained that as Irishmen, they were not really involved in the war. The researcher then arranged to meet with my grandfather because there was 'something he wanted to show him'. They met, and it turns out my great-grandfather was not in prison at all! He was creating false documents for the French resistance, British spies, and around 2K fleeing Jews. Much of his time was spent behind enemy lines and he even survived 'a thorough and intensive interrogation' by the SS, which explained his scars. The man was a hero and nobody knew, which is the best kind of hero IMO.
We need a book or a movie about this man! This is amazing!
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All these stories make it really clear that in the past, most families probably had these kinds of secrets about who was whose father/brother/mother/child, etc. I can understand why a lot of older people are really, really reluctant to take DNA tests. So many family secrets. Hopefully we have reached the point where most of us don't judge people on this kind of stuff, and maybe not having all these secrets will be much healthier.
yep, I know someone who adopted a kid in the 1960s because he was "illegitimate". Imagine taking a kid away from his mom because she wasn't married? pathetic religious garbage ideas.
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I find it fun that people assume this only happened in old times. You are not gonna tell me that with current time of easier travel and people going around more, there are no current stories like this in the making. You think 26 year old Cathy will admit to her partner of 5 years she has the kid likely from that timeout they had when she was doing hard studies ? Or there are, even wouthout the religious bullshit, which btw is still everywhere, no people left anymore who will cover up the rape of their daughter by family ? Not to mention the stuff happening with Erasmus students, current soldiers deployed, freelancers traveling and tinder affairs....yea no, i doubt the world became more transparent and open minded in that regard, things just changed.
This is the age of recreational DNA testing. If you're smart you'll fess up.
Load More Replies...
My grandmother lied to her oldest son for most of his life. Grandma was married young, that didn't work out and apparently she had a few lovers. One of them fathered my dad. We don't know if he never knew, or she lied to him or what but my grandmothers second husband adopted my dad. He was young and never knew any better, new dad was his dad. Fast forward to my dad enlisting in the army and his parents are like oh, by the way you should know..... except they weren't truthful as to who his father was . Fast forward many many years (I was an adult with a kid at this point) and she finally spills the beans that oh, this dude is your real father but he's dead now...bizarre, I've found pics of him online and my dad looks exactly like him
23andme and Ancestry.com ruining some lives here. I always think people really consider before going ahead with these things. You can find out stuff that could really ruin familial relationships and cause huge rifts.
People taking these tests "just for fun" might ruin somebody's life or force them to drag very hurtful and deeply buried memories back into the light. I am convinced there are many, many children whose parents are not their bio parents for a million different reasons. Would you really want to force your mom to explain to your wonderful dad that he is not your bio father because she has been raped some fifty years ago after church and never dared to tell anybody? In my opinion nobody owes you anything - not even the truth. Some secrets are better left untouched.
Load More Replies...
I am working on my family tree. My direct ancestor married a well-of man from the next village. He died in a year and a half and she maried her neighbour (from her home village) a week later. She was pregnant and gave birth to a boy, named after his dead father; the child died at 5 months. She and her new husband had meny children, one of them was my greatx3 grand father. Also found shotgun weddings on the other side of the family and a single great great grand mother, who had her only illegitimate son at her 28 years. Married at 41 to a 28 years old man but didn't have any more children. According to my calculations he could have been the father of my great grand dad... at a very young age. Should get a DNA test, but don't trust the companies who make them.
I totally agree about not trusting the DNA companies
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30 years ago, I was at a restaurant in Belgium with my future wife. I saw there a young man who looked EXACTLY like my father at this age.... I knew that my grandfather worked in Belgium 50 years ago...who knows?
I have a very good friend I met through work who is a data analyst. She was adopted and happy but in her late 40s decided to track down her original parents. Going through adoption records, she discovered she was actually 1 of 10 children adopted through the same agency in Oklahoma from the same mother. Turns out mom had been in a very bad relationship in Kansas with an abusive man who thought it was women's duty to produce children but didn't want children. Mom eventually killed him and she was sentenced to prison but the sentence was commuted after 6 months. She moved elsewhere and started a real family (2 kids) and never told them her past. I had helped my friend do the research to find everyone so I was invited to the most awkward family reunion where 12 kids met their siblings and mom for the first time. My friend has moved away but the kids and their families still meet regularly and all 12 showed up to mom's funeral.
This really makes me glad that, despite being raised by my grandparents, I was always thoroughly aware of my family situation. Understanding my family situation was hard enough growing up, finding out it was completely fabricated as an adult would have been even harder.
My wife has an cousin ho learned at the age of 60 that his dad wasn' t his biological father. His mother had an affair with a greek showman but his dad married her anyway and he raised the boy like his own. His sister doesn' t consider him as her brother anymore and doesn' t want to share the heritage from their mother with him....
That sister sounds like an absolute jerk; no matter what happened that man is STILL her brother and I am getting very incensed just thinking about how awful she's being. Also, that man is absolutely his dad's son because the dad raised him and I'm really tired of biology being considered above all else.
Load More Replies...
We recently found out that an old family friend died. We knew this person in the 1970's but eventually lost touch. There was a large group of couples who were friend and used to party etc. When I told my mother about the death of the family friend she then told me that they used to wife swap at these parties! Thanks for the mental image Ma!
My great grandmother was my grandmother mum. No one knew until grandma died. My great grandmother was known as Aunty ---
I think in those times young mothers were not earning sufficient to raise child n so using religion as reason they gave the child up. Mostly to related family members so they can take care of the child knowing it to be family. It's a good thinking. Because a mother always think about their children that are with them or half a globe across.
Very interesting! Now I wanna know what secrets my family has, or maybe I don't.
Half of these stories we invented others are a nice dxample of good old fashioned family abuse
My great-grandfather was a forger, he was imprisoned for 5 years in his early 20's. He must have suffered a great deal while inside because he refused to talk about it. A few years ago my grandfather was contacted by some BBC researchers asking if his father was still alive and if he was willing to talk about his experiences in the war. My grandfather explained that as Irishmen, they were not really involved in the war. The researcher then arranged to meet with my grandfather because there was 'something he wanted to show him'. They met, and it turns out my great-grandfather was not in prison at all! He was creating false documents for the French resistance, British spies, and around 2K fleeing Jews. Much of his time was spent behind enemy lines and he even survived 'a thorough and intensive interrogation' by the SS, which explained his scars. The man was a hero and nobody knew, which is the best kind of hero IMO.
We need a book or a movie about this man! This is amazing!
Load More Replies... All these stories make it really clear that in the past, most families probably had these kinds of secrets about who was whose father/brother/mother/child, etc. I can understand why a lot of older people are really, really reluctant to take DNA tests. So many family secrets. Hopefully we have reached the point where most of us don't judge people on this kind of stuff, and maybe not having all these secrets will be much healthier.
yep, I know someone who adopted a kid in the 1960s because he was "illegitimate". Imagine taking a kid away from his mom because she wasn't married? pathetic religious garbage ideas.
Load More Replies... I find it fun that people assume this only happened in old times. You are not gonna tell me that with current time of easier travel and people going around more, there are no current stories like this in the making. You think 26 year old Cathy will admit to her partner of 5 years she has the kid likely from that timeout they had when she was doing hard studies ? Or there are, even wouthout the religious bullshit, which btw is still everywhere, no people left anymore who will cover up the rape of their daughter by family ? Not to mention the stuff happening with Erasmus students, current soldiers deployed, freelancers traveling and tinder affairs....yea no, i doubt the world became more transparent and open minded in that regard, things just changed.
This is the age of recreational DNA testing. If you're smart you'll fess up.
Load More Replies... My grandmother lied to her oldest son for most of his life. Grandma was married young, that didn't work out and apparently she had a few lovers. One of them fathered my dad. We don't know if he never knew, or she lied to him or what but my grandmothers second husband adopted my dad. He was young and never knew any better, new dad was his dad. Fast forward to my dad enlisting in the army and his parents are like oh, by the way you should know..... except they weren't truthful as to who his father was . Fast forward many many years (I was an adult with a kid at this point) and she finally spills the beans that oh, this dude is your real father but he's dead now...bizarre, I've found pics of him online and my dad looks exactly like him
23andme and Ancestry.com ruining some lives here. I always think people really consider before going ahead with these things. You can find out stuff that could really ruin familial relationships and cause huge rifts.
People taking these tests "just for fun" might ruin somebody's life or force them to drag very hurtful and deeply buried memories back into the light. I am convinced there are many, many children whose parents are not their bio parents for a million different reasons. Would you really want to force your mom to explain to your wonderful dad that he is not your bio father because she has been raped some fifty years ago after church and never dared to tell anybody? In my opinion nobody owes you anything - not even the truth. Some secrets are better left untouched.
Load More Replies... I am working on my family tree. My direct ancestor married a well-of man from the next village. He died in a year and a half and she maried her neighbour (from her home village) a week later. She was pregnant and gave birth to a boy, named after his dead father; the child died at 5 months. She and her new husband had meny children, one of them was my greatx3 grand father. Also found shotgun weddings on the other side of the family and a single great great grand mother, who had her only illegitimate son at her 28 years. Married at 41 to a 28 years old man but didn't have any more children. According to my calculations he could have been the father of my great grand dad... at a very young age. Should get a DNA test, but don't trust the companies who make them.
I totally agree about not trusting the DNA companies
Load More Replies... 30 years ago, I was at a restaurant in Belgium with my future wife. I saw there a young man who looked EXACTLY like my father at this age.... I knew that my grandfather worked in Belgium 50 years ago...who knows?
I have a very good friend I met through work who is a data analyst. She was adopted and happy but in her late 40s decided to track down her original parents. Going through adoption records, she discovered she was actually 1 of 10 children adopted through the same agency in Oklahoma from the same mother. Turns out mom had been in a very bad relationship in Kansas with an abusive man who thought it was women's duty to produce children but didn't want children. Mom eventually killed him and she was sentenced to prison but the sentence was commuted after 6 months. She moved elsewhere and started a real family (2 kids) and never told them her past. I had helped my friend do the research to find everyone so I was invited to the most awkward family reunion where 12 kids met their siblings and mom for the first time. My friend has moved away but the kids and their families still meet regularly and all 12 showed up to mom's funeral.
This really makes me glad that, despite being raised by my grandparents, I was always thoroughly aware of my family situation. Understanding my family situation was hard enough growing up, finding out it was completely fabricated as an adult would have been even harder.
My wife has an cousin ho learned at the age of 60 that his dad wasn' t his biological father. His mother had an affair with a greek showman but his dad married her anyway and he raised the boy like his own. His sister doesn' t consider him as her brother anymore and doesn' t want to share the heritage from their mother with him....
That sister sounds like an absolute jerk; no matter what happened that man is STILL her brother and I am getting very incensed just thinking about how awful she's being. Also, that man is absolutely his dad's son because the dad raised him and I'm really tired of biology being considered above all else.
Load More Replies... We recently found out that an old family friend died. We knew this person in the 1970's but eventually lost touch. There was a large group of couples who were friend and used to party etc. When I told my mother about the death of the family friend she then told me that they used to wife swap at these parties! Thanks for the mental image Ma!
My great grandmother was my grandmother mum. No one knew until grandma died. My great grandmother was known as Aunty ---
I think in those times young mothers were not earning sufficient to raise child n so using religion as reason they gave the child up. Mostly to related family members so they can take care of the child knowing it to be family. It's a good thinking. Because a mother always think about their children that are with them or half a globe across.
Very interesting! Now I wanna know what secrets my family has, or maybe I don't.
Half of these stories we invented others are a nice dxample of good old fashioned family abuse
