Losing someone close to you can be one of the most difficult experiences you’ll ever have to endure. While grief and mourning can sometimes feel overwhelming, we still tend to remember how the one who has passed away made our lives more meaningful. Until one day we learn something unexpected about them.
Recently user Comfortable_Tomato_3 posted in r/AskReddit: "What disturbing thing did you find out about someone after they died?" Hundreds of people started sharing how they stumbled upon the most unsettling secrets that were never meant to see the light of day.
Bored Panda has collected some of the most unbelievable answers from the thread, so continue scrolling and, if you’re up for it, share your experiences in the comment section below. Psst! You can find even more shocking things people found out about their loved ones right here.
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I had a neighbour several years ago. Divorced, old guy. Was really nice to people. He always bought candy for all the kids in the neighbourhood (not a paedo). He died 10 years ago. His son told us that the reason he was nice to us kids was because he lost 3 of his 5 children while they were below 10. Not disturbing, just very sad.
Edit: Mr. Volkov was a really nice guy who suffered a lot in his life time. His son told us so many stories about him. Got married at 21 (right after military service - mandatory at the time), lost his wife when he was 40 to stomach cancer, lost 2 of his kids to an accident, another kid to a drunk driver. He had to be strong for the remaining two kids even though his son told us how many times they heard their dad crying in his bedroom. To him, we were the kids and grandkids he should've had, despite him having 4 grandkids. R.I.P to the nicest guy in the world - Mr. Volkov!
One of these stories is not like the others…you're right, not disturbing, just very sad :-(
My uncle died suddenly in a car crash when I was 18. My aunt has schizophrenia and went off her meds after he died, so when she was talking about eyes in the house, we tried to get her back into therapy to help her. Eventually she couldn't stay in the house anymore and we went to help clean it out.
We found cameras everywhere. Behind paintings, in the bookshelves, just everywhere. Eventually we found a safe tucked away in a small opening in his closet, and when we finally cracked it open there was two unregistered guns in it alongside a wad of cash. My uncle was already very wealthy, we don't know why he specifically had this cash set aside, or why he had illegal guns, or why he bugged his entire house. But we suspect my aunts illness and paranoia was worsened by him, and she wasn't always as delusional as he made her out to be.
In better news, my aunt now lives in florida with a caretaker in a condo, she paints for a living and is very happy.
When a person who meant a lot to you has passed away, it can be hard to find the meaning again. Usually, the healing process starts with the heartbreaking task of sorting out their personal belongings. Although some people have secrets that they hope will never reach the surface, the truth tends to appear in one way or another.
For those who never expected to discover something unsettling about the people they were close to, such a revelation might make the already difficult mourning process even more complicated. According to renowned grief counselor Helen Fitzgerald, in this case, bereavement can become a mix of emotions: "Anger can overtake sadness and may be joined by feelings of shame, rejection and isolation."
Of course, you have to deal with the decision of whether or not to share this new knowledge with others. If you decide to do it, "you may lighten your burden but you will do so by passing along some of your pain, anger, and confusion." Plus, there’s no way of knowing how they would react: will they comfort you or get mad at you for spoiling their memories of that person?
Not sure if disturbing, more kind of heart warming and goes along the lines of this thread. Dude I worked with was KIA. I was collecting his things and found a notebook. He had wrote every fact that came out of anyone’s mouth on the team. Everything from stories that happened to who he was talking to when they were young, to current problems they were experiencing.
I had once told him about a particularly traumatic relationship I had that came to a head on a particular date. He had a note to himself to “spend time with ___ on this date and make him feel valued and worthy.”
I just thought he was a good dude with a good memory. The whole time he was essentially acting as a life couch for all of us involved without us knowing.
My grandpa died in the late 90s of a heart attack when he was about 65 years old. My whole family came to Germany from Poland in the 80s and my grandparents were Kids throughout WW2. We didn’t find any pictures of him from when he was a child when we went through his stuff after he died. We thought „oh well they lived through war and communism, I bet there aren’t any“ but my mother had a feeling and something felt off for her. We asked my grandpas aunt who was still alive at that point. She burst into tears and told us that he was a german, jewish kid my great-grandparents rescued from a train heading to Auschwitz during WW2 and that they used the papers of their son who passed away just a few weeks earlier. We all were stunned but in hindsight it did explain a lot of things like how he suffered from PTSD and almost had no polish accent when he spoke german. It still amazes me how they kept this secret for over half a century.
So he gained something like 55 years of life thanks to them! That is awesome!
If you found out a disturbing secret and don’t know how to deal with it, Fitzgerald recommended finding a grief group or someone you trust with whom you can share your story. Also, you can consider "writing the deceased a letter, putting into words everything you would want to say if he or she were still alive," and let your anger go.
"Whatever you do, don’t keep your pain boiling inside of you," she suggested. Remember that you are still the same person you were before finding out the truth, "and the dishonesty of your loved one had nothing to do with you. It is your grief that needs to be experienced and expressed, and your life that needs to move on."
My grandfather was a member of the KKK. My grandmother found all his robes and other s**t hidden in the trunk of his car after he died. She burned it all that night in the backyard utterly mortified that he was an active member.
An ‘active member’. I hope he gets all the bonfires he wants up there, as their centerpiece.
Grandfather died when I was around 10. I distinctly remember being at his funeral and seeing a group of men there that weren’t associated with the rest of my family. I think I remembered this because I watched them pull up in beautiful cars and thought they must be rich and “cool.” Probably around his age at the time too. I wasn’t told until I was older but my grandpa had been involved in some organized crime for most his life and most of the time he was “traveling in Europe” he was actually in prison. Those men were his “partners” and my family hated them.
"So we wanna talk you about something. - What I am adopted? - Naah It's your grandpa. He was in mafia..."
Previously, we reached out to William Berry, a licensed mental health counselor, to discuss grief and how sharing your experience with others can help you cope with the pain. According to him, there are a number of reasons why talking about grief is difficult.
“For one, there is a pressure in society to put on a strong facade, and along with that, there is a fear of being a burden to others,” he explained. “Often, others do not know how to handle someone’s expression of grief, and it feels awkward, often for everyone. As such, there is a tendency to avoid the possible awkwardness.”
After one of my best friends died I found out how he became sick.
I knew he had HIV, he told me really early in our friendship, but he really avoid that topic since he didn’t like to be seen as a sick person, or as a burden. He did not ask for help when he needed it, and he end up having complications and dying because of it. He had the intention to say goodbye to only 4 friends and talk to them before dying, sadly he died a couple days before we met. He already knew he was about to die but he didn’t want to tell me before we saw each other. After he passed away, his brother called me to let me know and to talk about what my friend wanted to tell me. That’s where I found out how he got hiv. He had been r*ped when he was really young, and he did not know he was HIV+ until a couple years later. He never wanted to tell us because of the same reason he never talked about him being sick, he didn’t like the idea of being a victim. This broke my heart. And I understood so much about him after knowing this.
In the original story on Reddit "raped" wasn't censored. BP really needs to work on their censoring.
After my husband died I found the stash of love letters that he had saved which had been written to him throughout the course of our marriage. None of them were from me.
Some people might want to "fix" your feelings of sorrow, instead of just being with you and letting you experience it. According to the practicing psychotherapist, “This can lead to overly positive statements that are inappropriately timed. The person grieving may fear this, and thereby never share their grief.”
However, Berry explained that there’s a good amount of psychological evidence to prove that discussing experiences and feelings with others can help to ease the pain: “In an evolutionary sense, it bonds us.”
My uncle was awesome — bought me Legos when I was a kid, and we'd play fight; he always just seemed really cool when I was young. Well, he disappeared around the time I was 13. Then when I was 26, my dad told me he died. He was apparently on the run and was wanted for years for several murders. He was a hitman, apparently. He was never arrested, but he died in a shooting in Italy. I always had a hard time picturing him in that life. ... He always was really good to me and my siblings.
That my ex wife physically and emotionally abused my daughter when I wasn't around (we had a 70/30 custody arrangement essentially, I had weekends and 2 evenings a week.) Didn't find out until months after she died and kiddo had finally had enough therapy to come clean. I had no idea.
If you are feeling grief, remember that it is a process and everyone deals with it in their own way. William Berry advised to put your focus on accepting the experience rather than judging yourself for it: “All types of emotional responses to grief are normal: sadness, anger, despair, self-reproach, even relief in some cases. Try to have the experience and go through the process without negative judgment in yourself.”
When my step-grandmother died we found out she was unloading my grandfather's money to her daughter who was born from her previous marriage. My grandfather was in cognitive decline in his later years and his health was failing. She got him to sign all kinds of things. She bought her daughter's $200k house for $1.8m, put it in her name, so her daughter could keep living there. $9,999 gifts every year to her daughter and grandkids. Bought their cars. Investments in her name that would transfer to her daughter when she died.
Over a five year period she was able to transfer close to $8 million.
Every time we would see her she would talk about how great it was to have family, how wonderful it was that everyone got together, etc. She acted like the sweetest old lady while the entire time she was ripping off my family. Every time we saw her daughter (who lived in another state) she was the nicest person to us - while taking all of the money.
She truly expected to outlive the old man. Everybody did. And she had everything set up perfectly.
Except she died before he did. Just died of natural causes in her sleep. Shocked everyone. I mean you had this frail old man who couldn't stay awake for more than an hour at a time that was reliving memories from 75 years ago every time you spoke to him and a vibrant (granted elderly) healthy lady he was married to. And he outlived her.
By the time she died my grandfather was in really bad shape - mentally and physically. We had to clean out her things and we found all of the paperwork - every last detail. He couldn't comprehend what she had done and after trying to tell him about it a couple of times, we stopped trying. Nothing could be done legally. Her daughter was set for life.
When there is money involved, people become vultures.
I had a neighbor I would always fight with. I'd go out of my way to argue with him. We'd right about ANYTHING and it was great! All we ever did was fight. It made me so happy. I told him once that he was too stupid to be my archnemesis.
Then he died and I learned that he loved fighting with me just as much as I loved fighting with him. It was something we both looked forward to every day.
Then he went and died and I felt like part of me died too.
I'm imagining fake karate moves and a lot of ridiculous trash talk.
My maternal uncle was killed during a robbery gone wrong (he was staying the night at one of his furnished rental properties which was not being leased at the time). At least… that was the story I was told before hopping on a plane with my mom to attend the funeral held in our home country.
The day of the funeral, a cousin angrily shared with a small group of us that he had seen a photo of my uncle on the front page of the local paper. Not being used to seeing graphic images on a newspaper, I was confused by his outrage. So naturally, I looked it up on my phone… and proceeded to read a whole article about how my uncle had been tortured and killed in retaliation for past child abuse. I was, of course, shocked and started asking other cousins if the article was true. The s**t I learned disturbed me far more than the graphic image of my uncle (a photo of him shirtless, with multiple stab wounds; another uncle who happens to be a judge got the paper to stop printing the image by threatening to sue…allegedly).
Apparently, dead uncle’s murderer/victim had recently heard his name on the news and found out through social media that said uncle had continued enjoying life for ~5 decades since committing these crimes. So while no real proof was provided according to the media, my family KNEW it was likely the true reason behind the murder and only publicly denied the allegations. Privately, the reason for the murder wasn’t even discussed.
But that wasn’t the only abuse victim. Nope! Dead uncle had allegedly abused several children at different times, spanning decades, but “somehow” was never prosecuted. (My mother’s family is wealthy so the cousins are pretty sure that authorities/parents of the victims were paid off anytime he was accused as the victims were primarily children of low income families…). To add to the horror, my relatives knew to keep us children away from him outside of “supervised” family events. (Think Uncle Mo in Succession.)
Years later, when I finally felt it was safe to ask my fragile mother about it, I learned that this uncle had been abused by priests in his childhood, well into his teenage years. I had known that dead uncle was sent to seminary boarding school at around 10, then decided to leave religion and go to a regular uni at 18 instead of continuing his training for priesthood, but never suspected anything had happened to him. His decision to leave the church coincided with the end of a centuries-long relationship between the Catholic Church and my maternal ancestors. There are still religious primary and secondary schools with my last name on them (I have both parents’ last name), but we have not produced a priest or nun since before my mother’s generation. What she revealed explained this shift.
(After even more digging, I found out that yet another of my mother’s family members [a great uncle?] who made so much money for the church that he literally became a friend of the pope was also involved in a huge scandal spanning decades and was only removed from his position because of a journalist’s dedication to exposing him. He received no jail time and died in his Florida home at a very old age. Wtf!!!)
I’m an atheist, if anyone wondered
I’m European and uncles lived in USA. I did ancestry dna. A few months later a girl from Vietnam contacts me claiming to be a cousin. Typically anyone who contacted me was a 4th or 5 th cousin which basically means nothing. This one is a FIRST cousin. Turns out my uncle who was married in USA and had kids, was in Vietnam War had a whole other family. And the 3 Vietnamese kids are named after his American kids. SURPRISE!
Not to mix wrong name in conversations in each home and draw attention. Clever uncle!
My grandpa used to tell everyone to call him the high klegal. All his kids and grandkids thought it was this sweet nickname and a running joke. When he passed away my aunt was writing his eulogy and didn’t know how to spell his nickname so she googled it. The high klegal is a member of the KKK in charge of member recruitment. It was at this point that my grandmothers dementia kicked off and she started being very racist towards the staff in her assisted living home. Also made me realize why we were the least favorite grandkids because our mother was raised Jewish. Some people man…
My Mother had serious buyers remorse over me. I was adopted at 6 months and she had this textbook idealistic concept of what raising a child should be, how they should behave and what they should do. When I didn't live up to this expectation and acted like a normal child she couldn't handle it and took me to various doctors, child psychologists, and other quack practitioners insisting I was hyperactive. All in an attempt to mold me into the perfect child in her eyes. She kept daily diaries on this as well as hundreds of audio tapes where she voiced her displeasure in me being an overactive & undisciplined child. She even kept an expense account from when they adopted me up until her death listing what they spent on me. Birthdays, Christmas, random purchases, school, etc. all detailed down to the penny.
When we were cleaning out dad's house after his death, in his safe, I found a thick envelope with the words "To be opened only by [me] after my death. My suggestion BURN IT".
Long story short, dear old dad had another identity and family. My sister and I have several new siblings. This happened somewhat recently and we are all still processing it.
My grandmother was r*ped and my oldest aunt isn't my grandfather's child. My grandfather came back from fighting on the Yorktown during WW2 and my grandmother was pregnant, they married and he never once denied my aunt or treated her any different in fact my dad says she was the favorite. We only found out about it when my grandmother was close to death she told my dad. She held on to that secret until she was 93 yrs old. My aunt & grandfather have both been gone since the early 2000s
Here they are when he came back!
My partners grandfather died… a week or so after his death the grandmother started getting really sick. She is in her 80s and doctors suspected it was a bad UTI gone into other organs. Turns out it wasn’t a UTI but multiple STIs. The grandfather was sleeping with a ton of women at the church he was a preacher at and some also suspect he frequented prostitutes as well. He left her and many members of the church with quite the parting gift. We all knew he was a c**ppy guy but didn’t know to this new extent.
My great grandma was a moonshiner in her youth along with her brothers and sisters, they ran shine to afford food in rural Kentucky. Also she apparently told Jim Jones, yes, THAT Jim Jones, to f**k off, according to my grandma (her daughter) it was the only time she'd ever used language like that.
During his cult recruiting days Jones had showed up at my great grandma's church as a guest preacher, that woman had an amazing nose for bulls**t and when he tried to recruit her she told him to f**k off right there in the church parking lot. All my life she was this sweet but curmudgeonly old lady who was set in her ways but would make you the best peach cobbler she possibly could for whatever event you were having even if she didn't like any of the people there. Imagining her just looking this dude square in the eyes and cussing him out makes me cackle.
After my mother died i found out why her family (my aunts and uncles) avoided me. Apparently my mother told them i had been sleeping with my father at 13, and prostituting, among a whole pile of other messed up s**t. (I was a virgin until 17)
I have no idea why she hated me, and never realised the extent until she died.
Oh my Lord. You poor thing. This is so terrible. She could have had mental health issues. I hope you got to talk about this and process it. I just got this off Reddit: "my mother made it out to be me being a wanton whore". The mother could be a religious nut or jealous of her daughter. Very sad.
My grandpa was a closeted gay cross dresser. Had a secret boyfriend
That's sad. In those day's you were in trouble if people found out you were gay. Coming out of the closet was just not done. Even now in our modern, so called accepting world (lgbt)people are afraid to come out. And then when they do they are persecuted and shunned. I hope my wording is ok and I didn't offend anybody, I'm not fully awake. :)
Not too disturbing per say, but definitely a let down and it changed my view about them. I loved and respected my grandma all my life so when she got sick and passed away, I was really heartbroken. A few years later, I found out me and my sister were her least favorite grandkids because my dad was poor. It made sense to me suddenly. All my cousins would get gold bracelets or nice stuff for special occasions while I’d get a $20. Whenever my cousins were visiting, grandma would cook all their favorite food while me and my sis had to stay away from the dining table til they’re done. Basically we just eat scraps. I just didn’t realize all this until my mom pointed it out to me. I guess since I’ve been treated that way since young, I never think of her any differently.
My grandma liked to play favorites too. I didn't shed a tear when that bitch died. Didn't go to the funeral either.
It's our neighbor. He was known as a veteran soldier and came from a Japanese descent. His fam used to be popular in our neighborhood too and they seemed pretty well off. They had a female houshelp who disappeared one day and the story was that she eloped with someone. Years after his death, his son had their fence fixed by another neighbor and they unearthed a skull and some other bones. Guess who?
I found out that my uncle somehow had a black market liver.
He went through the first via drinking himself nearly to death. He wouldn't stop drinking and drugging so the implant folks wouldn't put him on a list.
He then takes a trip to, I believe, India and gets a liver implanted. He then found a shady doctor here for after care. After that, he drank through another liver in 3 years. He was preparing for another trip to India, but covid stopped him from traveling (he was anti-vaxx too). He died not long ago due to his liver not working anymore.
From what I'm seeing and what his wife says, I'm 99% sure that liver was harvested from a living donor.
When I was a kid my dad told me that his dad had died from being electrocuted. My whole childhood he raised me and my siblings to be very cautious around electricity. When my grandmother was on her death bed, she confessed to me that how my dad’s father really died was autoerotic asphyxiation. It was the 60s, so the fire department in their small town helped cover it up
I'd hate to think that if I died banging one out, my family would only keep it a secret for 20-30 years. If I find any of you deceased after spreading some ectoplasm, that secret is going to to grave with me. Rest assured. Not even your great grandchildren gonna find out how ol pappy made it to the pearly gates by tryna give himself a pearl necklace. 👍
My father fabricated an entire military career...we only found out when he died and everyone stopped agreeing to lie for him or not mention it. My Grandfather was a bigamist who used his first wife to buy him a house through her family then kicked her out took the home and the kids and got married to another lady and had more kids then he went back to grandma 1 had 2 more kids before going back to grandma 2 for 3 more...
My grandmother (grandma1) was disowned by her generationally wealthy family because she a. Married my grampa b. Suffered from schizophrenia..
I went to one of those fancy New England prep schools that has had to release reports about the sex abuse committed by teachers and faculty.
Two of my teachers who had since retired (I graduated back in the aughts) died within a few months of each other.
Days after the second one passed the school released a report that named them both-among others. They had both remained employed for many years after abusing students despite having been reported to the school by the students at the time.
my dad waited until my great great grandma died to reveal that she had been complicit in the devastating sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of her husband.
A friend of mine passed away last year and I had to go though her computers and wipe everything. Before we could wipe it her partner needed help getting some information to settle her accounts. I saw so much homemade porn of her with all of our friends.
So. Much. Porn. Everyone we knew together and lots of people I don't know. Men, women, trans people, all of them were represented.
My nanna always hated Americans. Despised them. She was in the British Royal Forces during WW2 and would tell me stories about the loud mouthed, stupid American soldiers she had to deal with and that I should NEVER trust an American because “they’re stupid and dangerous.” This woman wouldn’t even watch American tv shows or movies - hated the Americans too much. Hating Americans was a pretty big part of her personality. After she died in 2006 I found out that she was actually engaged to an American soldier during the war. I don’t know how long this soldier had spent in Britain... but at some stage he had to leave to finish his tour and later to the US. After the war she and her sister travelled to America from England so she could marry this man she was deeply in love with, only to find him in a hospital after having both his legs blown off in battle. Story has it that she still wanted to marry him but he refused. Claimed that she deserved a man who could provide for her - not an “invalid”. Heartbroken, she returned to England and married my grandfather instead (who she never really liked.) She always told me that the best years of her life were those in the Air Force during WW2. I guess now I know why. Turns out this guy was the love of her life. Her sister told my mum this story years ago and claimed that it was absolutely heartbreaking.
Not necessarily disturbing, but after my aunt died we found out she was pregnant and on the day she died she was going to tell us, she had a positive pregnancy test in her bag as she got hit by a drunk driver. Pretty sad to think about
My best friend who was 12 years divorced, and had 4 kids but he was on great terms with his ex and his kids, then one day he just dropped dead with literally no warning. Go to find out he had multiple stage 4 cancer..colon, stomach, testicular, and anal. The living hell he went through and he never showed any weakness whatsoever is what blew my mind. I can't even describe how his kids felt but his teenage son said at the service.. "you got men, then you got my dad...the biggest bad a** in bad a** history,". He even worked a second job to pay for his outrageous life insurance which I think was $2.5 million so his kids would be ok after he was gone.
My grandmother tried to kill her self several times in front of my dad, would talk to herself, see things that weren’t there, etc. This was in the 50’s, when postpartum depression wasn’t recognized as a real illness (she had 7 children and two miscarriages). My dad basically had to raise his six brothers and sisters because she was often in the hospital and eventually was given electro shock therapy which helped her depression immensely. I always knew her as a happy but flighty woman during my life so hearing about my dads upbringing was really jarring. It explained a lot as to why my dad was an anxious, controlling parent to us.
I remeber a few years back while I was still living in Russia I went to my Grandmas funeral and in someones speech about her they began to talk about how she was in a concentration camp and how she had gone through so many horrendous things I won't repeat. I never knew and its clear no one else did either. She went through horrible stuff and it disturbs me to this day. We cleaned out her house and there were so many things from that time in her life that documented all that and I looked at it and I felt sick.
I think its pretty natural for people to not to want to talk about such events
That my Grandmother accidentally killed her younger sister. They were walking back from school and my GM shoved her sister and she fell under a car which ran over her.
When I was about ten, my mom’s uncle, so my great uncle, died. I remember going to his funeral; he was a firefighter in a major city, and we spread his ashes at the beach. I wasn’t close with him, but my mom was. I didn’t know how he died at the time, but I recall thinking it was weird ‘cause he was younger than my dad, who wasn’t terribly old yet.
I found out nearly a decade later that he died not only via s**cide, which is awful, but before he did that, he murdered his wife. They were undergoing a divorce, and while he was sober most of his life (his younger passed away due to severe alcoholism), he gave in one night, got hammered, shot her dead and then instantly killed himself.
Well im not sure if this counts but my moms brother (my uncle) passed away when i was around 3 or 4 but when i got older she told me that he used to molest her n her other sisters and burn cigarettes on their hands to scare them and to keep them from telling on him
My grandmother was always difficult to get along with, critical and very fussy about "ladylike" behavior (always cross your ankles! Decent girls make sure men can't see too much leg.) After she died I had the surprise of my life digging through her papers and finding social workers' reports from 1928 and so much other s**t. I knew that her own mother had died young, but I hadn't realized that said mother had died in a mental hospital after being sent there for what sounds like severe depression, or that her father had tried to abandon her and her siblings in several places, was reported to social services repeatedly by their neighbors and finally had them taken away by the state and sent to an orphanage because he was getting "help" from a teenage male cousin whom the social worker discovered was sharing a bed with my then nine year old grandmother and her sister. I mean, holy s**t, I can't even imagine. She never breathed a word of any of this, but looking back it made sense because she hated, hated, hated to ever leave her house (my grandfather ran all the errands, etc -- she would stay in the fenced backyard and look after her garden) and would sometimes fly into rages and accuse us of planning to lock her up and abandon her. In all honesty I had thought she was losing it a bit. Now I don't think she was. I wish to God she had gotten therapy at some point in her life because she hid this her whole life and was a miserable, angry person. But never, ever would I have guessed that the woman who was fussing over my skirt length and telling me that people will think I'm trashy if I slouched grew up like that.
My uncle that lived in my grandma's attic whom we though was a gamer no-life chainsmoker in the 90's was actually heavily invested into Microsoft and a few other large tech giants and was pulling in hundreds of thousands a year on stocks
My wife died in a car accident while we were trying to reconcile our differences to avoid a divorce. Shortly after she died I learned that in order to gain favor in the divorce procedeings, she blew her friend who was a member of the county board because he was close to the judge who was to preside over our divorce. This really had an effect on my grieving process.
My dad passed away from covid a few months back...
My brothers were looking through his mail and saw a child support document. We're all half brothers, so we each individually asked our mom's if our dad owed child support to them (we're all in our late 20's/early 30's). Each one of our mom's said "no", naturally. So, we do some further digging. It turns out that my dad has an autistic son that is 25 years old. Knowing who my dad is, none of us were all that surprised that he had another son. However, all of us were completely shocked to find out that my dad was aware of this kid, and didn't tell us.
To make matters worse, he grew up down the road from us. My dad had photos stashed away of him, my newly found brother, and his mom. There are photos from the last 25 years. My dad knew since day one.
I flew back home for the funeral, and while I was there we all met our "new" brother and his mom. I still can't quite process this all
My grandfather survived the holodomor and the Holocaust, I didn’t see his journal until he died. He described what people did when they were starving(I don’t wish to go into detail), mass shooting executions, fearing who knew he was a Jew, everyday acts of sadism from nazis, all the horrors he experienced I never knew about. It deeply disturbed me how much horror he experienced … and that he never told anyone (expect my grandmother) up until his death. I wish I could have somehow comforted him when he was still alive.
I've never heard of the Holodomor before, thank you for educating me on that. As for him, just think that he was an incredibly strong brave man and he was trying to protect you all, don't feel anything but love and pride for him.
It’s on the much lighter side of disturbing compared to the rest of this thread, but I learned that my step-grandparents were nudists and just wore clothes whenever we visited.
I mean, that is kinda ok, nothing shocking. Nothing wrong with that :D
The town chiropractor found out he had brain cancer and was told it was terminal and he’d have weeks if not only months to live.
Shot himself in the head at the town park in a gazebo.
Found out a few weeks later from REDACTED hospital employee that there was an error made somewhere along the way of the diagnosis and or tests and it was treatable.
My great grandma and her brothers were notorious in Watertown Massachusetts for their check fraud and forgery schemes.
Oh the things you find out about the woman who would make you hot cocoa
My friend was a really bubbly friendly guy and somehow he ended up beaten to death by 3 or 4 other men on the street. They were probably all drunk. No one was ever arrested. After he died, his sister cleaned out his apartment and found a USB with gigabytes of ch!ld porn on it.
My grandpa whom I loved dearly and was my favourite used to beat the absolute c**p out of my nan and their children and that's why my mother and siblings hated him, really wish I had known this earlier as so many things I never understood finally make so much sense.
I used to attend these jam sessions at a fellows house in a nearby town. I thought he was a good guy. After his death I learned he was a Klan leader. I never would have guessed.
My cousin died a couple months ago of a drug overdose. Investigation found that his roommate was a drug dealer and my cousin had also been making payments of tens of thousands of dollars to a woman who was arrested shortly after for brutality murdering an old woman in my hometown.
Not disturbing on his account, but after my step-uncle killed himself I realised that he had suffered from schizophrenia for many years and was gay. The disturbing part is that our family begrudgingly acknowledged that there was something amiss with his mental health but still to this day will not accept that he could possibly have been gay. I absolutely believe that our family's attitude contributed to his s**cide.
That he had killed himself because he was about to be charged with human trafficking charges.
I live in an apartment building and there’s a big family who live in the several apartments upstairs. A patriarch with several children and all his children have families who live in neighboring apartments. A few years ago the patriarch passed away and it was only then that his family found out he had a whole other secret family that he’s maintained for at least 20 years.
Love the wholesome pic of the family making a gingerbread house to go along with the post
So I learned that my great-great grandfather was not a very nice man. When he owned and operated his sawmill from the 1920s-50s he’d regularly use child labor and often would beat the s**t out of them for doing the littlest things. He also had the kids euthanize the mules on site if they refuse to work anymore. His wife would stay at the house all day and did the house work i.e. cook, clean, etc. only to come in at the end of the day to drag in piles of sawdust off his clothes. His own kids worked for him until the 50s but he’d basically pay them peanuts. He nearly ran his wife over on numerous occasions. To top it off, he put his wife into a mental institution. Grant it, he died in 1974 and I was born in 2001, which still counts, but it still kinda shocks me that someone could be that nasty to people in general.
We recently had to bury my grandpa and we were the secret most people didn’t know about until we got to the wake. Basically, my grandpa was married to somebody but sleeping around and then he slept with my grandma, who was best friends with his wife. They had two kids, my mom and my aunt, but they never really interacted with my grandpa’s side of the family, since even if he wanted us to be close to them, his wife and parents wanted nothing to do with my mom and aunt and my grandma wanted nothing to do with them.
I always had a theory we weren’t his only secret kids and turns out there’s another son, but the son doesn’t interact with him or want anything to do with him. I didn’t learn that until we left the repass. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more kids.
A girl I went to HS with died in a horrible car accident.
It was early morning on a summer break Saturday. No alcohol or drugs involved. We all assumed she fell sleep.
I found out later that year that she had an anonymous blog where she posted, several times trough the years, that she wanted to commit s**cide crashing her car.
According to her parents, friends and teachers, she never show any suicidal tendencies. It always baffled me how you can have all this mind process and nobody could guess it.
Close to 30 years after she passed, I found out my grandmother had a really bad addiction to codeine. When I found out it totally filled in the blanks of why my dad's relationship with her was the way it was. RIP to both of them. Love em, miss em, wouldn't be who I am without em
That the pillar of the community and financial advisor to many good people…had been spending all their money. They all got up and said wonderful things about him at his funeral and then found out in the weeks after that he’d spent their lives’ savings.
My old man was born in the 50's. and was 1 of 6. When he was 4 his mum gave birth to twins and then promptly gave them up for adoption through the church. When he was 6 his Bio dad split and f**ked off to Port Elizabeth. He got an abusive a**hole of a step dad who physically abused him and sexually abused his sisters. He ended up with another 6 half siblings.
In the 70's my dad asked his mom what happened to his bio dad, and he was told he died. Sometime in the late 60's or early 70's. My dads mother and step father died in 1998/99 and we never thought anything about his bio dad until my mother did some digging on facebook in 2016, trying to find his twin sisters, which no one said existed(my dad has a few memories from his childhood about them, but then they were gone an no one spoke about them).
My mother eventually tracked them down, two ladies in their late 60's who only found out in the last few years that they were adopted. One didn't take it well and wanted nothing to do with us, the other was a bit more communicative and my dad eventually went to visit them, they still chat every now and then.
Whilst this was going on, some interesting DNA matches had come up on my family tree thing from MyHeritage. Turns out, my dads bio dad had another family in PE, had like another 6 kids all with the same names as his family in Joburg. My mother got in contact with one of the sons(dads half brother), asked him a few questions about his father, who died in 2007(not the 70's like my dads mother said). Mum eventually told this half brother what happened, about how his father had another family in Joburg which he abandoned, and he has 6 half siblings. All communications ceased then. Mom was instantly blocked. One of the wives of my dads half siblings got nosey and started talking to mom, and let her know that the family is in meltdown and in denial over their father, grandfather and patriarch who by all accounts was a good Christian man and pillar of the community, having another family in Joburg, and abandoning his first set of kids.
This is like the 4th time I've heard a story about a man abandoning his 1st family, having more kids with a 2nd wife, and then naming them the same names as his 1st set of kids. There HAS to be a psychological reasoning behind this. Very sad, but so interesting.
That my mother had an affair and I'm the product. Man involved has/had no idea I exist. Didn't find out from my mother because she died when I was 15. Found out at the age of 21 from my aunt.
Why my cousin died. We were about the same age at the time (very young). Cousin had been sexually abused and killed by a total stranger the parent let stay over for the night (some one-night fling sort of thing).
My uncle had a friend when I was younger who was a very quiet old man named Richard that had a cool powder green Monte Carlo that he used to bring around all the time. He died when I was in middle school and he always just seemed like a shy, sweet old dude.
Years pass and sadly my uncle died too, and one night my aunt starts talking about Richard with the Monte Carlo. I bring up how sweet he was and it was like the color left my aunt’s face. I ask her what’s wrong and she says she thinks Richard killed someone when they were younger. I obviously asked her to elaborate.
Apparently back in the 1950s there was a gruesome killing that took place in our town of a high school girl who happened to be a friend of my aunt. The girl Who was killed was found on an old country road covered in a burlap sack. For whatever reason the case was never solved and the murderer was never caught. My aunt claimed that she knows Richard did it. He lived on the road the body was found on, his family were farmers and had access to the sacks the body was covered with, and was known to be a loner, creep type and had a crush on the girl. All of this could be just coincidence she had said, but in the days after the murder, Richard and some other boys were questioned, but cleared of any suspicion because they had said they were at a bonfire that most of their high school class had been at, but my aunt said she never saw him that night, but had seen the other boys that were questioned. My aunt says that she had brought the killing up around Richard a few times over the years and each time he would grow cold and change the subject. She told me she could see it in his eyes.
I asked her why she never told the police about never seeing Richard at the bonfire the night of the murder and she claimed she had been convinced otherwise by my uncle at the time, which implies that he must’ve known Richard did it and was covering for him which adds to the horror for me. Not only do I believe my aunt, but the fact my uncle may have known about Richard’s guilt or had aided him in some way makes me shiver to this day.
Or Richard became cold because he was constantly accused of murder by the aunt because he was an introvert who had a crush.
My grandfather ran a gas station from the late '40s to the mid '80s. He and my grandmother had 13 kids (10 surviving), so there was never much money in the house. My mom and her siblings shared beds, hand-me-downs were the rule, the family kept a large garden to feed everyone, etc. I never thought of them as "poor" growing up, but they really had to scrimp to get by.
Anyway, after my grandfather died in the early 2000s, my grandmother learned of a secret bank account he'd kept for decades. It wasn't malicious, he had just always been fearful of dying young and he wanted to make sure my grandmother would have something to live on in case he actually did die young. When the rest of the family found out, at least a few of my aunts and uncles were pissed because of how (financially) hard their childhood was.
I don't know if it's that "disturbing," but it was definitely a shock to our family.
Finding out your dad was a miser and denied you a more normal childhood sounds disturbing.
My uncle was a doctor and passed away in 2014. He had no kids. In 2020 I check 23 and me and I see that I have a new first cousin all of a sudden. This cousin and I were very confused how we were related. It turns out when my uncle was in medical school in Canada 40yrs ago, he donated sperm to a sperm bank. The cousin never knew this and his dad never told him that he’s not his real son.
Well he is his "real son". Real parents are the people who raise and love you. He is not his biological parent. But that doesn't make him less a "real parent"
Heard a story from a friend about an older gentleman who served as a Fighter Pilot (apparently an Ace) in WWII. After he passed they realized he wasn’t buried with the American flag over his coffin. He was a German Ace…
My grandma died of COVID at 95 last year. Shortly afterward we opened up the will and read through the inheritances. There was a name on there that none of us recognized. Turns out one of my uncles had a kid in the late 1970s and absolutely no one in the family had been in contact with her since then. Last I heard, they were still trying to find her so that she could claim her inheritance.
My grandparents were married just after my grandfather returned from WW2. When he got back, he and my grandmother had 7 kids. It was a big catholic family. My grandfather was a kind honorable man that loved his wife, and they raised good kids that have all turned into well adjusted adults.
By now my grandparents have both passed away, and some of the kids and grandkids have messed around with 23 and me genetic testing. As luck would have it, some guy out of the blue has started messaging us with a high enough percentage of genetic match that it stands to reason that he is a son of my grandfather.
No one in my family has ever heard of him, or his mother. Evidently before his mother passed away, on her death bed, she identified a man by my grandfather’s name as his father.
Sounds like old Grandpa picked up some strange before shipping out. The awful part is this guy has spent his whole life not knowing who his father is. Poor guy.
My dad's great-aunt married a man who was always a bit of a mystery to the rest of the family. When he died she came into quite a bit of money.
They later found out he was part of the relief force at the Battle of Peking in 1900. Apparently he did very well for himself during the looting.
Grandpa owned a gas station most of his life. Always knew he had been robbed a few times working it. Found his pistol after his death with notches in it from the people he shot. One he killed.
My relative was a hospice nurse and got locked up more than once for stealing from dying ppl.
I knew my dad was dating younger women, but after he died, we were sorting through his paperwork and I found out that for the past 7 years, the various women had all been the exact same age as me at the time he was seeing them. How did I find this out? He had a restraining order against one where it listed her birth date. He received correspondence from one who was in prison on child trafficking charges - a Google search of the woman in prison revealed her age. And family members who spoke to the current woman (I managed to successfully avoid them all) relayed her age.
About 3 years before he died, he'd sold his house, made $200,000ish on the sale and moved into an apartment. There was an envelope stuffed full of receipts showing he had slowly drained that account by withdrawing between $1,000-$3,000 in cash over the 3 years since the house sale. He had once drunkenly told me he was in love with a stripper, and through the grapevine I heard the woman he'd been seeing when he died was a prostitute, so I'm assuming that's where all the cash went. No judegement to sex workers, they gotta get paid, but damn that was not the money management my dad taught me.
I was angry, but of course devastated he was gone. I felt like this wasn't the same man who raised me. I went to therapy and that helped, but I don't yearn for my dead father the same way I do my mother, and I think all of the above is a big reason why.
My dad passed from an overdose (which was a shock in and of itself). The day of his funeral, we all found out he had a son he abandoned when he was 19. That son had a daughter who was about 10 years younger than me, but she looked like a carbon copy of me at that age.
Not really disturbing but after my grandpa died, my mom told me he once abandoned my mother and grandma for 1 year before he came back
I had a cousin who had taken over as secretary of our local Rotary Club. He had taken over after my dad had served in the same position. After my cousin died, we found that he had been embezzling from Rotary Club funds. My dad was heartbroken.
That my father used to crossdress while living in a very conservative very judgmental small town
One on the flip side of this, we were disturbed by the secrecy my great uncle had. He fought in the Pacific in WW2, and after he passed we found out he'd earned a silver star and purple heart. Not one person outside his unit ever knew until he passed and we found the paperwork in my Grandma's barn.
I was helping a sweet old lady move one day, just to help her. She loved her son and told us about how an honest, and perfect man he was, but he passed away one night, and she was going to move in with her daughter. I was cleaning the closet, and his closet had a hatch to a small basement were he kept hundreds of porn magazines and condoms (some used). I had to get rid of it without the lady finding out, she was too sweet to suffer from that.
There were a few surprises while doing my family's genealogy.
My grandmother's grandfather was married at the same time, to two sisters, and had children with both of them.
My great, great, grandfather and his brother lay in wait and murdered their brother-in-law, then Grandpa fled Tennessee for Arkansas, and then to Indian Territory. He was never tried. His brother stayed in Arkansas, but the charges against him were dropped.
My aunt's husband passed and then they found out he had another secret family when they came to try and take her house.. never knew him well but dude had money
My grandfather killed a man when he was thirteen. It was during world War 2 and a German soldier attempted to take over his families farm. Also another weird side note, he had no legal middle or last name.
My grandfather was the son of a resistance fighter in Norway in WW2. I didn’t realise the existence of my great-grandfathers memoirs until after my grandfather died.
A few years ago my great grandad passed away and when we were cleaning his house we discovered that he was previously a member of the Waffen SS
Not necessarily disturbing but surprising; After my great grandfather died, we found out he was gay, his carer was actually his partner, and he (great grandfather) was a professional florist who travelled the globe and was shockingly rich. He left his huge fortune to the carer/partner instead of his only son (my grandfather), who ended up with some clothes and a couple of other things here and there.
Not long after high school, I had a friend who got in a head-on collision accident. Instantly killing him. About a week later, it was revealed he had a huge stash of CP on his computer.
A friend’s brother passed away in his early 20s. The circulated & accepted story was that he passed from a blood clot. He played a lot of contact sports which supposedly increases your risk of DVTs (deep vein thrombosis). I just recently found out from a close family friend of his that he overdosed on fentanyl.
More disgustingly funny. My brother died when I was young and after he died we received all his notes and journals from his CO. My other brother read them and then years later we were drunk reminiscing about stuff and he brought up the journals and about how our brother went incredibly into detail about the absolutely horribly swamp a** he had when he was in Iraq. S**t still makes me laugh to this day. I never got to read the journals but I’m sure my parents have them in storage somewhere
Found out after my mother died that she had this whole elaborate plan to try and gain custody of my, at the time, only daughter. She was an alcoholic who was completely obsessed with my daughter who was 3 at the time, she desperately wanted my child to prefer her to me. I still dont know why, outside of the fact that she was always jealous of me while I was growing up. Apparently she told horrible lies about me to my family and had retained a lawyer and everything. She was hit by a truck while she was on vacation, she was making her move on her return. It was really painful to find out, I honestly wish no one had told me.
Jill, I'm sorry. I wish I could delete this from your memory. Hug.
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That my grandfather was really, really abusive to his wife and kids when they were young. Explains a lot. That my great grandmother gave 2 of her daughters away to "live" with another family where they were practically slaves. That the only uncle (or family member) I'd ever liked and that was nice to me was actually a womanizing man wh*re who drank too much and embezzled money from his company while laundering money through it at the same time. Worst? Reading my mom's suicide notes addressed to me with some not so nice things to say after she died of flu that turned into pneumonia. There were probably 100+ notes dating back many years and they were very critical about me. I still have them. Some from before she got sober and some from after. A lot from after (I thought) we repaired our relationship. So fun.
My grandfather was in the British Army in WWII, invalided out in 42 with shrapnel in his a**e, walked with a stick after that. He was a miserable sh1t but spun yarns about his heroic war years and how he got the shrapnel where he was always the hero. He died in the mid 80's and his long suffering wife (my lovely warm grandmother who we all adored) died in the late 90's. When my dad was going his mum's stuff after she died he found granddad's letters to her whilst he was in Europe. One of them raised some eyebrows, apparently not only was he an arsehole but also nearly terminally stupid. Let's just say that when on guard duty in a fuel dump one should not smoke and if one does then 3rd degree burns and shrapnel in one's a**e should be considered a mild outcome.
Found out after my mother died that she had this whole elaborate plan to try and gain custody of my, at the time, only daughter. She was an alcoholic who was completely obsessed with my daughter who was 3 at the time, she desperately wanted my child to prefer her to me. I still dont know why, outside of the fact that she was always jealous of me while I was growing up. Apparently she told horrible lies about me to my family and had retained a lawyer and everything. She was hit by a truck while she was on vacation, she was making her move on her return. It was really painful to find out, I honestly wish no one had told me.
Jill, I'm sorry. I wish I could delete this from your memory. Hug.
Load More Replies... That my grandfather was really, really abusive to his wife and kids when they were young. Explains a lot. That my great grandmother gave 2 of her daughters away to "live" with another family where they were practically slaves. That the only uncle (or family member) I'd ever liked and that was nice to me was actually a womanizing man wh*re who drank too much and embezzled money from his company while laundering money through it at the same time. Worst? Reading my mom's suicide notes addressed to me with some not so nice things to say after she died of flu that turned into pneumonia. There were probably 100+ notes dating back many years and they were very critical about me. I still have them. Some from before she got sober and some from after. A lot from after (I thought) we repaired our relationship. So fun.
My grandfather was in the British Army in WWII, invalided out in 42 with shrapnel in his a**e, walked with a stick after that. He was a miserable sh1t but spun yarns about his heroic war years and how he got the shrapnel where he was always the hero. He died in the mid 80's and his long suffering wife (my lovely warm grandmother who we all adored) died in the late 90's. When my dad was going his mum's stuff after she died he found granddad's letters to her whilst he was in Europe. One of them raised some eyebrows, apparently not only was he an arsehole but also nearly terminally stupid. Let's just say that when on guard duty in a fuel dump one should not smoke and if one does then 3rd degree burns and shrapnel in one's a**e should be considered a mild outcome.
