Most family secrets (I… hope) are fairly benign. A sordid affair here, a small tragedy there, that kind of thing. But not so with this list of very chilling familial scandals and secrets that absolutely shocked people when they learned them.
u/haroldtitus425 asked over on Reddit “What ‘family secret’ did you learn that totally shocked you?” and the answers are going to blow you over.
1. Let’s start with a murderer
My Great Grandfather was an abusive piece of shit and ended up murdering 3 of my Grand Aunts and wounded another. He then ended up killing himself after a standoff with the police.
2. A witch
Found a Salem witch in the family tree. Not really a secret, just forgotten.
3. Another maybe murderer?
My great-grandfather may have murdered my great-grandmother because he believed that my grandfather was the product of an affair.
I don’t know whether the affair was true but I know that on his deathbed he still believed it. His last words to my grandfather were “I never liked you, ya know? Because you weren’t mine.”
4. No love
My great grandfather treated my grandmother horribly her entire life because he believed she wasn’t his. My great grandmother never stood up for her, and so the most love that she got was from their black maid.
5. Like a soap opera
My great grandfather was a quiet kind man and treasurer for his chapter of the Elks Lodge in Texas. He was attacked on his way home from an Elks Lodge meeting. He suffered amnesia and regained consciousness as a sailor on his way to Haiti. After landing, he lived in the country for a few months before getting into a bar brawl with a police officer and getting knocked out.
He regained consciousness in jail, with a new-found memory of who he was. Her told this tale to a priest from jail, who believed him and wanted to help. The priest wrote my great grandmother and the American government and somehow convinced the Haitian government to let him return to America.
He returned to my great grandmother, had two children, and was a law abiding citizen for the rest of his life.
This story is so UNBELIEVABLE that when my mother told it to me 6 months ago I was convinced it was a hoax. She has documents (the letters from the priest and others) and testimonials of his friends that say this behavior was uncharacteristic. I dunno, crazy man.
6. So many murdering relations
Always knew grandma died before I was born, just never knew it was grandpa who murdered her.
7. Cheating
My favourite uncle cheated on my auntie. Ended up knocking the woman up. She had the child and my uncle was forced to tell my aunt. Aunt divorced my uncle. He became an alcoholic and I had absolutely no idea.
I thought all the times we were going for car rides as a kid, he purposely drove crazy because it was entertaining for me and my cousins but it turned out he was just plastered.
8. AWOL
My grandfather had supposedly fought in WWII. Never talked much about it, though. After he died, one of our relatives enquired about death benefits. Well, it turns out you don’t get any benefits if you strike an officer in basic training and go AWOL. They never really looked for him cause they likely knew he was under 18.
9. Oh, grandma
My father had an affair with his brother’s wife so my cousin is also my brother.
my cousin doesn’t know though, grandma let this slip whilst wasted
10. Affairs
My aunt with a very “holier-than-thou” attitude has been having a 40+ year affair with a childhood sweetheart. This is a person that was always quick to criticize other people’s family issues and tried so hard to present her and her family as “perfect”. Her husband is an asshole to our family and she lets him completely get away with it. I guess we know why now.
11. Fathered a baby
My aunt was adopted by my grandmother… Or at least that was what she thought. 30 years later it was discovered that my grandfather was in fact her father, had her out of the wedding with some prostitute who left the kid with him. So he convinced my grandmother to adopt the baby that was “found at the hospital” – my grandmother died without knowing the thruth about it. (Sorry for my terrible english)
12. Inheritance
My grandma inherited several hundred thousand dollars from her step dad.
The juicy part is that to this day, no one knows how he got it. No one even knew he had that kind of money until he died. Since I’m from the south, my guess is rum running or something like that but we don’t know and likely never will.
13. He’s not straight
That the women that my dad was having sex with (cheating on my mom) were all men.
14. Shotgun wedding
I didn’t find out until recently, in my thirties. So at this age pretty much nothing shocks you. But it would have shocked me in my teens, when my mother was super religious, warning us against premarital sex. In my early twenties, she tried to stop my girlfriend and I from living together when we moved to a city where we knew no one. (Obviously, we lived together. But we had to hide it from her when she came to visit.) When some unmarried friends of mine had a baby unexpectedly, and the child was born with a physical handicap, she even insinuated to me that it was punishment from God for having a baby out of wedlock.
So guess what… a few months ago, my aunt mentioned in passing that the reason my parents got married after only knowing each other four months was because my mother was pregnant. (She ended up miscarrying, which is why we’d never figured it out before.)
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15. Gangs
My white, Jewish grandfather was once part of a black gang.
16. Poor aunt
That my aunt wasn’t born looking like that, When she was younger some kids in the neighborhood ganged up on her and attacked her with a 2×4. I never knew and once I found out I just felt so sorry for her. I was never told what happened to the attackers.
17. Slavery
My family owned black slaves. We’re Native American.
18. Killed a man
Uncle killed a man in the old country. Gang fight. Picked up one of those big cigarette garbage things and hit another dude in the head. He did time in jail and was disowned by his family. My mom is the only person to visit him.
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19. Dead sister
Found out when I was 22 but apparently I had an older sister. She died very young due to a heart defect or something before I was born but yeah no one in my (very very large) family ever let it slip the whole time. I only found out because my other 2 older sisters found a letter buried in a closet one day years ago and they told me about it way after the fact. Never asked my parents about it, I can only imagine what kind of old wound that would dig up and they don’t need that – I just quietly visited the grave by myself once to leave a flower. It was a pretty unreal feeling.
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20. This one was so screwy
My dad was born when my grandma was 18 and my “grandpa” was 14. He never looked like his “dad” and always thought his mom had an affair (for context, my dad’s family is all Lebanese but he is very fair-skinned, which was partially why he assumed it had been an affair). When his “dad’s” father, my great-grand-father, was on his death bed due to cancer, a relative confessed to my dad that his “grandfather” was actually his father. My dad had my stepmom take hair out of his real father’s head and had it sent for DNA testing which confirmed it (yeah, little morbid if you ask me).
So basically, my grandma had an affair with a married man when she was 18, had one, possibly 2, children with him, then married his SON and had another 4 kids. So my dad’s siblings are both his siblings and his nieces/nephews, and the man who raised him is actually his brother.