16 people anonymously share their family's deepest darkest secret.
If we've learned anything from dramatic CW shows, it's that every family is festering with dark secrets.
Some families hold secrets grim enough to fill a true crime docuseries. While others land in the weird or whimsical category. Wherever the needle lands, it's strange to discover just how many people we pass on the street whose family trees are shrouded in secrets.
In a popular Ask Reddit thread, people anonymously shared their family's deepest, darkest, secrets, and they run the full emotional gamut.
1. From fixinfordixon:
My cousin killed his mother with elder neglect just to inherit her money and to get rid of her as a 'nuisance.'
2. From unknownkaleidoscope:
My mom was allegedly adopted in the 70s but we found out about 5 years ago that my grandparents (who are both dead now) actually just straight up kidnapped her.
Like baby snatched her at a park, and her bio parents had been looking for her since (although her bio mom died as well before she found out, which is very sad). She died never being reunited with her stolen child.
3. From dagluck:
My paternal grandfather had a girlfriend (on the side) the entire time I knew him. When my grandmother died, he married her and completely disregarded us until right before he died.
It was a life-changing lesson on how people you truly think you know, have secrets.
4. From Tall-File7279:
My ex-husband's grandmother disappeared in the 70s. Her head was found several years later. It remains unsolved. My ex-husband, a few others, and I believe it was his grandpa who was a struggling alcoholic and just an awful person.
NO ONE in his family speaks of it.
I only found out due to a friend of a friend knowing his grandma. He found out when he was 16 after a newspaper published a short article on the case. His parents flipped and made the newspaper retract it. Small towns can hold a lot of secrets.
5. From PeachSignal:
Honestly, my dad's parents were some of the nicest people I've ever met. They recently passed away, and were just great. However, my grandmother's sister married a rather rough guy, and had some fairly rough kids.
My grandmother's nephew was allegedly 'cleaning his shotgun' when it accidentally went off and killed his wife. He gets arrested obviously...spends a while in jail before finally seeing a judge for sentencing.
The judge deems it an accident, careless with a firearm and gets off on time served. His brother-in-law was waiting on the steps of the court house where he proceeded to unload a revolver into his chest.
I never heard what happened to him, and I can't find a news story about it...this was back in the 70s in Southern Ontario.
6. From SandraVirginia:
My great-great-grandmother and her sister killed their neighbor in 1916 because he ass*ulted my great-grandmother.
The man was known around town as a predator and there was never an investigation. The sheriff's deputies just took his body away and the town buried it in an unmarked grave.
7. From MachineElectrical208:
My DNA was connected to a cold case. I had no connection to the crime, a close relative did.
8. From thomas4004:
My father was the most caring man. He loved his family. One day, when I was 6 years old, I came home with bl*eding cuts on my legs from the babysitter's b*ating. With no warning, he jumps in his car and headed to the babysitter's house.
My mom had no car, so me and her catch a bus to the babysitter's house. By the time we got there, the police were there, the husband was in an ambulance, and some of the living room furniture was thrown out the window.
My father had kicked in the front door and beat up the husband. He couldn't get to the wife because she locked herself in a room, so he started throwing furniture out the window. If he would have got to her, he would have killed her.
Never knew my father could get so angry. He only spent two nights in jail because all the police understood. The mother was charged with child abuse. I still have the scars.
9. From Foolyz:
Jesus Christ....reading through all of these truly disgusting stories.
I'm over here thinking about how my mom's no-bake cheesecake, which has been brought to every family gathering for 25+ years and is adored by everyone, is just a recipe that she found on the back of a pre-made graham cracker crust. Yikes.
10. From MaggieLuisa:
My grandma hadn’t seen my grandpa for over 12 months when 'their' first child was born.
11. From Smithme2g:
This is about my adoptive grandfather and it took place in the 1960s. He owned a big farm in the country and was a truck driver. At the neighboring farm, the father in the family traveled for work and had 3 young daughters at home.
One day the wife talked to my grandfather and said that the girls were seeing a man looking and potentially trying to get into their windows at night. My grandfather took the law into his own hands to rid the neighborhood of the s*xual predator.
He made a grid of wire outside the windows and energized it with an electric fence charger. He then sat patiently inside the house with his shotgun that night. Sure enough, around the time the girls reported seeing the man he heard cries.
The man became tangled in the wire and was getting shocked. By the time he got outside, the man, now a bloody mess, had freed himself and was running towards the cornfield.
My grandfather peppered his a** with some birdshot and he ran through the rows of corn. The man never returned.
He also single-handingly confronted and took on a mob family that was running an illegal waste disposal service in the country and poisoning the land.
Law enforcement were scared of this mob family, but my grandfather won and got them legally removed. He was tough as nails and a proud WWII vet, I miss him dearly.
12. From schizo-optimist:
My dad killed his uncle for m*lesting him as a child and got away with it.
13. From ocularnervosa:
My grandmother's brother was hung for being a horse thief.
14. From DonaldMcCecil:
My great-uncle was a hitman, and during his time in jail he sent his immediate family a bunch of letters. My grandma still has them, but as far as I know, she's the only person alive who's read them.
Someday we'll find out what he wrote, but my grandma says she wants to burn them - I don't know if she ever will.
15. From Henri_Dupont:
My father-in-law was 16 when he lied about his age to join the German army in WWII. At that time, he believed all the propaganda that said Germany was winning the war. He went to the front only to spend several months retreating.
He was eventually captured by the Americans. That time he lied about his age again, he said he was 15, so they let him out. He walked home at the end of the war, to a destroyed country.
He never again believed any propaganda from anyone, and spent a lot of his free time studying the history of N*zism and the failure of their madman leader. He felt intense remorse about what he had been hoodwinked into participating in.
16. From Bebe_Bleau:
My great uncle, who was deputy sheriff, single-handedly ran the entire Klan out of my town. That's not the secret though. It was common knowledge. So my great-uncle had to wear a gun on his hip for the rest of his life.
The secret part is that my mother, who was a child at the time would watch the Klan members parade down the street, recognize their shoes, and give names to my great-uncle. I never told anybody that until long after she passed away.