20 people share the most disturbing secrets they've ever been told. The cousin is the daddy.

Secrets secrets are no fun, secrets secrets hurt someone. That is, unless they are kept for very good reasons, and unleashing the dark truth will hurt more than help.

A secret can be as harmless as silently hating someone's new hair cut, or as insidious as knowing your married coworker's giving birth to her side-guy's baby. Being asked to keep someone else's secret can be both an honor and a burden.

Sometimes, there are ethical questions surrounding a secret, and one is saddled with the question of whether or not it's your responsibility to tell people implicated in the secret. Other times, a secret is so dark and heavy it's tempting to get your friend help, even if that means breaking their trust.

In a recent Reddit thread, people shared the most disturbing secrets they've been told, and you'll quickly understand why they were secret in the first place.

1. Sandpaper_Pants mother carried a traumatizing secret.

"When I was about 10 years old, my mom told me that when she was 12 years old, she was in bed at night (she lived in Puerto Rico). She heard her mom and dad arguing in the kitchen. Her dad might have been drunk, I don't recall if my mom said. She heard her mom screaming and then go silent. Her dad had stabbed her mom to death. He went to prison. My mom and her siblings got adopted out to other families."