People Share the Dark Family Secrets They Learned Once They Were Old Enough

Every family has dark secrets…

Mine, yours, everyone’s!

But everybody doesn’t learn about those things, even as they get on in years…

But these folks did, and they were brave enough to share those secrets with the world.

Check out what they had to say.

“I found out I had a sister who had been given up for adoption.

The only reason I found out was the person who informed me no longer felt bound to secrecy after my mom died. And the person who told me had “receipts” solid enough that I have no reason to doubt them.

It also explains why mom freaked out when I told her I’d done a 23AndMe test.”

“My extremely wealthy uncle was going downhill quick with Alzheimer’s.

Before he was too far gone, he apparently made a deal with my aunt that when things got the the point that they would have to send him to a nursing home, she would **** him instead.

He wrote all of this in a letter and gave it to the attorney of their estate. When the time came, I don’t know why she chose to shoot him in the back of the head instead of something less violent but she did.

It was a pretty big trial with a fair bit of news coverage, and it really blew up when the lawyer testified and brought forward the letter. My aunt served like 2 years I think and was released on parole.”

“My uncle was actually my cousin.

He was kidnapped as an infant and when he was returned a year later, my aunt didn’t want him back.

My grandparents adopted him so he was legally my uncle.”

“I found out when I was about 32 that apparently in 1973 my dad had a daughter he never knew existed.

I found out because he texted that to me while I was working, after finding out about it himself about 1 week earlier. She was in her late 40’s by that point, I think.

What’s sort of tragic is all this time we thought I was my dad’s only kid, and he always wanted a dauighter but never got one due to marriages ending.

He would have LOVED this girl. his daughter was the result of a one-night stand with a girl he never talked to again, and according to his daughter the mother had a mental breakdown not longer after giving birth and never really had custody of the daughter anyway.

Dad never would have had any way to find out, the baby grew up with the mother’s parents in another state, and the mother kinda went AWOL.”

“My parents took me to Disneyland for my 7th birthday.

I recall landing, going to the park, having a great first day or two. Then my parents had to step out and take a bunch of phone calls. They sounded very stressed.

They kept telling me nothing happened and everything was okay. Eventually we flew home, and surprise!! Took an extra couple days to go to a big Waterpark away from home.

I fondly remembered this birthday and eventually forgot about any of the weirdness.

Maybe 10 years later my parents finally told me what happened. My uncle, my dad’s brother, tried to **** himself on my 7th birthday. He shot himself in the stomach with a rifle.

He was poor, addicted to drugs, no work, etc. He felt depressed my dad had the life he always wanted, so tried to **** himself.

He ended up living. My parents took me to the Waterpark so that we didn’t have to come home to him leaving the hospital.

By not telling me, my parents let me keep my birthday as my day, not the day uncle tried to ***. Knowing how a 7 year olds brain works, I probably would’ve thought I had something to do with it.”

“When I was in my early 20s, I found an old photo of someone in a family album I didn’t recognize.

When I asked my mom about it, she said, “Oh that’s your aunt Gloria.” Then she lowered her voice (even though we were alone) and added, “she’s a NUDIST.”

Poor aunt Gloria, just wants to be a nudie-lady and everyone acts like she’s a leper.”

“My parents had 2 kids before I was born. My mother drowned them in a bathtub during a psychotic episode.

Somehow despite this & a prior history of mental illness, she got released & had me a couple years later. They had another child just before I turned 2, but I never laid eyes on her.

Neither of them ever fessed up, though. I only found out about their existence after an aunt died & left me her personal effects. I found birth announcements for these other kids in her mementos.

I always thought she meant for me to find them. When I asked my parents, they refused to discuss anything related to these kids.

A few years later, I went back to my hometown & looked up that date in the newspaper morgue. The friend who went with me was floored. I wasn’t, really. I’d grown up in fear for my life from her rages.

I broke off contact with them as soon as I could. Not just because of this, though it didn’t help. I had a slew of my own traumas growing up. It was a huge mistake to let them try to raise another child.”

“My uncle tried to rob a bank and ran away by foot.

He later got married and his wife ended up committing *******, at the time the police thought that my uncle ****** her, since he had a criminal past but he didn’t (he was at work and there were witnesses).”

“My grandpa (15) kidnapped my grandma (14) from a convent.

No one even bothered looking for her thereafter cause she was an orphan and didn’t even know who her family was.

They had 16 children together.”

“My paternal grandmother had an affair with our small town’s mortician in the 1940’s. She got pregnant and he performed an illegal ********.

The fetus was buried behind the funeral home he owned where we kids used to sled every winter. My dad told me this as I was getting ready to take a ride down the hill on the sled when I was 12.

Also, paternal grandfather had multiple illegitimate children around our small town. Turns out one of my best friends was also my half cousin. Father told me when I was 17.

My father was educated, intelligent, honest and moral. The fact that his parents were so wild was absolutely shocking to me.”

“My dad’s first cousin is serial ****** Kenneth McDuff.

We saw the Americas Most Wanted episode when it aired and were so surprised to hear about a McDuff, not knowing he was a relative.”

“I knew my grandfather was a coal miner, and that he was really involved with the Union, but it wasn’t til after he **** that I found out just how much of a Union Man he was… if something needed blowing up or someone needed to not be breathing anymore, they called Gramps.

After he ****, my brother remembers some men coming to visit Gran and giving her a lot of envelopes. She took off for a yearlong vacation in Europe after that.”

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.