People Open Up About Their Darkest Family Secrets

Our family histories usually include stories about uncles who made discoveries, grandfathers who fought in a war or participated in another important historical event, or great-grandmothers who raised an entire family alone. Sometimes though, they include people who’ve committed serious crimes, or who left their children behind and never looked back…

Not every family is going to have stories like this; they’re certainly not a dime a dozen. But for some people who have to cope with learning about shady or startling realities in their family tree, the stories tend to stick with them forever, as the things they learned have changed their lives. If you want to read about some of the craziest, creepiest, and downright most mind-bending family secrets you’ve ever heard of, read on…

A Warped Family Tree

My dad was born when my grandma was 18 and my ‘grandpa’ was 14.  He never looked like his ‘dad’ and always thought that his mum 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-grandfather, was on his deathbed due to cancer, a relative confessed to my dad that his ‘grandfather’ was actually his father.  My dad had my step-mom take a hair out of his real father’s head and had it sent for DNA testing, which confirmed it was true. So basically, my grandma had an affair with a married man when she was 18.

She had one, possibly two children with him then married his son and had another four kids. So, my dad’s siblings are both his siblings and his nieces/nephews, and the man who raised him is actually his brother. Yeah, I don’t talk to that side of the family anymore. Reddit user: Gabbi_RSL

Post-Mortem Admissions

My grandmother’s cousin married a man she met in college. They had a daughter and were married for maybe 40 years. Three years ago, he passed from cancer. We were not shocked at this. After all, he was approaching 70 and had a bad form of cancer, and it was spreading fast.

What we weren’t prepared for was that after he passed, his wife found a journal of his. It explained that for 35 years, he was having another relationship with a man. It was a shock to all of us. He was so committed to his wife that he never left; it must have killed him to stay silent for such a long time. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Not-So-Crazy Cat Lady

My great aunt was arrested for having 50 cats and 1 dog frozen in her freezer. They thought she was a crazy animal abuser and totally nuts. But she was just a crazy cat lady who had one dog, and during the winter, all the animals ended up catching this disease called parvo.

If you know anything about parvo, it is extremely fatal and also extremely contagious. It killed all her animals. But since it was winter, she couldn’t bury them. So she put them in her large freezer in the basement until spring. Of course, they still put her in a home. Reddit user: xxkoloblicinxx

For The Lifestyle

My older cousin happens to be very wealthy. He lives in a really nice part of town, has a beautiful wife, a few healthy kids, and a pretty luxurious lifestyle. I found out that apparently, the first kid that he and his wife had had was born with Down’s Syndrome.

They decided to give her up for adoption because of it, instead of giving up the lifestyle. No one talks about it in our family and I don’t know if the other kids he has now know about it. I stopped talking to him after I found out about it though. Reddit user: [redacted]

Bullying The President’s Daughter

I had always known that my grandmother, while she was president of her sorority in college, was a completely mean girl. She apparently ended up throwing a girl’s application into the sewer just because the girl was pretty overweight and socially awkward.

Grandma then lied to the rest of the sorority that the wind blew the application into the sewer. Only recently did I learn that the girl whose application she “lost” was Lynda Bird Johnson, the daughter of Lyndon B. Johnson, the President of the United States. Reddit user: mdnightwriter

A Hunger For Ashes

My cousin was a toddler, and we were together as a family spreading my grandfather’s ashes across the family farm. He had died two weeks before and had chosen that he wanted to be cremated. When the urn was passed to her, she did what toddlers all do… 

She grabbed a handful of the ashes and just started chomping down on them. It was pretty funny to me (as an 8-year-old), but we aren’t allowed to tell her about it even to this day. (she’s now 19, and I’m DYING to let her know). Reddit user: Rodgeramjit

The Secret Life Of A Stepmom

I grew up in a house that valued technology quite a bit. As a result, I started using the Internet at a pretty early age. But we lived more or less in squalor due to my parents getting divorced. Fast forward a few years, and my dad and stepmom have moved out of the crappy two-bedroom apartment with 3 kids and somehow afforded a much larger house.

I loved the internet and was a curious individual from a pretty early age; I remember searching for stuff like ‘boobs.’ I can’t recall exactly what I’d searched for, but I ultimately came across a photo of a woman with very familiar hair getting down and dirty with another man. I kept scrolling and, to my horror, realized that the woman was actually my stepmom.

She had become a local movie star and high-end hooker where I lived at the time. They were destitute despite my father being a lawyer and had to do something, so she turned to that kind of work, and he helped to facilitate it. She would regularly go on ‘business trips,’ and I knew before any of my other siblings did about what this really meant.

This came to a head by way of a custody trial between my mother and father. My mother is very religious, and my father naturally lost—despite the fact that I wanted to live with him because my mother was a tad unstable at the time. Reddit user: [redacted]

A Mother’s Lies

My mother was notoriously promiscuous earlier in life. It was simple: she hooked up with a guy, but he was married and had his own kid. In order to be taken care of, my mother told the man I thought was my biological father that she was pregnant. He married her.

So, my biological father is a falsely convicted felon and I have a sister. We talk frequently and have been trying to find a way to overturn his ruling ever since. We did do a blood test and have confirmed without a shadow of a doubt that he is my father and she is my half-sibling.

I have confronted my mother about it, but she denies it, even with presenting her with the test results. The man who raised me, who is apparently my uncle and not my father, doesn’t know, as that would absolutely devastate him. We decided to keep this a family secret. Reddit user: [redacted]

My Aunt Was More Than She Seemed

I never knew that my oldest uncle on my mom’s side used to be a man because she was actually identifying as a woman pretty much full-time. She happened to actually be trans, but my parents both didn’t know how to explain that to me when I was younger.

They had just hoped that I would never meet her until “he turns from his sinful ways.” She’s actually no weirder than any of my other aunts and uncles and pretty hilarious at times. I could not believe my folks kept that from me. Reddit user: G. Bowman

My Uncle, The Snitch

No one knows that my uncle snitched on a Youngstown kingpin. My whole family is or has been involved in some sort of criminal enterprise for around three generations. Growing up, we learned fast to never speak of family matters to strangers and definitely never to the police or we would be labeled rats.

Back in the mid-90s, my uncle was driving illegal substances all over the East Coast and got caught in Virginia with a large amount on him. The DEA had tracked him from the pick-up spot in Florida to the drop-off in Ohio once and had video of both the pick-up and delivery.

They ended up offering him an 8-year sentence if he gave them the man they really wanted, and he did it rather than get the life sentence he would have had in federal max. No one except a select few knows that he’s the snitch. Reddit user: [redacted]

Running From The Church

My granddad was an auditor for the Church of Scientology and decided to quit after one of his friends was brutally assaulted. He was hunted down and threatened repeatedly, and they threatened to take out his family and a bunch of other crazy stuff that no one would believe even though he had proof.

My uncle ended up hurting two of the men. He chased them down and took care of them himself. He buried them in cemeteries in another person’s grave. He told me that story one day when I found some threat letters from the cult the family got. Reddit user: [redacted]

An Extremely Shady Past

My grandfather was an illegal immigrant. He was born in Czechoslovakia to a Jewish mother and Catholic father and was living in Prague. When Germany took over Czechoslovakia in 1939, my grandfather was able to get Catholic papers and joined the Hitler Youth.

When he was old enough, he became a merchant seaman and left his country. In June of 1941 or 1942 (I forget), he was unloading cargo in New York and just fled. Family friends hid him for a while, and he surfaced with a whole new identity. Reddit user: [redacted]

His Uncle’s Dark History

I had an uncle in prison, but no one in my family had ever told me what he was in for. He was never spoken about, and if he was brought up in conversation, everyone would avoid talking about him and change the topic. There was one night I was watching TV documentaries about horrific crimes in Perth.

One of them was about David and Catherine Burnie, and then there was another one about a call girl being maimed by a man; this guy had my last name. I remember thinking, “Well my last name isn’t that uncommon, must just be a coincidence he has my uncle’s first and last name.” The credits start rolling, and my mum turns to me and says, “So, did you put two and two together?” Reddit user: Devil Running

All About Aunt Kate

My aunt Kate is a mentally disabled person. She was never officially diagnosed, but the family thinks she is a victim of shaken baby syndrome. As it turns out, in the 1980s, she would “party” with some Vietnamese immigrants and ended up getting pregnant three times.

My family is Catholic, so there weren’t any real options on the table for her, and the babies were put up for adoption immediately. My mom didn’t even know about the 3rd baby until a few years ago, because she was pregnant with my sister (oldest sibling) and they didn’t want to take any attention away from her. Reddit user: Fafa_Flo_hi

Hunting Trip Gone Awry

My great-grandfather had an accident with his brother while on a hunting trip just down the river from their house. He was 17 years old at the time, and his brother was 15 years old. He was taking the shotgun off his shoulder and accidentally hit the trigger.

He then had to carry his brother’s body back to the little canoe they had and row him back to their house. His parents never forgave him and blamed him until the day they died. Apparently, he had some serious mental issues resulting from the accidental death and the way his parents treated him afterward. Reddit user: Joe_Frank

We’re The Secret Family

I found out that my father had a whole other secret family that we didn’t know about. And even more awkwardly…we were it. One day, I heard him talking with a woman on the phone when he thought I wasn’t listening (I had headphones on) and she called him “husband.”

The worst part is that his wife and kids don’t know about us to this day. I also found out a while later that an uncle (my dad’s brother) had an ex-wife and kids he kept quiet about too. I guess it was something that runs in the family. Reddit user: hadasamatter

Faking Deaths And DNA Tests

A few years ago, one of my dad’s cousins did a DNA test. A few weeks later, she was contacted and told that there were several close relatives in their database that aren’t listed on the family tree she made. It turns out that my great-grandfather faked his death in a life insurance scam.

He started a new family on the other side of the country. He never got in contact with my great-grandmother or his children with her (my grandfather and his sister). It’s kind of crazy because he only passed away a few years before this all came to light. Reddit user: beautybyelm

Eight Months Later

This isn’t in my family, but in my wife’s family, her great uncle died at the hands of his wife and the hired hand. The assumption was that he was poisoned since he was just found dead in the field. They were farmers. And what did his wife end up doing?

She of course married the red-headed hired hand, and eight months after the death, she gave birth to a red-headed son. Everyone in the family and the neighborhood knew except, I guess, the RCMP. This was around 1935 in rural Alberta. Reddit user: redplanetlover

Great Grandpa’s Revelation

My great-grandfather has another daughter that nobody in my family knows about except for me. I was talking with him one day after he had had a couple of drinks, and he looked seriously at me and said, “Listen, before I die, someone has to know this…”

“I have a daughter that nobody else knows about….I’ve had nothing to do with her or anything for her entire life. Keep this to yourself until I die.” I nodded and told him I would. He is still alive, and we don’t talk about it. Reddit user: Jacob 2299

Their Recorded Past

An ex of mine was telling me that her father made films as a hobby of sorts, and he actually had some success in the indie horror cult classic scene. So one day, I was bored and decided to Google his name and found a bunch of his films on the internet. In most of them, the main character was my ex’s mother, and she had at least one uncensored scene in each movie.

She happened to be pretty attractive and as open-minded as I am, I do have to say I definitely felt more than a little weird when I watched one of the scenes between the mother and the father. I couldn’t look her in the eyes after that. Reddit user: [redacted]

Granny, The Black Widow

The rumor in my family is that my great-grandmother was a “Black Widow.” The reason is that she’s had four husbands in her life, and coincidentally all four of them ended up dying. And they didn’t just die naturally. They all died from mysterious deaths.

One of her husbands was knifed by my great-grandmother’s brother. The story was that my great-grandmother was being attacked by him and her brother walked in on it and had to kill him in self-defense. No charges were ever brought against either of them. My grandmother, my great-grandmother’s daughter, stopped speaking to her when she was 18 years old in 1950, and my great-grandmother died in 2014 at the age of 96. Reddit user: Phillycheeese

What They Did For Money

My grandmother has all the dirty little secrets, but she’s too proper to spill anything. Until this one night when she told me about my grandfather’s (her husband’s) family. Essentially, they were extremely poor, living off the streets and trying to earn money during Australia’s gold rush.

The family had too many kids to take care of and didn’t have enough money, so they essentially ended up selling one of their kids. This kid would’ve been my grandfather’s great-uncle, I suppose. She had kept it a secret all these years. Reddit user: [redacted]

Prohibition Criminals

My grandfather and his brothers were arrested during the Prohibition era for making and distributing bootleg alcohol as part of a major underground project. I discovered this while doing a school project at the library in high school. I was given access to these old newspaper archives and found the story.

It was honestly a pretty cool thing to figure out unexpectedly. Obviously, the first thing I did was to search for my last name, just like every other kid would’ve done. The first hit ended up matching my grandfather and his siblings. Reddit user: [redacted]

A Painful Past

I only found out when I was 22 years old, but apparently, I had an older sister that I never knew about. She had died at a very young age due to a heart defect or something before I was born. I only found out because my other two older sisters found a letter buried in a closet one day.

They had told me about it way after the fact. I 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. Reddit user: Thug-laifu

Missing In Action

My grandma and grandpa are not buried in a casket as the rest of the family believes. Their kids wanted them to be buried, while the two of them actually preferred to be cremated. Some of my family just had this weird belief that burning your body would prevent you from getting into heaven.

They decided to ignore their parents’ wishes and had them buried instead of cremated. Or so they thought. A select few family members carried out their wishes. They now reside in the laundry room at my mom’s house. And none of them know to this day. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Secret Sister

After my grandpa died, my mom learned that she had a half-sister that my grandma wouldn’t let anyone know about. My grandfather had apparently been unfaithful a few years into their marriage, and a baby girl was the result of that infidelity.

My grandmother found out about the baby when the child was still a few months old. She made my grandfather promise to take his indiscretion to the grave. My mom felt robbed of having this other sister since her full sister is pretty crazy. Reddit user: black_flag_4ever

A Little Too Close For Comfort

Last year, I was visiting my grandparents back home in New Zealand. It was their 60th wedding anniversary, and I found out that my great-great-grandfather actually married his sister. I was with my mother, cousins, and aunt, and nobody really acknowledged it.

We all just kind of glossed over this story and didn’t dig too deeply into it. It wasn’t that big of a deal for me because my mother was adopted, so there’s no biological relation to them. I don’t know what I’d do if I found out I was inbred. Reddit user: Tazza4077

Granny The Scammer

My great-grandmother was an Irish scammer during WW2. What she used to do was that she used to scam multiple American and British soldiers all at once. They would come to Liverpool to be sent to the European front, and she tricked them into “marrying” her.

It was very easy to do since she was what my relatives called “drop-dead gorgeous.” She would then collect a percentage of their pay and pawn any jewelry she was given. By the time they came back to find her, if they survived, she’d be long gone. Reddit user: SerenityHill48

The Bro-Sin

My brother is only a half-brother, which is completely fine with me. Before my dad was with my mom, he was with her sister, which is my aunt. He had a kid with her, who is my older brother. He then decided that he was done with her and left her for her sister, which is my mom.

I know, it’s a very scandalous situation. So, if you want to get technical, he’s my half-brother and also my full cousin. Fun times with me and my bro-sin, although we don’t really tell many people about this little secret in our family. Reddit user: blaack8888

Never Looking Back

I found out that my great, great, great grandpa left England for America and was supposed to send money for his wife and kids to come over with the money he earned from his new job. Many men were doing it at the time, especially because things were so hard in that era.

But he never did end up sending back any of the money. He just started a new family in America and forgot about the old one, which sounds pretty awful. I sure would’ve liked to say a few words to him if I ever got the chance to meet him. Reddit user: jakash

The Menage A Trois

This isn’t super dark, but it was supposed to be a secret in my family. I was actually conceived in a menage a trois between my mother, my dad, and his identical twin. The three of them would get together fairly often and do whatever it is that they did.

I happened to be the product of one of their many get-togethers. I can’t get a firm DNA test because they’re identical twins, but the one who took on the role of my uncle bought me a pony when I was a little kid, so it’s cool. Reddit user: [redacted]

A Thing For Brothers

My grandmother had six children, and I always thought that my oldest uncle looked and acted differently from the rest of the siblings. When I was 24 years old, I found out the reason why that was. It turns out, he was different than the other siblings.

He didn’t share the same father as the rest of them. Now, this came as a shock, especially given how religious I know that side of the family to be. But that isn’t the juiciest part. His real dad is my grandpa’s brother. Apparently, she had been hooking up with both of them back in the day. Reddit user: SmartyLox

Lies And Inbreeding

I found out through an angry venting session given by my mother that most of my cousins aren’t actually legitimate. Most of my aunts had apparently lied to their husbands about who the true fathers of their children were. I’m not even sure if they know who the men are.

I think they just pinned the babies on their husbands instead. I also found out that there was a very large niche of the family I had never met and that no one really admits to…because they’re all inbred. It was a difficult thing to swallow. Reddit user: [redacted]

Lies, Courts, And A Brain Tumor

I was helping my grandmother clean out her attic and I came across a box with old legal papers, I’m nosy, so I took a break and read through them. I found a document adopting her 4 kids out to a family, with her reasoning being that she had a fatal brain tumor.

I thought this was weird, so I kept on digging. I found another document that showed that she took the family to court to get her kids back, then had to confess the brain tumor was a lie and that she did it because the man she was with didn’t want kids.

The reason she took the family to court was to get her kids back. The adoptive father was habitually hurting them, including my uncle. She apparently found out because my grandmother and her new man were living close enough that my mom ran away from her adoptive parents to my grandmother’s house and told her everything. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Inheritance

My grandma and her nine siblings are very close. So, when they each got a call saying a family member had died and they had inherited a large sum of money, they thought it was a scam. It turns out, their very strict and religious father had a secret affair and an additional child, Marie.

Well, Marie, now in her 80s, had passed away, and so had her husband, and they had no children. So, the closest relatives were my grandma and her siblings. And that’s how 10 religious people in their 70s and 80s learned their dad had cheated on their mom and that they had a half-sister they never got to meet. Reddit user: Individualchaotin

Business Deals And Stolen Babies

I always thought I was born of an affair between my parents, who were both married to other people at the time. Last year, my grandmother told me that my father and his first wife wanted a son, but had a daughter. They tried to buy my mom’s son (my older half-brother) from her, but my mom wouldn’t sell him.

Instead, they agreed to give my mother $10k to have another baby. The deal somehow fell through after my dad had gotten my mom pregnant. My dad then went to prison and got divorced from his first wife; the first wife tried to steal me from the hospital. Reddit user: cshock91

I Met The Mistress

I used to travel with my grandparents and another woman when I was younger. I had no idea who she was, but I assumed she was just a friend of the family. She would come on almost all of our trips, and yeah I thought it was a bit strange.

Nothing really stood out to me about it at the time. I learned later that this other woman was actually my grandfather’s mistress, and that somehow my grandmother was okay with it. The relationship lasted years, in fact, strangely enough. Reddit user: Schremdu

A Secret Brother

I have a sister who is four years older than me and a half-brother who is 14 years older than me (from a different father). My aunt, my mom’s sister, sent out an email to the entire family one day that vented about 60 years of hatred toward my mother.

Right at the end of this super awkward email, my aunt clearly indicated that my mom actually had another kid that no one knew about and had ended up giving the kid up for adoption. This was huge news to my mom’s family, who knew nothing about this whole thing.

I asked my mom about this and found out that the father of the kid was my brother’s dad….But my mom and he weren’t married when this happened 45~ years ago, and it was looked down upon by others. My mom eventually married my brother’s father and had him, but that was a few years later. Reddit user: [redacted]

Tanning Too Easily

My family goes around telling everyone that I’m darker than my brothers because I “tan easier,” but that’s not the case at all. One night my dad got really drunk and rambled to me about how he slept with a Dominican girl when they were separated and she turned up pregnant. She bled to death during childbirth, and that’s how I’m here.

Just one more odd thing to add to the list: as the only girl of five siblings, the youngest child, with a fairly normal name compared to the laughable ones my brothers are stuck with, and being half-Dominican, I would say embrace being unique, guys. Reddit user: [redacted]