25 People Expose The Crazy Family Secret Everyone Tried To Keep Hush Hush

Every family has skeletons in their closets. The mysterious uncle, the uncivilised grandparent, the reclusive aunt and all those stories of the 'black sheep' of the family usually stem from some long-forgotten family drama. However, we live in a day and age where people can freely and, most importantly anonymously share the tea on the most shameful secrets their families have tried to keep buried. So when one Redditor asked folks online to expose the darkest family secrets they could never tell anyone, people unburdened themselves under the veil of anonymity. Scroll below to read some of the most unsettling family secrets revealed on the thread, which honestly sounds like a horror movie plotline rather than real life.

#1

Image source: Fun_Situation7214, boggy / freepik My last name shouldn't be my last name. My great grandfather got it off a tombstone while on the run from the law. My great grandma found out she wasn't legally married after 30 yrs and 5 sons. She ended up in some mental institution in New Orleans and got a lobotomy over it. She raised me till her death and she was an amazing woman that didn't deserve any of it. She was from the south but studied medicine and wasn't allowed to practice so she ended up teaching black kids to read to p**s off her father. She was one of the first women to vote and have a drivers license in Georgia. An all around amazing woman that I'm lucky to have been around. She was born in 1899, RIP Irene.

#2

Image source: Shadow_Sally, RDNE Stock project / pexels Don't think it matters here in the United States but my Great Grandfather, from Japan, was a Buraku (a social caste seen as unclean and impure in Japan) and he had to get fake family history papers and IDs in order to marry my great grandmother. He got the fake papers and IDs from a friend who may or may not have ties to the Yakuza, not really sure, but that's how the story was told to me by my father.

#3

Image source: WeAreAllSoFucked23, freepik I've told this story but it's still pretty f*****g dark. My great grandmother's father was a family annihilator and [ended] her mom and all 4 of her siblings when she was very young (5 or 6). While he was [attacking] everyone else she hid under the porch. Apparently he called her name looking for her for hours before finally giving up and committing [self-harm]. She was the only survivor. I didn't find this out until after she had passed away when I was in my teens. Edit: I know it's technically my great great grandfather but f**k that and f**k him.

#4

Image source: lizzyote, freepik The darkest family secret used to be that grandma [ended] two husbands. But since she's died and out of reach of the law, I'm telling everyone lmao. My grandma was a bad a*s and was willing to do whatever it took to protect her children. Those guys chose the wrong woman when hunting for children to harm.

#5

Image source: Hot_Astronaut6027, freepik My great grandfather was well known in town 80 years ago for trying to publicly [end] himself a bunch of times before finally succeeding, I didn’t know until I was 20 and found his obituary. I’m named after him and as a kid my pediatrician, who was really old, always asked about my mental health and encouraged me to talk to a therapist about any dark thoughts I may have. I think the doctor remembered my great grandfathers story and wanted to make sure I didn’t go that way.

#6

Image source: imjustheretodisagree, freepik No one knows where my uncle came from. So my grandfather was a very high-ranking policeman, but also a raging a*****e. My nana unfortunately had a stillborn baby, and my very Catholic grandfather was a right d**k about her grief. He refused to acknowledge the baby as having any right to be buried in the family cemetery as it was not baptized. Nana suffered ernomously in her grief, and Grandad was sick of it. So, one day he comes home with a newborn, told Nana they had adopted him and she could stop crying now. And that was my uncle. He came with zero paperwork. No birth certificate, no adoption papers, nothing. Our best guess is that he was the baby of an incarcerated woman, but as both grandparents have passed away now, we really don't know for sure. I personally don't care about the legacy of an angry and abusive man, but the rest of the family keep it under tight wraps so that his service history with the police won't be tarnished over the fact that we're pretty sure he stole a baby.

#7

Image source: EarhornJones, freepik I tell people this all the time, but it's considered pretty taboo by a lot of my family. My MIL is married to a very religious man, who is very judgmental/outspoken about what's right/wrong. He's very active in his church (which he constantly reminds people that his father 'built', whatever that means) and will freely remind you that taking the lord's name in vain, or living together before marriage is your free ticket to hell. The thing is, he's a serial adulterer. He was married to his first wife for over 20 years, and cheated on her almost the entire time. In fact, he had a long-running affair with my MIL when she was in her 40's. She broke it off because he refused to leave his wife. When his first wife died, he was knocking on my MIL's door looking for "companionship" before the wife was even buried. We know of at least two other women with whom he carried on for multiple years. Apparently in his mind, swearing and failing to go to church every week are mortal sins, but that stuff about adultery was only a suggestion. I'm always sure to point this out to the young people in my family whenever he drops his holier-than-thou judgements on their lifestyle. "Say what you will. It's true that I haven't set foot in a church since my wedding 20 years ago. But since then, I never slept with anyone but my wife in that time, either." -Me, at Christmas.

#8

Image source: Murky_Translator2295, mdabdullah18511 / freepik The IRA gave my granddad a full military funeral. Nobody alive has any idea why.

#9

Image source: sarahzilla, master1305 / freepik My great grandfather would smuggle in alcohol from Canada during prohibition. It was also illegal for native Americans to drink in local bars. But he would invite them in and claim they weren't native Americans but they were from Mexico so they could drink with him. He also had a brother who ran away and joined the circus and eventually became a Hollywood prop man. I also had a great Uncle that [hurt] his wife so badly she [ended] him. She was one of the first women to win the court case using the battered spouse defense. A few generations back part of my family were LDS polygamists . Fortunately I'm not directly descended from them. It's nuts all the dirt you find when doing genealogy!

#10

Image source: Spicy_Chloee, Dziana Hasanbekava / pexels Not exactly dark, but I found out my father wrote p**n novels under a pen name to make ends meet when I was a baby. I've been trying to find one ever since.

#11

Image source: jskalaj1, freepik I had to put my dog to sleep in 2023 because she was lethargic and dehydrated, with vomiting and diarrhea, and lost the use of her back legs. I assumed - paired with her CCD - that it was time for her to go. Three months later, I received a recall notice informing me that a batch of her prescription dog food was formulated incorrectly, causing the exact symptoms (minus the CCD) she experienced the night before I had her euthanized. I threw the notice away and never told anyone about it.

#12

Image source: justaduckyyy, ksandrphoto / freepik My uncle didn't die in a car accident. He [ended] his mistress and then [ended] himself by crashing his car with her body in the trunk.

#13

Image source: ShakeUpWeeple1800, freepik My brother committed [self-harm]. I helped my mother and sister pick up the pieces. They both viewed me as somebody very safe and responsible and comforting, and nobody in the family has ever found out that I failed to complete my own attempt years before he did, spending four days in hospital and two months off sick. He was always better at things than me.

#14

Image source: Over_The_Influencer, dmytrenko.fsk / freepik My mom gave birth on the floor of her apartment. I used to think it was because it happened so fast, that's what she always said. I recently learned it was because she was in denial she was pregnant and never got any prenatal care..denied it up until the baby was literally coming out of her.

#15

Image source: tuqois9, Verina / pexels My mom runs an illegal ferret-breeding/rescue operation in California where they're banned She has about 200-300 ferrets living in her home at any given point in time

#16

Image source: Dangerous_Ant3260, freepik My grandfather had two families, in the same town, at the same time. The 1930 and 1940 census were very interesting. Of course everyone in my mother's side (her father) denied it was the same person, but it was.

#17

Image source: manchvegasnomore, EyeEm / freepik My Great Grandfather was a member of the Klan Wrecking Crew in Mississippi in the teens and twenties. He later became something called the Grand Kleagle I think. So yeah, he was a racist a*****e.

#18

Image source: NothingDifficult1600, freepik The person my uncle thinks is his older sister is actually his mother but my family has kept it a secret this whole time. Most of us know except for him… She got pregnant in high school and they’ve pretended his grandmother was his mother because it’s taboo

#19

Image source: Realistic-Original-4, Donald Tong / pexels I have an uncle literally nobody talks about... I have no idea if he's even still alive. He [made love] with a woman. She told him she had AIDS. He [ended] her. Now, that's what he claims. The woman didn't have AIDS and he didn't contract it I didn't even know about him until I was doing a family tree thing online. Asked my grandparents about it and they told to me to never ever speak of him again. Brought it up with my dad a few years later. "He said he's not your real uncle, don't ask about it again" in the most chilling way I've ever heard.

#20

Image source: coryhill66, pshevlotskyy / freepik I found out right before she died that my grandmother was r**ed by her brother when she was 16. She was pregnant and my grandfather married her and raised the child as his own.

#21

Image source: lovelyawkwardsilence, oksix / freepik After my mother found out that her husband was infertile, she decided to have 6 children with her father in law. On top of that she brainwashed her husband (my legal dad) for years into believing the diagnosis of infertility was wrong and had him raise us as his children.

#22

Image source: Adam_Zapple, alexkoral / freepik Like so many others, during The Depression my great-grandfather lost his job. His wife and their baby son moved back in with her parents but they wouldn’t let my great-grandfather come with them. He had to sleep on benches, stand in bread lines and try to find work to send money to his wife and baby. Why? Turns out the great-grands had knocked boots before they were married (Irish Catholic), which ultimately resulted in the birth of the aforementioned baby. They did get married before the baby was born, but my great-grandma’s parents never forgave what they viewed as his fault. From what I understand, he was a gruff, but good man who worked a blue collar job to send his four children to expensive private schools. That baby grew up to be an engineer who helped design airplanes and the NASA space shuttle.

#23

Image source: Cheetodude625, wirestock / freepik Already been said on here, but might as well say again. I'm half-Japanese and half American. My Japanese grandpa fought against the Chinese in WW2 (though he was forced into service despite how much he didn't want to). He saw minimal fighting and was not part of any of the Japanese atrocities (Reddit is bad at understanding that not all the Japanese soldiers back then were not barbaric). He only told two short stories of his time in war. 1.) When Japan was leaving Shanghai during the end of the war, my grandpa lost a coin toss with his friends for the first boat out. He sat on the docks as he watched the boat with all his friends and half his company get blown up by allied bombers. 2.) Last military mission. Hiroshima was bombed. He was ordered to find survivors if any. He only said, "We were told to find survivors... We only found ash." After the war, he became a diplomat for Japan from 1950-1998 advocating heavily for peace and being anti-war. He never told anyone, besides my grandma, about his military service. Only found out about his past when he was nearing the end of his life. I wouldn't call this dark, but more of "Oh... Right. I have family that actually fought against the 'good guys' in WW2 technically... This is a weird feeling."

#24

Image source: FoolhardyBastard, MrDm / freepik My great grandpa robbed a bank and did serious time for it. This was a big secret, but it all came to light when my great uncle tried to join the FBI as a forensic accountant. Needless to say, he wasn’t hired.

#25

Image source: Critical_System_3546, The Yuri Arcurs Collection / freepik My two older brothers are adopted, their bio mom was my dad's sister. It was common knowledge that their mom was [ended] while being a high paid escort. I had no idea they never knew this their entire life. Onetime my brother said something about wondering where his mom was because she left when he was a kid, and I was like holy moly that's not what happened. My brothers were in their 40s when they finally found out.