Site icon Humans of Tumblr

15 People Share the Dark Secrets in Their Families

There are crazy families, and then there are THESE families.

Serious, when people ask questions on AskReddit, you know you’re going to get some juicy tidbits, but I don’t think you’re prepared for exactly how juicy it’s gonna get!

Ready? Set? Share!

1. An On-Purpose Accident

“My uncle was pissed at my dad once, and decided to poke holes in all of his condoms. He was dating my mother at the time, and that is how I came about. I wasn’t supposed to know, but my uncle told me once when he was drunk. I am thankful he did it, but that was a pretty douche move.”

2. “Not table conversation”

“We had a family Christmas dinner a few years ago where my aunt and uncles from both sides were staying over at our house. There were probably 10 or 11 of us at the dinner table, and everyone is getting along well like we always do. My cousin, around 14 or 15 at the time, brings up something about how he laid a massive p*op earlier that day. The kids laugh and the adults were like ‘that’s not table conversation.’ Then I jump in and say ‘haha yea, there’s things we don’t talk at the dinner table, like politics and illegitimate children.’ Every adult at the table drops their eyes to their plate and goes silent. I’m sitting there like uhhhh, what in the Woody Allen movie is so awkward about all this .

What I didn’t know is that my uncle had an illegitimate child many years ago and thats always been a point of contention between my aunt and him. They also had been arguing about that earlier in the day, and all the adults knew it. Hahah man, that was jokes. But seriously though, never make jokes about illegitimate children unless you are absolutely sure no one has one.”

3. Family Tree

“I recently learned that my mother is the child of an affair. And that my grandfather was illegitimate royal blood from Russia.”

4. “Pet name”

“My family is mostly Portuguese. It used to be completely so, but my paternal grandfather married a French woman. All my life my grandfather called her something in Portuguese that I couldn’t understand. Last year at Thanksgiving I found out it meant ‘The French wh^re.’ My grandfather’s parents hated her and called her that. My grandfather decided to own it and made it a pet name.”

5. Piano

“I found out that my mom had an affair with my piano teacher. Not sure that my dad even knows…”

6. “Haunted her till the day she died”

“I am named after my great aunt. I was told by my mother and my grandmother that she died a few years before I was born in a terrible motorcycle accident. I was also told never to bring up my great aunt’s name around my great grandmother as the loss of her daughter still troubled her. Understandable. Nothing was ever mentioned or said and I grew up understanding only the barest of details about her and her passing. A little odd to not know much about the person I was named after, but, whatever.

When I was 24, my great grandmother passed away. At the meal after her wake, my great uncle gets drunk and starts letting all the family secrets fly out.

In passing, he mentioned my great aunt’s suicide and everyone at the table solemnly nodded their heads, except for me. ‘What suicide?’ I asked, ‘Gran told me she died in a motorcycle accident.’

‘Yeah, that was the cover story,’ he replied, ‘Your great grandmother was too embarrassed to tell anyone what really happened and she had to explain the closed-casket at her daughter’s funeral.’

I came to find out my great aunt was a lesbian and in love with a woman from her university. The other woman felt the same way and they hatched plans to figure out a way to be together without their parents knowing. When my great grandmother discovered their plans, she went mental and sent my great aunt half way across the country to separate the two. Little did she know that both women had made a suicide pact that if this were to happen, they would shoot themselves in the head, which they did. My great grandmother, in her homophobia, caused two young women, in love, to kill themselves.Apparently she never forgave herself for what she did and it haunted her till the day she died.

After I found out the truth, I was first incredulous that my entire family had lied to me about the origin of my name, and second, I was deeply disturbed that to ease my great grandmother’s guilt and shame everyone accepted the lie.

Since then, I tell as many people the truth as are willing to listen so that my great aunt’s memory is served. Which is why I am posting this here. Every year since I found out, I have attended Pride. I donate to LGBT charities. I volunteer for LGBT organizations. All in her memory. If certain resources and volunteer organizations existed then as they do now, I might have a totally awesome, motorcycle-riding, great aunt to hang out with.”

7. Cross-Country Move

“The only reason my family is in California instead of New York is because my dad’s father wanted to follow his mistress (which nobody knew about until he died) to California, so he uprooted his entire family and made them move over here.”

8. Hungarian is a weird language

“All this time my family thought that my weird Hungarian last name meant ‘boat builder.’

Well, recently we were enlightened to learn that the closest meaning is actually ‘man who goes around the village at night and picks up the p*op buckets from doorsteps.’

9. “Dad doesn’t know”

“My dad doesn’t know that I know that I have two younger brothers and a sister.

I’m also trying to look for them.”

10. Mental Institution

“My grandfather had a younger brother who was mentally disabled.

He pretty much took care of this brother completely until he was about 18, when he left for college. He came back and the brother had been put in a mental institution for months/years. No one had told my grandfather.

My mother only recently found out about him.”

11. Passing

“My dad recently told me a family story of one of his older, distant relatives; we’ll call her Jill. This all happened some 70 years ago, a good 20 years before my father was born. It’s a bit unclear what actually happened, but I’ll try my best to piece it together.

Jill was a ‘plain’ looking girl who was raised on a small, country farm. Being a bit of a quiet tomboy, she didn’t go to school, but took care of the farm’s horses instead.

One day in her teenage years, Jill was in the stables when something spooked one of the horses. It reared up and kicked Jill in the face. Since there was very limited medical surgery, she ended up somewhat disfigured and scarred. She withdrew from much of society and lived solely on the farm as a hermit.

Years of isolation pass and one day, Jill vanishes.

Perhaps her immediate family knew, but no extended family were ever told what happened. That is it, until they were notified of her death four years later. You see it turns out, Jill had run away and enlisted in the army. She had fought overseas in WWII, and had been killed.

Now that might not seem like much of a story, but keep in mind that only men fought in WWII. Jill had somehow managed to pose as a man for four years in the army without being detected, and it was her death that gave her away.

Considering the rest of my family history isn’t very exciting, I think it’s a pretty cool story.”

12. “And they all came to visit”

“So my grandfather is roughly 80 and has five kids (one of which is my father) all ranging from ages 40-50. Well about three years ago, he had a knock on the door, and it turns out that he had a family before he met my grandmother in Iowa and never told anyone.

He had married his first wife in California when he was sent out there in the Navy, and had two or three kids with her. He went and got himself deployed, and she apparently left with the kids while he was gone. Being the mid 1900s, he never found them, so he went on a cross country trip to New York for some reason. Luckily for me, he met my grandmother and had five kids, never telling anyone about his former life. From what we understood he graduated school, went into the Navy after working on some farm for a couple years, and tried to go to New York before getting snagged by my grandma in Iowa.

Well while he was doing this, apparently wife #1 was moving around the country as well, and every couple years, put those kids in adoption, busted them out of adoption, had three more kids from three different dads, but kept my grandpas same last name. So one of the original first kids went on a mission to find my grandpa, found him, and they all came to visit.”

13. Film Hobby

An ex of mine was telling me that her father made films as a hobby of sorts and he actually had some success on 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. In most of them, the main character was my ex’s mother and she had at least one full frontal nudity scene in each.

She was pretty attractive and I’m open-minded about nudity anyways, but I have to say I felt a little weird when I watched one of the s^x scenes between the mother and the father.

I couldn’t look her in the eyes after that point.

14. “It was looked down upon”

“This happened in May of this year. 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 that vented about 60 years of hatred toward my mother. Right at the end of the email, my aunt clearly indicated that my mom had another kid that no one knew about and had given the kid up for adoption. Huge news to my family who knew nothing about this.

I asked my mom about this and found out that the father of the kid was my brother’s dad, but my mom and him weren’t married when this happened 45~ years ago, so 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. After they got a divorce, she got married to my dad about 8 years later.”

15. “Horse people”

“I found out that one of my ancestors was exiled from Russia for challenging an army officer to a duel (with swords) and winning. My ancestor worked in the czar’s stable, and the argument arose when the army officer insisted on riding my ancestor’s horse. The horse threw him off and the army officer shot it.

We’ve always been horse people.”

Oh my… that last one… what would you think if you saw somebody nude and they didn’t know you saw them? I’m guessing that the woman wouldn’t care AT ALL because she made her living doing it.

But we want to know what you think? Let us know in the comments, fam!

Exit mobile version