Every family member has their shameful secrets.
Some succeed in taking their misdeeds or past regrets with them to the grave without anyone ever knowing.
Others, unfortunately, failed to keep privileged information to themselves. Because the ugly truth always has a way of slipping out.
Strangers online opened up under the veil of anonymity when Redditor kaushman2 asked:
"What family secret was finally spilled in your family?"
These startling family secrets were so criminal.
Crooked Aunt
"My aunt didn't lose her teaching job due to budget cuts like she'd always claimed. Turns out she had never had a valid teaching license to begin with, regularly had affairs with the dads, and embezzled PTA money!" – itsjustmo_
Like Bonnie & Clyde
"My great aunt was a nurse supervisor at a mental hospital in the 1920s. She fell in love with a guy who was being evaluated for a murder trial. She helped him escape, and they went to Florida."
"But the police caught up with them. My aunt got off easy, but he got the electric chair. I found all this in a newspaper archives while working on family history. Showed it to my mom, and she admitted it was all true." – p38-lightning
Not Dog Lovers
"My uncles are infamous criminals who killed multiple people. I thought they bred dogs." – Traditional_Top_8635
These people were under the impression that the loving individuals they've grown up with were not who they thought they were.
Unfit Parent
"My parents got divorced when I was about 3 years old. I stayed in contact with my mother but my father got full custody, as mom apparently relinquished custody because of her financial situation and claimed she made the difficult decision of giving custody to my dad for the sake of us kids, because he could provide a better life for us."
"'The most difficult sacrifice she ever made'. On several occasions my mother would also get drunk and lament her life and say something to the effect of, 'I never should've left your father. He was a good guy, he didn't deserve that. We would've been happy.'"
"I had heard variations on it a bunch of times, so one day I decided to share it with my dad. I was in my mid-20s at that point. My dad, who at no point in my life ever discussed the divorce or my mom, replied:"
"She said that?"
"Yeah."
"I left her because of her alcoholism and drug use and how she was always drunk during the pregnancy and while you were little. Kids deserve a safe home to grow up in."
"I later got that verified from my maternal grandmother. Apparently everyone knew but never bothered to tell me that my dad was the one who left mom because she was a druggie and an alcoholic."
"And she didn't have to 'make the difficult sacrifice of giving dad custody because he could provide a better life for us', the court straight up gave dad custody after a court battle where my mom was deemed unfit to be a parent because of said substance abuses."
"For about 20 years, I'd thought my dad got dumped by my mom but turns out, he was just a really good parent and made the right choice for us kids." – Reddit
A Long Ruse
"That my dad's little sister wasn't really his little sister. It was his sister's baby, raised by his mom. The girl didn't know until she was 21." – Ok-Thing-2222
"This was really common, right? Teen pregnancy/unwed mothers very very frowned upon back in the day." – PumpkinPieIsGreat
The Truth About The Sister
"This happened to my sister-in-lawv."
"Her sister is really her mother, and her parents are her grandparents."
"The real mother had my sister in law at a young age, and so the mothers parents decided yo take care of the child instead. My sister in law always knew something was amiss, but got actual confirmation about 3 or 4 years ago. She is now close to being 40." – LittleTay
The Surprise Brother
"My sister and I found out in our mid/late-20s that we had a full-on brother. Our dad got our mom pregnant in high school and cause it was the 60s it was all hush-hush and she went to do her senior year 'with family' and just quietly came back to town."
"They ended up getting together for real in college and no one knew - not their life-long friends or even my uncle. Our brother had a good childhood with his adoptive family, but he was always curious about his birth mother so he wrote her a letter."
"He sure was surprised to also come to meet his dad and two sisters. Crazy thing is he didn’t live too far away and we all look extremely alike. Would have been weird if we’d have bumped into each other otherwise." – LazyLeslieKnope
Unanswered Questions
"My mother is kid #7 of 10. My aunt (kid #4) who was born in 1945 did her DNA and found out that she has a different father from everyone else. She was devastated."
"There was always rumor that there was an affair but nobody talked about it. She has so many questions but nobody's alive to answer her." – bossykrissyCC
The Guise Of Greek
"My mother was Catholic."
"After eight kids she would 'go visit family' when she got pregnant."
"The Catholic church would take the baby and re-home it with a 'barren' Catholic family."
"I met a Greek Catholic brother. He looked like all of us but had a Greek name and Greek parents." – Chon-Laney
"My mom worked as a United airlines stewardess, starting in the late 70s, but told me that up until the mid to late 60s, United (along with most airlines back then,) wanted stewardess to be single, without children."
"So, they did the same thing as the catholic church. housed pregnant stews someplace, and put their children up for adoption after birth. My mom knew several women that happened to." – KeyFarmer6235
Mother To All, Father To None
"We found out after my grandfather died that none of his seven children with my grandmother were his, and that they all likely had different fathers." – ProudMedusa71
"My maternal grandmother had two kids who were biologically my grandfather's kids, my mother and aunt. Then two boys who weren't my grandpa's bio kids. She never said who fathered the older of those two, and ancestry hasn't turned up anything for him."
"She then moved in with father of the younger boy, without getting a divorce, leaving all the other kids with grandpa. Cheated on that guy and had another boy, and was forced to give him up for adoption, because he refused to raise another man's child."
"Years later she was scandalized when my sister got pregnant without being married, and when we pointed out that we were aware of her past, she was all 'that's different, I was married.'"
"I guess in her mind it didn't matter if weren't married to the person you were having kids with, you just had to be married to someone." – Kalamac
Some family secrets are not that scandalous in comparison.
A Chef Never Tells
"We found out Grandma's secret ingredient was actually just store-bought marinara sauce. Our family dinners will never be the same." – Few_Insurance9739
"I once served my kid my grandmas secret family recipe bean soup (Campbells from a can, just like my grandma made it), and she loved it and begged for the recipe. She was six so I don’t know what she thought she was going to do with it. I promised to tell her when she’s older." – ancybeadedplacemat
The Clandestine Operation
"We found out Uncle Bob's 'fishing trips' were actually undercover missions to become the neighborhood's reigning champion of competitive lawn gnome collecting." – Intelligent-Gur-625
Spice Of Life
"We discovered Grandma's 'secret recipe' was just a pinch of love and a whole lot of takeout menus hidden in the pantry." – AdSquare1004
How well do you really know your cousins?
What about your aunt? Uncle?
These examples just go to show you never really know who you're sitting next to at Thanksgiving.
