"Once you were old enough, what were the dark family secrets you were finally let in on?"
Gramma didn’t decide to move in with us because she loved us so much and wanted to spend more time with us.
Gramma moved in because her son was a meth addict and convinced her to put his name on the house, take all the money out of it “for renovations,” and leave her homeless.
She had a heart attack the night she found out and now has to live with a pacemaker.
beep you Uncle Roy.
My cousins lived with us for a while and we thought that was fun because it's like a sleep over every day.
One time our mom even took us out of school to pick them up.
I learned later that it was because child protective services took my cousins away from their mom because of mental health issues.
My mom offered to take her sister's kids until she got her mental health back in order.
My cousins live with their mom now and their mom is in a much better condition mentally.
My father got my mother pregnant when he was her teacher in high school.
He was thirty and married.
She was fifteen and his student.
They ran off together, he got a divorce, and they got married in a state that allowed marriage at 16, two months before my older brother was born.
My grandma retired and she still decided to work for her brother in his restaurant to save up money for when she dies.
Funerals are, obviously, expensive.
She insisted he would hold on to her paychecks and pay for her funeral when she dies.
He never did.
Grandma’s top secret pie crust was actually just Marie Calender’s from the grocery store, set in a fancier dish.
She messed with her daughters-in-law for years over it.
My dads uncle died in a boating accident with his cousins.
My family let me know he was possibly drowned in the middle of the lake by his cousins because of some money issues.
No one was ever prosecuted though and the family is still very close.
Weird.
My dad is in a cult.
Wasn't much of a secret, but as a kid you just kinda assume everything your parents do is the norm.
I'm still at least one families secret!
I'm adopted and found my Biological Father, he begged me not to reach out to any of my half siblings as it would "ruin his life and standing in the community".
The sad thing is I'm not even his first secret child, I have an older half sister that he also begged not to reach out to family.
So that's two kids he's had because he cheated on his wife.
I can only imagine how often he cheats to have at least two women end up pregnant...My half sister and I call 23andMe (how we met) "23andMark" because who knows how many more kids he might have out there.
Pretty sure he's been terrified since at home DNA kits became a thing.
Edit: A word.
My parents led me to believe that my grandfather (on my mother's side) had died due to a heart attack.
A year later they revealed he actually shot himself in the head.
My cousins used to stay with us a lot, I remember my male cousin was a just a small baby when he first came to us.
He would scream and scream and scream all night, and mum put him in my room so I used to spend the night cuddling him or playing peekaboo.
My other cousin was my age (5) at the time.
I found out later, my auntie was a heroin addict and a sex worker.
My cousins were the result of clients and my male cousin was actually born whilst my auntie was heavily using and he was going through withdrawal after his birth.
My grandparents ended up flying in from Wales and taking custody of them as well as putting my auntie on a plane and leaving with all of them.
It was
one of the saddest days of my life that I never understood...
I thought they were going to be my brother and sister and wasn’t sure why all of a sudden they were taken from me.
My dad used to send me birthday cards every year when I was a young girl (my mother left my dad while pregnant with me for good reason), even though I never got to meet him when I was young I was glad to still receive a card from him with a few bucks acknowledging I was alive and that he did one day want to see me.
Around 14-15 I learned that my mother had written every single one of those letters and my grandfather would mail it to ourselves to make it seem legit.
I never ever actually received any letter from him.
**Edit**: I didn’t expect this comment to blow up as I slept but I wanted to answer a few questions that I got!
My dad was a pretty terrible guy.
Without airing all my family’s dirty laundry, he was a sexual abuser.
I did eventually meet him two times: once at my aunt’s funeral at 17 where he wrote me a long letter about how he wished he was better, and once when I was 19 when he tried to establish a relationship.
He gave me terrible vibes and I never answered his attempts to reach out after that, and I’m happier this way.
My mom raised 2 kids by herself.
Unfortunately my family has
its issues.
My family suffers from alcoholism and my mother has deep mental health issues.
Growing up with her wasn’t always easy and still isn’t now — some days she is lucid and a wonderful mother.
Other days she’s violent and unstable.
But I know deep down inside her where she is well and unafflicted by her illness she is an incredible mother and kind.
I just have to accept that she is unwell and try to remember good times.
My family and I are estranged these days but it makes me want to work harder to be a stable and loving mother if I do become one someday.
At the end of everything I do still love my mom and am thankful she shielded me from him.
Thank you guys.
I’m so sorry to read your stories of similar things happening to you.
My inbox is always open if anyone ever needs to talk/vent.
Be well everyone.
My step-grandfather molested my 3 aunties, my eldest sister and possibly my other sister and cousin.
Only found out when my Nana was dying 11 years after he died.
They are buried side by side and I cannot bring myself to go visit my Nana because he is there also
My grandma actually legally disowned my mother for marrying my dad.
The family house was supposed to go to my mom, but after the disowning, Grandma didn't say who she wanted house to go to, resulting in a decades long family feud that has split the family even to this day.
Sad thing is, my parents actually ended up divorced after 20 years of marriage.
Mom took care of my grandma til the end and was the one who handled the funeral arrangements when my grandma passed two years ago.
She never asked for the house back.
It's worth millions.
Nobody told me any of this until I was thirty.
Great Grandpa was a soldier oppossing the Axis powers.
Him and his squad were caught by Italian troops and given the death penalty along with his friends.
They would be executed together.
At the time of the execution all of his mates died in front of his eyes but he survived because the soldier missed.
Without skipping a beat he faked his death by.... well lying on top of his deseaced friends bodies.
Surprisingly it worked and he got to escape
When my grandfather died, he wrote his will on his death bed.
He left his entire estate to my family, which was enormous.
His wife however, who despised us, in the biggest beep you move I've ever seen, wrote a directly conflicting will, leaving the estate to her family, none of whom I've ever met, and then killed herself.
It took around 5 years in legal hell to sort that out.
We ended up winning the case in the end, but it cost so much that we couldn't afford to keep his $3M house anymore.
The reason I had a "live in baby sitter" when I was 5 that moved in at 2am was because my mom's cousin killed 2 kids and we ended up harboring his daughter during the trial.
He's the only person on death row in my county.
My grandparents spent some time in lock up after my grandpa killed their newborn in a shell shock induced frenzy.
They were jailed because they buried her body in a cave and tried to hide it.
*my mom and her siblings were all adopted out very young and went back to their parents around 11 years or so later.
I knew that growing up, but didn’t know why until I was older.
To put it shortly - my family tree, is more like a very long branch.
Yes we have the genetic defects to prove it.
That my cousin was actually my half-brother.
Mom got pregnant in college and my aunt and uncle adopted him.
And, that my dad wasn't my biological father.
Mom and dad got divorced, she got pregnant by another man, and my dad wasn't able to have kids of his own so they got remarried and he raised me as his own.
That my favorite cousin *wasn't* missing.
All I knew growing up (he was 13 years older than me) was that he would come and go alot.
He lived with us when I was a baby and after he moved out he would visit every 6 months or so out of the blue, but we never visited him or called him.
His visits were one of my favorite things in the world.
I loved him like a brother.
By the time I was a teenager I did understand that he had issues with his parents.. they had kicked him out at 13 and my parents took him in.. but that kind of childhood messes with you.
In
between visits to my parents he avoided the rest of the family, moved alot, and didn't hold jobs for long, which is why my parents didn't always know where he was.
But in my later teens he stopped coming over at all.
I asked repeatedly if anyone had heard from him and I was told no..
I asked about contacting him and was told no one had a number or address for him.. he would come around when he felt like it..
But it stretched on for years.
I really worried he was dead, and I really missed him.
In my later 20s I finally found out that everyone knew where he
was the whole time.
He was in prison for murder :(
From what I hear it was actually somewhat justified.
He was defending his new wife, who I never got to meet.
I also found out some super beep things about how the extended family sided with his beep up parents and refused to help him or his wife when he got arrested .. and that they shamed my dad into not helping either.
I tried to send a message to him in prison but I don't know of he ever got it.
I wish he knew that *I* didn't turn my back on him for decades like everyone else did..
I just didn't know.
That my grandpa molested all the women in our family, not just me, and they let it happen because “that’s just what you do.”
My uncle is believed to have murdered two Australian police officers in the late 80’s
My dad’s sister had a secret daughter that would have been approximately his age.
She was 16 years older than him, and the family didn’t tell him until he was in college.
In their small town, there is a not-zero chance he could have/did date his niece.
Edit: for those asking, my dad was 3-4 when this happened.
He remembers a lot of shouting at the time, but not the topic.
Also, he is definitely NOT the baby in question
My uncle wasn’t missing a ton of birthday parties, family reunions, holiday dinners, etc.
when I was a kid because of his “really busy job,” but because he became a heroin addict after his wife took off with their daughter, my cousin who I’ve still never met.
Edit: Oh yeah he also tried to stab my aunt (his sister) in a drug-fueled rage when she went off on him about being a bum and exploiting my grandparents’ kindness.
My grandpa stopped him but got beaten unconscious in the process.
My grandparents’ neighbor heard the commotion and had to rush in and stop him at gunpoint.
I legit thought he was just a normal, nice guy who I
happened to rarely see before I learned all this beep in one night.
My aunt started the communist party in her country.
It got quite large, her children fled the country, and I still don't know what happened to her.
EDIT: there's a reason I didn't list the country.
Not so much let in on, as we found out by accident, but apparently my dad’s first love and him got into a serious car crash when he was 25 and she died.
He lived with her father for years after her death.
He still occasionally comes to visit my dad, even 30 years later.
We were always told he was a mentor until my sister pressed my mom on the subject.
One of my sister’s is even named after the girl that died (middle name) and we never even knew about her until last year.
None of us have ever brought it up with him.
My grandmother ran off and had an affair, got pregnant, came back to my grandfather & they raised the baby girl together.
My father and his siblings didn’t find out until they were older.
I’m not sure if my aunt new the truth before she passed away.
It’s also rumoured that there’s another half sibling somewhere out there so grandad seemed to be having an affair as well.
Just affairs all round back in the day!
My parents were going to abort me, but his friend stopped him.
My dad named me after his friend.
My dad and I have a great relationship now though lol.
My step grandfather has always been an alcoholic.
As a child he even taught me how to mix his favourite drink.
As kid at like 6 years old I would mix his drink as he liked and bring it in to him in the living room.
(Don’t ask what the drink was a mix off cause I literally can’t remember) and my grandpa always acted “funny”.
I always liked spending time with him cause I found him funny.
So I never saw the bad side of his alcoholism and he never made me drink or anything so overall he didn’t have any negative impact on me at all, but before I was born he could get so drunk he threatened to kill my grandma and when he got in a car accident and came home he was bleeding badly from his
head and he started saying my granny shot him.
He even threw out some of the wedding pictures my parents had.
I never knew how horrible he was.
Maybe cause he liked kids or something.
He would make me cocoa and watch Garfield with me when I was a kid, he was never a bad influence in my life.
So it was so weird to me when I found out these things about him.
Before he died tho, he really regretted drinking, and he completely stopped.
He became really depressed too until his granddaughter (biological) was born.
He was so happy about his granddaughter.
He died regretting everything and a sober man who was happy to have been able to meet his one and only
biological granddaughter.
Regardless of everything he really changed in the end and everyone was really upset he died.
Quite literally a "dark family" secret.
Being a white ass blond haired blue eyed little rat bastard at 6 and finding out my bio dad is black.
Funny enough my best friend at the time was whiter than me with blond hair blue eyes also had a black bio dad.
I guess our mums were just supper beep white.
I’m starting to think my family is just boring... Kinda hard to compete with the fascist great-grandfather or the plethora of affairs.
I always thought my uncle Dan died in a car accident.
Turned out he owed lot of money to a loan shark.
He and his partner were asked to play Russian roulette and one survives can walk away and get an extension for payment.
Uncle wasn't lucky.
What's with the quotes?
Anyway, turns out my father raped my sister, so there's that.
That my father and mother were both fugitives.
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