93 Of The Darkest Family Secrets These People Found Out
Imagine discovering that your grandfather abducted your grandmother when she was 12. He got her pregnant, married her, and they later had another two dozen babies.
It might sound like something from a Netflix horror or drama. But it’s actually a deep and dark family secret that someone found out long after their grandparents had died.
Many families have skeletons in the closet. Buried beneath the surface of happy photos, summer holidays, and long-held traditions are lies and secrets that could be turned into best sellers. Sometimes, they come tumbling out – often by sheer chance. Extra-marital affairs, criminal activity, people living entire double lives – it’s the stuff that can make or break a family.
Someone recently asked“What’s the worst family secret you’ve accidentally found out?” And netizens didn’t hold back. From eternity collars to eternal regrets, some of the replies might leave you wondering what your own family is hiding. Bored Panda has put together a list of the top stories shared by people who found out things they were never meant to know.
We also explore how common secrets are, and what harm they can do to individuals and families. You’ll find that info between the images.
My mom never let me spend the night at my (step) grandparents my entire childhood! My uncle lived with them. I used to throw a damn fit! When I got older I found out my uncle had been convicted of murdering a little girl (I think around 4-6yrs old) In a horrible way, i resembled the little girl a lot honestly. He was a teenager and only served until he was 21. I cried and apologized to my mom, she was just trying to make sure I was safe. 😭
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Anyone who says their family doesn’t have a secret might just not know about it yet. Or, maybe they’re lying.
In fact, people keep about 13 secrets at any one time on average, five of which they’ve never told anyone. That’s according to research by Michael Slepian, one of the leading experts on the psychology of secrets and author of The Secret Life of Secrets.
Some secrets are kept strictly confidential while others are revealed to a few select souls. Slepian says there are 38 common categories our secrets fall into. They include beliefs, family, finances, ambitions, habits, hobbiessubstance use, mental health struggles, cheating, workrelationships, bedroom shenanigans and more.
The kid who lived next door to my mom & her siblings turned out to be their biological brother. My grandparents had 7 kids back to back, meanwhile the neighbors couldn’t conceive so my grandparents just gave them one of their kids. He didn’t find out until he was 18.
my dad is bisexual and had multiple secret boyfriends in my childhood even tho he was a homophobic republican. 😇 I tell everyone I can bc I know he wouldn’t want it that way
Apparently, the most common secrets people keep are related to having told a significant lie (without revealing it), having a romantic desire whilst single; and issues about money and personal finances.
People are more likely to share their experiences with substance use or hating their job than they are to reveal secrets about romantic desires or their behavior in the bedroom. These, says Slepian, are”consistently the top secrets shared with no one”.
When my dad passed away, some of his siblings thought they won the inheritance lottery. They scoured our house for his will and brought our insurance guy over to discuss god knows what less than 24 hours after his passing. They thought the businesses were under his name but were shocked to find out that they were under my moms. We still don’t talk to most of them till this day.
I caught my grandma’s brother (a self proclaimed homophobic womanizer) having seggs with his life long MALE FRIEND, and told me to keep quiet or else, so of course I WENT BACK TO MY GRANDMA’S HOUSE AND TOLD EVERYONE WHAT I’VE SEEN!!! He tried denying it, but his “friend” came out and told everyone it was true, slapped the ish off his face in front of everyone and walked out. after that he went out with multiple women, and got 💀 by one of the woman’s husband. when his children were cleaning up his belongings, they found many love letters he wrote to his “friend”.
my cousin was kidnapped by his father after his parents divorce. The dad took him from Russia to Spain and my aunt hasn’t seen or heard from her son in 30 years
Not surprisingly, experts say secrets can be harmful. But not in the way you might think.
“The idea that our secrets hurt us mostly because hiding them is difficult and stressful turns out to be wrong,” explains Slepian. “Our secrets do hurt us, but often for other reasons associated with feelings of shame, isolation, and inauthenticity.”
The expert adds that these experiences can leave us feeling helpless. And that holding a secret back in conversation is just a small slice of the pain and stress caused by secrets.
I just found out my grandpa married my grandma when she was 14 years old and he was 28 years old 🙃 they ended up having 8 kids together
My grandparents passed years ago but I recently found out that my Grandma was kidnapped by my Grandpa in Mexico. I’m not talking Romeo and Juliet story. She was just 12. He saw her walking home from school with her books, decided he wanted her, grabbed her, and threw her in his truck. She tried to escape for days but couldn’t. Eventually, he got her pregnant, and because of the fear of gossip in the town and judgment from the Catholic church, she stayed and married him. Over time, she learned how to be his wife, and together they had 13 children. Growing up, I only knew them as a couple deeply in love who grew old side by side. I was often left alone in their care, and I thought of my Grandpa as a sweet, hardworking man who respected his wife. Learning the truth completely shattered the way I saw them and left me really confused…..so yes I did spill it, I called my bestfriend and we stayed on the phone for hours and now im here telling you. They say not to speak ill of the dead or they will come back to haunt you. I wish he would 🤨 I wish he would.
My great grandmother wasn’t actually my great grandmother. She kidnapped my grandmother when she was younger and just made everyone think she was her daughter. So I have a secret family somewhere
Evan Imber-Black, a professor of marriage and family therapy at Mercy College in New Yorkagrees. “People keep secrets for all kinds of reasons but mainly to protect relationshipsthemselves or others,” he says. “Secrets become harmful when a relationship is injured, or when it haunts the secret holder.”
And according to Slepian, keeping a secret has been associated with a lower life satisfaction, lower quality relationships, and symptoms of poor psychological and physical health.
My grand uncle died of Covid, and his eldest son went to get his house ready, and found his sister’s body in a rug in the garage. She was thought to be couch surfing on the west coast for three years.
My grandpa was sick and thought he was dying so he confessed to having another family, he didnt die btw 😂
Took a 23andme DNA test… turns out our grandpa was indeed not our grandpa. The way my family found out was me high-fiving my cousin yelling “what’s up half-cuz”. They didn’t talk to me for three years after that. 💀😂
Psychologist Maria Mifsud says there are three types of family secrets. Individual secrets are the ones only one member of the family knows. For example, only a father knows that he has an affair baby, or only a mother knows that she once had an abortion.
Internal family secrets are shared by two or more family members, who keep at least one other person in the dark. “For example, only the parents know that their daughter was conceived out of wedlock,” writes Mifsud. “An especially complex situation arises when a son or daughter is the only one to share a secret with one of his or her parents, as this entails a serious conflict of loyalties.”
My great grandfather left one of his kids out of his will. The siblings and children all divided their portions of the inheritance so their other sibling wouldn’t know they were deliberately left out.
My great grandpa lied to the whole family abt what he did during ww2 until his death and we found out what he rlly did 4 yrs when i came across an article. Turns out he was building the fxcking atomic bomb 😭
Then you get shared family secrets: those known by the whole nuclear family. “These are secrets the family will keep within the family walls and never disclose to an outsider; for instance, no one apart from the nuclear family knows that the father was in prison,” Mifsud explains.
Like the other experts, Mifsud warns that secrets can have a negative impact. “Family secrets have consequences beyond what the secret keepers ever imagined,” she says. “I have met individuals that were afraid that their partners would get to know their secret (a traumatic episode for example). Thus, they unconsciously avoided forming intimate relationships out of fear that if their partners were to discover this secret, they would reject them.”
I took an Ancestry DNA test. I found out that my grandpa had an affair 60 years ago and got another woman pregnant. The other woman was also married, and she raised the kid as her husbands. We all only found out when we the Ancestry results came back. Surprise half uncle and cousins!
my mom wanted to abort me but my grandmother stopped her then my grandmother proceeded not to help me when i was homeless to escape my mom’s abuse (don’t make people who don’t want kids have kids if ur not gonna step up)
Misfud warns that the secret-keeping culture can be carried on from one generation to another. “During my line of work, I became aware of many cases where children were raised in an atmosphere of secrecy,” she revealed. “These children in return grew up with a sense that something is wrong, and were afraid to discuss their intuitions with their parents.”
The expert adds that in these families, once secrecy becomes the norm, there is no end to the ways in which information is blocked from flowing. Children learn to keep secrets from parents, and parents keep secrets from children and from one another. “This learning process can be carried over into generations as the children marry and keep secrets from their spouses,” she says.
Not a secret but on one of my relatives wedding the brides mother ran off with the grooms father on the wedding day
My dad tried to kill my mum before they got married like full on murder attempt and she still decided to marry him cause she felt so trapped
The psychologist says family secrets often create barriers and affect family communication.
Family members may experience tension, anxiety, loneliness, and stress-related symptoms like sleeplessness and headaches, she warns. “Furthermore, secrets can lead to a developmental deep freeze, which means that when secrets are made between a parent and a child at key points in time during a family’s development, they hinder the child’s natural growth of individuation and independence.”
When I was little my dad hid in the crawlspace under our house after my mom got a restraining order against him and he was plotting to unalive us all
I always thought I was special having a video of my birth when we didn’t have one of my sister’s……. Only when I was pregnant with my own child and mentioned having a birth video for my child too, did my mom tell me that the only reason we had a video of my birth was because my dad was in federal prison at the time of her delivery. 💀
My dad drunk told me i was named after his first love and my mom doesnt know 😭😭
😤 my mother hadnt heard from her brother since 2002 and asked me if I’d help her find him. I couldn’t find him online, no fb, no social media, it was like he didn’t exist. so because the Internet was pretty new when he went missing I assumed he had died and that’s why I couldn’t find him. so for about 8 years off and on I’d look up John Doe pictures trying to help identify bodies…but none with pictures were him. so, one day I asked her what the police had told her or her sister when she had reported him as missing. apparently she had never talked to the police.
so to save a lot of boring details the local PD contacted him after talking to me and gave him my number, we reconnected. I found out why he went “missing” and it was because both sisters essentially took the jewelry off my dying grandmother when she was in hospice and made her cry. after the funeral he cut them out and they still don’t know I found him.
my dad got his step daughter pregnant she kept the baby…. my steps sisters kid is also my sister…. to make it all even more … 😬 … she is now dating my step brother from my mother’s side of the family
to top it all off, my step sisters mother murdered her husband back in the 90s, his name was Doug gardner…. she buried him in the flower garden… Doug got Doug into the garden….
I swear I need to write a book or make a movie lmfao
My coworker asked me to stay for a while after closing because her ride didn’t arrive yet and her rideeee was…..my uncle. 🫠
My mom was murdered when I was 7. Two men did it. One got life the other got 7 years. When I was 14 I met my “long lost uncle” and spent three years with my moms killer with out knowing. 😳
My dad got remarried and they were trying for a kid, but never told her he had a vasectomy. They were trying for about 8 years. One night she was venting to me and I said maybe it’s cause he had a snip snip… she had no idea 💀
my great grandmas family was in the KKK….. they are all full blooded cherokee
my grandma is a die hard christian and is against abortions but I later found out she had one herself cause she didn’t know who the daddy was 💀
I was a donor baby. They still think I don’t know.
My uncle, a full blooded indigenous man, tried to join the Kkk 3 seperate times and was upset that they rejected him AND that we weren’t supportive. His mom was on the tribal council and we lived on the Rez.
My dad had an affair with his brothers wife while his brother was dying of brain cancer, he moved into their home within months after his death
my dad is not my biological dad & my biological dad died years ago. my mother had an affair on my “dad” and i was the one who discovered it through an ancestry dna test. 2/3 kids are not his biological children. 😭
One of my daughters wears a eternity collar and she thinks I dont know but her cousin told me
I was almost aborted but when my mom went to the clinic and they did an ultrasound and saw that there was two of us she decided not to go through with it simply because she thought it would make her popular to have twin babies 😭
my aunt’s twin sister was stolen by the doctor. no one knew she had a twin until she was in her 40s and my grandma casually said she wondered what it’d been like to raise both
Found out that my grandpa was dying because of cancer but my family was keeping it as a secret so that he doesn’t get stressed out. I was too young by that time and told him “grandpa you’re gonna die soon” 🤷♀️
We found out that my great great uncle fathered 17 illegitimate children in our small town of 1000 people
I’m adopted and most people in my biological family didn’t know I existed until I got back in contact with them at 21 years old…,I am the family secret
2 sets of my grandparents met through being swingers then two of them fell in love so they divorced their original partners and got married
My grandpa was a polygamist and had 3 wives. my grandma gave him 4 kids, his other wives gave him 5 kids. none of the kids belong to my grandpa and when he found out at 75, he died of a heart attack within 12 hours. A hoe got played by hoes😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I found out my uncle was having an affair with my coworker when she asked if I wanted to see a picture of her new man.
I was born in a prison. Didn’t know till adulthood but when i was a child my uncle would sing Akon’s “Convict music” adlib at me.
im only alive bc my mom needed an anchor baby to stay in the the states 😭🙏
Found out my uncle cheated on his wife of 30+ years because my cousin posted on here looking for her dad and it was a picture of him from the 90s 😮💨
I took an ancestry dna test and had a match for a first cousin I’ve never heard of. Turns out my uncle had a kid with another woman that his family doesn’t know about. I met up with my long lost cousin around Christmas
i have precious family heirlooms that my grandma gave me while fighting cancer and everyone thinks they’re missing…. it’s been 8 years…
My brother told me my dad wasn’t my real dad during a casual conversation at Walmart and when I told our sister she said she knew years earlier because she overheard our mom talking about it and pretended to listen to music while her iPod was paused 💀
Caught my uncle meeting up at a hotel with my BEST FRIENDS MOM in high school. Yes I did introduce her mom to my fam. Yes I take full responsibility for BOTH of their divorces. I told my mom and let her handle the adult side of it 🤣
My father told me he was an only child and that his parents were dead. 2 years after he passed away I got a call from his sister.
So she was looking for her brother for over 20 years unfortunately she found his obituary (he passed away in 2020) and that’s where she found out about me and it’s crazy we were secretly looking for his family my whole life. My mom hired private investigators and everything. My dad was essentially a ghost. There’s only 5 ppl that knew my dad which is me, my mom and 3 other friends of his and they said they don’t know where he’s from or who he’s related to and my father NEVER talked about family. He didn’t even have his parents name on his birth certificate and when he died they said they have no records of anybody that’s connected to him. So when she called she put the pieces together for me. They were really really close. They lived together in their 20’s and after an argument with their mom one day he woke up and left and she never seen him alive again. She showed me pictures of him at her wedding, holding her first son, their baby pictures together, and both my dad’s parents who lived longer than he did. My aunt is amazing we talk every week. She told me why he left, thats a crazy story in itself. 😂😂😂
My mum found out her dad wasn’t her dad at 45. She was not quiet about it. Told everyone. She found court documents with her father’s side trying to fight to just be able to see her when she was growing up. They fought for her when her mums side abu$3d her. Her biodad also had died a year before she found out. She was devastated.
My mum tried everything to abort me. Drank concussion and she bled for a whole month and thought I was gone. Her tummy was still small. Guess who showed up 8 months after. 💅. Turns out im the only girl she had. I have three brothers.
Not mine, but my husband’s 🥲 We moved into my MIL old house and while we were cleaning an old cabinet, I found paternity papers. It had the paperwork, polaroid of my MIL, alleged father and my husband (he was about 8 months old and this was the early 90’s). The results you may ask? 0.00% probability that the alleged father was biological 😭😭😭 BUT THERE’S MORE!!!! I also found adoption papers in that same cabinet. After she gave birth to my husband, she gave him up for adoption bc he was biracial and she lived in a white town (who basically outcasted her bc of his skin color). The agreement stated that he had to be placed in a foster home out of state and nowhere close to where she lived. She went on with life for a few months, started to feel awful about it and reached out to the agency. She found out he was placed 30 minutes from where she lived and she got him back through breech of contract. Finding those documents was WILD, to say the least lol
my grandpa was a college professor and CHEATED on my grandma with one of his STUDENTS. that student has been my other grandma my entire life. nobody bothered to tell me any of this, i just pieced it together one day at 17
my dad has a child with his uncle’s wife…she’s 20 years old now and I call her sis all the time bc she’s …my cousin/sister
my “cousin” is an offspring of my aunt’s daughter and son 😭 she doesn’t know about it
My grandma stole my moms wedding ring when my mom died and my dad didnt find out until my cousin got married 6 years later
My cousin is actually my brother… My uncle and dad both mingled with the same woman at the same time but my dad could not claim him because he was MARRIED! So my uncle took one for the team and we later found out because he looks EXACTLY like my dad 😂😂😂
Uncle had two women pregnant at the same time.. took care of one but not the other. The story was, he ignored one bc the mom was underage.
My grandpas a pastor (83) and was having an affair with like 15 of my grandmas caregivers all ranging from 19-60…. Stole my grandmas money to pay for women… I hacked all his accounts when I was suspicious… he literally spent hundreds of thousands that she inherited… so I sent out a mass email to all his pastor friends… exposed him to everyone in the family… he ended up Married one of the caregivers right after and tried suing us for defamation lmaooo
I’m about 80% sure my mom and aunt unalived their dad bc he was sick and they both needed his money BAD (mom was in legal trouble for stealing and aunts house was gonna be foreclosed, and all of a sudden my grandpa was 💀). And when I brought it up to them, they beat me and broke my foot 😭😂
In high school my brother was grounded and took my step moms phone when she was asleep to text someone and saw messages of her cheating on our dad 😳
My great-grandmother moved to the US to avoid taxes she & her brother owed to the Ottoman Empire before WWI, after it was defeated she decided to stay in the US and get married and start a family. However, she already had a husband and kids living in Poland. It was kept a secret. My dad only learned of this when his cousin from Poland visited and he talked about letters he found from great-grandma and her kids.
my great grandmother was married off at 9yo to her 25 yo cousin bec she was an orphan and needed to be spoken for or she would be “up for grabs”. this was yemen in the early 1900s. he was widowed with a daughter. they consummated their marriage when she got her period at 13. she had my grandmother at 14. so sad.
Did a DNA test to find my bio dad. Everyone cheered me on. Got my result back and was excited only to find out he assaulted my mom and that how I was made. Everyone knew but still let me do the test. Then I found his obituary he had passed 2 weeks before I got my results back. So gain a dad and lost him in multiple ways ✨trauma✨
One of my grandmother’s sisters killed her husband and got away with it. No one really knew how he died
My dad got his side pregnant while my mom was pregnant… the kids are exactly 7 days apart. We’ve never met the other bro, They’ll be 13 this year
When I was 7ish My mom brought me to Kentucky to meet her friends daughter. Once we landed she gave me Benedryl for “allergies” and I literally slept into the next morning. I woke up in a random room and started crying because I didn’t know where I was or where my mom was so I sat there for a few hours until my mom came back and we immediately flew back home. When I was 17 I asked my dad about it he said “ I was deployed and she cheated that weekend while she was supposed to be watching you” 🙂
I was adopted by a lovely white couple and when my grandmother on my dads found out I was black she offered my parents 1500$ in cash to take me back to my birth mom because she didn’t want me “blackening” the family line 😳.
my family urgently and very quickly moved from MA to NY in like 2012. never knew why until a year or two ago when I found out my mother wrote an extremely homophobic article and was getting TORREE up online real bad. reddit doxxed her and people made threats and sent death wishes, which is why we moved. people made comments about me and my siblings like “I hope they turn out gay” 4/5 of us are in fact, LGBT 😭
Someone who is super conservative in my family had an abortion when she was a teenager and NONE of her children or family knows. Same person who would blast me for being pro choice
My grandpa paid for his girlfriend before my grandmas ab*rtion and then never spoke to her again…. The man now votes against women’s rights… I told the whole fam.
My uncle went on the view in the 90s because he was a founder of a Christian swingers group
my mom wears an eternity collar, i found out pic searching it bc her last one was even more sus
My mom confessed she’s always been attracted to women but has “turned away from that life of sin”
I found out my mom was cheating and sat on it for weeks. I finally told my dad. They divorced, my mom blamed me, and I chose to live with him. 32 now and have no idea what shes up to besides knowing shes divorced again and living with my sister. I dont talk to anyone in my family anymore 👍🏼
My gpa passed away, my GMA started dating this guys she went to hs with. Then told my mom that was her real dad. Did ancestry and found out that wasn’t her dad either 😅
I found a marriage certificate with a woman that has my mothers name, same exact signature and she married someone with a very similar name to my grandfather – her dad 👀 no clue what that’s about but very sus
My grandfather would sexually assault my mom and my father(his son) knew and didn’t cut off his father, or family. All of my grandfathers family said my mom was lying, and my dad NEVER defended her to them.
Me and my ex ran into his male cousin and his bf, so when I met aunty and he said, this is my cousin’s mom I said, oh yeah , and aunty said, you met my son? So I said: yeah I met him and his bf while at the Raleys by my house, they live by me”. MY EX NEVER TOLD ME HIS COUSIN WAS DEEP IN THE CLOSET TO HIS FAM AND I OUTTED HIM AND IT HAUNTS ME FROM TIME TO TIME
I found out my half brother was having an affair with my full blood brother wife on a family trip 💀
my brother cheated on his husband like at 2 pm and made me promise not to tell anyone and everyone knew by like …. 3 pm
