People share the shocking family secrets they learned later in life
Every family has a skeleton or two in their closet, and most of the time, these skeletons stay hidden. Some, however, are unexpectedly dragged out into the open – with explosive consequences. A recent “Ask Reddit” thread asked users of the online forum to (anonymously) share the dark family secrets they stumbled upon by accident, and some of them are soap opera-level dramatic.
1. Scam-ma
“My great-grandmother was a dirty Irish scammer (sorry Nanny) in WW2. She used to scam multiple American and British soldiers who would come to Liverpool to be sent to the European front into "marrying" her, then collect a percentage of their pay and pawn any jewellery she was given.” – SerenityHill48
2. Family man
“My great-grandfather had two families that lived about 200 yards from each other for about 20 years. Neither had any idea the other existed until the funeral. When the priest asked the spouse to step forward, two women did. I've been told it was quite a scene in the aftermath. I remember going to see my grandma when I was younger and being told these people were my half cousins but had no idea what that meant until I was lot older and my dad told me what had happened.” – jerk40
3. Troublemaking ancestors
“Apparently, waaay back in the day, there were ship wreckers in my family. They'd go up to the cliffs and shine a light to direct ships onto rocks, then they'd steal whatever they could.” – zebedir
4. Black widow
“The rumour in my family is that my great grandma (GG) was a "Black Widow". She had four husbands and all four of them died mysterious deaths. One of her husbands was stabbed to death by my GG's brother and the story was my GG was being attacked by him and her brother walked in on it and had to kill him in self-defence. No charges were ever brought against either of them.
“My grandma (GG's daughter) stopped speaking to her when she was 18 (in 1950) and my GG just died in 2014 (she was 96). That's a long time to not speak to your mum, something serious must have happened. The rumour was that my grandma knew for a fact that her dad was killed by my GG and she got away with it, but my grandma refuses to talk about it, even after my GG's death. I actually grew quite close to my GG the last 10 years of her life and she was the sweetest, most cliché old grandmother you could imagine 99 per cent of them time. But every so often when something would make her angry, she would get this morbidly evil look on her face and it would make me think maybe all the rumours are true.” – Phillycheeese
Did you discover a dark family secret later in life? Let us know in the comments!