Family secrets can range from the mildly embarrassing anecdote to a soul-shaking revelation. You don’t expect your family, the people who love you the most, to harbor secrets, but in retrospect, they are people too, and just like us, prone to mistakes. Here are some such people whose family secrets turned out to be wilder than a rollercoaster ride.
- My great-grandfather was a quiet, kind man and treasurer for his chapter of the Elks Lodge in Texas. He was attacked on his way home from an Elks Lodge meeting. He suffered amnesia and regained consciousness as a sailor on his way to Haiti. After landing, he lived in the country for a few months before getting into a bar brawl with a police officer and getting knocked out.
He regained consciousness in jail, with a new-found memory of who he was. He told this tale to a priest from jail, who believed him and wanted to help. The priest wrote my great-grandmother and the American government and somehow convinced the Haitian government to let him return to America. He returned to my great-grandmother, had two children, and was a law-abiding citizen for the rest of his life.
This story is so UNBELIEVABLE that when my mother narrated it six months ago, I was convinced it was a hoax. She has documents (the letters from the priest and others) and testimonials of his friends that say this behavior was uncharacteristic. - My aunt with a very “holier-than-thou” attitude has been having a 40+ year affair with a childhood sweetheart. This is a person that was always quick to criticize other people’s family issues and tried so hard to present her and her family as “perfect.”
Her husband is very rude and ill-mannered to our family, and she lets him completely get away with it. I guess we know why now.
- Not my family, but I thought I’d contribute. Friend turns 15, and she’s told she’s adopted. Turns out that both her parents died in a car crash when she was just a baby, and her uncle adopted her and raised her. Told her that both parents were dead.
A year later, a man messages her on Facebook, saying that he’s her half brother. Turns out the dad lived through the car crash and later remarried; her adopted parents were lying to her as they knew all along, the dad just didn’t want to keep her.
That’s the “secret,” so to speak. However, the story continues, as her biological father wanted to meet her. She flies out to meet him, stays with him, and meets his wife and her half siblings. She struggles with the idea of reconnecting with him because she both loathes and loves him.
Loathes him for not wanting her and getting a new family; loves him for wanting to make a difference in her life and reconnect. She takes the plunge anyway. 6 months later, he dies from lung cancer. Life’s cruel joke on her. - That my grandmother was adopted, sort of. My great-grandmother miscarried her child. At the time (1930s/40s, I think), all women were put in the same ward in the hospital after they gave birth, even if the baby didn’t survive. Anyway, there was a woman in the bed next to my great-grandmother who had just given birth, but she didn’t want a child.
She wanted the hospital staff to “get rid of it.” So they just gave the baby to my great-grandmother. No paperwork, or anything — they had What happened next changed everything…
TAP → NEXT PAGE → 👇
