10+ Mysteries Which Haunted People’s Childhoods That Were Finally Solved Years Later

Childhood often harbors mysteries that linger with us throughout the years. Fortunately, people sometimes solve the unanswered questions and puzzling incidents that stuck with them for so long. As adults, they turn to social media to share their own mysteries and reveal the surprising answers that came much later.

• I met my wife in college and when we were dating she often mentioned that when she was a kid she had a play doctor’s kit that was stolen from her house. She had some surgeries really young and so her parents bought it for her to demystify the doctors office. She’d use it all the time on her dad poking and prodding him.
  
  One day I asked her about the robbery. Did they take everything? Jewelry? The TV? Other valuables? No, no, and no. It hit me. I asked “so, someone broke into your house and only stole your doctor’s kit, leaving anything worth fencing there?” “Yeah, why?” “Did you ever consider your folks were tired of you using the kit on them all the time after you got better?” “Oh, damn.”
  
  We confirmed it with her dad later but for 15 years she had believed some thief broke in and ONLY stole her beloved doctor’s kit. © Darkj / Reddit

• My husband said in middle school, there was a time that he’d get pulled out of class to shoot free throws in the gym. Only him. He didn’t think this was strange, but didn’t understand why he was the only one that got to do that. Turns out, his parents told his teachers he couldn’t participate in Sex Ed. © hyzdie / Reddit

• One evening when camping, my brother caught a fish that we decided to keep alive in the cooler for some reason. Well, the next morning we ran out to see the fish and it had grown like 5 inches! We were so excited and didn’t know how the fish grew that much overnight! Last year we brought it up and my dad said that he had got up that morning and seen the fish being taken by a raccoon and that he spent the next hour or so frantically fishing for another one. He said he caught the new fish (the first one he was able to catch) just a few minutes before we got up. I had never questioned that the fish growing that much as I grew up, but after hearing what really happened I did feel like we probably should have wondered about that more. © MorningStar_16 / Reddit

• I solved a family mystery for my mom. I wasn’t allowed to play console video games during the week all the way until I was 18 but some nights I’d really be craving it so I would noiselessly creep through my house into my basement where I could play video games in peace. But every once in a while one of my parents would need something from the basement and I’d quickly turn off the TV monitor, hide in the guest room and pray they didn’t turn on a light or notice the Xbox was on.
  
  One night I ducked into the guest room and hid behind the bed. To my horror my mom followed me into the room and turned on the lights. I was panicking so when she started digging through the closet with her back to me I made a run for it. I nearly brushed her shirt and if she’d seen me I’d probably have given her a heart attack. But I made it and kept going all the way to bed.
  
  About 5 years went by and my mom said something like “you’re such a quiet walker” and I told her it was because of my basement trips thinking I had nothing to lose. My mom’s face went kind of solemn and when I explained she said, “so there really was someone down there.” And she explained that she remembered that exact night and the feeling that there was a ghost in the room. © Salt_Paint8157 / Reddit

• My dad used to say he could stop the rain for a moment by snapping his fingers. He’d do it in the car, when it was pouring. I was so mesmerized; told all my friends about it, well into late elementary school. I’ve since realized he’d snap as we drove underneath an overpass. © te***amockingbird16 / Reddit

• When I was 4, I vividly remember getting into my mom’s car and her telling me that our cat had died. She told me how she rushed him to the vet because something was seriously wrong. Despite her best efforts he died. I never knew why he died, and why it happened so suddenly, but I accepted that it happened.
  
  Fast forward about 15 years, I’m home from college for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, I’m out driving to the store with my dad and uncle. They are talking about the cat my parents got for Christmas one year (the cat mentioned above). My dad says, “yeah, that thing was too aggressive, so I took it to a farm and gave it away.”
  
  Normally, when the family pet dies, the parents lie to the kid and say it “went to a farm upstate somewhere” to ease the burden. Not my parents. They told me the horrifying “truth” even though it wasn’t true. © dpderay / Reddit

• I remember being about 8, and in the car with my dad. I was in the front seat and we were driving somewhere, and this song came on the radio. He cranked it and said something about it being the best guitar playing ever. He really jammed out, which was really uncharacteristic because he was usually so stoic. It was the only time I heard the song, and he died before I could ever ask him what song it was. When I asked around, no one knew what I was talking about or what song I was thinking of.
  
  So I had this melody in my head for years, but how do you look up a song that has no lyrics? So for years and years, this song stayed on the back burner in my brain. I was afraid to forget it. Somehow this story pops up when I’m like 26 or so, chatting with my husband and we searched YouTube for “best guitar songs”. After about 15 minutes, we find it. Cliffs of Dover was the song that I’d burned into my brain on repeat for 16 years. Now I jam out to it with my kids. © 1thruZero / Reddit

• My dad used to be religious, and every night until I left the house when he’d tuck me in he’d say “We love you. God bless you. Goodnight.” And I was always wondering why, since he had stopped going to church long ago.
  
  Fast forward to me being 28 years old and watching an old Bruce Springsteen concert together (one of his favorite artists), and Bruce says, “We love you. God bless you. Goodnight!” at the end of his set. I turned my head towards my dad and asked if this is why he’s said that for years to me at night. He laughed and said, “I have no original material.” © fermi90 / Reddit

• I had nightmares for years, literally every dream I had was where my older sister was a robot and trying to harm me. She would come in the form of a tank, things that looked like transformers, metallic spider, had a lot of knives and things on her. Every single metallic robot you can imagine with my sister’s face on it. Had only these dreams for all of elementary school. It was solved when I brought it up at 17.
  
  I was born super early at 4 months and with countless issues and complications. After I was born I spent 5 months in the NICU, where I received a lot of attention from doctors, had multiple surgeries and had a feeding tube put in me. My mom was sad that I couldn’t meet my sister and she couldn’t meet me (she was 4 at the time). So, she put a picture of my sister’s face above me in my incubator thing so I could see my sister.
  
  Cute idea, but this ended up causing my brain to put together the only two things I knew... Surgical tools and scary hospital equipment with my sister’s face. It took us so long to figure out what these nightmares meant. © Cambuhbam / Reddit

• The mystery of why my mom never ordered anything for herself and was never hungry whenever she took my sister and I to eat out. 25 years later, she told me she really was hungry and wanted to eat too but she only had enough money to feed the two of us. She didn’t want us to feel guilty. I love my mom so much. © thunder_spears / Reddit

• My dad used to occasionally burst out with this one line of a song: “...said Barnacle Bill the Sailor...” Only ever that line. When I was 6 or so I asked him why and he said it was an old song that was absolutely filthy and I was too young to hear the rest of it. This continued once or twice a year until I was 18. I told him I was an adult now and he could tell me the rest of the song. I distinctly remember him looking up from the newspaper, sighing and folding it, then going, “The truth is I can never remember the rest of the song.” And then went right back to reading the newspaper. © dabbit-secondus / Reddit

• I figured out my dad wasn’t on a “business trip” in 2005, he was at my uncle’s wedding and didn’t want to take me all the way there because it was in Ireland and he knew I’d want to go if he told me. In hindsight, I probably should have picked up on the lie. My dad is a school custodian. © charvey1 / Reddit

Not all mysteries are as lighthearted as these ones. Some bizarre incidents left people in shock and years later they decided to share them online, in search of a logic explanation.