10+ Unusual Family Secrets That Made People Question Everything

We all know families have secrets. Some of them keep peace, while others can make us feel really uneasy. Research shows secrets fall into 3 types — taboos, rule violations and conventional secrets. But instead of studying them, we wanted to share the deepest secrets people told under an anonymous username online — secrets that completely turned their world upside down.

• One of my friends did 23 and Me and discovered she had 185 half siblings she didn’t know about. The fertility doctor her mom had gone to was just using his own sperm and not telling anyone if a couple was having trouble conceiving because of the father. What’s even crazier is that, apparently, he was not the only fertility doctor doing this. A couple of other “super clusters” of siblings have been found because of DNA testing. In most cases, the parents had no idea this had happened until their kids got DNA testing done. © PM_me_your_fantasyz / Reddit
• Every single one of my uncles is currently having an affair. I have 4 uncles. © Unknown User / Reddit
• My father won the lottery, and we’ve been pretending to be poor, so our family doesn’t try to ask for money. © Unknown User / Reddit

• My grandparents didn’t talk to each other 20 YEARS before my grandfather finally kicked the bucket. They lived in the same house the entire time, too, and no one knows why they weren’t on speaking terms. © GideonIsmail / Reddit
• I found out that my dad hid money all over the house, not huge amounts mind you, but $60 here, $120 there. Felt like a bit of a scavenger hunt when we were cleaning out his stuff. He was always a bit of a sneakily generous guy, always gave me and my brothers a secret handshake with money tucked in his palm when we’d go back to school after a weekend home, etc, so wouldn’t be surprised if he’d done it intentionally. Made us smile every time we found some, the final total was somewhere around $800. © Mzunguman / Reddit
• That my cousin’s dog didn’t run away... I was with my uncle on the porch and watched that poor pup get snatched off the ground by a massive hawk. A blink and it was gone. There was nothing we could do. We looked at each other after a solid few minutes of silence, and he leans over: “That dog ran away.” I nodded and that was the last we discussed it. © ZedisonSamZ / Reddit

• Got a birthday card on my 17th birthday from Christine. Asked my (adoptive) mum who Christine is. “Oh, that’s your sister.” The only living biological relative. Didn’t know she existed. © washrag*** / Reddit
• My two remaining grandparents, my father’s father and my mother’s mother, married each other when they were 75. This made my mother and father stepbrother and stepsister. Since the son of my father’s sister (my aunt) is my cousin, and the son of my mother’s brother (my uncle) is also my cousin, I became both cousins. I am, therefore, my own cousin. I’ll never be alone... © Pigs100 / Reddit
• When my grandfather passed away, we discovered that he did not exist. His name was not in any government registry. He was a normal citizen, paid taxes, had a license and everything. Lived a long life, married to my grandmother for over 50 years, had multiple children, everything normal. Still to now, no one knows who he really was and why he had a false name. © daveypump / Reddit

• 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 us to make it seem legit. I never ever actually received any letter from him. © kikistiel / Reddit
• Discovered that my sister stole my father’s $25k Rolex less than 24 hours after he died. I only discovered it when her and her husband made a frivolous purchase and I wondered where they got the money since they were always broke and begging my parents for money. I got suspicious, it hit me that she might have stolen and sold the Rolex.
  I had the paperwork, ran a track on the sales history and discovered it had been sold to a pawn shop down the street from where my sister lives. Went to the pawn shop and after a bit of persuasion got them to tell me who sold it to them, and it was my sister. My mom and I disowned her. © dallased25 / Reddit

• My mother passed after a few months of giving birth to me. Whenever I asked how she died, the answer was that she passed away in her sleep, and no one knew why. I just learned a few years ago that she actually had cancer and was pregnant with me. Giving birth to me severally weakened her and eventually led to her death. I don’t think I’ll be able to ever forgive myself because from what I’ve heard from everyone, she was a really good woman. © Iamyeetlord / Reddit

Don’t go anywhere, we have more unsettling secrets that online users shared — for instance, in this similar article, one person shared that they found out their grandma did not have a uterus and this fact shattered their entire reality.