12 People Who Discovered Shocking Truths About Their Families

Everyone has a secret, but finding out something about a close family member can be shocking sometimes. In the following stories, hidden things came into light after years, causing huge surprises.

• Growing up, there was one room in our house we weren’t allowed to enter. Ever. Dad said it was “for storage” and always kept it locked.
  Sometimes, late at night, I’d hear faint music from inside. Or humming. I once asked what was in there, and he said flatly, “Nothing worth seeing.” After he passed, I finally opened the door.
  Turns out, it wasn’t a storage room. It was a soundproof music studio. Instruments. Tapes. A wall full of songs—all labeled with my name. He had been writing music for me, in secret, for over 20 years.
• My parents “had” to get married. They always told us they got married in 1961, but it was 1962, 3 months before my sister was born.
  What’s amusing is that my father was an accountant who was insanely fast with math. Whenever he was asked how many years they’d been married, he’d be off by one. My mother would correct him through clenched teeth, and then my father would nod and agree. © dramboxf / Reddit
• When I was 5 years old, Santa Claus left a Nintendo on our front porch. It was wrapped in a newspaper, and my parents had no idea who had gifted it to us. My dad, particularly, tried to figure it out. He was always suspicious that it had been a family friend.
  It was by far the best gift of the year, and we played it all the time throughout our childhood. Last Christmas, my mom explained that she was the one who had bought it and surreptitiously placed it on the porch. She didn’t tell a soul for 30 years. © Madame_F / Reddit

• My grandmother was famous in our town for her amazing cooking/catering, in particular her turkey dinners. Notably, her gravy was absolutely amazing. So delicious. She had a heart attack several years ago, and it convinced her to share some of her secret recipes with me, all except for her gravy recipe.
  When she died this spring, I was going through her pantry and found an entire bucket of a famous restaurant’s gravy mix. She was literally using this gravy mix as a base to make her incredible gravy. © beaubandit / Reddit
• Found out my grandma had a baby as a teenager and was forced to give him up for adoption by my great-grandparents. 40 years later, he found us. © dont-take-my-soup / Reddit
• My great-grandmother wasn’t actually Mexican, but rather was adopted by a Mexican family from a Chinese family who was being kicked out of Mexico when railroad construction was over. She always had more typically Asian features, but only spoke Spanish, and it was never really questioned. © b***yodust / Reddit

• After my mom died, I found out the real story behind my parents’ marriage. She came to my father’s country to visit some of her relatives. Met my father, and after just one week, she asked him to marry her so she could stay in the country. My father accepted because he had no one else, and his parents were pressing him to get married already.
  But the highlight of the story is that over time, the two of them fell in love with each other. Their love only grew over time, and they were really happy together. My mother spent her last days very ill, and she would accept only my father by her bedside.
  I am shocked that they got married just like that, out of the blue, and ended up loving each other so deeply. I can only hope to have as good and loving a marriage as they had. © Unknown author / Reddit
• My mom and older brother are not biologically related to me. My bio mom died sometime after I was born, leaving me, my sister, and my dad behind. My brother was the one who told me.
  My parents never told me because they wanted to protect me from the truth. I don’t know if my parents know that I know the truth, but I don’t want to bring it up either. © ItsGoT1me / Reddit
• Due to 23&Me, my Dad learned that his recently deceased father was not his biological father. It wasn’t a situation related to my grandma cheating either, it was a sperm donation. So, they knew this was the case for his entire life. Pretty crazy that they never told him; his parents did not pass until he was 65 years old. © usereddit / Reddit

• My aunt wasn’t my grandfather’s child. He met my granny when my aunt was a very sick infant; she had polio and wasn’t expected to survive. My grandad married my granny so she could get on his insurance and move to an area that had proper medical support.
  My aunt was the first infant to survive open-heart surgery at Yale New Haven Hospital, and although she had to be in leg braces most of her childhood, she had a great (although not long enough) life. My grandad loved her like she was his own, and I never knew until she went to her bio dad’s funeral when I was a teenager. © knittybitty123 / Reddit
• My wife’s mother’s family (in rural Iowa) had a schism within the family around inherited farm land. So growing up, when she visited grandma for two weeks in the summer, she never knew about 2nd-3rd cousins living in that small town. My wife found out when we started using Ancestry and tracing our family. © ctmurray / Reddit
• My aunt’s garden was the envy of the block. Vibrant flowers, flawless hedges, vegetables that looked grown for a magazine cover.
  She was out there every morning before sunrise, always in her sunhat, pruning silently. She’d wave if you passed, but never spoke much. People said she had a green thumb. Some said she had a gift.
  Last year, she moved to a retirement home. When I was cleaning out her shed, I found dozens of receipts. Every plant, flower, and vegetable had been ordered plastic, high-end, UV-resistant fakes. She hadn’t grown a thing in years.

Some of these stories have been really shocking, so if you’d like to read something to uplift your mood, check out 12 Families Who’d Make You Laugh and Cry at the Same Time.