"We Spread The Ashes Of A Total Stranger": People Are Revealing The Moment They Found Out Someone Close To Them Wasn't Who They Thought They Were
It's easy (and reasonable) to think we know all there is to know about someone close to us. But everyone has secrets, and sometimes, they'll take those secrets all the way to the grave. Recently, redditor u/OldCarWorshipper asked the r/AskOldPeople community to share the shocking thing they learned about someone after they passed away. Here are the wild secrets that were uncovered.
Note: This post contains mentions child abuse, domestic violence, and pregnancy loss.
1."My mom had two kids she put up for adoption before she married my dad. 23andMe opened that can of worms."
2."I had a great-aunt who never married. I just thought she was a lesbian. Turns out, she had a 40-year affair with a priest. They were supposedly 'madly in love.'"
3."That his entire life was a complete lie. He had great military stories and even gifted us his military sword, which we found out later came from a pawn shop. He was never in the military. His life stories of travel, adventure, and people he met while working as a bodyguard were elaborate and fascinating to listen to. None of it happened. On his deathbed, people came out of the woodwork, including his adult children, and informed us that he actually lived his life as a dangerous conman, conning everyone he knew throughout his lifetime, and lives were lost."
"His own family wasn't an exception. It was straight out of a movie. We spent days listening to old friends and family separately tell stories of who he really was, and I spent days with my jaw on the floor.
Honestly, I think they all showed up to get whatever was owed to them. My friend and I went to his house after he passed, and everything valuable was cleaned out.
Needless to say, during his ceremony, as we spread the ashes of a total stranger, all we could say was, 'Fuck you, Gary.'
To add insult to injury, I was wearing a sundress with freshly lotioned legs, and a gust of wind kicked up while I dumped his ashes. He was stuck to me for hours. It was horrifying. Like I said, straight out of a movie."
4."My uncle was gay. His wife knew. They hung out with his boyfriend all the time. We just thought he was a really close family friend."
5."My sister and I knew an older couple. The wife was always seemingly in ill health. She eventually passed away, and the husband confessed to me that both husband and wife were never married as they were, in reality, brother and sister. The wife/sister was on the husband/brother's health insurance at work. Both had the same last name."
6."The reason my cousin was never talked about in the family for decades was because she was in the witness protection program. Didn't see that one coming."
7."I had to go through a colleague's office after they died. I found evidence of an affair in a small lockbox. I shredded all of it."
8."When I was young, it was important to become something — an engineer, a doctor, a writer, etc. My aunt's kids were always excelling at something. My brother, sister, and I were average kids who stayed out of trouble, didn't do drugs, never got arrested, etc. My mother was always impressed with my cousins' many achievements and sometimes commented that we could do better and be like them. Well, you guessed it, it was all lies. They lived on the other side of town and had terrible grades, got in trouble, etc."
"When they got older, my cousins were regularly in trouble with the law. My father rented an apartment to one of them. The shit bag cousin promptly sold the new appliances and replaced them with free appliances people gave away.
He moved out, and while we were cleaning the apartment (he didn't know we were there), he started breaking in by prying a window open. He was coming back to steal tools my father had in the apartment.
All the shit came out about them when his lying mother died. My brother, sister, and I lived in the shadow of his mother's lies."
9."My grandfather had an entirely separate family. At his funeral, my mother's family asked them who they were, and a bunch of them showed up and said they were his children."
10."A friend of my best friend died in a motorcycle accident. The guy was married with two children under five years old. His wife got along with all of his friends very well. Authorities got a hold of his wife to come to the morgue and ID her husband. When she showed up, she was wondering why he didn't have on his helmet during the accident. Well, his girlfriend did and survived. No one knew the guy was having an affair. About 15 years later, she refuses to talk to any of her deceased husband's friends. She thinks they all knew what he was up to."
11."My paternal uncle's former mother-in-law killed my maternal great-grandfather in the 1950s. She was part of high society. She was also a person with alcoholism. My great-grandfather was working on a bridge; she was driving drunk and hit him. The powers that be decided that because she had young children and lots of money, it would serve the public interest if it was deemed a hit-and-run with no suspects. Case closed. My mother and I found out about it at my paternal grandmother's funeral. Evidently, it was an open secret on that side of the family."
12."I knew my step-grandpa was in WWII, as were many of our grandparents. I didn't know he was a B-17 pilot who got shot down and hid out in a French farmhouse from the Nazis until he was rescued."
13."When my mom was in the hospital giving birth to my brother (eldest child), my father had buggered off to Colorado to be present at the birth of his other child. And yes, my mom and dad were married when my brother was born. Who knows how many half-siblings we have out there?"
14."My great-aunt was a nurse in a mental hospital in the 1920s, and she fell in love with a guy who was being evaluated to stand trial for murder. She helped him escape, and they ran off to Florida but were eventually caught. My aunt got off pretty easy, but he got the death penalty."
15."Not after, but a year before her death, I learned that my 98-year-old great-aunt had been married to her 47-year-old female caregiver for a DECADE. They'd been best friends for 25 years and married for 10. I have a great-aunt who is five years younger than me! My 98-year-old great-aunt had been married to my great-uncle for 68 years and had four children, and she never really considered herself a lesbian; she just considered it to be as simple as 'love is love,' no labels required for them. It's a beautiful thing. I'm so glad I learned that my great-aunt was a total badass before she died so I could honor her as such during her last year of life."
16."Through doing genealogy, I found a kindly gentleman who was my fourth cousin in the UK. He was a retired teacher and refused to get a computer, so we corresponded through the mail. His letters were brilliant and laced with really clever humor. I came to adore him. After a while, he kindly offered to research my English family history for me, and I gladly accepted the offer. He lived in the same city my family had originally come from. A few years later, on a trip to England, I got to meet this man. He had never married and had a deformed leg due to one of those old-time diseases, but he drove me around to see where my ancestors had lived and was fun and interesting to be with."
"I was sad when he died a few years later. I had saved his letters and an oil painting he had done, and I continued to more or less idolize the man. However, a couple of years later, I received a message on Facebook asking if I knew my relative's whereabouts. I replied that he was dead.
The person wrote back that he was sorry the man was dead because he wanted to see him go to prison. It turns out this new contact was a former student, and the 'nice' teacher used to force several boys in his car to play 'games.'
Everyone wanted to report him, but they knew no one would believe them. They would have ended up getting in big trouble and probably getting thrown out of the prestigious private school.
This man had been traumatized, and finally, all these years later, he had gained the courage to go public with what my relative had done to many young boys. I don't know if he would have been jailed, but his reputation would have been ruined, and he would never have been able to face the world again. Sometimes, you just never can tell."
17."My father's cousin served six months in jail in the mid-'50s for stalking Oscar-winning Italian actress Anna Magnani while she was filming in the US. He had hundreds of photos of her squirreled away."
18."That my mother's best friend's sister died from a home abortion and not pneumonia. She became pregnant by her uncle at 13 and decided that she had to abort, so my mother and her best friend performed the abortion. She collapsed in school a couple of days later and died after going into a coma for two weeks. I learned my mother blamed herself entirely for the sister's death. It made sense because I don't know if I ever heard my mother laugh out loud."
19."My grandfather shot my grandmother. It grazed her cheek. There was a trial; he went to jail. I never knew this until both of them had passed — it was a big family secret. They had already divorced and remarried, which is when they had my mother. They never spoke about it."
What secret was revealed about someone you know after they passed? Tell us in the comments or fill out this anonymous form.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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