30 Wild Stories Of People Whose Double Lives Eventually Caught Up With Them

My grandmother passed away a couple years ago. While going through her house, my family found a box with my grandfathers name on it in his handwriting. My grandfather died before I was born. It was taped closed and the dust on it suggested it hadn’t ever been opened.

Inside, my family found newspaper clippings and other documents.

Turns out that in the early 1900’s, my grandfather took a road trip with friends to see the ocean. During their time at the beach, their car was stolen. They decided to stay awhile; being in their late teens and out of school, they decided to earn some money and have a good time.

My grandfather met a Mexican girl and married her within the course of a month. There was an article on the vehicle theft, as well as another on the marriage and a marriage certificate.

We could never find information on what happened next. We don’t even rightly know if they married for love, to get her citizenship, if they had kids, or even if he was legally divorced when he married my grandmother in the 1930’s. We don’t think my grandmother knew.

We did find out his first wife returned to Mexico. She did have children (who say they don’t think their mom had kids before she remarried). We sent them copies of the documents we found and they were as flabbergasted as we were.

A friend of mine lives in San Diego, and was recently telling me the story of her grandfather who has an entire family in Mexico that he kept hidden for decades. Im talking he has kids that have kids, and one of his secret granddaughters has ANOTHER kid. Dude is a great grandfather and nobody knew. Her grandfather is nearly 90, so its unbelievable how much a quiet old man can keep from people.

A local pastor in Florida gave me private marriage counseling many years ago. He was pious and godly, and I respected him very much. He insisted that the sanctity of marriage demanded that I make sacrifices of some of my desires, and that God would reward me later (in this life and marriage) for those sacrifices.

About a month after the counseling concluded, he was forced to resign from his church. Turns out he got caught with his assistant pastor’s wife.

So went I first left home in my late teens I shared a big house (I think 6+ bedrooms) with a close friend, his brother and some other randoms. Think frat house except no college/university. Splitting the expenses worked out pretty well. So one of the guys worked at a port in customs or something. He had a uniform and ID etc. Left for work at the same time every morning and hung out with us after work. He was always down for attending social events with us and most of us liked him. Fast forward about a year and he starts telling us about how he can get us discounted TVs and other merchandise from the port. Unclaimed/seized property that apparently no one sweats about if just a few items go astray. Everyone gave it a pass as it seemed sketchy. Then one day we come home to one of our housemates in shock and bawling like a baby. Turns out not only did he give the guy his life savings he also gave him money borrowed from his dad. The customs guy had said he could get him a new car cheap! The long long con. Turns out the guy doesn't work at the port, the name he gave us doesn't exist and we have no idea how he spent his days or came up with his share of the rent/bills. Still creeps me out a little knowing I lived with a stranger for so long.

My boyfriend’s sister’s friend was married to this guy and had started a family with him. They just had their second child actually (the first was probably 7-8 years old). Every year he went on a hunting trip to Missouri for about a week. Turns out he wasn’t hunting. Turns out he had another family there. Two kids, almost exactly the same ages as the other two. The friend divorced him immediately when she found it.

Not exactly a double life, but my cousin was a secret for 4 years.

When my uncle was 21 he and his girlfriend had a baby with out telling anyone in our large, very nosy family. No one suspected a thing and they went on dating.

When I was 8 and their daughter was 4, her adoptive parents perished in a fire and left in their will that they wanted her to go back to her bio parents.

My uncle and his girlfriend sincerely regretted giving their daughter up and so they were thrilled.

Everyone just went with the fact that they were essentially keeping a secret child for 4 years and were pretty much ok with it.

My cousin is 14 now and she has 2 full siblings and my aunt and uncle are great parents. Every now and again someone brings up the situation but it’s pretty much just laughed off. I do find it a little odd though.

Edit: this is what I understand of the story. I don’t know any more than what my mum told me and the few things my cousin has said, so I don’t know how the adoption worked really.
Also, when I said they laugh about it, they don’t laugh about the tragedy of my cousin losing her adoptive parents, they laugh about how none of them though to question why my uncle was acting so odd- you know, over losing a child and all.
Currently, my cousin doesn’t seem to be screwed up over the situation. But it’ll be something she has to deal with when she’s a bit older.

A work colleague was exposed as an illegal immigrant using a false identity. He absconded back to his home country of Iraq and on arrival was arrested and hanged for war crimes. We only found this out when his wife threatened to sue the company for exposing him.

We had a guy in highschool who faked a deep voice for the 7 years weve known him and senior year he revealed that it wasnt his real voice.

edit: typically kids in highschool also went to middle school with the same people.

A friend's mother is adopted - no big deal, she knows about it since she was 5 and loved her adoptive mom to bits, so it was never an issue. When she was in her late 20s, she discovered she had a brother which lived in a nearby city (for the Brazilians amongst us, we are all in São Paulo and her brother was living in Santos), so she decided to go after him.

 

It turns out her brother, who was in his early 30s, did not know he was adopted. He had a fit and even slapped his mom in the face.

My sister-in-law had a second child. She was still married, but separated with her husband (because she caught him cheating). The man with whom she had the baby was her father's old prodigy, who was also married with a couple of kids.

This all took place in China, while the one-child policy was in full effect.

So: to her parents, the separation and affair were secret, up until she had a baby. Once they were looped in, they helped her to maintain the lies, because 'face'. From her ex-husband's perspective, the child and the affair were secret; from the perspective of his family (with whom she remained in touch), the separation, affair, _and_ baby were secret. This was complicated by the fact that they shared custody of their first kid (in fact, they pretended they were still living together for years). So the older kid was warned not to mention _his brother_ to _his father_, while spending plenty of time with both. It was all a secret from _most_, but not _all_ of their close family (i.e. cousins, aunts, and uncles). And then there was the prodigy's family, and really the rest of the outside world, for whom there was no separation, no affair, and certainly no _kid_. That included the government. I'm not even sure how that worked.

She wasn't living _another_ life. She was living _fractals of lives within lives_. Just try to imagine the logistics of getting your nonexistent kid to school (under a false identity?) in time to pick up your older kid, who was waiting with your secret lover, so that he could get back to his real family, and you and your kid could meet up with your cheating ex-husband, so that you could all drive together to lunch with family from both sides, doing your best impression of a perfect platonic family who had come straight from a shared, loving home (while being careful that neither you nor your older boy mention to anyone that you have to pick up your other son from school soon).

Now I've got a headache.