35 Secrets About People That Surfaced After Their Death And May Have Forever Changed The Way Their Loved Ones Remember Them

My dad died in 1988. He was a smart man; a qualified engineer who worked for Lucas, Lotus and Fafnir during his career.

During my childhood in the '70s I, like most little boys of that era, was fascinated by space, rockets and astronauts and dad always encouraged my interest. He'd buy me books and toys that were space related, and would talk about spacey things with me for hours on end. With his help I turned into such a space nerd that in my first year of secondary school (US: 6th grade), when we each had to give a 5-minute talk during English about a topic we were passionate about, I talked for over 30 minutes about the stellar life cycle.

I found out only a few years ago from mum that he believed that the Moon landings were a hoax.

My brain literally stalled; I was speechless and couldn't process it.

My uncle passed away when I was about 2 years old. I went through some of his papers my grandparents keep as a memorial to him. I teared up. He wrote beautiful poetry and made gorgeous art. At that time my parents weren’t encouraging of my art and made me feel it was a waste of time. But in that moment, it connected me to my uncle and I didn’t feel like such an oddball.

My mother died the day I found out I was pregnant with twins back in January. I found out she kept the pregnancy book she used for her pregnancy with me and was planning to give it to me when I became pregnant. Breaks my heart to know I didn’t get to tell her and see her excitement.

My grandmother was a mafia mistress and my dad was the product of an affair with a married man and not the man who raised him. Also found out the the string of really bad luck she had in the 60s was actually that man trying to get rid of her because she went full Glen Close in Fatal Attraction crazy on him when he tried to break off the affair.

We met our long lost family after I took a dna test and we are afraid of them.

A year after my parents divorced, my father took early retirement, sold the house and moved with his mother from Ohio to Florida. All of this was very sudden and rushed, he accepted the first offer that was made on the house. He died 18 months later. In his effects we found his medical records, he had pancreatic cancer, did nothing to treat it, and never told a soul. He found out, retired, moved someplace warm, and waited to die. Also found his medals from his time in the Marines, including a Bronze star, and Purple Heart. My father was the poster child for PTSD. A few years later, grandma and I had a real heart to heart. She said I never really met the real him, a piece of him never really left Vietnam. He died a broken and depressed man, told know one he knew his time was up.

After my father died, we found a booklet that told us that he had been sneaking off on weekends to do some parachute jumping. He did three jumps and was rated proficient. He would have been in his late 50s. My mom thought that he was going to his car club. She would have had conniptions had she known.

My mother comes from a wealthy Sicilian landowning family. When she got together with my father, a penniless half-Calabrian, her family did everything to make this union end.

They offered him money, a good job but he always refused. My grandmother then decided to pay a local gang to beat and threaten my father that if he did not leave my mother, they would kill him and feed his corpse to the pigs. Just before this happened my mother announced that she was pregnant with me so they were forced to marry before I was born.I found this out recently when my grandma's sister passed away. My cousin, reading the correspondence she had with my grandmother, found the letter explaining all this and sent a copy to me.

This is a picture of my mom, nonna and dad at their wedding. Look how happy she is!

My great aunt never married and passed in her late 40s from cancer. She read a ton and kept all the books she read. My grandma (her sister) would brag about how well read she was. Going through her stuff after she passed, we found out that much of the reading was of dirty novels

My dad was a car salesman when he was alive, however when he died, I learned that he was actually a drug trafficker and transported drugs all over the country in the cars that he was transporting and selling.

Four women were seated to one side at my grandfather's funeral. They were obviously at ease with each other, chatting freely, but were NOT known family or friends. A few discrete inquiries revealed that they were my grandfather's four current girlfriends. Note that he died at the age of 96, and had an ex-wife and current live-in girlfriend. He was a 'man of commendable vigor,' by many standards.

Uncle Ingram was apparently a sperm donor back in the 1950s. New cousins pop up on 23andme every couple of years.

Nothing scandalous... after my mom died I found an enormous stash of candy in her sock drawer. Like, tons of it covered by a layer of socks. She loved her sweets and apparently didn't want to share.

Grandma was a Russian spy in the Cold War. Wild.

After my dad passed away, my family decided it was finally time to clean out the attic. My dad would keep everything from old TVs to old tax documents from when he owned a business. I came across a box that was really heavy. I opened the box and saw a bunch of paperwork, and on the top said '(My Dad's Name) vs. The United States of America'. That's when I learned my dad was in federal prison back in the '70s for import fraud, and that he had a lot of ties to the mafia.

My father died a little over a year ago. About six months later a woman contacted my sister on Facebook suspecting that she (the other woman) was his daughter from a one-night stand he had 50+ years ago when he was in his early 20s. A DNA test has since confirmed she is correct. The birth took place before he met and married my mother, but the mother of the other woman says my father knew about the child because she told him. That SOB took his secret all the way to the grave with him. My sister and I have agreed not to tell my mother because, really, what good would come from doing so.