"What 'Family Secret' Did You Learn That Totally Shocked You?" (32 Answers)

My grandma inherited several hundred thousand dollars from her step dad. The juicy part is that to this day, no one knows how he got it. No one even knew he had that kind of money until he died. Since I'm from the south, my guess is rum running or something like that but we don't know and likely never will.

That my aunt wasn't born looking like that, When she was younger some kids in the neighborhood ganged up on her and attacked her with a 2x4. I never knew and once I found out I just felt so sorry for her. I was never told what happened to the attackers.

Not so much a family secret I learned, but when I learned our "family secret" wasn't so secret at all. Growing up my grandparents would make popovers for every family gathering. For whatever reason my parents told me that popovers were our family's secret recipe, or maybe I was just a stupid kid and thought a secret recipe meant nobody else made that food at all. Anyway, fast forward about 20 years when my wife and I were at a restaurant and they had popovers on the menu. I wondered out loud how this restaurant knew our family's secret recipe. My wife got confused and asked to to explain, whereupon I immediately realized how dumb I was. She will never let me forget that.

That Great grandpa was a decorated soldier who fought in the Indian regiment of british troops in WW1. In reality, he was a cook, who deserted after seeing men sent to attack machine guns with their bodies. Him and a bunch of others Nope'd the [darn] out of there while stealing a bunch of supplies. This was corroborated by the other deserters that returned with him. Took them a few years to get from france to vadodara in the current state of gujarat, India They sold the guns and rations along the way for money and great grandpa picked up an STD from a iraqi wh*re (luckily grandpa was born before he left). They blame the STD on why he went "funny" in the head towards his end. Also the little bit of money he brought back from the stolen and sold army gear helped my grandpa buy some land and kick start my family fortunes so that we could move out of the untouchable class.

I'll submit one b/c I think it's totally nuts, but it wasn't my family's secret. Family that I've known my whole life lived across the street, the daughter of the family married a cousin of mine, etc. Learned just a couple years ago that the dad of the family didn't go away to the Peace Corp for those years he was gone in the '80's when we were kids. He was in prison for trying to rob a bank b/c the family hit such hard times when their second kid was born. The dad is the sweetest person ever and we never doubted for a second that he would do something like join the Peace Corp (that kind of guy), but the prison thing was a real [why?] moment for EVERYONE.

My great grandfather was a quiet kind man and treasurer for his chapter of the Elks Lodge in Texas. He was attacked on his way home from an Elks Lodge meeting. He suffered amnesia and regained consciousness as a sailor on his way to Haiti. After landing, he lived in the country for a few months before getting into a bar brawl with a police officer and getting knocked out. He regained consciousness in jail, with a new-found memory of who he was. Her told this tale to a priest from jail, who believed him and wanted to help. The priest wrote my great grandmother and the American government and somehow convinced the Haitian government to let him return to America. He returned to my great grandmother, had two children, and was a law abiding citizen for the rest of his life. This story is so UNBELIEVABLE that when my mother told it to me 6 months ago I was convinced it was a hoax. She has documents (the letters from the priest and others) and testimonials of his friends that say this behavior was uncharacteristic. I dunno, crazy man.....

My grandmother as I knew her was a hyper religious Christian woman that had every bit of conservative 1950's social viewpoints (she was racist, sexist, etc) Found out she was pimped out at 16, got pregnant by the pimp, she didn't want the kids as her father would [end] her as they were mixed-race, so the pimp took custody and moved to a different state. She was the door kicker in a motorcycle gang. Her brother killed a guy and is serving life in prison - she was part of the same gang. My uncle being a murderer wasn't a shock as he's been imprisoned since before I was born and I had visited him when I was young.

Maybe an inverse sort of deal, but my family were apparently millionaires in the late 1800s. I guess they had always been very wealthy. But between that wealth getting split up every generation and my family living on the run for many generations, all that money was gone by the time I came around. Only thing left was a chunk of property in Mexico that is completely worthless aside from a small bit of money from it cause there's a highway going through it. This totally shocked me because in my lifetime my family has been quite poor. Full on redneck on top of that. And lots of issues with addiction.

When I was 13 years old, I was initiated into the family witchcraft tradition. The biggest shock was running into two classmates at a Sabbat (Pagan holiday).

My dad is a straight man. Everyone in the family assumed he fell somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum but he had to marry mom for appearance sake back in the '60s. We were wrong. No Transparent shenanigans for us. He fooled around on mom with another woman.

I found out very recently that my maiden name (and subsequently rest of my family's name) was supposed to be completely different but was changed by deed poll when my grandfather was 11 by his stepfather. So before my father, we aren't actually related to anyone with this surname, it means nothing to our heritage or whatever

One is mine. One is my friends Mine: Uncle killed a man in the old country. Gang fight. Picked up one of those big cigarette garbage things and hit another dude in the head. He did time in jail and was disowned by his family. My mom is the only person to visit him. My friend. He was told his parents died. Turns out his dad is his uncle and the woman who raised him (his "aunt") is actually his mom