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People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
Relationships,FamilyJUL 27, 2025

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families

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At some point in life, usually between dessert and the third glass of wine at a holiday gathering, it happens: a relative—often an elder, often unprompted—lets something slip that quietly detonates your entire understanding of the family tree.
Like how grandma was once engaged to a man who later founded a cult in Oregon. “But he was very sweet,” she says, as if that’s the relevant part.
One TikToker asked people to share their own unhinged family stories like that—and sure enough, the internet had plenty. Scroll down to read the most chaotic ones, and if you’ve got one too, the comment section’s waiting.

#1

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
Someone I know was SAd by her dad, her uncle took him hunting in the woods and they had an ‘accident’ and her dad never came back and no one ever got arrested, justice was served
136points

#2

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
after my stepdad moved us across the country, he sa’d me for years and uses the military as a crutch to stay out of jail. my mom saw it as competition and tried to get pregnant to “make me jealous” and i saved enough bday money to buy a tent at 14 and never looked back. theyre still married, shes still popping out kids. when i tell anyone in the family about the truth, she claims its my “diagnosis”(autism). ive been on my own for a while. i love venting in comment sections, thank you for this.
132points

#3

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My Nona didn’t work for over 40 years and was unmarried but was taken care of by several men who would come over to fix her house up and give her an allowance in exchange for her baked goods (she was an amazing cook/ baker) well one of the guys fell obsessed with her and when he found out about the other men he tried to break in and k**l my Nona but she shot him dead while smoking a cigarette and never leaving her recliner. Nona was a player
114points

#4

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
I grew up in a small town and there was a woman whose husband was an awful drunk and would beat her horrifically. She had these dogs that were always kenneled, and horribly mean and she would spend a majority of her time with them. One day she came to my grandmothers house and was really badly beaten. The next day her husband went missing. After a while no one missed him and it was just considered he left her and she was better off. Town people could care less where he went. Eventually she confessed that she k**led him and fed him to her dogs.
95points

#5

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My great great great grandmother was a picture bride. Her picture tho was taken when she was 15, but when she was “ordered” she was already 25… guy didn’t like her so he hung her on a nearby mango tree to die. A guy passing by found her right before she died, nursed her back to health and they got married
92points

#6

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My dad was murdered in 1999 from a carkjacking. My sister and I were in the car and witnessed it. Almost 2 decades later, a false documentary came out about the k**ler saying he was innocent (he claims he didn’t do it but there is overwhelming evidence against him). It got popular and many celebrities got involved to try to get him released. Luckily, he’s in jail for life. But it was traumatizing watching the public get manipulated about the case and have to relive that trauma.
92points

#7

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My grandma was thrown in a well to die. She clawed her way out and went to the police station to press charges on her boyfriend. He was filing a missing person report.
81points

#8

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My grandmother fell pregnant to her boyfriend when she was 19. He left her because of it being a scandal and married her bestfriend. She had the baby and was forced to give him over to the nuns running the orphanage. She tried to find him but they didn’t keep records back then. When she was 74, he found her (another long story) and they had a beautiful relationship catching up on their lives in between. Until he died 18 months later, in a train accident. He was the driver. She grieved her son’s life twice.
80points

#9

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
my gma was committed to a psych ward & given electro shock because she didn't want more than 4 kids. She became a famous burlesque dancer when they got divorced. My mom was in Playboy in the 70s
79points

#10

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My mom went to school with hulk hogan, she said everyone hated him then too
76points

#11

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My grandmother watched her father and brother drown in a river when she was 12. Later she admitted that if they didn’t unalive, she probably would have been pregnant by one of them by 15.
74points

#12

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
my great grandma went to jail for murder of a guy. came out years later the guy was actually not dead n very much alive so she proceeded to actually k**ling the man and when she got arrested she told the cops she can’t go to jail again for the same crime
Report
70points

#13

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My mother used abortion as a form of birth control. She told me I was a missed abortion and that she didn’t know she was pregnant for seven months. I am now 40 and have no contact with her, nor do I know if she’s alive or not. and that’s OK because I treat my children like the mother I never had. She chose d***s and alcohol over her entire family.
67points

#14

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My dad passed when I was 7. I’m 26 now. Did ancestory to find out more about my dad’s side. Got my results and turns out, my dad isn’t my biological dad. Found my bio dad in less than 24 hours (we didn’t know about eachother) and now I have a dad
63points

#15

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
We believe our great grandmother is a serial k**ler.... Three people that have been in her care have died, two husbands and a neighbor.. she almost got our great Uncle Joe, her son. He went to go stay with her and he started getting sicker and sicker until he finally moved out and got better... She's always given some weird vibes.
60points

#16

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My aunt asked her mom (my grandma) to fly from Ohio to Palm Springs to get her car from her boyfriend’s house and drive it back to Ohio for her. My grandma went and never came back and married my aunt’s boyfriend.
58points

#17

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My grandma’s dad was an a****ve alcoholic. They lived up in the Tennessee Appalachian Mountains. The house burned down one day, everyone made it out except him.
57points

#18

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
Took an Ancestry DNA test hoping to find my birth parents (I was adopted as a baby). Didn’t find them, but I did find a “2nd cousin” on my dad’s side. She didn’t know who her dad was either, so we were just two mystery babies trying to make a family tree from scratch. Fast forward…I get my original birth record from the state, find my birth mom on Facebook, and literally messaged her like “Hey lady… this you?!” She said “Sure is!” And that’s how we started to get to know each other after almost 40 years. Found my bio dad too! Turns out I’ve got a whole squad of sisters I never knew about (hello sisterhood). That “2nd cousin”? Yeah, she was actually my half-aunt. Her half-brother = my father. Apparently my grandpa was out here planting seeds from Maine to Florida. Still finding cousins like it’s a Netflix docuseries. But wait—it gets better. On my mom’s side, I kept getting DNA matches with the D’Arcangelo family. Asked my birth mom, she’s like, “Oh no, they’re just old family friends.” Riiight. Got her to do her own Ancestry DNA test and BAM! She shares D’Arcangelo DNA. Her siblings? Don’t. So turns out her mom had a secret affair with Mr. D’Arcangelo himself. And the woman my mom grew up calling “just a close friend of the family”? Yeah. That was her half-sister. I basically cracked open a multigenerational secret with one little spit test.
57points

#19

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
My grandma grew up in Honolulu and saw Pearl Harbor happen as a child, watched her best friends house explode, all the horrible things you can imagine.
56points

#20

People Are Revealing The Most Unhinged, Depressing And Awful Things They Know About Their Families
I'm adopted and found my birth mother when i was 19 and when i was 20 I asked her about my bio dad and so she gave me his name and i found him on Facebook sent him a message, hoping for the best ,(my mom didn't think i would contact him), so this man never knew about me , they never told him cuz they broke up when mom got pregnant with me ,(he never got married and literally has no kids besides me)so fast forward couple months of us being in contact, i made a post for fathers day for him and she asked if we are talking, and im like yeah we have kind of started to build a relationship... so then she got quiet and was like " listen I don know how to tell you this, but your dad might not be your dad " ( turns out she cheated on him when she got pregnant ) it was a whole story that day , we did end up doing a dna test and also when we went to got do the dna test , that was the first time me and my dad actually met in person , dna test came back positive that he was my dad so that worked out great tho but still damn
55points
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