Sometimes, we're better off not knowing something. Even so, human nature makes us dig, investigate, and discover—often with disastrous results. Here, Redditors anonymously share secrets they've found out or kept hidden for weeks, months, even years. But readers beware: There's no going back from this kind of knowledge.
1. Sister Swap
I found out that one of my aunts had an arranged marriage. She wasn't actually the aunt who was supposed to be in the arranged marriage, but her sister was adamantly against marrying the guy. I guess my grandma somehow persuaded my aunt into replacing her sister's part of the marriage. My aunt and the guy got married, moved away, and had kids.
They lived far away so I barely ever saw them. Only as I got older did I learn that the dude was abusive to my aunt, to the point where she still had some intense mental breakdowns long after he was gone. I guess her sister was right.
2. Sitting on a Big Secret
My secret is that I have been sleeping with my babysitter for many, many years. I know that it sounds crazy and hard to believe, but it’s completely true. This whole thing started when I was fairly young...and it just never ended. Nobody has ever caught us or suspected a thing about what we are really up to when she’s over.
3. The Other Family
I had a cousin who passed a few years ago. I went to his funeral and was walking around hugging his wife and kids and giving them my condolences when a lady and two teenage boys walked in. Nobody knew who these people were, so of course, my great aunt asked. She claimed to be his wife and the two boys were his sons. Turns out all those week-long work trips he'd been taking weren't actually work trips. They were trips to see his OTHER family.
4. Secret Sister
When I was a kid, I knew my grandfather was odd. He'd call me his grandson even when I was wearing a dress and clearly female, but my parents would tell me to ignore it. Then I made a disturbing discovery. I found out that when my dad was a kid, grandpa had sold my dad's sister Barbara to someone, and kept my dad and his brother because he didn't want a girl in the family.
My dad found his sister Barbara around the time I was in middle school, through making some calls and getting access to records. They were reunited, and she's my favorite aunt now. No one liked grandpa.
5. Misdiagnosis
I’m not sure how my dad discovered this, but he found out he had a secret older brother, his parents' oldest child (Ron, if I remember right, named after his dad). When Ron was preschool-aged, my grandparents were told he was mentally disabled. Horrified, they turned him over to the state and never spoke of him again.
Years later, they learned the truth. Word got back to them that the kid was not, in fact, disabled; he had "auditory dyslexia"(now called auditory processing disorder). He grew up to be a fully functioning, independent adult. He refused to have any contact with the family when my dad reached out. Honestly, I don’t blame him at all.
6. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire
My father burned down our childhood home for the insurance money. He took me along as his alibi, so that I could “verify” that he wasn't anywhere near the location when it happened. I was only 13 years old at the time. I remember crying so hard knowing that all of my clothes, books, photos, and everything I owned would be destroyed.
I wasn't allowed to save anything because he told me it would have looked too suspicious. It got even more chilling. I found out years later that he blamed the whole thing on me. He told the fire chief, plus all of our friends and family, that the fire had started because I had been secretly smoking in my bedroom. I've never smoked in my life!
7. Dress for Success
I have a cross-dressing hobby, even though I am completely straight. Thankfully, I have an incredibly supportive girlfriend who knows about this and is okay with it, but I don't think I could ever handle telling anyone else about it. Lord only knows what would happen to my already small social life if this ever got out…
8. Don’t Judge Me!
I am a judge in a town in the United States. I also have a bit of a secret wild side in the bedroom. I tell all of my co-workers, assistants, and family members that I go up to my cabin most weekends, and that they can't contact me because there's no cell service. They think that’s the way I like it. They don't know the dark truth.
In actuality, I go see a mistress 20 years my junior. I have a college-aged daughter and an ex-wife. I also have a fair share of cash lying around and a lot of people who look up to me in my career. For obvious reasons, I have made sure that absolutely no one ever has any reason to suspect what I am really up to on the weekends.
9. The Worst Day of All Time
This is something that I should probably have told my best friend about a long time ago, but I just don’t have the heart to break it to him. Only an hour before his girlfriend lost her life in a car accident, I saw her at my job making out with someone else. It’s now been eight years since the accident, but I still can’t tell him about it. It would destroy him emotionally, and I can’t do that to him. He was planning to propose to her that day, too…
10. Psycho Granny
When I was about 31 years old, I found out my maternal grandmother, who practically raised me, slayed my grandfather. I was doing research trying to build out a family tree and wanted to find out about my grandfather who passed about four years before I was born. We never really talked about him. I found an article about him, with a report number for the arrest of my grandmother.
I didn’t immediately put the two together, but once I did, I put in a FOIA request for the case file. The real story made my heart drop. Apparently, my grandfather was in ill health, had a few strokes and needed A LOT of assistance; assistance my grandmother grew tired of. One day, he was sitting in his chair and she just snapped and stabbed him numerous times.
She was arrested, tried, and eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity. She spent some time in an institution, only to be let out in 1981, the year before I was born, to move in with my family. As she lived in our home, she basically raised me from a child. She was the sweetest lady in the world and this SHOOK me to my core.
11. Double Date
Fellow grad student has two young kids; one that is struggling to walk and communicate and is in the process of being diagnosed. She is pulling 10 to 16-hour days (between interning and classes) plus being a mom and wife. She gets a call from a friend that expresses how excited she is to see her at the husband’s work party. What?! She didn't RSVP, and her husband said he would pop over for less than an hour than come home to be with her for a quiet dinner.
Turns out he was bringing a date that definitely wasn't her. These two cheaters had been seeing each other for about six months, and even had taken a trip together under the pretence of a business trip. Anytime he had been late or gone, we assume he was with her. Friend did her a solid and took a couple pics for the divorce lawyer.
12. Famous Last Words
When my father passed after a long and painful battle with cancer, a pastor at my mom's church spoke at the funeral. The entire time that she was talking, I wanted to walk up there and punch her in the face. She had the audacity to stand in front of us and speak about how devastating cancer is. If she realized that I knew the chilling secret of her past life, she would never have had the guts to show her face.
That pastor used to attend a different church, but had to leave after she was caught for having faked cancer for two years. Her husband left her and her daughter disowned her after they found out. My mom was the secretary at that church. So she knew, and had already told me. My dad’s funeral was only like two years after that whole thing went down.
13. The Garden
There was a woman in my town, and after she passed, people were clearing her garden and found what they thought was a model skeleton. Yeah, it wasn't. It was her husband, who went mysteriously missing in the mid-90s. Apparently, she was fairly well-liked in the town and she told everyone her husband ran away with another woman.
She had a really well-kept garden with hard-to-grow orchids, etc. and put a lot of care into it, but was very secretive about it and wouldn't let visitors in there because they might "trample the flowers."
14. Commander Granny
It's disturbing in a way: My great grandmother went into the military after committing a crime, and once she was there, she confessed to a judge. He punished her by extending her contract and forcing her to serve in the conflict. I never knew what happened until way after she passed when I asked my dad about it. My jaw dropped when I learned the backstory.
There was a man in her neighborhood who was touching kids and going after boys. My grandma beat the snot out of him when she saw him try to lift two boys.
15. Chickened out
There was one dad in our mother's group that lost his high-flying big city financial job due to a market crash. To pay the bills, and because there were no jobs in finance at the time, he took the first job he could get—in a chicken abattoir. Bit of a change from a desk job to slaughtering chickens, but when you have a newborn baby and bills to pay, you step up. Or so I thought.
Every time I ran into him I was always impressed with how much he was up to speed on current events. We would talk about the latest news; there was not much discussion about chicken butchering. Turns out he was fired on his first day. Every day after that—for months—he would leave home in the morning, go to the pub, read newspapers all day, and then go home in the evening. She eventually found out. They are divorced now.
16. A Little Too Close to Home
We had a family Christmas dinner a few years ago where my aunt and uncles from both sides were staying over at our house. There were probably 10 or 11 of us at the dinner table, and everyone is getting along well like we always do. My cousin, around 14 or 15 at the time, brings up something about how he laid a massive poop earlier that day.
The kids laugh and the adults were like "That's not table conversation." Then I jump in and say "Haha, yeah, there are things we don't talk at the dinner table, like politics and illegitimate children.” Every adult at the table drops their eyes to their plate and goes silent. I'm sitting there like “uhhhh,” what in is so awkward about all this?
What I didn't know is that my uncle had an illegitimate child many years ago and that's always been a point of contention between my aunt and him. They also had been arguing about that earlier in the day, and all the adults knew it. Haha man, it was a joke. But seriously though, never make jokes about illegitimate children unless you are absolutely sure no one has one.
17. Miss Me?
It was the day of my husband's funeral. I answered a call from an unknown number—that’s when everything fell apart. There was a woman on the other end claiming to be his girlfriend. She’d been calling his cell for weeks but I’d had it turned off when he was in the hospital. I had no idea that he'd been unfaithful, but it was about to get worse. She told me that he'd been paying her rent for a year—while the bank had been about to foreclose on our house.
18. We Have a Winner
I won a fairly sizable lottery of roughly a few million dollars a little while back and told absolutely no one, family and friends included. I quietly took a bunch of steps to secure my kids’ futures, and we live a very comfortable but not lavish lifestyle. I'm pretty generous with the people around me. I think that they just think I'm doing very well in my career.
Either that or maybe some of them think I’m involved in some kind of sketchy dealings under the table. I justify keeping this a secret by thinking that if it was general knowledge amongst friends and family, it could easily cause tension and ruin relationships. I want to be able to continue my life the way I have always lived it.
19. Vengeance Is Mine
My grandfather took advantage of me from the ages of eight through 12. I had to go to his place after school every day to be babysat until my parents were done work. I told my mom after about six months or so. Her response was, "Don't tell your dad, it would really hurt him." It was my paternal grandfather who was doing this.
I gave up on trying to tell anyone else about it for a year or so. Then, I told my cousin, who is four years older than I am. Her response was anger, and asking me how I could dare to speak out against our grandfather in that way. That was the last time I tried to tell anyone about what he had done. But it was far from the end of the story...
Fast forward to when I was 16 years old. My grandfather had a stroke and was in the hospital with pneumonia. He was lying in his hospital bed with an oxygen mask on. The whole extended family went to visit him together on one particular day. I don’t remember what the occasion was exactly, but we were all there and hanging out as a group.
My uncle was in the hallway with my baby cousin, and at one point he called everyone out there to come and look, because she was starting to take her first steps. So, everyone gathered in the doorway facing out, or in the hall, and I was left sitting in a chair, on my own, beside my grandfather's bed. He started coughing. I leaned over and took his oxygen mask off.
It was so surreal. He was gasping, and my heart was pounding. I was waiting for someone to turn around and see or hear him, but they were all intent on watching my little cousin and they were all being so loud. It only took a couple of minutes, but it felt like hours. I put the mask back on his face when I knew he had passed.
I waited a couple of minutes, and then yelled for my dad to come in because "grandpa looked weird." I remember my face was burning hot, thinking holy heck. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I figured they had to know. Someone is going to know for sure! But nope. No one knew. And no one has ever found out. This remains my deepest secret by far.
20. When Age Isn’t Just a Number
I’m 18 years old, yet I’m in love with a 44-year-old. Just how much older than me he is could ruin my life and his if people knew about it, but I still want to be in a relationship with him more than anything in the world. I'm selfish and I miss him. I would do anything to protect him from any people who thought his behavior was inappropriate.
21. Way to Leave Us Hanging
When I was young, my mom's best friend passed. She wouldn't tell me how, only that it was sudden. When I asked why we weren't going to the funeral, she told me that there wasn’t one. But just months ago, I was scrolling through her phone to find the number for a pizza place, and as I’m looking I come across the phone number of the long-dead best friend.
I was floored, and very suspicious. The next day I called the number from a pay phone—and that’s when the situation went from suspicious to disturbing. As I'm scrolling through her contacts I come across the phone number of the dead best friend. Biggest WTF moment of my life. The next day I called it from a pay phone at Waffle House and she picked up. I instantly recognized the voice and accent. She's not dead.
22. Saved by the Smell
My secret is that I know my dad cheated on my mom. I know this because, when I was just 9 years old, he invited the person he was cheating with over to our house while I was home, thinking I wouldn’t know or understand what was going on. She was a severely overweight woman, and my father is also quite overweight himself.
At the time, my parents had been frequently fighting, but they were trying to work things out. It was bad enough by this point, though, that they had already started sleeping in separate rooms. Earlier that day, I had jumped on my dad’s bed and broken the board supporting it on the frame. I wasn't allowed to jump on the bed, and often got in trouble for doing so.
When my mom came into the room to discipline me, she could smell the fact that my dad had just had company, because the woman had clearly smoked while she was in the room. She asked if I had jumped on the bed. I said no, fearing that I would get in trouble if I confessed the truth. Years later, I suddenly remembered the whole incident—and that's when I realized the painful truth.
My seemingly harmless lie basically incriminated my dad in her eyes. Now, I'm sure he was actually guilty of what my mom suspected; but nevertheless, it was my lie that got him kicked out of the house for good. I will never let anyone know that I was the one who really broke the bed; or that I broke up my parents’ marriage in the process, either.
23. Tree Hugger
When I was a kid, I would often wake up before my parents and slip downstairs to watch some TV. Well, the only bathroom we had was upstairs, and I never felt like going back up there and missing my cartoons. We had houseplants behind the TV, so I just started peeing in them. Pretty much every single day. They eventually withered and got replaced by new houseplants. I peed in them, too.
24. Too Little and Too Late
When I was a kid I heard a gunshot while walking down a street. I ran back home, fast as I could. Went to my room and watched TV to calm myself down. Didn't tell anybody. Two hours passed, and the phone rang. Mom told me my uncle died of a gunshot wound, trying to stop a fight nearby. At the funeral, we were told my uncle could've lived if paramedics arrived earlier. For 20 years, I've always thought I could've saved him.
25. Making It Work
I've never actually told anyone this. My dad passed about 20 years ago when I was 15 years old. He worked putting in skylight glass for big buildings like malls and stuff. Anyway, according to the details, one of the crates on the forklift was tipping and he tried to stop it; no one came to help and it crushed him. That's what we kids were told...
It wasn't until three years ago I found out through a guy Dad worked with that no one was even there on the job but said guy and my dad. They were closing up shop. My dad had been discussing things like suicide with this guy. When the guy turned his back... my dad shot himself in the head. There was no forklift accident. He wasn't crushed.
The guy made it look that way so we kids would end up with an inheritance and a lump sum payment. I freaking cried for days. Thank you Clark, for setting all that up. You didn't have to change our lives for the better. But you did.
26. Things Aren’t Always as They Seem
I love my husband, but he doesn't love me. After five years of problems, it finally clicked for me. He loves having a wife, he loves not being alone, and he loves our kids; I, however, am incidental. I can't afford to leave him and I don't really want to because of the kids. We don't hate each other by any means, but I basically have a roommate that I raise kids with.
To our friends and family, we are the perfect, super-duper happy nerd family, but in reality, it's such a sad situation. You never know what goes on behind closed doors.
27. Passing the Real Test
I am a teacher. I once had a sweet, wonderful student who had been in foster care for years, but his mom worked her butt off to get him back. He had to take a very important state exam and she called me afterward to ask if he had passed it. I looked at the grades and saw that he did, so I told her so. She immediately burst into tears...and that was when I realized I had been looking at the wrong score.
He had actually failed—but I knew I had to act. I changed his grade to a pass. No one knew. That was the only time in my entire career that I ever did something like that. It could have cost me my license. The weird thing is that, on a separate occasion, when my awful and corrupt principal tried to pressure me to change other students' scores so that we could raise our pass rate, I refused.
I never told anyone about what I did for that student. He eventually went into the Armed Forces, was extremely successful there, and had a great wife and kids. So at the end of the day, I guess that I did the right thing. Screw those standardized tests. They aren't human.
28. The Night Before
My secret is that my cousin slept with an adult dancer during his bachelor party on the night before his wedding. Hours earlier, we randomly ran into his fiance and her friends, and she made a huge deal about not wanting him to go to a gentleman's club specifically because she was afraid of something like this happening. As it turned out, she was absolutely right to be worried about that. He never told her. Only 3 people know this. Me, him, and the dancer.
29. Don’t Take Your Family for Granted
When I was 11 years old, in 2006, my little sister tragically drowned in my mom’s backyard swimming pool while I was at my father's house on the weekend. I was very close to my sister, and I loved her with all of my heart. My mother often talks about how she misses my sister, and I agree with her. There is only one problem.
I have almost no memory of my sister. My mom does not know this, because I know it would break her heart. I don’t know why I have such a hard time trying to remember her. One of the only moments I do remember was when I swimming in the pool, trying to do back flips. I was yelling out to my mom, "watch me!" My mom was holding my baby sister and talking to her, so she didn't hear me.
I, being selfish and rude, yelled at the top of my lungs, "STOP BABYING HER!" and stormed into the house. I have no idea why I can remember this moment, but not any good moments.
30. Hush Money
I have been having a long-term affair with a famous actor. I have his child (now five years old) and he pays me a LOT of money to keep everything a secret. He bought me a house and gives me money every month. Yes, we still hook up occasionally. He is married with children. I have never told a soul. I told my friends and family that I don't know who the father of my child is. I will perhaps tell my son one day. It's hard living a lie.
31. A Family Secret
About 6 months before my grandmother passed, she told me a terrifying secret about my dad. Before then, I remembered visiting him in prison and he seemed great…but then my mother and I changed our names and she told me that we couldn't see dad anymore because he had passed. I was sad and then life went on; I was just a kid and never thought much about it to be honest.
Mom and I never talked about it. My grandmother, my dad's mom, wanted to see me before she passed. Before I went, my mom finally told me the horrible truth about my dad. He was a very well-known serial killer. After she told me, I looked at his picture, and my memory version of my dad didn't look the same, but then she showed me pictures of us together, and I knew it was true.
I went through a few days of shock and then mourned the loss of my dad after I found out that he had been executed. We look alike, in some ways, and I know he did terrible things, but I just remember that he was loving to me—or, at least he was in the limited memories that I have of him. None of my friends know, and I will never tell anyone. The deepest secret? As much as I know he did terrible things, I would do anything to have him be alive with us today.
32. The Cheater
My sister’s fiancé passed very suddenly and very tragically from a heart attack. She was 20, and he was 23. It turned out that he had an underlying condition. In the months following his passing, she found out he had been cheating on her basically since the start of their three-year relationship. Some women were long term and knew about her, others were just casual one-night stands that probably didn't know.
She kind of went off the deep end a little, because now she was not only mourning a man she loved; she also had to deal with this fact without being able to ask him for answers. Silver lining though; she ended up dating and marrying one of his good friends. They sort of bonded in the aftermath. He is the best thing that ever happened to her and vice versa. They will be married for three years this summer.
33. In for a Penny, in for a Pound
My dad bribed my mom for full custody of my youngest sibling when we were kids. Not only would this be a massive blow to my sister, but my dad remarried quite quickly and his new wife is the very definition of an evil step-mom. I don’t think that she could live with the knowledge that her real mom gave her up for next to nothing and the trade-off was more than five years of torment.
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34. The City of Motherly Love
You know those stories about girls in the ‘70s who “went to live with an aunt” for a year during high school? I did that. In 2008. I was a very naive teenager who was still just getting used to the way her body worked, and my friend thought it would be absolutely hilarious to buy a few of those cheap pregnancy tests from Walmart and see what happened.
We laughed the whole time, until one of them came out positive. We couldn’t remember which one was which, so we got 2 more and it turned out it was mine. That was when it dawned on me. I had recently slept with someone. My school did not offer any kind that education, so it was completely possible that I hadn't used my protection properly. I panicked and swore my friend to secrecy.
I basically put it out of my mind until my clothes didn’t fit anymore. I was always close with my older cousin and we were talking on the phone one night when she asked how school was going. I just broke down and dumped all of it on her. It was too late to do anything, even if I wanted. So she calmed me down and then came up with the perfect plan.
It was already April and, when I’d finally gotten up the courage to go to a Planned Parenthood, they’d told me that I was due in August. So, my cousin called my mom saying that there was this amazing summer music program in her town that I just HAD to attend, and that I could stay with her the whole time. My mom thought it was great and the day after school ended, I got on a plane to San Francisco.
I stayed with my cousin, she went to all of my appointments with me, and she helped me find a social worker and eventually my daughter’s future adoptive parents. When I arrived back home before my junior year of high school started, my mom asked me how my summer was without really caring and then remarked that I must have lost a few pounds.
My cousin lost their life in 2012 in a car accident, and no one else knew about this whole thing apart from that one friend, the doctors I saw in Oakland, and the people involved in the adoption. I get a photo and a letter about the child once a year, and I send money for her college and a card for her birthday every year. When she turns 16, her parents are allowed to give her the cards if she wants them, but they are not permitted to pass any contact information along.
35. Can't Hardly Wait
My dad had a deep, dark secret for a long time, but I managed to find out about it on my own. The woman who he is now married to is the woman with whom he was having an affair...when my mom was dying of cancer.
36. Sister, Sister
My twin sister and I love each other. In an intimate kind of way. We love each other more than siblings probably should. I'm sure that if people knew about our relationship, it would disgust many of them. That alone would probably ruin a lot of relationships. Our parents and grandparents would probably disown and disinherit us.
Other family members would probably break off all contact with us, and we'd lose a good chunk of our friends. I imagine the news would spread like wildfire amongst our social circles. Our older sister might be the only person in our family who wouldn't outright condemn us, and I'm not even too sure about that, to be honest. Sometimes we think about running away to Europe or something, so we can start new lives together with fake identities.
37. Ignorance Is Bliss
I had the best grandpa growing up. Like the typical movie grandpa. He was perfect. He spoiled us like crazy; great corny jokes and he always had crazy silly stories. He always saved the day. Just the best man I knew. After he passed, one of my aunts told me and my little sister he had cheated on my grandma with her own sister multiple times. We never knew. I wish she never told us.
38. Dad’s Tragedy
Here is one that my dad never told me but my uncle shared after my dad has passed. He was madly in love with a girl when he was 17 years old. They were soul mates, lovers meant to be, engaged to be married and grow old together... all that sweet jazz. They went to the county fair one year and decided to ride the Ferris Wheel.
About the time they got to the top and started heading back down the safety bar came unhooked and swung open. My dad grabbed her and held onto the seat. He tried to hold her but he couldn't. She fell to her death. My dad never mentioned it, never said a word to anyone, even to my mom. My uncle said her passing broke his heart and he was never the same again, until after I was born.
He would never let me go to fairs, amusement parks, or any place with rides when I was growing up and we used to get into big fights about it when all my friends were going. He always told me it was just because they were dangerous and didn't want me to get hurt.
39. Acting Aussie
After graduating from high school, I went to a small out-of-state college where no one from high school knew me. I was told many times how impressive my false Australian accent was, so I decided it would be great fun to go through college pretending to be from Australia. All of my friends—and even my girlfriend of two years—think I'm Australian.
I have a completely fake Australian identity, family, and past. I will soon be graduating, and I plan on asking the girl to marry me. Everything she knows about me is Australian, and I don't know how to tell her she doesn't really know me. Guess I’ll forever be a bloke.
40. Keeping Her Good Name Alive
My mom kept it a secret that the woman I was named after (her mom, my grandma) was fatally stabbed by my uncle when my mom was just 18 years old. I always suspected that my grandma had a tragic end because of how my mom would always avoid talking about it, but I had no idea that it was that tragic. It was really difficult to find out.
41. Double Life
My pawpaw had a secret girlfriend for several decades. We suspect some of her children might be his as well. He had 7 children with my mawmaw, and I guess to escape he'd leave and live with the girlfriend for a couple of weeks at a time. The woman lived a couple houses down from them, so my dad and his siblings never suspected anything, because he was still around the house a lot during those times.
My mawmaw didn't like it, but she was a very prim and proper woman, and this was during a time when people didn't air their dirty laundry and they certainly didn't divorce. I was told that when the woman passed in the early 2000s, my mawmaw sent flowers to the funeral; not sure if it was out of spite or just because that's the kind of woman she was.
42. Butterfly Effect
I blame myself for my sister’s end. She passed from complications from a car accident. The car accident was caused by sun blinding the other driver as he drove over a crest, which only happens at a specific time in the morning. Everyone knows that my sister accidentally slept in that morning. No-one knows that it was me who took her alarm clock the night before. I wanted to get up early to finish an assignment that I had left to the last minute to complete. I regret it every day.
43. Bunker Bliss
Two and a half years ago I was in dire financial straights, so I sold my home to keep my struggling business afloat. The new family seemed great, so I felt bad about deceiving them, but I neglected to tell them about the property's weirdest feature: There is an 800 sq. ft. bunker on the property that I built about seven years previously. But that's not the bad part. Not even close.
I also neglected to tell them that the bunker is the place I've called home since I sold the house. The entrance to it is well-hidden, but I still come and go very early or very late in the day, just to make sure I’m not seen. I'm a single man who keeps to himself. I'm now in a situation where I could move somewhere else, but I love this hidden paradise so much, so I stay.
44. Evil Next Door
When I was about 11 or 12 years old, the guy in the flat next door was a computer nerd type. I got interested in learning a little about computers from him. The consequences were devastating. To cut a long story short, he took advantage of me over a long period of time. I found he had several magazines and videos lying around that should have raised some red flags.
It got as far as hugs and kisses, and then he tried to feel me up. That's the point at which my brain kicked into action and I ran away from there as fast as I could. I was intensely scared, ashamed, and somewhat retreated into myself. I realized that my parents, and specifically my mother, knew something wasn't right in this odd child/adult relationship. Yet I didn't act on their suspicions.
That totally messed with my mind and led to many, many years of confusion and introspection, and if I'm honest some screwed up attitudes towards people from myself. I told one girlfriend many years back, and she basically blocked it out, didn't want to discuss it, and made it fairly plain that she wasn't sympathetic or willing to be of any help.
I've managed to get past most of the issues around it, but I sometimes find myself watching TV, films, or documentaries where a related subject comes up and everything hits me again. During one scene, I had to get up and leave the room before I went off and burst into tears in front of my wife. Unaware of what was happening, she paused the show so I wouldn't miss anything!
I have gained some good things from the struggle. That could have gone very differently. I have a loving family and have learned to be sociable. I have also managed to create some level of trust with people. The dark memories still burn me on the inside at times, though. I have sort of accepted that they are something I will never fully get away from and will take with me to the grave.
45. Opened After the Fact
My uncle runs a business hooking up internet in hotels. He travels all over the West Coast for it. Recently, he asked my aunt to have an open relationship. Turns out most of his "business trips" were actually trips to go meet with his business partner, with whom he has been having an affair for the last year or two. This business partner has even had two pregnancies with my uncle.
Both were miscarriages, but both were also INTENTIONAL. My aunt and uncle have been married for 12 years and have a five-year-old son. My aunt also has terminal cancer. He's been introducing their son to his mistress as their son's new Mommy without my aunt's knowledge. Needless to say, that open relationship isn't happening. They're getting divorced.
46. Worked out
When I was a teenager, my parents were divorced yet lived within walking distance of each other. I would often walk back and forth between their homes for whatever reason. I got to know a family that lived in the house on the corner of the block that my mother lived on. One day, as I was passing this family’s house, I noticed a wallet on the ground.
I picked it up and opened it. I noticed that the address on the ID was the house on the corner, and that it belonged to the mom of the family who was a very nice lady. Me being a teenager, I took all of the money out of the wallet, which was a total of about $50. I then went back to the home and returned the wallet, explaining that I had found it down the street.
The mother was very relieved and grateful to have it back. What always weighed on me is that, a few weeks later, I passed the corner house as I often did and the lady stopped me. She wanted to thank me for returning the wallet and handed me a $50 bill as a token of her appreciation. I tried to refuse it, but she insisted. I was rewarded for stealing. I have never really had the heart to tell anyone about it.
47. Not Who I Appear to Be
I have a severe disability. I also have a large following on the internet, and none of my fans know that I’m disabled. No one on the internet does. I don't want to reveal the truth because I’m scared that it would destroy my reputation. In real life, I am really disadvantaged by my disability, and I don’t want to risk that affecting the one place where I’ve been successful.
48. Love Triangle
A server I worked with when I was a cook is now three months pregnant… with MY child. No one knows it's mine. Since we're no longer speaking, she thinks I don't know she's pregnant. She's letting her boyfriend think that it's his...and it's definitely not. I really don't want kids, but I'm also having extreme moral issues about what I should do.
49. Living on the Edge
I almost ended my sister’s life many years ago. She was about three years old at the time and I was maybe about nine or eleven years old. I carried her out to the terrace, which was five stories high including the ground floor. And like some dumb idiot, I placed her at the edge of the terrace, above a barricade of sorts.
There was nothing whatsoever to protect her from falling and directly below, five stories down, was a cemented path. I don't remember what was so important that I had to do, but I left her dangling there at the edge. All I remember is that she was starting to sway backward, towards the ground. Alarm bells suddenly started ringing in my head.
I ran over there as fast as I physically could, and I somehow managed to grab on to her just as she was about to fall. I felt my heart racing against my chest. I hugged her for a really, really long time. I was too afraid to let go. To this day, I still haven't told her about this incident. She's 25 now. I have never told our mom about it either.
Even just typing this story up still makes me nervous. That height, how a baby's body would have ended up splattered all over the hard cemented pathway, how I could have been institutionalized, how my family would have disowned me, how I would have missed out on watching her grow up. All of those thoughts still haunt me. It developed a lifelong irrational fear in me of carrying babies around.
50. Sink or Swim
I enjoy peeing in the sink whenever I’m home alone, simply because it feels sort of “taboo.” I have no idea what makes me enjoy this experience, or when or how it started. It's been with me as long as I can remember, and now it's just a part of my lifestyle. And that is not something that I want anyone aside from me to ever know about.
51. You Always Hurt the Ones You Love
I live with enormous guilt because I ruined someone’s life. My first ever girlfriend was really the love of my life. She was the only person that was ever able to finish my sentences, and we bonded over sort of a mutual disdain for the world we lived in. I knew her psyche was fragile and I literally gave her a reason to live while she was institutionalized.
We broke up and she took her own life very soon after. Or at least that's what I tell people—no one knows the whole, horrible story. In reality, I cheated on her and she destroyed herself when she found out. She burnt holes through her skin hundreds of times, cut herself, and eventually threw herself off a bridge in a fit of rage.
All of that happened because of me. And this was someone who I loved very deeply and treated terribly. I can't even imagine what others would think of me if I ever revealed all these facts to anyone. I've only told a couple of people that the relationship even happened, but as far as the details? I probably should do so, but I just can't face that.
52. Motherly Instinct
I lied to everyone about being infertile. For some reason, I enjoy the thrill of letting guys sleep with me without them realizing that they could be getting me pregnant. It feels risky and exciting. I knowingly lie to my partners because I want the forbidden thrill of doing something that I am not supposed to do. You would never know it by my personality, though. This fact haunts me. It would ruin my family.
Piqsels
53. Risky Business
My secret is that I've been sleeping with my boss's wife for four and a half years. We've never been caught by anyone, and I don't even think anyone suspects anything. They have a totally hollow bedroom, or at least that's what she's always told me. I believe her. They never go away on anniversary weekends or even do any date nights.
She says that, most nights, he'll fall asleep way earlier than her, and she'll sleep in a different room. That's comforting to me because I love her. It all started about three months after she got hired to work in the office at the warehouse where we work. He is the warehouse manager and I am the second shift supervisor. Our plant runs 24 hours, or three shifts a day.
She works in the sales office. I was working in the office and trained her to take my position, as I was moving on to become the plant supervisor. She started hitting on me right out of the gates, but I didn't think it was anything more than a flirtatious personality. She was out of my league from my perspective, not to mention married to the guy who was about to be my direct boss.
But after a few months, she was straightforward about pretty much telling me all the things she wanted to do to me and let me do to her. For a while, I was strictly, "No. I don't get involved with married women. If you're unhappy in your marriage, deal with that." But they have two kids and she wanted to keep the family together.
He's a good father and they live a pretty comfortable life. Slowly, she wore me down. I live about three miles away from the plant. She comes over a minimum of three days a week on her lunch break. We usually see each other both Saturday and Sunday, too. Though, not always. We are friends on Facebook, but never like each other's stuff or send messages. Now, it's starting to destroy my life.
When I see new family pics of them together, I burn with rage. When we do company stuff or have cookouts and she stands near him or sits with him and he touches her, all I can do is struggle to contain my seething anger at the whole situation. I usually overcome it by rationalizing to myself that I'm actually the monster in this situation.
Then, I get angry at myself. But I can get over it quickly because, eventually, I always redirect that anger towards her, too. She always knows I'm angry, and the next day she'll come over and make it up to me. Six months ago, the situation got even more complicated. My boss’ boss, who is a regional director about five hours away, put in his retirement.
He will be retiring in three months. My boss is definitely getting his spot. Their house is going up for sale soon and they'll be moving. I am the one poised to take his position here at this plant. If my secret relationship gets discovered at any point from here on, I'm sure I will be forced to resign and the fallout would be ruinous for all parties.
Of course, she's moving away with him. I can rationally say that we'll all be better off. But I truly love her and would do just about anything to have this play out in my favor somehow. In the end, though, it may already have ruined me. When I sit alone and think about it, I absolutely hate myself for all of this and have for a long time.
Lying and cheating are not a part of my DNA. That I've been able to keep it up for so long makes me feel evil. In a lot of ways, I hope I never forgive myself so that I'm the only person that ever gets hurt by me. I can't wait until she's gone, yet I would give anything for her to stay. I never want to see her again. Yet she'll be here in about an hour.
54. Fecal Fondler
When I was about 8, every time I took a poop, I would put my hand in the toilet and squish it to see what it felt like. Yeah, gross, I know. At home it'd be fine, since I could clean it off right away. In school though…I cringe thinking about it. I am lucky I turned out semi-normal and have friends based on all the gross stuff I did in elementary school.
55. Karma Seeker
I grew up a middle class kid. I worked 40+ hours a week all through high school, so I always had extra cash. When I went to college, however, that changed significantly. During holiday breaks, I never traveled to see family for reasons I'd rather not cover. This meant that I was left alone in a college town that was nearly empty. This is when I committed unforgivable acts.
It started with burglarizing apartments that I could walk to. This burglary spree quickly escalated from private residences to businesses. I've outrun authorities on foot three or four times. I've outrun them in cars a few more times. I've had to spend hours hiding in woods waiting for them to leave before I could get outta dodge.
I know how to completely disable an alarm system in a matter of seconds; I can open sliding doors with a coat hanger; I can jimmy doors, etc. It's been ten years since my last burglary. I'm married with kids now, and I'll never tell them how I made money back in college, but at the same time, those memories will never leave me.
56. Confuse Thy Father and Thy Mother
Every year, I secretly write my parents a Christmas card signed by "Sarah and Michael" just to mess with them. Obviously, they have no idea who those people are, and so they spend a large chunk of every Christmas Day trying to figure it out.
57. On the Run
This is an odd one, but here goes. My secret is my present location. I'm currently estranged from my family and recently got some cash in an insurance settlement. If my mother found out, she'd come running for a share of it so fast that it would break the sound barrier. Light traveling from the sun would be like, "Hey, yo! Slow down!"
I've pretty much had to hide the existence of this money from everyone I know. I have basically become a ghost. I moved away from my longtime home and am living in an undisclosed location. Right now, all of my mail comes to a PO box and only three people know the true address of where I'm staying. And I’d like to keep it that way.
Everything I do online routes through a cell tower about thirty minutes away from where I actually am. I have no intention of ever resuming my life with my insane family. Not only are we estranged, but my female cousin and I used to sleep together. That should give you some small idea of how messed up our family truly is.
As far as not sharing the money with my mother, she isn't owed any of it. I gave up nursing school and a promising career to take care of her when she was diagnosed with cancer. I did everything for her. Then, when I was homeless and had no place else to go, she looked me in the eye and said, "So what?" when I came to her desperately begging for help.
I've tried to get away from them twice before and was unsuccessful. The first time, I moved half a country away to Florida. My mother hired a private investigator to track me down. She subsequently harassed my then-fiancee and her family until she couldn’t take it anymore and dumped me. My mother kept the harassment going until I finally caved and moved back to a close enough town where she could mooch off of me.
As far as the cash settlement goes, it was the result of a simple car accident. Some dude rammed into my car going 55 miles per hour while I was stopped by the curb. It was a company truck, and he was clearly at fault. I had no idea how much money I was going to receive as a result of the incident, and I immediately knew I would have to keep it a secret as soon as I found out.
The hiding is the tricky part and I'm sure someone will eventually come along asking for me. My official address is still listed as my mother’s place on all government documents. All of my mail is being double forwarded, first to my friend's PO box, and then to mine. I use a burner cell phone, and the room I'm renting is paid for in cash under the table.
58. Getting Schooled
I failed out of college and didn't tell anyone about it. I lied to literally everyone I know about still being in school and I even pretended to go to classes. My parents still thought that they were paying for my college tuition all the while. That is the worst part of this whole thing. I wasted six months and a good $5,000, if not more, of their hard-earned money.
59. Behind Closed Doors
When I was about nine years old, my oldest sister passed. She was 32 at the time. As a result, her two kids came to live with us. I was a "surprise" child, so all of my siblings are much older than me. My nephew and I (we're both boys) began to share a room. He was just a year younger than me. Around the time when I was eleven and he was ten, we started doing...things together.
Obviously, this is a huge secret of mine. Over the years, we started out by cuddling with clothes on, then clothes off, then eventually things escalated even further. We eventually started engaging in this kind of behavior nearly every night. When I went away for college at 18, we never did it again and we haven't spoken of it since.
As a matter of fact, I don't remember ever talking about it. One of us would always just give our gesture to the other that we wanted to start, and we would go at it. I'm 21 years old now and in the process of coming out as gay. He identifies as straight and is in a relationship with a girl, but I wonder all the time if it's just a coverup.
Anyways, we're the only two people in the entire world who know about this little secret, and I would never dare to even think of telling anyone about it. Not even my closest and most trustworthy best friend, who knows literally everything else about me. Sometimes, I still fear that my nephew might decide to tell someone one day…
60. Photo Finish
I really, really want to post adult photos of myself on the internet. I get excited by the idea of people looking at and enjoying my body but not being able to actually touch it. I like showing off my body in general. But I have a wonderful boyfriend whom I'm very much in love with, and he would be devastated if I ever did that.
I have created this anonymous throwaway account online, and it’s ready to go if I ever decide to go through with my fantasy. I made it while drinking one night. I don't know if I'll ever actually use it. The idea taunts me more and more, and it doesn't help that I have pent up urges from not seeing my boyfriend very often, or from the fact that he’s not into the same stuff as me.
61. Footing the Bill
I'm a guy who is very into other people’s feet. That is my greatest secret in the world. I have never even told my own wife about it, even though she has amazing feet. But it gets worse. I have a weird twist to this interest of mine: The thing that really turns me on is what I call "pedal pumping," as in watching someone’s feet as they motion like they would when pedaling a bicycle.
I guess that's the best way I can describe it. I'm mortified to tell my wife or anyone else about this, and I never have. When I was a little kid, I spent a lot of time at church during the week for my mom's choir practices. There was this decent looking piano player lady who would always kick off her shoes and play the piano barefoot.
Even though I knew nothing about myself at the time, I remember spending many Saturday afternoons up on the stage or by the pulpit during boring choir practices, laying on the carpet, playing with toy cars, and trying not to make it seem glaringly obvious that I was transfixed on watching this lady's barefoot pushing on that piano pedal.
I remember getting very excited while watching this, and wishing so much that I was that piano pedal, on the floor, with her amazing foot pushing down on me. I was totally transfixed, and the feeling continues to this day. I can never control myself when I see women playing pianos, organs, driving barefoot, or using a sewing machine barefoot.
My fantasies usually always involve me imagining myself as the pedal, and the woman as sporting a bare, nylon, or sock-clad foot. If it's a smelly foot, I like that even better. Don’t ask me why. I have no logical explanation for it. I feel guilty and stupid about this whole thing to this day. Why on earth would a feeling like that develop when I was just an innocent little kid?
62. Family Ties
I know this is awful, it's just there's nothing I can do about it now. I slept with my brother's wife...and my youngest niece is, in all likelihood, my daughter. Yes, their child looks exactly like me. For obvious reasons, this fact would cause tremendous stress and shock for every member of my family, and I have no intention of allowing them to ever find out about it.
63. He Loves Her, He Loves Her Not
My secret is that I want to see my mother pass. I love her very much, but she is such a jerk to her family, her friends, and to society in general. I just can't stand it anymore. She is almost to the point of abusiveness towards her family. She calls us all stupid all the time and says she wishes that she had never given birth to me or my brother.
She is also a raging drinker, yet everyone seems to just sweep that fact under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist. If she were to pass, it would certainly be heart-wrenching and I will be inconsolable. But a part of me will be very glad that she is finally gone. She had open-heart surgery this time last year. I thought that was going to be the end.
Although I was worried the whole time that I was going to lose my mother, a part of me actively wanted her to not come out of that surgery room. The reason this secret would destroy my life if it got out is that I would be completely disowned by my whole family and all of her friends. To the point where I would have to move out of state to be able to start life anew.
Because my mom knows everyone in this town that I currently live in, she could easily get me fired from pretty much any job just because of her connections. And she also has control of my bank account as of right now, due to the fact that she created it for me when I was only 15 years old. I plan on changing that this week, though.Sadly, she has control over every facet of my life, and she could screw me over hard if my wish for her demise ever got out.
64. Opening up
I'm asexual, but I’m also married to a man who definitely isn't asexual. My husband knows, obviously, because we've been together for years and haven't slept together yet. But no one else knows. They also don't know that we're in an open relationship and that he sleeps with other women, because we both know that's the one thing I can never give him.
And no, I don't mind that he sleeps with other people. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It was my idea to have an open marriage, and we have strict rules about it that he's always followed. We're both very secure in our relationship.
65. Bonus Gift
When I was very little, what I thought was going to be a harmless toot turned into a little bit more. This was before I had the wherewithal to know not to check for poop with my hand. I had no clue what to do because the bathroom was right past my parent's room and I thought I would get in trouble if they saw that I had wiped my butt with my hand.
So, I looked around my living room, and I saw big speakers that were hooked up to the TV. These things were taller than I was back then. The shelves we kept our cassette tapes on hid the backside of these speakers, making them the perfect place to hide some poop. The worst part isn't that I wiped my butt chocolate on these speakers...
...It's that when my parents eventually bought a better TV that came with better speakers, they generously decided to give the old speakers to my cousin's family. It's been about fifteen years since we gave them the poopy speakers. My cousin's parents, my aunt and uncle, got divorced a few years back, and my aunt is now in possession of the poo speakers. Fifteen years later, nobody knows what I did.
66. Striking Below the Knees
I used to poop in my pants until I was about 13 years old. I had absolutely no control of my bowels, and the results were extremely gross and embarrassing. My mother knew about this problem, but she was the only one who did even within our family. I don't even want to imagine what would have happened if my fellow students had found out.
67. Revenge Can Be Pungent
This is my revenge story. When I was 10 years old, my mom sent me to a summer camp in another county. I knew 2 other people there, and we were placed in the same cabin. The other cabin was full of the local kids who had been there previous years. I was a fat awkward kid, and I got picked on all the time. This camp was no exception, but there was this one kid who was relentless.
We'll call him Sam. Sam was always pushing me around and called me names constantly. I wouldn't even eat if he was in the lunch area because his tormenting upset me so much. I was a sensitive kid, but this guy would haven broken anyone. One day, my friends and I were in our cabin talking about how mean the other guys were, and I decided to seek my revenge.
I had to go to the bathroom, so I grabbed a plastic grocery bag and filled it up with a massive number two. I took the bag to the boy's cabin while the other kids were out being cool. I found Sam’s bunk, grabbed a pair of his underwear, and shoved them down in the bag. After squishing it up again, I put it under Sam’s mattress with a little bit of it hanging out so that everyone would see it.
By the way, the stench was horrendous. Relieved I hadn't been caught, I ran out of there and back to our cabin. When the mean kids came back in from playing, we could hear their disgust. It didn't take long for Sam to be the new target. Nobody wanted anything to do with the kid that had had an accident in his pants and tried to hide the evidence under his bed. Guess who didn't get picked on for the rest of camp?
68. Stranger Danger
My secret is that I occasionally, as in pretty much daily, find strangers on the internet, hop on a video chat with them, and engage in role-play with them where I act like a 25-year-old woman who's into being tied up and taken advantage of. I'm an otherwise straight, average 22-year-old man with no strange quirks at all. I have no idea what's wrong with me.
69. Exploration Gone Wrong
When I was a kid, I had a friend. Let's call her Amanda. Well, the two of us were hanging out at a park and right across the street, there was a building planned for demolition. Anyway, the genius in me had the great idea to go inside it and check it out. As we were exploring, the floor caved in beneath us. But that was just the beginning of the nightmare.
Amanda fell down two stories and landed on some debris. She was severely injured. While I caught myself on the first floor, she didn't make it past the first day in the hospital. I'm still haunted by the memory. Every year, I have a little memorial for her by myself. I still blame myself for causing her demise, and it doesn't get any easier as more time passes by.
70. An Opportunity to Vent
When I was about six years old, I was super scared of the dark like most six-year-olds are. It was late at night one time and I needed to pee really badly. I was too scared to leave my room when the hallway was dark, though. I had an air vent on the floor near my bed. So, obviously, my six-year-old mind thought it would be a good idea to pee into the vent.
My parents never found out about what I had done, but from that day on they were constantly complaining about the pee smell in our house that they could never seem to locate. If they ever found out that I had caused it for such a stupid reason, I don’t think I could ever live the embarrassment down. I’m taking this secret to my grave.
71. Who Has the Power?
I might have killed someone around ten years ago, without any questions asked. I was an intern at a hospital. One day, me and one of the technicians were performing maintenance on some ventilators. You know, as in ventilators that keeps people alive when they can't breathe on their own. It was a normal day and I was in charge of replacing batteries.
The next day, I heard a patient had died because the power supply had gone out during the night. The staff had not been able to hand-ventilate the patient sufficiently. I had my fingers in the power supply the day before. I have only ever repeated this here.
72. So Tell Us How You Met!
A guy I know confessed that he stalked a lady for a year by hacking her love interest's computer, planted a load of proof that love interest had been stalking her and was into a load of weird and creepy stuff, revealed it to the lady, helped girl to get a preventing order on love interest, used that as his own way in with the girl, and finally married her. What the actual heck.
73. The Past Is Present
My grandfather was Polish. He fought in WWII in the Allied forces after escaping to occupied Italy. Later, he came to the UK and met my grandmother, with whom he had an unbelievably troubled relationship, and five kids. He passed when my dad was 14. My dad and his brothers found some old projector films in the attic. When they looked at the photos, their blood ran cold.
It was a slideshow that appeared to depict my grandfather in a suit, next to a woman in a wedding dress, standing at an altar. The guy had been married already, in Poland. We don't know what happened to his first wife, but now we know why he was estranged from his Polish family.
74. Saved by the Bread
When I was nine years old, I was planning to shoot up my school. I planned it for months. I brought all my stepdad's arms and stuff in my school bag, and most assuredly would have gone through with it. But then everything changed. The girl I liked gave me half of her sandwich at lunch. This blew my mind, as she had never even bothered to speak to me before.
75. Civilian Hero
Once, a lady ran up to me at a notoriously bad corner in town. I thought I knew her because she ran right up to me and hugged me. However, as soon as she let go, she started babbling incoherently, and I realized that she was one of the many mentally ill people living in the area. A few minutes later, she did the same thing to a 50ish-year-old guy. I got a bad feeling, so I kept an eye on them.
He got very creepy with her, pushed her against a bus stop, and stated, "You're coming home with me tonight." She was half in tears, mumbling, and shaking her head violently, clearly not interested in going anywhere with him. Even though I knew it wasn’t a safe choice for me, I felt compelled to do something. I started yelling at him. He yelled back, then grabbed her by the wrist and started pulling her towards the alley.
I was terrified, in tears, and very angry. She screamed and I pulled a bottle out of my bag, yelled at him—and got hit in the face. I hit him back with the bottle. The girl ran away and I hit the man with the bottle again and he fell to the ground. I ran away crying then puked. That is the only time I've ever been in a fight, and I've become a bit afraid of myself because of it.
76. The Collector
I like to peel the dead skin off the bottoms of my feet. It doesn’t hurt or anything, it just feels satisfying. I started keeping the bigger pieces in a small jar. When the jar filled up, I didn't want to throw it out, so I donated it. My skin is now in a glass jar on display at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, which is a museum of medical history and oddities.
I sent a second jar over there too, as well as my favorite big pieces. As long as I keep filling jars up, they keep taking them! My current jar is about one quarter full right now. That’s my secret claim to fame.
77. A Taxing Burden
My biggest secret is that I have not paid income taxes in more than a decade. For obvious reasons, I cannot let anyone find out about this, or I would get into some major trouble. I don't get any part of my paycheck withheld from work. I don't know how this situation managed to get away from me like this. At this point, I'm afraid to ask anyone what I should do.
78. Not What You Signed up for...
I once pooped in my pants on a New Year’s party bus a few years ago. I thought it was just going to be a toot, but it turned out to be a small blast of fluid. I stayed calm, said nothing to any of the people around me, and threw my undies in the garbage can at the next bar we stopped at. Luckily, there was little to no poop residue on the inside of my jeans and I was able to continue the night without anyone finding out about my little secret. And no one ever will.
79. Fire in the Hole
My cousin is not a good person. He was an addict and he used the house we used to live in as kids to cook and use substances. One night, while I was living with my mom a few houses down the road from him, I was up at 3 am just watching his house from my kitchen window. I saw him leave. Without thinking about it too much, I grabbed a lighter and a piece of printer paper.
I snuck out, walked over, and knocked on the door. No one answered. Then I got an evil idea. There was a small window on the side of the house that was open, and the curtains were dry and thick. I twisted the paper as tightly as possible, lit it on fire — and then set the curtains on fire. I threw the paper through the window onto the floor and then snuck back in my house.
I sat at the kitchen window and watched my cousin’s house slowly catch on fire with a smile on my face. All of the sudden, it exploded. My parents woke up and called 9-1-1. I took a lawn chair and sat at the end of my yard and watched it burn from about 300 feet away. The authorities found the remains of the lab after the fire was out. I knew what I’d done was wrong, but I still cant help feeling that justice was served.
80. Money (That’s What I Want)
Nobody knows it, but I am broke. I feel like a failure. I work as a line cook making minimum wage and hardly have any money for groceries or for anything personal in my life. I've gone hungry, I've gone without power and water, and most of the time I feel like my life is worthless. They say that money can't buy you happiness, but I can freaking guarantee that if I had some I wouldn't feel the way I do most nights when I lay down before bed.
81. Anger Management
It still freaks me out to think about this. It's the worst thing I've ever done. I tried to strangle my mom once when I lost my temper. I don’t even remember what I was angry with her about. Ever since then, I've done everything I can to keep my anger in check, because it scared me. I was like 13 years old then, and thankfully not strong enough to actually hurt her.
82. It All Came Crashing Down
My first car accident back in high school was not the result of me swerving to avoid hitting a deer, like I told my dad and the authorities. What actually happened was something supremely stupid. In reality, I tried to pull the emergency brake and do a 180 while going 50 miles per hour down a steep hill, just to see if I could pull it off.
Had I crashed on the other side of the road instead of where I did, I would have fallen down a 50-foot hill and into the river. That was the last time I ever tried anything like that. Lucky for me, there just so happened to have been visible deer tracks in the mud near the ditch that I ended up in. I avoided getting a ticket and my dad paid to have my car fixed. I have never told him the truth in the more than 15 years that have passed since the incident.
83. Sock It to Me
Once, when I was 13 years old, I went a full week and a half without pooping. I was on a camping trip and something must have happened with the drinking water or my digestive system. I tried taking laxatives, but nothing worked. My stomach hurt so bad, but nothing would come out. Then, one evening after dinner, I suddenly felt it coming.
At long last, I knew that this was it. I bolted for the bathhouse, mentally preparing for the epic event. When I finally waddled in, THE STALLS WERE ALL OCCUPIED. At this point, I was freaking out. I was literally about to either poop in my pants or in the woods with no means of cleaning myself after. Desperate, I waddled over to the private shower area attached to the bathrooms.
My mind suddenly went into problem-solving mode. I felt like I was Bradley Cooper in the movie Limitless. Initially, I thought I could just poop on the shower drain and waffle stomp it through, but I was not going to be that guy who ruined the nicest shower in the woods for everyone. Then, like a bolt of lightning, I knew what I had to do.
I pooped in the only piece of clothing I could spare: my sock. Obviously, my stomach was doing much better now and I was hugely relieved. I carried the poop sock over to the nearby dumpster to discard, but one of my friends saw me on the way. Before I could dispose of the poop sock, this friend strikes up a conversation with me and starts asking questions about what I was doing.
At this point, I started to really panic internally. The best excuse I could come up with on the spot was that I had just found a sock in the shower that was stuffed with mud, so I thought it best to throw it away. My friend affirmed how good of a guy I was for doing that, and then walked away without suspecting a thing.
As soon as he left, I threw the poop sock into the dumpster and let out a massive sigh of relief. My problems were finally over. In hindsight, mud in a sock is a ridiculous story, but there’s absolutely no way he could have ever guessed that the real situation was much, much more bizarre. I’ve never told a single soul about this little episode, until now. And I never plan to again.
84. Scoop and Snoop
I once helped out a female friend's family by taking care of their cat. Every day for a week, I would go over there, feed the cat, scoop some poop away—and then get to work snooping around their house. I found my friend's diary, and proceeded to read the entire thing. I then used this information to get her to like me. She is currently my wife.
85. Acting Like It Never Happened
My secret is that me and my cousin took turns licking each other when we were about 10 years old. I have a vivid memory of it. We have never spoken of it since. We're both 25-year-old men with normal lives now.
86. Pernicious Prince
Almost everyone I know thinks extraordinarily highly of me, but I’m actually not a very nice person. It all started when I read The Prince when I was 11… and 12… and 13. Actually, I’ve read it every year since then, and I am now 23. It taught me how to manipulate people. I control exactly how every person I know sees me and, more importantly, what they expect of me.
Even though I'm nothing special, because I have created this narrative that says otherwise, everyone has this impression of me that's not accurate. I cheat and lie all the time. I have lied and manipulated my way through life and through every challenge I’ve faced. Many people think the world of me, but they shouldn’t. So far, nobody has ever seen through it.
87. Musical Graves
When I was 13, a friend and I went to a graveyard. We noticed about six fresh plots that had placards in plastic sleeves in place of tombstones. I decided to switch them all up. To this very day, I feel horrible about this, and I will for the rest of my life.
88. What a Ripoff!
I have evidence of a massive scam that my former company is running. It basically robbed millions of students of a chance at a good livelihood. I was asked to help out with the scam by the company while I was working there. When I said I would not participate, I resigned and the company told me that they would destroy my life if I made it public.
I was only 22 years old at that time and was extremely scared when this all first happened. The owner of the company is very well-connected. He is related to a bunch of powerful officers and they can literally screw over my entire life easily if they want to. Even though I have kept it a secret up to this point, not a single day goes by when I don't think about the situation.
89. Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Equally
My secret is that my mother is cheating on my father and my father is also cheating on my mother. Neither of them knows about what the other is doing. They both know that I know about their own behaviors, as they each separately made me promise not to tell the other parent. Parents can be so incredibly messed up sometimes…
90. Out of This World
I believe in aliens. Like, to an insane degree. I used to attempt to summon them in an effort to be abducted. I've spent countless hours and night upon sleepless night looking up abduction videos and the like online. Every time I think about aliens, I get this adrenaline rush and feel so alive. I love the thought of hyper-intelligent, spiritually advanced, telepathically inclined beings. But it doesn't end there.
I daydream often about being abducted by them, or at least coming into contact with extraterrestrials and getting to interact with them. I know how weird it sounds, but this is truly the way I feel and it is basically a lifelong obsession at this point. If anyone realized how much time and energy I've invested into this bizarre interest of mine, I'm pretty sure they would think I was a nut-job and stop being friends with me.
91. How Much Is That Doggie on the Sofa?
I am the only person alive who knows that my mother-in-law sat on her pet dog until it suffocated; and I intend to keep it that way.
92. A Scary Imagination
This one really would destroy my life. I dream about ending my own life fairly frequently. I'm terrified of what happens on the other side and would never actually go through with it, but I fantasize about it a lot. Especially when I'm stressed or tired or having a bad day. I've mentally composed more goodbye notes than I can possibly recall.
If I ever tell a doctor about it, my life as a free and unmedicated woman is over. I'm terrified of mental hospitals and psychiatric medication. I never told anyone about how I feel. A doctor would instantly confine me to a mental hospital, and a friend or family member would either panic or just think that I'm some sort of drama queen.
93. You’ve Got a Friend in Me
I’m a grown man. My biggest secret is that I have an imaginary friend, who happens to be a dragon. I spend a lot of time each week daydreaming about our little world together. Sometimes, I might be flying on his back. Other times, we may be exploring the forests or something. I never know what we’ll be doing till we “get there” so to speak.
Usually, at night until I fall asleep, I imagine that the two of us are in a cave on a cold night curled up together and snuggling around a warm, toasty fire. I realize that this is very childish, stupid, and weird, but honestly, if my imagination is vivid enough during a given session, it makes me really happy and I feel at peace.
Writing about our friendship is a nice outlet, but not enough for me. I can't really lucid dream either. That’s why I continue to actively spend time daydreaming about this. But hopefully, in the future, I will be able to visit the world in my head through virtual reality technology and spend time actually physically being there. So, yeah. There's my weirdness laid out for the internet to see!
94. A Dog’s Life
I am a zoophile, meaning that I have...feelings for animals. Specifically my pet dog. Unfortunately for me, that is not socially acceptable and my life would immediately be destroyed if anyone ever found out. It is sad; I don't hurt anyone, I just love my dog. And that is not okay.
95. Liar, Liar Pants on Fire
My secret is that I cannot stop myself from constantly lying. Half the time, I just lie about things that don't even matter and that I could easily have just told the truth for. But I can't stop myself from doing it. I don’t know why. All the lies I've told, big and small, will all catch up to me at one point or another and will be seriously damaging to my life.
My parents and my brother don't trust me at all anymore because I've done some incredibly stupid things and lied about them for no reason. I've also had to do extra things or tell bigger lies to cover up for what started out as a little white lie. Other people around me who have caught me in little lies don't know how to act around me anymore.
I know that I need to stop this destructive behavior and I am seriously trying to. But, somehow, the more I try to stop doing it, the more I end up doing it. This whole thing is slowly destroying my life bit by bit, and my relationship with my family is already in shambles. Yet, as far as I can tell, there is nothing I can do about it.
96. Dagger of the Mind
My secret is that I once brought a knife to school with the intention of using it to take the life of a fellow kid. In the end, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was a very angry, very lonely kid for a long time. That all sort of piled up into an uncontrollable rage sometimes, and one day I had just decided that I’d had enough.
At the end of the school day, I saw him minding his own business on the playground. I still had the knife in my pocket and was standing there pondering what I was about to do. Luckily, right at that exact moment, my dad miraculously spotted me from the parking lot and took me home. I didn't get to do it. Then I realized my mistake.
97. Secret Liaisons
A really good lifelong buddy of mine dropped out of college after the 2001 attacks and joined the army to help protect our nation. He completed three tours in Iraq, got married, had a kid, and all was great for him. His mom was the type that was always close to his friends because they reminded her of him while he was away. Because of that, us guys would take her out and keep her company, as a group.
One day, she called me up and asked me to go out and have a drink with her. She had apparently found some pictures or whatever of her son and me from childhood that she couldn't wait to share. We met up at a local watering hole for a couple drinks and a few laughs. She kept feeding me drinks and, before I could say that it was time for me to head out, she had her hands on me and was very forward.
I admit it wasn't a decision that I was capable of making at that time, so I went with what felt good. We went back to my house and slept together. It was one of the craziest experiences of my life. For obvious reasons, I have kept this a secret and never told anyone about it. Tragically, my buddy lost his life in Iraq just a few months after this incident. I am a horrible person.
98. Frosty the Liar
I ran a very successful cake business for years. I was really a cake decorator at heart; I had been doing it for years and that was my true passion, but I HATED baking!!! I tried to bake from scratch, but it never tasted good. So I came up with an ingenious plan. I would visit my local "big cost savings" type store and get CASES OF FROZEN SHEET CAKE. Seriously. People complimented me ALL the time.
I even made my wedding cakes and celebrity's cakes from this stuff! Frozen, pre-made sheet cake. Yep. It was actually okay stuff; I mean, I made my own icing and filling so yes, the cakes did taste fine and they looked great. I just hated baking and still do. I'd always be sneaky about buying the frozen sheet cake too, scared that I'd see a customer.
Wikimedia Commons, Michael Prudhomme
99. One Bump Can Wreck Your Love Life
I used to work the desk in an ER. One day, we had a fellow brought in via EMS after a horrible car wreck. After a while, a lady came to the desk and said, "My husband is here, he's just been in a car accident." I checked with the unit, they said he could have visitors, so I let her go back. I went on with my day. About 20 minutes later, a different woman came to the desk.
She said, "My husband is here, he's been in a car accident." I knew that we only had one MVA back there, but I asked her for the patient's name, figuring maybe she'd come to the wrong hospital. But she had not. This man was not polyamorous. Instead, he was leading a double life of Bruce Wayne proportions. He wasn't just sleeping with two different women.
He had two sets of children. He had convinced both that he was officially married to them. And neither had any idea the other existed. There was, how you say, a mild kerfuffle. In the end, the women joined forces against him and walked out planning their respective divorces. It was just amazing to me that this guy's whole life was blown up by a minor fender bender that wasn't even his fault. Dude looked just haunted when he walked out.
100. The Old Switcharoo
My wife and I absolutely adore our son. It’s been amazing to watch him grow up—but neither of them know the painful secret that I’ve had to keep from them ever since the day my wife went into labor. She nearly perished while giving birth, and the labor was so difficult that she fell into a coma afterward for days. When she woke up cradling our son in her arms, she had no idea about the sin I’d committed.
Our baby never made it through the birthing process, and I secretly bought our son from a human trafficker. This is quite easy to do in my country, considering that there are a lot of very poor parents willing to give their children away. My wife has no idea and I have no intentional of telling her or our son the truth.
101. Spoiler Alert
Two sons of a really wealthy couple go to the family lawyer to have their recently deceased parents' will read. The lawyer is super nervous because he has known them both since they were kids. One son gets the entire inheritance, and the other gets nothing. The explanation was that it should be passed through to blood relatives only. So that was the day he found out he was adopted.
