12+ People Who Revealed Family Secrets Online and Unexpectedly Went Viral

Nobody can resist a good secret, even the slightest hint of a secret story fuels the urge for us to want to know the entire thing! The inherent curiosity, coupled with our existence in the digital age, drives many of us to use the internet as both a vault to lock away some of our deepest family secrets and also as a platform for them to be revealed. Whether it’s a need for validation, the relief that comes from finally speaking out, or simply the safety of being “Anonymous123”, the internet offers us all something that makes putting our secrets into the digital world so appealing. Whatever the reason, breaking the silence of a secret can certainly feel liberating, and for some, their family secrets could be their claim to fame.

• My two remaining grandparents—paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother—married each other at 71 years of age. This made my mother and father step-brother and step-sister, and made my father my uncle and my mother my aunt since they were step-siblings. So, since I’m now the son of my aunt, my mother, my uncle, and my father all at the same time, I’m my own cousin! I’ll always have family... © Pigs100/ Reddit

• I found out I had a sister who had been given up for adoption. The only reason I found out was the person who informed me no longer felt bound to secrecy after my mom passed. And the person who told me had “receipts” solid enough that I have no reason to doubt them. It also explains why mom freaked out when I told her I’d done a 23AndMe test. © zombiemann / Reddit

• My grandparents had gotten a divorce, married other people and then divorced them, then got back together with each other and had another child, but never got remarried. I was scandalized, was told this in the early 1980s...things were still different then. © clubJenn / Reddit

• My dad secretly had his vasectomy only after I was born because my mom lied to him about taking birth control, which obviously resulted in my birth. Our family is GREAT at communication and conflict resolution. © squirrely_gig/ Reddit

• I am 57 years old now, but when I was 17, I found a photo of me as a 1-year-old in a playpen with a little girl of about 5 standing next to me. The photo was labelled with our names. I asked my sister who ‘Marianne’ was, and she immediately had a pained look on her face. Turns out Marianne was our foster sister from 6 weeks until my parents sent her away when she was almost 5. My siblings, who were 13, 12, 9, and 5 (and I was 1) when she was sent away, were told to NEVER mention her name, ever again. Obviously, they didn’t because I only found out about her from the photo. © pinkgrace67 / Reddit

• My aunt and uncle couldn’t have children, so they had a friend give them her child, and they paid the doctors on the spot to change the names of the parents on the birth certificate so that he would be their child legally without having to go through adoption. It was like he was born to my aunt and uncle, even though he wasn’t. © Unknown author / Reddit

• I had an uncle who was a railroad engineer and worked the Terre Haute, Indiana to Danville, Illinois line. Never took a day off from his one-day-there, one-day-back route. At his funeral (I was a kid and didn’t go), a strange woman came into the funeral home with some older children. No one knew who she was, and finally, my grandma introduced herself to the woman and asked who she was. Suddenly, the woman said, “I’m Mrs. so and so I’m here for my husband’s funeral.” Turns out my uncle had two families, one in Terre Haute and one in Danville. I didn’t find out about this until I was an adult. My mom, grandma, aunt, and sister kept this a secret for decades. © mildlysceptical22 / Reddit

• When my mother was pregnant with me, my dad’s father found out he was dying of lung cancer. He had always wanted a grandchild, and I would have been his first. Well, my parents made the decision to not tell him my mother was pregnant with me, and he died without knowing he had a grandchild on the way. I’ve heard so many wonderful things about my grandfather who never met me, I wish my parents had told him I was on the way. I don’t know, what do you all think, should they have told him? © Unknown author / Reddit

• My grandfather was in love with someone in his teens, but things did not work out. He married my grandmother, and the girl he loved married my grandmother’s brother. So they all continued to spend many, many decades together as a family. We all grew up knowing them as there would be monster-sized family reunion picnics. When my grandmother died (in her 90s), my grandfather married the love of his life, who had lost her husband (my grandmother’s brother) 2 years prior. They lived several years happily until his 2nd wife passed away. He tried for love again and married someone we all detested (a really overbearing, rude woman). She passed away also. At the time, he was 100 years old, so he decided not to go for a 4th wife. :) © ShadesOfCerulean / Reddit

• My great grandparents were high school sweethearts and the only role models I’d ever had for a relationship since my grandparents and parents are divorced and hate each other. Then my mom tells me that my great grandma had an affair, and that’s why one of my grandma’s sisters isn’t like the others. So, there goes that. © Symnestra / Reddit

• I discovered, many years after my mom passed, that her mother was still married to her first husband until almost a year after my mom was born. As soon as the divorce went through, my grandmother married my mother’s father, with whom she’d been living. They crossed into another state and got married the day after the divorce was finalized. I don’t think my mom ever knew this. This all took place in the mid 1930’s. © Kincherk / Reddit

• My grandma was raised in a catholic orphanage under the pretext that she lost both her parents and siblings during the Spanish Influenza. Turns out her and her dad survived, but her dad didn’t want to take care of her so he left her at an orphanage in Brooklyn and moved to Europe and started a new family. © Human_Commercial_406 / Reddit

• I found out my mother was briefly married once (to her high school sweetheart) before she married my father. This was only surprising to us kids, since everyone’s families knew about it at the time. No one just thought it was important enough to tell us. © Fredelas / Reddit

Some secrets are meant to be kept, but for these people, speaking up and releasing their families’ secrets into the digital world brought them much more than the relief of sharing; these stories went viral! Eager for more secrets? Click here to check out even more stories like this one.