My grandpa had a secret family that he kept up with our whole lives and never said a word about. There were graduation pictures, Christmas cards, the whole deal. Completely blew our minds.

My great-grandfather had not, in fact, been eaten by a bear on Mt. Rainier (he was a park ranger). Instead, he’d been cheating on my great-grandmother and was summarily run out of town by her brothers. He moved to Alaska and nobody knew what had become of him until we located his grave, many decades later.

My great uncle shot himself in the head with a hunting rifle right before his kids walked in the door from school. His suicide letter said he wanted them to find him so they could know how much they ruined his life. They were very young at the time he died and no one knew about the letter until our great aunt died many, many years later. It was a whole new layer of hurt for the kids to find the letter.

My uncle found out he had a different dad than his siblings when he was taking a DNA ancestry test. His mother had had an affair. Both parents were dead when he found out. He’s a huge prick so I thought it was funny how it hit him. He mistreated my mother for not being one of their full siblings from the same parents and turns out he isn’t either lol

Great-grandma lived in a boarding house while great-grandpa was a traveling salesman. There was a nicely dressed man who would come through on business like clockwork. He thought 4-year-old grandma was adorable and would watch her for great-grandma if she needed to run to the store. He suddenly stopped coming around and a few weeks later great-grandma saw his picture in the paper. Turns out, she had been letting Pretty Boy Floyd babysit her kid.

This isn’t shocking, more cute. My grandad was a farmer his whole life. Every animal loved him. We’d go to a new place and dogs would be coming straight to him, horses would cuddle with him. He just had a charm with them. When cleaning out his closet and digging in his pockets to make sure nothing of value was thrown in the wash, we found grains, bits of dried meats, dog treats, bits of old carrot (for the horses). Man’s been bribing animals with food all this his life.

We found a sex swing in my little Catholic grandma’s attic.

Found out that my wife’s grandfather was a high-level KKK member. Found an old storage locker in his garage filled with his robe and hood and TONS of “memorabilia”.

Granny had always been famous for her fantastic iced tea recipe. No one made it like her! But! It was likely a family secret, probably handed down through the generations. Never to be revealed. We kids were always dying to know what was in it. After she died, many decades later, we finally found out: one can of frozen iced tea mixed with one can of frozen lemonade, add water and lemon slices.

My grandmother dated Mr. Rogers in high school.

I took care of my dad before he passed (I am the youngest of four). Come to find out my parents were divorced well before I would have been conceived. That plus the fact that I have blonde hair and blue eyes and all my siblings have dark hair and brown eyes, pretty much got the ball rolling and I started to ask questions. Mom initially denied it, but after I came back with Ancestry results showing another man was my biological father, she came clean.

I found out my boyfriend cheated on me after he died. The only reason I found out is because the girl was bragging on Facebook about how she was the last person who got to taste his junk. I called her a liar and she posted pics for proof. Shocked me for sure.

I met all 4 of my mom’s boyfriends at her funeral. It was a surprise to them and myself.

I cleaned out my grandpa’s house and he had a lot of porn, cock rings, and a shit-covered dildo. I never told my family because grandpa was awesome and they would be too shocked

My great-aunt and great-uncle were siblings who had an incest relationship for most of their lives. They shared a house for the last decades of their lives which I always thought was very sweet, siblings caring for each other as they got older. Years ago, I was talking with my father about how much I missed them when he just offhandedly told me that the two were in an incest relationship since they were kids. My mother confirmed, laughing at me like I was dumb for not knowing when it was obvious, which it apparently was since everyone in the family knew except me.

My grandparents were not biologically my grandparents. My dad and his sister were both adopted as babies. Only found out when, after the funeral (one funeral, they died on the same day) I was bitching about my aunt and her behavior at said funeral, and I said something along the lines of “I just don’t understand how the two of you are even related!’ and Dad came back with “well, actually…” and the whole thing came out.

I have a cool shocking story! I knew my grandfather was in the armed forces in the early 60s, but I DIDN’T know that one time Martin Luther King visited and my grandfather was the only white guy on the Alabama base that greeted him and shook his hand, and who wasn’t a general or something that had to. When I heard this story I was like no fucking way but there’s a PHOTOGRAPH. Grandpa shaking hands with MLK. Amazing, wish he or someone had told me that when he was still alive

My grandfather was very wealthy and I found out after he passed that he anonymously paid for hundreds of funerals for children in minority, low-income parts of our town.

I found out my father killed a guy when he was like 19. It was an argument over a girl, they gave him a choice of jail or the army. He chose the army then switched to the Air Force, was in for 20 years.