My father tried to kill my mother while she was pregnant with me

Here goes: My two remaining grandparents, my father's father and my mother's mother, married each other when they were 75. This made my mother and father step-brother and step-sister. Since the son of my father's sister (my aunt) is my cousin, and the son of my mother's brother (my uncle) is also my cousin, I became both cousins. I am, therefore, my own cousin. I'll never be alone...

My uncle tells the story that when he was a kid, his older brother wanted him to go out hunting with him in the woods near their house. They woke up really early, and started walking much deeper into the woods than they usually did, and way off the normal trails they used. My uncle realized his brother was letting him get further and further ahead. He stopped and turned around to see his brother starting to bring the shotgun up in his direction. He asked him what the hell was he doing, his brother said "Oh, I thought I saw something." My uncle decided to go back at that point. Later that week he went back and found a pit that someone had dug a bit further off the trail. He never went anywhere with his brother alone again.

I found out that my grandfather’s first wife (before my grandma) died of botulism from eating some tomatoes she had canned at home. She could have been saved, but he refused to take her to the doctor because the botulism was her “fault.” He let her die to teach her a lesson.

My step-grandfather had a completely hidden life in Australia before he met my grandmother. He had a family and kids in Australia, and faked his death by driving his car off a cliff then moving to America. His kids thought he was dead until my grandmother found out about them and reached out years later. His son actually became a famous comedian over there, and from what I know has a joke he does at his shows about his father faking his death to disconnect from them.

A few years before he passed, my dad and I had a long heart to heart, at the end of which, he told me he wasn’t the one to first sleep with my mom on their honeymoon. He caught her in bed with her cousin, with which she was had been in love for a long time. He spoke with their pastor, who told him to forgive and forget. That worked, until 6 years later, when he caught her again, with the same cousin. He told me he wanted to leave with me but ultimately decided to stay, because he wanted me to have a family. With all that happened in my childhood, and to him (workaholic, diabetes, heart attack), I wish he’d left and be happy instead.

My father used to secretly go to parks and highway rest stops to meet other men for anonymous sex. Just in case you're wondering, he really hated gay people.

Not necessarily a family secret but a weird story nonetheless. This happened around 2013 - Instagram wasn’t totally new but it was still a much smaller platform centered a lot around visual artists. Through Instagram - a friend of mine found a profile that was my goddamn doppelgänger. Like, this guy looked so much like me that I sent multiple photos of him to my mom and she was convinced it was me even after I told her. Now, for the purpose of the story I’ll just say I am incredibly unique looking. Dark brown hair, firey red beard, almost a full bodysuit of tattoos. Same for this guy. The brands of clothes I wore, even down to the gold and black RayBan Clubmasters. I am a professional Tattooer and he is a painter who owns an art gallery. So - keeping with how the internet worked back then - we said hey and joked about meeting and occasionally would call or FaceTime the other to prove a drunken point. Then, I got an opportunity to travel to NYC for work. This guy lived in NYC as well so we made plans to meet up! Bought plane tickets, made arrangements and even talked about how funny it would be to get a photo together. Then we started talking about how funny it would be if we were long lost brothers and he goes “that’s entirely possible! My Dad was never in the picture - he was a traveling biker that hooked up with my mom one night.” Which was weird because my dad was a tattooer and notorious biker who traveled in the area he lived when he was growing up. I thought it was a long shot but I said “hey! Ask your mom if his name is James Jobin! Wouldn’t that be crazy if we are brothers?!” He loled and agreed that would be funny - said he’d ask his mom the next morning before I got into town. Then he blocked me on everything. Instagram, Facebook, Text. Absolute radio silence. I’ve made other accounts to check up on him and see how he’s doing but I’ve never reached back out. The thought that I could have a brother is bittersweet for me - I wanna respect his right to have contact with me or not but it does break my heart a little every time I think about him.

My biological grandfather threatened to kill my grandmother while she was very young and pregnant with my uncle. (Long story short, he was engaged to someone else). My grandmother became a nervous wreck while pregnant and wouldn’t leave the house and he used to throw bricks through the window. Eventually she told some of her friends about what he’d threatened to do to her. Shortly after that he went missing, never to be seen or heard from again. We always kind of laughed and joked that one of her friends must have threatened him or ‘ran him out of town’. We would even go as far to say someone might have killed him for her. It wasn’t until we were going through her boxes of photos and ‘love letters’ we realized she was actually friends with the Kray twins...

That my grandfather murdered his own brother to inherit his money

In doing ancestry research, I found a prison record for my great-grandfather. Felony assault at age 18 in 1901. My mom was shocked and never knew.

Two years ago I found out that my Dad had a wife before my Mom and she died in a freak accident on their wedding night.

My great uncle is a rapist that prefers underage family members. I don’t know how many people actually know, but my grandparents certainly do along with his victims (my mom, aunt, and I know at least a few or their cousins but I’m not sure which). But then he found Jesus again so we all have to forgive him and pretend nothing happened? It was before I was born but that’s the basic run around I’ve gotten from my grandparents, they don’t ever actually acknowledge it just that “Tony did bad things but he found God”. I eventually put two and two together about my mom’s history or sexual assault and her making sure that me and my female cousins were never left alone with him. And now that I’m in my 20s that duty has been passed down to me at every family gathering. It’s like an unspoken rule that you can’t say **why**, just the warning. Don’t leave your daughters alone with him. I’m tired of it though. Tired of shooing little girls away and having to pretend like it’s normal. Scoping toddlers out of a predators arms and acting like everything’s fine and I’m just baby crazy. When this is all over, I’m not going to stay quite anymore. The next time I have to around him I’m taking children right back to their parents with the full f*****g story of why it’s dangerous. I’m tired of having to protect a rapist to keep peace.

Not really dark at all, but surprising. My mild mannered Buddhist lawyer uncle was International Mr. Leather's "Leather Daddy's Boy of the Year" some time in the late 80s.

My great uncle told his wife that their son died right after being born and gave him up to the state because he had Down's Syndrome. They had twins, a boy and a girl, and he somehow hid it from the whole family for about 40 years. It was only found out when the family lawyer was dying and contacted the sister to tell her she has a living brother who lives in a home run by the state. I guess he had helped my great uncle with the whole thing and still felt terrible about it. Also, for some added context, my great uncle was extremely wealthy. He could have easily paid for multiple caregivers to help his son and it wouldn't have effected his life at all.

A relative tried to poison one of their guests. Once I learned about it, it finally sealed the deal for me and forever changed my view on them. They were bonkers anyway but good lord that's too much.

Both of my mother's parent's had affairs without the others knowledge. My grandmother had Parkinson's and in one of her confused states she told my grandfather that she had an affair. Suffice to say my grandfather was not happy and put her in a home. He then started talking to my mother trying to figure out when it could have happened. He speculated that it happened around the same time he was having his affair, which was around 1966. My mother was shocked, she was born in 1967. So my mother may or may not be related to the man she believed to be her father.

I found out 2 years ago that my mother had a baby she gave up for adoption 18 months before she had me and then had another baby when I was 3 and she also gave that baby up for adoption. All 3 of us have different fathers and I think the only reason she kept me was because my father married her but that marriage only lasted a year. My mother remarried when I was 5 and my (half) brother was born when I was 7. As far as I knew for 59 years he and I were our mother's only children. I never saw her pregnant with the 2nd baby because she sent me to live with my great-grandparents across the country during her pregnancy. My mother and grandmother were the only people who knew about this and they both took the secret to their graves. The only reason any of it was found out is because of all of the DNA testing people now do. This discovery really impacted my sense of identity for a while, my view of my mother, and our relationship. I've met my half-siblings, an older sister and younger brother. I like them and I'm glad I've been able to answer some of their questions but the initial discovery really messed with me for a bit.

I found out that my great-grandpa got away with murder. He thought that my great-grandma was cheating on him with her dentist so he went into his office and shot him. He got away with it too and they didn't find out that he did it until he told everybody before he died.

My Uncle didn’t have an ~~aneurism~~ stroke spontaneously. (Sorry, I’m not a Doctor) He deliberately stopped taking his blood thinners. Dude was 63 with a wife, four kids and 15 grandkids, the oldest of which was 13 and the youngest was not even a year. He was just done. His wife doesn’t know, his kids don’t know. I only know cause I overheard the family doctor telling my dad. As far as I know, only myself. The Doctor, and my dad know.

I found out my dad killed someone in a drunk driving accident. My mum randomly told me a few years ago, it shook me for a while. I think it still very low-key affects him.

My uncle’s family claimed he had polio instead of a hereditary crippling disease. His wife figured it out when she went to their family reunion. She already had one child and was pregnant with another.

One of my aunts raised another aunt’s baby as her own. My mom had 4 sisters and a brother all of whom got married and had kids, so I have around 20 cousins. Unfortunately 3 of my aunts got breast cancer in their 30s. All 3 recovered, but years later the youngest, Maria, got it again and got it worse. Maria needed a bone marrow transplant. All her sisters and children got tested, but no one matched. The family then revealed that Maria had had a teenage pregnancy. Her first child was actually my cousin John who had been adopted and raised by my oldest aunt as her 2nd child. None of the cousins knew about this including John and his revealed to be adoptive siblings. John was asked to get tested and was a match, so he agreed to donate bone marrow to his birth mom, Maria. John was in his late twenties at the time and had had very little contact with Maria over his life, so he’s pretty cool. The transplant took, but Maria eventually succumbed a year or so later.

My dad told me that, before my mom and dad broke up, he hadn't been happy with her for several years. My mother even had a miscarriage at one point, which destroyed the both of them. But he couldn't leave her, because he was afraid that she would hurt or even kill herself. So his only thought was to have a kid with her, so that motherly instinct would hopefully prevent her from killing herself.