Few families have no secrets, but some members are better at keeping them than others. Some take said secrets to the grave, but what they leave behind might be enough for the information to come out.
Members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community recently discussed such information afteru/WhoAllIllasked them what secrets were revealed when cleaning out the home of a deceased family member. Netizens shared stories covering all sorts of scenarios, ranging from bizarre to hilarious and even shocking. Scroll down to find them on the list below and see for yourself why some people kept their lips sealed until the end of their days.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
this isn’t ‘cleaning out their home’, but when my husband died a few years ago i found several notes/letters he had scattered in various places around our home, written to me in advance (he had terminal cancer & knew he was dying). some were marked ‘open when you can’t stop crying’ ‘open when the holidays are too rough’ ‘open when you have to put one of the cats to sleep’.they didn’t contain any secrets but they are heartbreakingly beautiful.
The OP told Bored Panda that they haven’t been in a situation of finding anything shocking about a deceased loved one themselves. The reason they decided to start the thread on such a topic was based more on their own life. “I was going through my own childhood stuff and wondered what picture it would paint of me if someone else was doing it,” they said.
My dad kept a handwritten note in his wallet containing my mom’s old address, phone number, and directions to her house from when they first started dating in the 70s. He had moved it from wallet to wallet over the years. ❤️ He just died this past March and that was one of the first things we found.
The redditor shared that they were surprised about how many wholesome responses they received from the online community. That might be because, according to the author of ‘The Secret Life of Secrets’, Assoc. Prof. Michael Slepian, the most common reason for secrecy is protection.
Grandpa did drawings of the faces of the people he killed in WW2. Nobody knows why but my grandma said he had a lot of guilt over the things he saw so my guess is he didn’t want to forget them or didn’t feel like he should be allowed to forget them.
Cleaning out my grandpa’s apartment we found different pieces of a handgun scattered around. He struggled on and off with depression, and apparently, he did it so that if he was thinking about taking his life, he would have to go find all the parts and give himself time to talk himself out of it.
My brother found giant pickle jars of coins, mostly pennies, in our grandpas garage. Turned it into cash and it was nearly 400 dollars. He took everyone helping clean that day to my grandpas favorite restaurant for dinner. 🥰
Michael Slepian suggested that one of the reasons people often want to know someone’s secret is the natural curiosity to learn about the things that are hidden away. “We look at a wrapped gift for us under the Christmas tree, and we can’t help but wonder what’s inside,” he pointed out.
Nan was rich af. She left 90% of her money to a dog charity. Didn’t bother me but my cousins still haven’t got over it.
A diary with only a few entries from my uncle who lived alone. One of the entries was about how sad he was to have never met anyone or had children and how lonely he was. Broke my heart.
My dad was in hospice at home for a couple months before he died of lung cancer, and when I went to clean out his house I found that he had already sorted and packed away most of his personal treasures in couple storage bins. It was heartbreaking all over again thinking of him sitting there packing up his own life knowing it was coming to an end.
The expert believes that it’s uncommon for a person to plan to take their secret to their grave; and even though their goal might be to keep a secret forever, sometimes they get discovered nevertheless.“I’ve heard multiple stories now of people learning of their parents' secrets after they’ve passed away. One of the drawbacks of taking a secret to the grave is that there is absolutely no chance for the person who learns the secret to discuss it with the secret keeper.“I recently learned of a secret my grandmother had been keeping—a family secret that involved me—and I wish she hadn’t. She’s passed away now, but if I had learned the secret sooner, I could have told her that her concerns were not warranted. I could have made her feel much better about it, if we had the chance to discuss it,” Slepian shared.
The expert believes that it’s uncommon for a person to plan to take their secret to their grave; and even though their goal might be to keep a secret forever, sometimes they get discovered nevertheless.
“I’ve heard multiple stories now of people learning of their parents' secrets after they’ve passed away. One of the drawbacks of taking a secret to the grave is that there is absolutely no chance for the person who learns the secret to discuss it with the secret keeper.
“I recently learned of a secret my grandmother had been keeping—a family secret that involved me—and I wish she hadn’t. She’s passed away now, but if I had learned the secret sooner, I could have told her that her concerns were not warranted. I could have made her feel much better about it, if we had the chance to discuss it,” Slepian shared.
My mother and her siblings found a still in my 91 yr old great grandmothers cellar. She always grew a huge potato crop. My little old Polish great-grandmother was making vodka apparently.
Grandmother climbed Mt. Rainier, in WA, in a woolen skirt. Summit and all.
Found my grandparents wedding certificate, which didn’t match the date everyone else had. Their ‘original’ date was 9 months before my aunt was born. The certificate was dated about 5 months before she was born.
“Family secrets are among the most common kinds of secrets, and so it is perfectly normal to have a family secret that others who are outside the family don’t know about. Keeping secrets from family members is also highly common,” the author of ‘The Secret Life of Secrets’ pointed out, adding that family life and relationships tend to get complicated; so does life, in general.“If learning of a family secret is to drop a major bombshell into the family, it’s likely family members will need to cope with the new information. One of the main reasons why our secrets so often hurt us is that we tend to not cope effectively with them, because we try to do it on our own without others' help. Healthy coping comes from discussions with trusted others. Discussing the information with others can make a world of difference.”
“Family secrets are among the most common kinds of secrets, and so it is perfectly normal to have a family secret that others who are outside the family don’t know about. Keeping secrets from family members is also highly common,” the author of ‘The Secret Life of Secrets’ pointed out, adding that family life and relationships tend to get complicated; so does life, in general.
“If learning of a family secret is to drop a major bombshell into the family, it’s likely family members will need to cope with the new information. One of the main reasons why our secrets so often hurt us is that we tend to not cope effectively with them, because we try to do it on our own without others' help. Healthy coping comes from discussions with trusted others. Discussing the information with others can make a world of difference.”
That my dad hid money all over the house, not huge amounts mind you, but $60 here, $120 there. Felt like a bit of a scavenger hunt when we were cleaning out his stuff. He was always a bit of a sneakily generous guy, always gave me and my brothers a secret handshake with money tucked in his palm when we’d go back to school after a weekend home, etc, so wouldn’t be surprised if he’d done it intentionally. Made us smile every time we found some, iirc I think the final total was somewhere around $800.
My 97 year old uncle had a very decent pot stash and pipe collection.
My step-grandma had been married 5 more times than she told my grandpa she had been.He was her 9th husband, not her 4th
I found a hidden 38 revolver in my late stepfather’s bookshelf. Every bullet in the gun had the name Steve written in sharpie. No one had ever heard of him.
I’m a huge dorkus. Have worked in three comic shops. Have a huge collection. When the gf that would eventually become the wife and I moved into a house together, She flipped her s**t about how many long boxes of comics I had and the space they took up. Sports cards and binders of other non-sports cards… huge Magic the Gathering collection as well. We lived in that house for six years. Me and the son moved out after she passed away. As I was going through the closet my comics and binders of cards where in I found two small boxes that were NOT MINE… I found her collection of Pokémon cards and a full set of Nightmare Before Christmas cards. With her hand written notes on the set list. She had added her small collection of books to mine without me even knowing.My wife was a secret nerd.
After my Grandfather died, I asked my Dad to quietly go through his Dad’s bedroom while I took my Grandmother out to lunch. I explained that GrandDad might have racy magazines about, that would be upsetting to GrandMa if she found them. So just, be a good son and save your Mom from that.When we got back, my Dad was nearly hysterical, half laughing, half barfing, and pulled me into the garage to debrief. Apparently, my Grandfather was exactly the devout Catholic that he had appeared to be. And what my poor father had found in the bedside table was a stack of cheesecake pictures - of his own mother.
My nan had about a platoon’s worth of American servicemen photos tucked away…
My dad passed away in 1994 (I was 28). While going through his safe I found some adoption papers. While reading through them I got excited at the prospect I might have a brother out there somewhere (I was raised as an only child) but couldn’t understand why my parents never told me that they’d adopted a child but never told me. After rereading them, I realized that they papers were about me. After confronting my family about this turns out everyone - family, close friends, I mean everyone, knew I was adopted. Except me. That was a fun day.
Food from 1970. They died in 2006.
Elderly aunt had a hidden room with staircase to basement area no one knew about. She and her son had a meth lab.This was in the 90’s in Philly.Blew us all away.
Not mine, but happened in my old neighbourhood: some old dude died of cancer, his daughter and her boyfriend cleaned out a garage he was renting and found human body parts. The police got involved and it was revealed that the guy was a serial killer who murdered at least five women, though the exact number of his victims is unknown.
My grandmother was secretly using medical marijuana. She asked me to help her get her card, and I took her to the dispensary when she wanted to go. The rest of the family found out when she passed away whn they found some edibles in her nightstand. Miss Her everyday.
We found a box containing an old KKK robe in my grandpas closet after he passed. Apparently my great grandfather (his father) was a member of the Klan. So that’s a fun little snippet of family history we had absolutely no knowledge of. I believe my uncle took the robe and burned it.
I, as a joke once, made thong underwear on a merch website with my cats face on them and my signature. The description just said “so you can wear my pussy on your pussy.” My friends found this hilarious and bought them up of course. I got numerous Snapchats of thong photos for a while…We forgot about this for years.My best friend passed away in a motorcycle accident last year. His family called me while cleaning out his house a month or so after… they were wondering why they found thongs with my signature in his closet.I never thought I’d have to explain that one. Luckily, they thought it was incredible and we all shared some good laughs. 😅
Note to self … sell dragon dildo collection before dying…
A family friend (50s) was moving stuff from his mothers storage locker after she passed,opened a box of documents and inside was his adoption papers HE WAS ADOPTED!!! TURNS OUT his aunt who is significantly younger had a teen pregnancy and to avoid controversy at the time the newly married older sister just adopted him.
Mine was confirmation of a wild story. My grandfather served in Korea, for years there was a tall tale about how he won a “house” in Korea, (unsure how to phrase this politely online) that it included the family who owned it and essentially anyone who worked there in a game of poker. That when he returned home, after a few years of receiving letters and small payments my grand mother told him to give the ownership back the the family.I don’t think anyone really believed him when the story was told, over and over again, my grand mother died when I was young so couldn’t ask her if it was true.When he passed away and we were cleaning out the house, we found the letters from the family and the letter from the lawyer gramps used to officially return ownership.My grandpa owned a pleasure house in Korea, is a sentence that’s hard to say.
See Also on Bored Panda
That the city paid my mother $2,400 for the wrongful death of my father in 1979.
I had a falling out with my father when I was 21. Fast forward 18 years when died, and I found stacks of pictures, notes, and articles about me. My stepmom said he was always proud of me, and didn’t know how to say he was sorry.
Cleaning out my grandparent’s house after they passed away…We found a booklet on sexual anatomy, a penis eraser, a penis that my grandma had crocheted and there were walnuts in the “nut sack”, and a drawing my grandpa did of my grandma wearing nothing but a feather boa.
Many years ago I went with my dad and aunt to clean out my great uncle’s apartment after he passed away. He was never married, no kids, and lived (we thought) very poor. Tiny apartment with a twin bed, table and chair, a couple of pots and pans, a couple pants& shirts, and that’s basically it.As we stripped the bed and moved the mattress, we were shocked. He had hundreds of stacks of 10 dollar bills, wrapped in rubber bands, under his mattress. They were all 10 dollar bills. He lived during the Depression and didn’t trust banks, apparently, but we had no idea he had so much cash. He never spent it on anything. Just bundled it and saved it under his mattress. Some of the bills were so old and yellowed. It equaled thousands of dollars. We had no idea.
My grandmother, we discovered, had a decent sized safety deposit box full of gold bars. She kept meticulous records of her finances and business dealings as she was a very successful author. Yet no record of the purchase or the existence of these gold bars was in any of her records. We have no idea of how, when or why they were acquired. I’d love to know.
My uncle, who had been sober for about twenty years before his passing, had dozens of full bottles of liquor in his basement. He bought them over the time he was sober for and for some reason had them all stored neatly in boxes. One of his old service buddies said that he was probably buying them to honor the people he lost in Vietnam, as he stopped going to the VFW and events when he stopped drinking. He had a lot of survivors’ guilt.
I learned a lot about my grandma’s daughter from a previous marriage that she never talked about. She kept a shoebox full of letters and pictures.
My grandmother hid 5k cash in her vacuum cleaner. Good thing I opened it to change the bag before I donated it. She also had a kitchen drawer completely full of the rubber bands from her daily newspaper delivery. Nothing else but those..
They found out my Grandmother lied about her age to her second husband. Keep in mind this was the 1940s. Her age on her marriage license was 6 years younger than she actually was.
Not really a secret but cleaning out my gay brothers sex toy collection in front of my father wasn’t a lot of fun
Coming from a conservative household it was incredibly shocking to find out my uncle was a deeply closeted gay man. Shocking but it made sense. He was always well groomed, nails manicured (no polish just really neat nails) impeccable classic style, he had a lot of friend who were girls but no girlfriends and no male friends.
My great grandmother was one of survivors from a religious persecution in my home country.She hid an old English Bible, translated Bible (all hand written in my native language), blood stained English dictionary (really old and bad conditon), cross pendants and etc.A group of researchers paid my grand mother for the hand written Bible. It was a pretty interesting material for researchers to study my native language around late 1800s.She did not want her children to be punished because of her action at that time, so majority of my family did not know about it.
My mom learned her dad has another family. We met them a few years ago.
An atheist friend had prayer beads under his pillow and had left $ to the local mosque so he could have a Muslim funeral service.
Grandma had multiple cats in freezers
Continue reading with Bored Panda PremiumUnlimited contentAd-free browsingDark modeSubscribe nowAlready a subscriber?Sign In
Continue reading with Bored Panda Premium
Unlimited contentAd-free browsingDark mode
Unlimited content
Ad-free browsing
Dark mode
Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber?Sign In
I was cleaning out my grandparents house and found photos from my mom’s first wedding. She never told me she was married before my dad. I finally talked to her about it the other day. According to her it doesn’t count because she had it annulled. My mom didn’t even spend the wedding night with him, she called my grandpa and made him come get her. My mom only married the guy as a way to get back at her ex boyfriend that she was in love with. She’s now on her technically 4th marriage and it’s to a woman. I guess she gave up on men.
When sorting through my grandma’s affairs after she passed my father found that my uncle had been stealing from her back account and racking up debt around $18,000 on her credit cards gambling online. To make it worse he was doing it while she was suffering from dementia. My father who was almost 70 at the time was basically forced to take out a mortgage on my grandma’s house that my grandparents paid off back in the 70’s. He’s always been a bit of a scumbag but that was sickening
Our (single/62 yr old) uncle died in the mid 1970’s and when our mom and her sister went to clean out his apartment they found mass quantities of hard core pornography, his bedroom was decorated like a young girls (think Montgomery Wards French Provincial Canopy Bed Suite), and the mattress had a hole bored into it about waist high. My brothers had to maneuver said mattress down 3 flights of stairs so their recollections of our Uncle Bunny have become hysterical family lore.
My dad never fully gave up the cult he was a part of. Held on to a lot of their stuff, despite telling my mom he got rid of it all.
That my sister was about to leave her boyfriend. (never married, no common law but together like 14 years)She found out he was cheating, had other kids he was paying child support on, and he was abusive.Also found out my parents are ok with that and even enabling him.I’ve cut them out of my life. (for that and other reasons)
My aunt had been engaged decades before her death. The engagement was called off because he cheated on her. When she died we have dozens of letters and cards he had sent her over the years. He apparently never stopped writing trying to get her back and she never told anyone she was getting these letters.
Grandma and Great Aunt wrote letters to each other nearly every single day during WWII.They had absolutely nothing interesting to say.It was utterly shocking how non-eventful it all was. It was all stuff like “well we had ham for dinner” and local neighbor gossip that wasn’t even intriguing in the least.Like imagine you came across a treasure trove of 2020 posts and not a single one mentioned quarantine, the pandemic, social distancing, corona, vaccines, masks, or absolutely any of it. Like you couldn’t even tell 2020 was happening.That’s what these wartime letters were like. Eerie stuff. My mom and I read boxes of them, and just… nothing.
Closest I got is that I think one of my uncles (one of my dad’s brothers) may have been trans, or at least a cross-dresser. If I started listing all the reasons that I always assumed over the years that he was not straight, I’d be here all day. TL:DR, I always figured he was either gay or bi and closeted, and I know my mom thought so too, and remaining closeted made sense to me as our family was largely conservative.He passed way back in ‘08 when he was only 61, and I was only 32. When we were cleaning out his things, my mom and I found several eye shadow palettes, some lipstick, and setting powder, all obviously used, and no, there’s no chance it belonged to anyone else. I don’t think she ever pointed it out to my dad. I still have some of the eyeshadow palettes tucked away somewhereI wish he’d taken better care of himself. I wish I’d had the proverbial balls to just ask him about it. I know that he didn’t hold the same prejudices in that regard as much of my family did, and he knew that I didn’t either. But I never wanted to ask directly because I never wanted to put pressure on him. I know how our family was/is, and we were still in the age of don’t ask/don’t tell. I’ve used he/him throughout, because that’s all he ever openly identified as and I’ll never truly know one way or the other, but I will always hold some regret that he may well have died without ever having been able to be open about who he was
My parents got divorced almost 50 years ago. When I cleaned out my old man’s place thirty years later he had a written out accusation that my mother cheated. I know who he referred to and honestly…he was probably right.My old man was pretty hard to take most of the time so the divorce wasn’t a shock. My mother cheating doesn’t seem much of a surprise, but that he kept this in writing was…I’m guessing it was his last blame volley from beyond.
My Nanna had 24 unopened tubes of toothpaste in a drawer. Don’t know what that was about.
Not deceased, but when my grandmother sold her house and moved to a small apartment because she couldn’t manage the house and garden anymore, we found loads and loads of chocolate in her cupboards.She had lived extremely healthy (not fanatic and not pushing it on others), but at some point she apparently just decided that enough is enough and started buying loads of chocolate. I guess the habit was strong as there was quite a lot of chocolate lying around still.
It was my cousin and that he was gay. Everyone suspected it but nobody said anything about it beyond that he had a bad breakup when he was young (with a woman) and that made him a bachelor for the rest of his life.The big stack of men-themed magazines I found in his closet suggested otherwise.
My grandfather was put in a juvenile home in the 40s. My aunt found letters my grandfather received while there when she was cleaning out his house after he died. One was from a sister teasing him about how she bet he wished he was in school instead for once. Apparently, a neighbor had accused my grandfather of stealing a chicken, and he was taken away. My great grandfather had died, so my grandfather was the man of the house, and my great-grandmother didn’t speak English. We don’t know many details, other than that he was there for close to a year. My grandfather’s older brother was injured in the war and sent back to the States to recover, and once he was able to walk again, he got my grandfather out. The neighbor who called the police on my grandfather was my grandmother’s mother.
My wife’s bio-grandfather was a career Air Force Master Sergeant. He passed and he got roped into helping clean out the house.We found porn. So much porn. Knee high mountains of porn mags in every cabinet we could reach. And it wasn’t classic stuff from his service days. There were mags that were dated only a few months before he died. The subscriptions were current.
My dad had all the drill chuck keys.
Modal closeAdd Your Answer!Not your original work?Add sourcePublish
Modal close
Add Your Answer!Not your original work?Add sourcePublish
Not your original work?Add sourcePublish
Not your original work?Add source
Modal closeModal closeOoops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.UploadUploadError occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermarkInstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermarkFacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermarkChangeSourceTitleUpdateAdd Image
Modal closeOoops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.UploadUploadError occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermarkInstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermarkFacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermarkChangeSourceTitleUpdateAdd Image
Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
Upload
UploadError occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermarkInstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermarkFacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermark
Error occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.
TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermark
InstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermark
FacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermark
ChangeSourceTitle
You May Like30 Family Secrets People Anonymously Shared Online Because They Just Had To Tell SomeoneIeva Pečiulytė“You’re Really Gonna Make Me Do This?”: Woman Bursts Into Tears Over Son’s GF’s “Petty” House RuleGabija SaveiskyteWoman Breaks Off Her Engagement After Finding Out How Her SIL Really Got PregnantViktorija Ošikaitė
Ieva Pečiulytė
Gabija Saveiskyte
Viktorija Ošikaitė
Relationships
