Sometimes, secrets that were never supposed to get out end up being revealed because of an unintended slip-up. The risks of misjudgment and recklessness especially increase when drinks are involved—a few sips of liquid courage and the truth just gets blurted out in a moment of impulse. Keeping a secret is no easy task... Carrying something like that can be mentally and emotionally straining, so as much as a person tries their best to keep it contained, the thought of letting the truth out seems like a much better idea in the long run. People from around the world shared a secret that was revealed by a loose-lipped family member. From secret siblings to jumbled family trees, these juicy stories will definitely make you raise your eyebrows:
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#1 Way to Leave Us Hanging
A long time ago, back when I was still in middle school my mom's best friend passed. She wouldn't tell me how she passed. Only that it was sudden. When I asked why we weren't going to the funeral she told me that there wouldn't be one because "her body was being donated to science."
I didn't ask any more questions. That was the last time we ever talked about her.
Well, five months ago my mom handed me her phone to find the number for Domino's and as I'm scrolling through her contacts I come across the phone number of the unalive best friend.
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 still alive.
I still don’t have the whole truth. I probably never will.
#2 Rebecca The Homewrecker
My father came home tipsy one day while I was in my room gaming. He barged in and said, "I just slept with Rebecca.". Rebecca was his secretary and a long-time family friend. I didn't know what to do or say since I was just 15 at the time, so I kept my mouth shut. Fast forward to three years later and my parents got a divorce. My dad is currently married to Rebecca.
#3 The Lost Twin
I found out I had a twin who didn't make it in the womb. Thanks for taking one for the team, brother. My mother outright told me this one. She said that she kept being told by her doctors that both my twin and I survived, I would likely be the one to be born with a severe handicap. After giving birth to an apparently healthy me, she said she was afraid to breastfeed me because she thought she was poison—that something was wrong with her body after losing my twin. That broke me in two to hear that out of such a strong woman. I can thankfully say I am very healthy and fully developed. No defects. You made a great kid, mom, thank you.
#4 Small World
I didn't hear it from someone being tipsy, but it is a fun one nonetheless. My best friend got pregnant and nobody knows that her stepbrother is the father. They had been seeing each other before their parents even met and married. Small world. She got pregnant at 15, so she wanted to finish school and go to a local community college while living at home. She isn't abandoning the child. It's just that her mom will help so that she doesn't have to hire babysitters.
#5 The Long-Lost Daughter
I worked with a guy who married his stepsister unknowingly. His dad remarried after his parents divorced, then the new wife was contacted by her long-lost daughter that she gave up for adoption when she had a young pregnancy. They hit it off and now he is married to that long-lost daughter. It's crazy how the universe works to bring certain people together.
#6 My Uncle's Secret
My family only drinks tea, but one day I was told that one of my uncles was still alive and locked into a psychiatric hospital for stalking a woman, breaking into her house, and intimidating her with a sharp object. Later, he mistook a random woman in a train station as the woman he was stalking, and almost charged her.
#7 Sad, But Understandable
Not a family member, but a friend of mine announced to about 25 people at a bonfire that he was pretty happy that his girlfriend had lost their baby. He had no desire to have to care for a child at 21 years old.
#8 The Cassette Tape
Apparently there's a cassette tape in our family of my grandfather telling the story of his involvement with the Manhattan Project. He never spoke of it until my uncle got him enough scotch that he told the story, just that one time. He was a co-pilot of a B29 super fortress in the 509th composite, and was part of the team that dropped the second atomic explosive device on Nagasaki.
I've been told different things throughout the years and when my grandpa passed two years ago I tried to research his history. Apparently, he was on the plane that held scientific observers but it went MIA during the mission. I really want to hear this tape and finally learn the entire story, and possibly transcribe it for historical records, as everything I've found in my research leads me no where. I know this isn't "juicy" per se, but I'm curious to know our family secret and the history behind it.
#9 The Olive Garden Confession
I found out that this was my dad's second marriage. My mom got tipsy at Olive Garde and was commenting about the people next to us who were around 24 years old and having marriage problems. I was 21 at the time.
#10 Dark Family Tree
When I was young—about nine or so, I think—my dad sat me down after a few glasses of grape beverage, and he said to me: "Son, I'm tipsy. My father told me this when he was tipsy. And you'll tell your son this, someday, when you're tipsy.".
He then proceeded to pull out some old book on true offence, and flipped to a chapter dedicated to this Maltese guy who ended his wife, sister-in-law, and mother, before going on the run with his lover... whom he also later ended, back in the 1950s. My grandfather (who was also Maltese) had done some digging on the family tree and was about 90% certain this dude was his half-brother. So that's a thing.
#11 Carried Guilt
When I was in high school, I was studying one night when my dad came home super tipsy, which wasn't unusual because he was a heavy drinker at the time. He started telling me stories about his high school experience, such as his girlfriend getting pregnant and miscarrying without him knowing. He later found out and was devastated since he thought it was all his fault. Then he just left the room immediately after saying that.
#12 The Millionaire Offender
She isn't a family member but a very close family friend. Recently, while I was at her cottage, she informed me that my father, who I haven't seen in about four years, was at one point a millionaire offender who transported not permitted products to Mexico and Jamaica on his freaking yacht. She didn't elaborate on any additional information.
#13 All The Signs
Apparently, my grandfather was gay. I've been told to never discuss it with my grandma or mom, even though they're both totally accepting of gays. In fact, my brother told me this and is gay himself. Now that I think about it, I think he may have been gay—he apparently got along very well with women, enjoyed shopping, was a huge Judy Garland fan and has a rainbow engraved on his tombstone.
#14 Uncle Jeff's Antics
My uncle Jeff once barged in on family dinner at a gathering and said, "I'm coming out as gay." He must have been really hammered because he'd been married to my uncle Anthony for eight years. Everyone laughed and my dad blurted out, "Geez, Jeff, we know. Tony, can you put him to bed, please?"
#15 A Pathologist's Motivation
My grandfather was a pathologist in the very early days. He was in pursuit of what turned out to be the poliovirus and isolated a similar virus instead, which meant that while he isolated the first known virus. Salk got there first.
The reason Grandpa was so fired up about polio? My mom had it as a small child and had partial paralysis as a result. How did she get it? From grandpa's necktie that he wore while doing his rounds. My mom was a bit in her cups when she told me that story and would probably deny it now. But sometimes it takes something like that to motivate the guys who do great things.
#16 Ruining Santa
When I was a kid, we used to go over to my great aunt's house for Christmas with the family that we had here in the US, which was mostly my dad's cousins and their kids. My uncle used to dress up as Santa Claus and hand out presents to the kids. Well, one year, he had way too much to drink before doing this. Instead of the usual, well-coordinated Santa, we got a stumbling, tipsy Uncle Beto, which was obvious because he forgot the hat and beard.
At this point, the younger kids were asking what happened to Santa (I was old enough to know the truth at the time) and my uncle told them that there was no Santa. Of course, this just made the kids even more upset and finally, another relative stepped in and got my uncle out of there. That was actually the last Christmas we had all together like that because my great aunt passed the next year.
#17 A Chance To Reconnect
My dad left us when I was 11, but we still see him every now and then. I have no animosity towards him since he was hardly around when I was younger too. I kind of just got used to him not being around and just kept doing my own thing. Anyway, a week before I was going to college, I had a going-away party. Later in the night, it kind of just became a party with adults and I happily excluded myself from it.
It was around 1 a.m. when my dad came into my room wanting to talk. He was pretty tipsy. He pretty much confessed his paternal love for me. It was weird because he seemed REALLY sincere and even apologized about him being absent from most of my life. I didn't really know how to take that all in.
#18 A Chill Job
I found out from my aunt that another aunt had a home operation going on in her extra bedroom and made $5,000 a month profit doing it. I know it's not a huge sum of money but that is a pretty good income for such a chill job.
#19 A Conflict Story Revealed
WWII in the Pacific. Australian grenades had a three-second fuse and Japanese grenades had a five-second fuse. The Japanese had a tactic of hiding in trees, cooking the grenades and dropping them on passing enemy service men. My grandad's squad found a Japanese stash and replaced them with Australian grenades. The next time they were on patrol or whatever, walking through the trees, all the treetops started exploding. It was horrible. My grandad was not a veteran. He wanted nothing to do with that. He didn't march in Anzac day. He went to conflict underage, came back and worked hard and lived a normal life. He never talked to me about the conflict.
Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, Flickr
#20 Secret Sibling
My mom got tipsy and told me that my dad and his girlfriend had a kid when they were teenagers (before he met my mom). They gave their daughter up for adoption at birth. They moved across the country to do it so no one would know. I have a half-sister that I've never met or spoken to. I'm not sure if my dad knows that I know.
#21 Tipsy Tongue Slip
My brother accidentally came out of the closet to me while he was drinking at my apartment. I forget exactly what he said, but he slipped up genders when describing someone and then went red-faced and left. He called me a few hours later and said, "So, you probably already knew, huh?" I had no idea, and in fact, I thought it was just a tipsy tongue slip. I don't know why he was so worried about telling me in the first place, though. I guess it's hard to walk out of the closet you've been hiding in for more than 30 years.
#22 Miracle Or Mistake?
That I shouldn't have been able to be conceived. The doctors told my mom that after her Crohn's disease operations, the chances of her getting pregnant were almost zero. So when I was conceived, it was a major surprise and the doctors couldn't understand why it happened. I was their little miracle as they call it. More like a very unexpected mistake.
#23 Quite The Character
My parents' families are both from the same small town originally in rural Hungary, which is rather good for getting dirt on all your ancestors. My mom really likes to tell tales after she's had a few drinks. My favorite out of all of these is my great-great-grandpa on my dad's side, who was the lawyer of the town. He actually had three women in his life but never married (he only had kids with one, so she became his common-law wife).
We know this because my maternal grandmother had to visit these women as a little girl on Christmas day as a token gesture to the old women who had no family, and even as a kid it was a bit awkward. That's pretty much all I know about my great-great-grandfather, but he definitely sounds like quite the character.
#24 Family Shuffle
My mom has three siblings: an older brother, older sister, and younger brother. One day, my mom had maybe just one glass of grape beverage too many, and let it slip out that her younger brother was adopted. Not only that, but her younger brother is actually her older brother's son. Her mom obviously knew that her brother couldn't handle raising a child, having him at only 17. So she adopted him and raised him as her own.
#25 Still In Love
My father admitted to me while very intoxicated that he not only cheated on my mother (thus ending their marriage and beginning a very spiteful, two-year divorce process) but that he was also still in love with her. This was over seven years after they split. It kind of messed with my head as a fifteen-year-old. I really didn't know how to react to that information.
Cast Of Thousands, Shutterstock
#26 Everyone Struggles
My grandpa told me once that at the lowest point of his and my grandmother's life, he had to take bread just to feed the family. I always thought grandma and grandpa were doing so well, but it was actually even refreshing to hear that grandpa struggled at one time, too. RIP grandpa.
#27 The Schizophrenic Gene
That my grandfather's brother ended my grandmother's best friend. He was diagnosed as insane and was placed in a mental institution. He's still alive today and out of the asylum, but before I was 18, I had no idea he had ever existed. My grandfather never talks about him and I was told to never ever bring it up around him for fear of upsetting him severely. And that's how I learned schizophrenia runs in the family.
#28 Beating Around The Bush
My dad still hasn't told me, full-on, about my mom being his second marriage. Every once in awhile, I'll hear them half-arguing over whether or not to tell me. I'm 26, guys. I only know for sure because my mom told me when I was 12 years old because I asked her why my dad didn't go into churches. My mom doesn't remember telling me, but it explains a lot. Also, I have a half-sister somewhere.
#29 Careless Fathering
The reason why we stopped visiting my father on the other side of the country is that when my mom came to pick my sister and me from the airport, our hair was all matted and we were filthy. My mom is from Asia and said we looked like homeless children. To top it off, she had a great career and more than provided for us. She said that moment broke her heart. She never really let us go there again.
#30 Two Accidents
Both my sister and I were accidents. I'm possibly the reason my parents got married. They were still in school when I was born, in a foreign country. I was babysat by mom's professor's secretary while she was in class, and there are photos of me at the wedding. We were living between credit cards when my sister was conceived, so my parents were pretty strained, and I was too young to have any idea. Everything worked turned out in the end though!
#31 Not On Good Terms
At my grandmother's funeral, my mom had a few drinks and told me that the other members of our family talked about me behind my back but that she stood up for me. It's not clear exactly what the family members were saying about me, but it was something about how I don't treat my mom well. That angered me, considering that my mom did not treat ME well growing up and I was always there for her when she was dealing with drama. I had to be an adult when she was not. So I'm not on good terms with my family right now.
#32 Ditching Responsibility
That I likely have a long-lost cousin. My aunt was drinking one night and joked about my "long lost cousin."My uncle, her brother, apparently got a girl pregnant but denied it was his. When he was summoned to take a paternity test, my dad, who looked very similar to my uncle, took the test for him. The results obviously came back negative and my uncle left his pregnant girlfriend. My uncle lost his life 10 years later. So yeah...
#33 First Baby
After mom was gone and dad had a few at the bar after the funeral: "Yeah, her side of the family never liked me much. They thought that the baby was mine, but it wasn't." Me: Uhhhh.what baby? Dad: Your mom's first baby that she gave up. So yeah, I've got an older brother or stepbrother running around somewhere.
#34 The Necessary Lie
That all of the pictures of my German great grandmother posing with another beautiful young woman were in fact pictures of my great grandmother and her brother. His parents had him dress and live as a woman throughout the Second World W. to avoid conscription. I thought that was neat.
#35 Pattern Of Problems
I found out that my great grandmother was estranged from the family. I'm seeing a pattern with anger problems with the women on my mother's side of the family. It could also be a result of untreated mental health problems, which would explain a lot.
#36 Just Being Real
I was 11 years old and very sober at the time, but my family is very big into therapy and expressing feelings and stuff like that. Our motto was always, "The more you talk about a problem, the more it goes away." I thought that was how the world worked. At my grandfather's funeral, I just assumed that his drinking problem was common knowledge, and when it came time for people to share their memories of him, I remember saying, "I'm so grateful that my grandfather never drank in front of me and my sisters." There was an audible gasp, and my parents were mortified. I didn't see what the big deal was at the time, though.
#37 The Other Woman
During an extended family Christmas party, my uncle was telling his niece who was in her 30s a story about her dad. He mentioned a name she didn't recognize. He said, "Oh, she was your dad's first wife." Cue the niece flipping out, then finding her two sisters so they could all find out about this woman their dad had spent over 30 years keeping a secret from them.
#38 Too Much Info
That my aunt Joanie had been constipated for 14 months. My grandfather had passed and my aunt had been shut inside her house for three days getting tipsy. The family decided to send my uncle Joe over to sober her up. He came back the next day completely hammered and told us about her constipation problem. We had a good laugh.
#39 Double Whammy
After my grandfather's funeral, my grandma got really tipsy and told my dad that my grandpa wasn't his biological dad. His actual dad is a guy she cheated on my grandpa with. After a few hours of my family fighting, my mom took me aside and told me that my dad is actually my stepdad and she never meant to keep it a secret. She just didn't want it to ever get to the point that my grandma just did.
#40 Hiding The Bump
My mom's side of the family is extremely Catholic. After my parents got engaged, my mom got pregnant. They were thinking of an April wedding but they hadn't set any dates or anything, so they just slid it back to January so she wouldn't be showing. My dad's cousin was his best man. This guy is my favorite uncle—he was a mechanic who loved camping, drinks, and jeeps. At the reception, when giving his toast, he gabbed out that he was just "so happy for the three of you."
Silence. Silence for a very long time.
#41 My Grandpa The Imposter
Grandpa had been quietly sipping on booze on his 70th birthday more than we thought. When it was just me and him sitting on the porch, he randomly started crying and confessing that he was never actually in the army and that all his "memorabilia" was purchased from an antique store, Every single incredibly-detailed story he has been telling me since I was a little kid were made up. Man, I even did a presentation on "My grandpa the conflict hero" when I was in 5th grade.
#42 Egg Nog Truth
After drinking half a pitcher of egg nog my cousin decided to tell all her aunts, uncles, and grandparents about how she was cheating on her then-husband with younger guys she met at night clubs. She's marrying one of the guys in the next few months, actually.
#43 That's Messed Up
That my sisters aren't really my dad's. My mom cheated on him with some guy from down the street. She got pregnant... with TWINS. It was my mom's sister that told me. He still doesn't know and my mom doesn't know that I know.
#44 A Stroke Of Conscience
My parents would have divorced 15+ years ago, but my dad had a stroke of conscience and didn't sign the papers at the last second. He didn't want us to grow up without a father.
#45 Thanks, Mom
My mother told me she had had carbon monoxide contamination whilst pregnant with me. She closed the story with, "You're lucky you're not stupider than you already are." Thanks, mom.
