Recently, we rounded up a Reddit thread from u/Comfortable_Tomato_3 on shocking secrets people discovered about relatives and friends after their deaths — and now we're back for more!
Here are 23 more wild things that came out about people after their deaths.
1. "A family friend who was like a cousin to me died of an overdose about a year ago. After he passed, we discovered that he had huge social media accounts — like millions of followers — where he promoted his drugged-out lifestyle to a bunch of other barely adults."
"It made me so sad to think he was living this double life, where he was being encouraged by all these strangers, while his friends and family were begging him to get help. I hope even just one of his followers made a change after seeing what happened to him."
2. "My parents recently went to go clean out my grandpa’s house to move him to a care facility. My stepgrandma died years ago, but when they were cleaning out the house, they found information that proved she faked her cancer diagnosis and was an intense drug addict."
3. "My great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland as a baby with his parents and siblings...at least that’s what we were told. A few years ago, years after my great-grandfather died, I found out that his mother actually died while giving birth to him. The woman who raised him and who I thought was my great-great-grandmother was actually his stepmother, who married his father a few weeks after his mother died."
"The stepmother was essentially the replacement of the children’s real mother; they believed she gave birth to them. And one of the reasons this was sold so well was that they had the same name: Winifred. My great-great-grandfather replaced his wife/the mother of his children with a near copy and passed her off as the original in their new life in America. How twisted is that?"
4. "My mom has always told me that her mom, who died when she was 7, died due to complications of diabetes. When I was a teen, one of my uncles (one of my mom's older brothers) told me my grandmother died from a botched abortion."
"It was the '60s; she was a single mom of several kids already. So she took the route of a back-alley abortion. She bled to death afterward. I know my uncle isn’t lying, and he and I have always been close. I’ve never mentioned it to my mom because I honestly think that since she was so young, she was never told the truth."
5. "My boyfriend’s aunt passed suddenly a few years ago. She had to have been in her mid-60s at the time. When it was time for her house to be cleaned out, my boyfriend’s mom (her sister) and a few of his sisters took on the job and found multiple crack pipes stashed around her house and pornographic videos in her phone."
"We later found out that she was prostituting herself for drugs. And that’s not the worst part...the kicker?? One of the pornos in her phone was of her and her own niece's now ex-husband."
6. "After my grandfather passed away, I found out that we are 99% sure his son from his first marriage isn’t his. Growing up, I was told my grandmother (his second wife) couldn’t have kids, which is why my mom and aunt were adopted."
"After his passing, I read almost an autobiographical thing he wrote just for record keeping, and found out my uncle likely is not his son. Everyone in the family knows it but my uncle. And it’s really strange because my uncle looks SO much like my grandfather, but science isn’t usually wrong."
7. "I found out the great-grandmother I was named after killed one of her husbands. The thing is, his death was officially listed as a mining accident...and so was the death of her previous husband. I guess we'll never know."
8. "My family found out after my married uncle died that he’d had another 'wife' and children in another state. His wallet had his contact info in it, and both women were contacted! He’d even had the nerve to give both of his daughters from his two wives the same name. So he had two daughters named Susan. The funeral was a hellish mess."
9. "A few years ago, I got a Facebook message from a neighbor of my mom’s mom telling us that she had died a few months before. She and my mom didn’t have the best relationship — they hadn’t spoken for a long time, and my mom had spent over a decade trying to find her. The real kicker was finding out that my dad’s mother and my mom’s mom had been friends for over 20 YEARS. My dad's mom had gone to parties at her house and so on, but hadn’t told us. She didn’t even let us know that she had passed away."
10. "I was about 8 when my father died, and he hadn't been a big part of our lives, but I remember after he died, I was having dinner with my mom and there was a knock at the door. My mom answered the door, and it was this teenage boy. I don't know what he said, but my mom just told him to fuck off and slammed the door in his face."
"I found out when I was a lot older that my father had a secret wife he would visit on gambling trips to Macau, and the kid at the door was my half brother who had come looking for his father's family. I never saw him ever again."
11. "My wife's uncle lived hand to mouth with his wife and family as long as anyone could remember. NEVER enough to eat, barely a roof overhead, handouts from every family member. He was the last to pass, save for one daughter. His wife and two other children died from illness. When the family went in to help the last child recover whatever could be salvaged, we found coffee cans hidden everywhere there was a hiding place, FILLED with cash."
"Some of it was collectible denominations and mints worth way more than face value. In total, when all was — we think, anyway — found and tallied, OVER $1 million. And NOBODY knew."
12. "My mother had serious buyer's remorse over me. I was adopted at 6 months, and she had this textbook idealistic concept of what raising a child should be — how they should behave and what they should do. When I didn't live up to this expectation and acted like a normal child, she couldn't handle it and took me to various doctors, child psychologists, and other quack practitioners insisting I was hyperactive, all in an attempt to mold me into the perfect child in her eyes. She kept daily diaries on this as well as hundreds of audiotapes where she voiced her displeasure about me being an overactive and undisciplined child."
"She even kept an expense account from when they adopted me up until her death, listing what they spent on me: birthdays, Christmas, random purchases, school, etc., all detailed down to the penny."
13. "My grandpa used to tell everyone to call him the high kleagle. All his kids and grandkids thought it was this sweet nickname and a running joke. When he passed away, my aunt was writing his eulogy and didn’t know how to spell his nickname, so she googled it. The high kleagle is a member of the KKK in charge of member recruitment."
"Made me realize why we were the least favorite grandkids — because our mother was raised Jewish."
14. "I heard a story from a friend about an older gentleman who served as a fighter pilot (apparently an ace) in World War II. After he passed, they realized he wasn’t buried with the American flag over his coffin. He was a German ace."
15. "When my great-grandfather died, I was left with the box that apparently held his prized gun. It was this old, well-kept revolver that came with a small, leather-bound journal. Apparently, back in the day of my great-granddad, his father was some kind of regulator at an old mining town. If you took too much of what wasn’t yours, he would use that very same gun to go vigilante justice on your ass. After he died from some sickness, though, my great-granddad was sent to live with some relatives, who, according to him, were really the worst."
"They were apparently shot to death and killed one night. In his little journal, good old Great-Grandpa admitted to killing his aunt, uncle, and three of his cousins. This sweet old guy who taught me about trains and science when I was a baby was the same guy who was willing to spill his own family’s blood because he was pushed too far."
16. "My maiden name is super unique. A few towns over, there's another family with the same name as ours, but no known relation to us. But the same names repeat. I know this because I met someone with exactly the same name and surname as my brother where I used to work."
"I learned my great-great-granddad didn't die when we thought he did. He literally disappeared and had a second family. They were raised within 20 kilometers of each other, and he died in some kind of accident. All the men's names in the family repeat."
17. "My uncle had a friend when I was younger who was a very quiet old man named Dicky. He died when I was in middle school, and he always just seemed like a shy, sweet old dude. Years passed, and sadly my uncle died too, and one night my aunt said she thinks Dicky killed someone when they were younger."
"Apparently, back in the 1950s, there was a gruesome killing that took place in our town of a high school girl who happened to be a friend of my aunt. The girl who was killed was found on an old country road covered in a burlap sack. The murderer was never caught. My aunt claimed that she knows Dicky did it. He lived on the road the body was found on; his family were farmers and had access to the sacks the body was covered with; and he was known to be a loner, creep type and had a crush on the girl. In the days after the murder, Dicky and some other boys were questioned but cleared of any suspicion because they had said they were at a bonfire that most of their high school class had been at. But my aunt said she never saw him that night. I asked her why she never told the police, and she claimed she had been convinced otherwise by my uncle at the time, which implies that he must’ve known Dicky did it and was covering for him."
18. "My dad's great-aunt married a man who was always a bit of a mystery to the rest of the family. When he died, she came into quite a bit of money. They later found out he was part of the relief force at the Battle of Peking in 1900. Apparently he did very well for himself during the looting."
19. "When we were cleaning out Dad's house after his death, in his safe I found a thick envelope with the words 'To be opened only by [me] after my death. My suggestion: BURN IT.' Long story short, dear old Dad had another identity and family. My sister and I have several new siblings."
"Inside the envelope was not a confession. It was a jumbled mess of birth certificates, official-looking court documents (most faked), and other odds and ends. We had no idea what any of it was or why it was left to me in such a manner. My sister pieced together the missing family from a unique last name on one of the birth certificates. This name popped up on her 23andMe profile, and we began to wonder if this document was actually Dad's. She looked up several folks with this name on Facebook, and we eventually found our long-lost uncle, in his 80s. That itself was heartbreaking. We talked with him on the phone. This man sounded just like my dad. He looks like him too. One of the first things he said? 'Yes, that's my baby brother, and we've been looking for him for over 50 years.'"
20. "That my grandmother accidentally killed her younger sister. They were walking back from school, and my grandmother shoved her sister and she fell under a car, which ran over her."
21. "My friend was a really bubbly, friendly guy, and somehow he ended up beaten to death by three or four other men on the street. They were probably all drunk. No one was ever arrested. After he died, his sister cleaned out his apartment and found a USB with gigabytes of child sex abuse images on it."
22. "That the pillar of the community and financial adviser to many good people had been spending all their money. They all got up and said wonderful things about him at his funeral and then found out in the weeks after that he’d spent their life’s savings."
And finally, let's end on one that's a little disturbing to learn about your grandparents, but mostly pretty funny:
23. "It’s on the much lighter side of disturbing compared with the rest of this thread, but I learned that my stepgrandparents were nudists and just wore clothes whenever we visited."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.