Recently, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the wildest thing that happened to *that one kid* they went to high school with, and they truly had some wild stories. Here's what they had to say.
Note: There are mentions of violence, murder, and sexual assault in this post.
1. "There was a kid two years under me who lived with his grandma and snapped one day and murdered her supposedly because he didn’t want to go to school. I’m sure there were other problems, but he just put her in the backyard afterwards, and it wasn’t until someone at her job asked for a wellness check on her that everything came to light, but he was just at the house like nothing happened."
2. "In middle school, one of my classmates Zoe snuck out in the middle of the night with a friend. An older guy (20s or more) picked them up promising to give them tattoos. Instead they showed up to a party with people 10+ years older and drugs and drinking. There were swords on display, I believe samurai, and a guy asked Zoe if she wanted to duel. Of course, she assumed he was joking, but no, he quite literally sliced her throat in front of everyone. It was a huge deal and lots of gossip in school. She ended up moving schools but she has a huge scar. Wild. Now she’s 18, married, with a baby."
3. "This one kid that was part of our small friend group, who was heavily into drugs, decided to join the Army when he turned 18 our senior year. This was four years after 9/11. He went off and did all his vaccines and whatnot, came home, and then was just gone. The next thing I heard was that when he had disappeared from our lives, he had actually gone AWOL. It’s been almost 20 years, and we still have no clue what happened, where he disappeared to, or what he’s doing now. Like, we have tried googling his full name, looking him and his family up on social media…NOTHING. Just gone. Whenever I google his name, I honestly assume I’m going to see a death notification."
4. "Our head of student government was an all-around normal, nice guy. About eight years after high school, he randomly reached out and asked to get together. As I was never close with him, I didn’t take him up on the offer. I found out on the news that less than a week later, he went on a schizophrenic rampage stabbing his family pet over 50 times and didn’t understand why he was arrested for it."
5. "Though he was a year above me in school, I had a few classes over the course of high school with a nice but quiet and shy boy. I talked to him here and there through group class activities or in passing in the hall but never really got to know him beyond anything superficial. About 10 years after he graduated, he was working as a security guard in a famous theme park that caters to children and was arrested as part of a larger sex sting operation involving other theme park employees for attempting to have sex with a girl he knew was in her very young teens. He was well into his 20s by then."
6. "I was in and out of public high school, but during the period I did homeschooling, it was different back then. instead of being at home, it was at a public library. We had a group of, like, seven kids. I became really close with one girl. She was over at my house all the time. Her parents were awful so I was never allowed to go over to hang out at her house. Eventually, I went back to public school, and we lost touch. Not by my choice; she just stopped responding. I was sad for a while, but then I forgot about it. Years later, I saw her at the mall, heavily pregnant, holding hands with OUR HOMESCHOOL TEACHER."
"I was disgusted, especially when I found out they were married. He divorced his wife for her, and she was barely 18. They have a few kids now. It's so disturbing."
7. "There was a guy in my year who sustained seven concussions in four years from playing basketball and soccer, and by the time we were high school juniors, his doctor had forbid him from playing any sports whatsoever (even non-contact ones like cross country) because of how many head injuries he’d suffered. To the surprise of absolutely no one, experiencing repeated trauma to his head in his teen years severely impacted his ability to think rationally and control his impulses, which culminated in his being arrested for underage alcohol possession halfway through senior year (I grew up in a wealthy suburb where everyone came from 'good' families, so this was a big deal). How did I hear about this? His parents bailed him out, and he returned to school a few days later and bragged about it."
"He stopped attending school soon afterward, he wasn’t at graduation, nothing. After high school, his mom started telling people that he’d moved out to California (I’m from Massachusetts, so literally the other side of the country) to be with his girlfriend and was attending community college there with the hopes of getting into the tech field. My friend grew up on the same street as him, and when we were 22/23, we found out that the girlfriend wasn’t real, he wasn’t attending community college, and was living in his parents' basement the whole time, barely going out. My friend saw him for the first time in years standing on his front lawn, and when he saw her, he ran into the house."
8. "I went to school with this girl who was always a 'pick me' type. Twenty-five years later, she was in the news — she ran for the state House of Representatives as a Democrat and then switched parties after winning. Rumor is that she was having an affair with a Republican Party leader and planned the whole thing. That changed vote caused abortion to be outlawed in my state. Screw you, Tricia."
9. "A kid I partied with in high school was always into smoking weed, but got into harder drugs when we were in college. He ended up into heroin and was found by his friend's mom rolled up in his friend's bedroom rug. His friend had murdered him over an argument. I’m pretty sure his friend was playing video games nonchalantly while the guy was dead in his rug."
10. "She was a track and field star and was the first of Tiger Woods's mistresses to go public."
11. "One of the guys with me in theatre always seemed a little odd and gave off this mildly creepy vibe. He never did or said anything outright, just this tiny bit of unease whenever I was around him. Five years later, my high school best friend texted me. The guy had just been sentenced to 10 years in prison for molesting his girlfriend’s two kids (both under the age of 9). It was shocking — I never would have imagined that he would have been a pedophile. Out of curiosity, about a year ago, I searched his name on a prison penpal site. He came right up, saying that he was looking for the love of his life and didn’t mind if she had kids."
12. "Not a classmate, he was the track coach. I quit track senior year because I got a bad vibe from him. A couple years after I graduated, he was arrested for sleeping with a student. I see why he would take his shirt off during practice now. Yuck."
13. "I had just started high school, and we’re, like, a month in when one of the teachers got a permanent sub. My brother was two years older than me, so he knew the teacher. We decided to walk past the classroom and saw the teacher’s stuff sitting in the hall, and the room was taped off. The rumors eventually began. It turned out a recently graduated student had posted photos of herself kissing said teacher. She figured since she was 18 and graduated, they were in the clear. They fired him immediately. They've had, like, three kids together since then."
14. "There was this kid that I went to school with who was a stoner and was constantly high in class. He didn’t do much in high school, but the summer after graduation, I heard in the news he bit his dad's ear off and punched a cop."
15. "There was an all-American boy I used to walk home from school with. Blonde hair, blue eyes, tall, cute, and friendly. He went to college and killed his girlfriend and then had sex with her corpse."
16. "One of the cool, hot guys who came from an upstanding family went on to be busted by Chris Hansen’s To Catch a Predator series on Dateline. He was trying to have sex with a 13-year-old. Sent pics of his junk and everything."
17. "When I was a freshman, there was a senior getting ready to have her fourth baby. She had her first as a freshman, twins her sophomore year, and her fourth as a senior. They were all fathered by the same guy, and they eventually got married and are still together today."
18. "There was a girl in elementary that had bullied me. She stayed a not-nice person for years to come. In 10th grade, she completely disappeared, and no one ever saw her again. Years later, her Facebook profile popped up, and she had an 8-year-old. Everything came to surface — she had been so embarrassed about her high school pregnancy, as were her parents, that she moved away for a new start."
19. "I went to Catholic school with this one kid, let's call him Josh, who no one really liked because he was extremely annoying. A decade after graduation, a friend tells me that Josh was sentenced to over 17 years in federal prison for child sex images. (*cue the Catholic school pedo jokes*)"
20. "I'm not sure if y'all remember the guys who are still in a Venezuelan prison for what Venezuela called an 'attempted coup.' Long story short, he thought he was being contracted by our government (because he's former US Special Forces and a Green Beret). And our country is shady and works through different outlets to keep their hands a bit cleaner. The whole situation was used as political propaganda in Venezuela. He confessed under duress and was imprisoned without legal counsel or knowledge of what he had been charged with. He was totally unarmed. He does not belong in prison. I've known him since middle school, and he's an amazing person. Unfortunately, this happened in May 2020 and quickly got overshadowed by the pandemic."
"If you want to read more about this, go to www.bringourfamilieshome.org/luke-denman, or www.austinmonthly.com/what-ever-happened-to-luke-denman/"
21. "A woman from my high school just got married for the fourth time. We’re 29."
22. "A guy I went to high school with was really popular, and everyone liked him. He was one of the few male cheerleaders we had back in the late '90s, early '00s. One of those super talented, tumbling cheerleaders. Turns out, while he was coaching young girls at the nearby gym, he was also sexually assaulting them. He went to jail when I was a sophomore, and he's still in prison today. People were shocked, because he was such a 'nice guy.'"
23. "One of the sweetest kids at school. Always had something nice to say about anyone. Currently in prison for raping a woman at a jail he worked at."
24. "One of the nicest guys in my class was murdered a few years after graduation in a random killing, and his killer still hasn’t been caught after 20 years. His best friend was with him and is still traumatized."
25. "Our class president was that one guy everyone loved. He was so friendly and peace-loving with a kind word for everyone. If he saw you looking sad or down, he’d always try and cheer you up. I always thought he’d end up being someone notable for doing good things. Instead, he moved to San Francisco after graduation and ended up overdosing on heroin. RIP Tim."
26. "He was the bad kid early on (pulled chairs out from people, would slam kids heads down onto the desk, tripped the teachers, and other random acts of violence). Yet he had some talent when it came to playing football, so all the adults and school administrators turned a blind eye to all the horrible stuff he did...meaning he never learned that there were consequences to his actions. Once he broke into a teammate’s locker and stole money from them (while the football team was practicing) — instead of discipline or perhaps alerting the police, the coaches instead made the team chip in and pay the money to the aggrieved player. And by the end of high school, he was a father of four, with four different girls."
"Well, his football talent got him a full scholarship to Northwestern University; it took only one semester for him to get kicked out for selling coke and ecstasy. Once back home, he started hanging around the high school, trying to pick up the 14/15-year-old freshmen girls, which eventually led to him being banned from campus. Then one night, he and some friends went into the city, tried to shake down a laundromat owner, and ended up shooting the guy to death. This kid was the getaway driver, and because it couldn’t be proven that he shot the owner, he was given a slap on the wrist. Last I heard, he’s been in and out of prison for various things, like domestic violence, robbery, and drug dealing."
27. "One dude who was in my class bullied me, spitting in my face and putting chewing gum in my hair, among other things. He was in prison for dealing drugs last I heard. Another guy who bullied me has also done jail time for defrauding the company he worked for to the tune of tens of thousands of bucks. So yeah, not nice guys as adults either."
28. Finally, we'll end on a happy one as a palate cleanser: "I recently went to a concert in the nearest major city to mine, which is about six hours away, to see one of my favorite bands — an essential supergroup made up of musicians from several successful bands from the past two decades, so like, they're a bit of a big deal (not nobodies). Never heard of the opening band, but I'm posting videos of them to my Instagram story anyway, only to have someone I went to high school with DM me and comment that the lead singer is a former classmate of ours. As soon as I had that knowledge, I recognized them, and I excitedly caught up with them after the show at their merch table, and we're actually friends now!"
"About a week later, still excited about that revelation, I pulled out my high school yearbooks, only to discover that this same classmate was voted 'most likely to be a rock star' almost every year. How incredible that even in high school everyone recognized that talent, and now they're out there opening for well-known hardcore musicians."
Now we want to know what happened to that one teacher, coach, or administrator from high school (or even middle or elementary school!). Basically — what's the wild story that keeps getting shared (or conversely, is kept super hush hush) in your town? Let us know via the comments — or this anonymous form — and you could be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community post!
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.