“I found out my Dad was Black Ops between 1958 and 1962 for the US Army. ... I’ve been wondering ever since who he killed and what he was involved in.”

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"He was never arrested, but he died in a shooting in Italy. I always had a hard time picturing him in that life. He was always really good to my siblings and me."

"She said he would literally corner her when she came out of the shower and force her to have sex. He was also physically abusive toward my brother (we have different dads). Also, while my mom was pregnant with me (actually on her due date), he pushed her down our basement steps, which are the most jagged, stiff, wooden steps leading to our concrete basement.

"The identity of his partner and probable killer was never discovered. Soon after, his wife moved across the country and cut off contact with the entire family. Poor woman! I cannot imagine how horrific that would be!"

"I told her he mentioned training missions and whatnot. She told me that one night, while they were dating, he came to her house drunk and crying. He told her that during his service, he was engaged in several missions. One of them involved airdropping into a country and breaking into a political leader's compound and shooting him in his bed. She recognized the name from the paper/news but can't now remember who it was. He never talked about it again to her.

I didn't fully believe her, so I asked my uncle. My uncle responded with, "Why would you want to go digging into the past? He didn't tell you things for a reason." I left it alone, and then one night we were drinking, and he started talking about it. He didn't know who my Dad killed, but he knew about a few instances where he blew up some radio towers and his parachute was shot, and either he fell and broke his neck, or he got caught on something and fell because of that.

I've been wondering ever since who he killed and what he was involved in. My mother said the thought of killing people in their beds haunted him the rest of his life."

"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."

"I will say I appreciate that my mom didn't tell me when I was younger because it would have been way too much for me."

"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.'"

"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."

"Shortly after, I found a pendant with the zodiac sign Virgo on one side and 'Ralf, 8.9.77' on the other. A date four years before my elder brother was born.

I knew my mother had a miscarriage during her first pregnancy; she told me when my best friend was pregnant for the first time, as it was a risky pregnancy. I asked my father if this 'Ralf" could be that miscarriage, and he said: 'But we never even got to see him.'

So it turns out my mother had a stillbirth, rather than a miscarriage, and she mourned that baby boy she never got to even see. In secret, as I can't see my father having the empathy to name a — for him — never existing baby.

There are so many things I'd like to ask and tell my mother now. Did she ever forget Ralf? Did she remember his stillbirth on the anniversary of the 8.9.83? And did my birth later give her some comfort?"

"We came to learn that shortly after my grandma graduated high school, she was dating a sailor from the Midwest who accidentally got her pregnant. When she phoned to tell him she was expecting, he broke the news that he was married and couldn't raise a child with her. At this point, she had told her parents, and they decided to send her down to California for the summer to 'visit with family' (have the baby, place it up for adoption). Not long after returning home, she met my grandpa, and they got married and went on to have three kids. All the while, her daughter was being raised by a family friend in CA. 

My grandma started traveling to Southern California every now and then to check in with her daughter and give her some money. Since she was raised with a family friend, it made the trips non-conspicuous, and by this point, my grandpa was dealing with alcoholism and pretty poor health, so he probably didn't think twice about what was going on. It's wild to think this secret daughter knew all about my grandma's family back home and was aware that she had siblings, but no one knew about her existence. It breaks my heart to know my grandma felt like this was something to be ashamed of, and also to think of how my aunt must have felt, knowing she was the unplanned/unwanted child who had to be kept hidden away from the rest of the family. 

It was a blessing in disguise, though; we gained a new family member after my grandma's death, and she looks SO MUCH like my grandma, it's almost like having a small piece of her back in our lives."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We later found out that she was doing sex work 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."

"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?"

"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."

"Dead uncle had allegedly abused several children at different times, spanning decades, but 'somehow' was never prosecuted. (My mother’s family is wealthy, so the cousins are pretty sure that authorities/parents of the victims were paid off anytime he was accused, as the victims were primarily children of low-income families). To add to the horror, my relatives knew to keep us children away from him outside of 'supervised' family events."

"By the time she died, my grandfather was in really bad shape — mentally and physically. We had to clean out her things, and we found all of the paperwork: every last detail. He couldn't comprehend what she had done, and after trying to tell him about it a couple of times, we stopped trying. Nothing could be done legally. Her daughter was set for life."

"So. Much. Porn. Everyone we knew together and lots of people I don't know."

"He left her and many members of the church with quite the parting gift. We all knew he was a crappy guy, but didn’t know to this new extent."

"The short answer is that somebody else took advantage of her weakened mental state. But it's not something I've ever really been able to justify."

"Long story short, it left a huge rift in my family once we found out about it — my brother is actually only my half-brother and did indeed side with my mom. My dad felt the money rightfully belonged to him. Literally everyone in my extended family felt he was in the wrong and being an asshole (personally, I felt he was justified, and he was close to retirement and could use the money more than anyone else), but that makes sense because the only extended family in our area is my mom's side of the family. My brother didn't need the money but wanted to split it equally between the siblings, excluding himself, thinking it was the fairest way — I ended up telling him that if he did that, I would be giving my share back to my dad anyway.

In the end, my father put up enough of a fight that my brother relented and just gave it to him — most of my extended family hates him now. I personally don't get it. Really sucks that all this fighting is over money, and the young people who would have benefited from the decision had no idea what was going on.

Just want to add that my mom was a very nice person and not an asshole (outside of this). She was doing her best to secure her future; did she make the right choice? Absolutely not, but it doesn't matter at this point."

"My uncle was already very wealthy; we don't know why he specifically had this cash set aside, or why he had illegal guns, or why he bugged his entire house. But we suspect my aunt's illness and paranoia was worsened by him, and she wasn't always as delusional as he made her out to be. In better news, my aunt now lives in Florida with a caretaker in a condo. She paints for a living and is very happy."

"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."

"It was an enormous shock when she died suddenly. She was only 35."

"Oh, the things you find out about the woman who would make you hot cocoa."

"She went through horrible stuff, and it disturbs me to this day. We cleaned out her house, and there were so many things from that time in her life that documented all that, and I looked at it, and I felt sick."

"They used the papers of their son who passed away just a few weeks earlier. We all were stunned, but in hindsight it did explain a lot of things, like how he suffered from PTSD and almost had no Polish accent when he spoke German. It still amazes me how they kept this secret for over half a century."

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