31 People Reveal The Most Shocking And Shameful Things They'll Carry To Their Grave

Once you read their secrets, you'll understand why they vowed not to reveal them to anyone.

May

• Published in Interesting
• September 16, 2022

Secrets are like a little piece of us that we keep hidden away from the world. Maybe it's because we're afraid of what people will think, or maybe we're just afraid of change.

Either way, secrets can be a powerful force in our lives. And sometimes, we have secrets that we'll take to the grave with us.

These are the secrets that we're afraid to tell, even to our closest friends and family. Maybe it's because we're ashamed, or maybe it's because we don't want to burden them with our troubles.

In other words, they can be a heavy weight to carry. But it's important to remember that we're not alone when it comes to carrying those heavy secrets

Everyone has something that they're keeping hidden. And that's okay.

Secrets can be a part of who we are, and they can make us feel more connected to others.

So if you have a secret that you're carrying, know that it's okay to keep it to yourself. Your secret is safe with you.

In this post, we're looking at the secrets that people carry to their graves. Redditors revealed their dark and shameful secrets online.

And it's perhaps the only way to unload the weight of keeping such things hidden.

1. We hope this person is doing well.

Well for a while last year i was planning on [taking my own life], with a note typed out on google docs, how to leave the rest of my room to be the least inconvenience to my family, etc.

Doing much better now, went on antidepressants, weaned myself off, just trying to land a job so i can actually get started with my life. Feeling good about the future :)

2. The truth about the cat's death

We had an old cat growing up named Tuna. He was 16 or 17 and had a long and happy life but was really deteriorating. My mom did not want him put down as it was her cat and she seemed to be in denial about how decrepit and near death this cat was.

One day she comes home from the store and my dad calmly tells her that he found Tuna dead under a tree in the sun. She was happy he died peacefully and on his own terms. What she doesn't know is that she actually ran him over as she was leaving for the store.

She obviously didn't feel him under the tire but my mom killed her cat and we all lied about him dying in his sleep.

3. Maybe the mom felt that she had to do it.

Throw away because some friends know my username.

My dad had bowel cancer, he fought it for a few years but we eventully realised that the chemo was losing.

They set up to make him comfortable, this included one of those little automatic dosage machines that hopped him up on morphene every so often so he wasn't in pain. By the end he could barely speak, couldn't move, his stomach was distended because he hadn't s**t in... f**k I can't even remember how long.

Close to the end the morphene would become less effective faster than the doctors/ nurses could come around to up the dose, it was so distressing for my mum hearing my dad in pain that the nurse showed her how to increase the dose on the machine herself in case he woke up in pain.

Me and my sister are pretty sure that the night he died, after we had all said good night to him, my mum increased his dosage... quite a bit higher than she should have done. Nothing was ever said, by my mum, the nurses or the doctors, but we're pretty sure... **If** she did do it, I understand why and I don't blame her, I'm actually quite glad because my dad was suffering, and it was just f*****g awful to see him in so much pain and not be able to do anything.

Anyway, that's sufficiently depressed me first thing in the morning and I'm sure this will get buried anyway. Never logging into this account again...

4. A father's gift

My father bought me a beautiful Fender Stratocaster for my 15th Birthday. It was unique and gorgeous. I sold it to a guitar shop when I was 20 because I needed the cash. I never had the heart to tell him.

I even found one exactly like it almost 10 years later, after I had become financially stable. I bought it in an instant. He still thinks I have the guitar he got me for my birthday. I still don't have the heart to tell him.

5. This is a very heavy secret.

About 10 years ago I met my now wife and her 2 year old daughter that was a product of a r*pe. After falling in love with her, I decided to adopt the little girl under the condition that we tell everyone that we had a one night stand and I got her pregnant and she couldn't find me for 2 years.

I don't like lying about paternity but I love this little girl so much I couldn't even fathom the idea of her growing up and finding out how she came to be. My family has big mouths so I will never let them find out. Now my parents call me the family whore and make jokes about it and it f**king pisses me off. But I love her and treat her like I treat my own son.

As a bonus, the entire reason I married my wife was to adopt her daughter. We've been married for 8 years now and my daughter is now 12. She never questions it and I will never let anyone find out the truth. It could ruin my life.

6. This is mentally painful at 19.

The real reason I don't talk to my mum is because she called me at 3 am one day, after she'd had a fight with her boyfriend and I had to run to her house and wrestle the pill bottle out of her hand to stop her from trying to [take her life] by OD'ing again.

She refused to get help, we'd had her committed several times, and I couldn't handle the burden, at 19, of being the one physically stopping her.

7. Somebody's making pr0n.

Probably not going to the grave with it because I'm sure the rest of my family will find out about this (some family already knows and that's how I found out) but I just found out that my homophobic/racist as [hell] step brother who is a marine has been doing gay [adult movies] for the last few years.

Apparently, he is one of this site's top stars or whatever and it all has a military theme. I just found this out 3 days ago..

8. Childhood scar

For about seven to ten years I was sexually abused by my dad. No one else in my family knows and I have never told anyone about it. I do not know exactly when it started but it has at least been going on for as long as I can remember.

The last time I remember it happening was when I was 10, in a hotel room when we were on our last family vacation before my parents split up. It was never intercourse, but he touched/kissed/licked my body. I remember when I was maybe 7 years old and I kept thinking that maybe when I turned 13 dad would r*pe me and I might get pregnant.

The disgusting part is that I always really liked my dad when I was a kid. I never understood what was happening so I couldn't grasp that it was wrong. I lost contact with him for a few years when he lived with a truly disturbed and mean woman, but nowadays I do talk to him and meet him occasionally.

I feel really weird about it... part of me wants to scream and cry because he really ruined me, but another part of me wants to just forget and put it all behind me. I hate that I still like him. I hate that I get so happy when he calls to wish me happy birthday. I hate that I just really want to have a dad.

Today I'm 18 and very afraid of boys/men. I can't trust anyone and I never feel safe. I am very desperate for attention and affection, but I get absolutely terrified whenever a male pays me any attention. I get uncomfortable and wonder what he wants from me. No one ever loves someone genuinely without having some dark motives.

Sorry if this was long, but long story short: I was sexually abused by my own dad for several years. It f****d me up and I don't even hate him.

9. When you can't hold it in

In the car ride home the other day from a family vacation, my date offered to drive the 9 hours home since I drove us there. I had fallen asleep but woke up abruptly when I farted. Loudly. And it stunk. I had been sleeping with his jacket over my head so I pretended to be asleep.

As I was drifting back to sleep I farted again. Just as loud. Just as smelly. I continued to pretend to be asleep, though I heard him stifle giggles.

I'll never tell him I was awake the whole time.

10. Ugly duckling to Greek god

Throwaway because the whole point of this thread is to take this secret to the grave, right? I feel like this isn't actually that uncommon, but since it's still taboo as f**k I'm not taking any chances.

I'm generally not sexually attracted to anyone, but I *am* attracted to my cousin. He's a year younger than me and used to be the kid nobody noticed but me -- he was a little overweight for most of his childhood and was just generally awkward. I'd spend time with him and listen to him when we visited.

When we were 11/12 we spent a whole week's vacation hiding under a fold-out bed with the door closed and locked just talking about our lives and how we felt about our families and all that. When we played together he used to let me tie him up and pretend that I was queen and had taken him -- a valiant warrior from a distant tribe -- prisoner.

We'd also make paper airplanes and send them flying off the balcony of our grandparents' house. For a while we were really close, and then we didn't see each other for years. We drifted apart, but I found myself thinking about him every now and then, and we'd call and talk sometimes.

Fast forward a few years. I'm 17, he's 16. My family has moved closer to his. Now we're an hour apart. I'd *heard* that he's changed since I'd seen him last, but I didn't really think about it until we pulled up at my aunt's house. I say hi to everyone, they've all grown and changed. Then, fifteen minutes in, he comes downstairs fresh out of the shower apologizing for being late; he'd had to coach a junior soccer game in the southern summer heat and needed to clean up. Meanwhile, I'm dying.

What the f**k happened to that awkward kid I used to know? He's 6'4", golden skin, sandy blonde hair, beautiful clear blue/green eyes. He's also lost all the baby fat and gained just enough muscle to make him look really damn good.

Since then, over the last two years, I've had to deal with this horrible attraction to him. We don't look anything alike and I basically thought of him more like a friend than a cousin growing up, and now that we're older (18/19) I keep thinking about him in incredibly inappropriate ways.

He's only gotten better looking and more muscular and it's honestly the worst. A year ago he volunteered to be my model to help me practice outdoors photography (I was a fledgling photographer) and it turned into him lying shirtless on the grass and giving me these *looks.* I'm f****d in the head and I'm going to hell, but I figure as long as I keep repressing it I might get out of this alive.

Tldr: My cousin turned from an ugly duckling to, essentially, a greek god. I've been attracted to him for the past two years. Kinda hate myself.

God, it feels good to get this off my chest, even though I'm already kind of regretting it. Thanks, reddit. Hopefully I won't get too much backlash here.

11. Lady luck was on this person's side

There was a math competition/test in grade 8, and this was to actually decide who got the math award at graduation, but we didn't know that at the time. They grabbed all the top students, including me and my best friend, and we were probably the two smartest kids in the grade.

Well my friend was always faster than me at completing tests, assignments, etc. he just had that gift of always flying through these things, so I knew he would crush this competition/test.

There was about 15 of us in a computer lab, all spaced apart, the test was done on a math program (I can't remember what it was called) and it was some long a*s weird word problem that was actually meant to confuse us.

Well while the teacher was explaining the test I was clicking through one of the network drives and I found a folder that said Final.Test.William (my name is William). I was like "That's really weird I don't remember making this?" so I opened it up, and BOOM! it had the answer for our competition.

So I quickly copy and pasted it onto Word so no can see, and then once we started I minimized Word into the corner and re-wrote out the answer in my own words. This only took me about 10 minutes to do, and the teach said this should take everyone at least an hour.

So I sit there for another 10-15 minutes just to play it safe, and then I told the teach I was done. He came over and was amazed how fast I completed the test.

Graduation comes and I receive the math award and the teacher explains how amazed he was how fast I had completed the test in record time. I found out that day the teacher's name was also William.

Funny end to the story, my best friend and I actually live together now and he is a very successful Architect and I'm an Engineer. Years later he still brings it up and asks "How the f**k did you do that test so fast? That was mine and you know it"

12. A husband's lie

I always tell my wife how much I love her makeup that day.

I hate it. I wish she would stop wearing it but it makes her happy so I decide to lie.

13. This is heartbreaking.

My dad was having a heart attack in front of me and my mother, she yelled at me to go get help but I froze in fear. He later died which caused my mother to become addicted to prescription pain killer and then killed herself while my brother also killed himself a year later.

TL;dr I ruined my family.

14. Family drama over a stamp collection

TL;DR I "stole" my dad's expensive stamp collection because my family was fighting over it. I'm safekeeping it until everyone who fought over it is dead and turning it into a family heirloom.

Before my dad fell off the wagon, he assembled a beautiful stamp collection. I really loved watching him collect them as a kid. Life happened. He became a non functioning alcoholic. My parents got divorced. He moved in with his girlfriend. Then he beat his girlfriend, and she kicked him out and got a restraining order.

At that time I was living on my own attending college one state over. My mom called from the other side of the country. Somehow she'd just found out my father had left his valuable stamp collection in his ex's garage.

My mother had been having money problems and asked me to retrieve it for her so she could sell it. I was reluctant because finals were coming up, and I was broke. It would cost me a lot in gas and the trip was long enough I'd need to sleep at a motel, too.

My mother said she'd give me 10% of the sale if I got it for her. She anticipated selling the collection for $10,000. I agreed to get the collection for her.

The trip was miserable right away. My car was an ancient beater that burned through gas. By the time I got to the ex's neighborhood, I'd spent so much money on fuel, I had to sleep in my car every night. Though I'd been told she was expecting me, this was clearly a lie. His ex had no idea I was on my way at all. Thankfully, she was happy to let me take whatever I wanted that my father had left behind.

As soon as I had the stamps, I called my mother. She was ecstatic, claiming she'd found someone who would buy the stamps sight unseen for $1,000, and she was very excited about her upcoming windfall. I told her she'd said the collection was worth ten times that.

She said she was sure it was but didn't have the energy to shop around and would just go with the offer she'd been made. I asked if she was still going to give me 10%? No, since she'd only be getting a tenth of what she'd anticipated when she'd made the offer, she no longer had money to spare to pay me. Also, could I pay the shipping to mail the box?

I was furious and just said "I'll see what I can do," and hung up to decide what exactly I was going to do. Once I had calmed down, I decided I'd sell the collection myself for as high as I could, take my 10%, and cut her a check for the rest.

Before I could call her back, my phone rang. My mother had called my father to rub it in that she was getting his stamp collection, and he'd called me to scream at me and demand I turn around and bring it to him instead.

By the time I had made my way back home, my parents had tag teamed me with so many angry calls, I'd had to shut off my phone. My e-mails (both personal and school), my AIM, my Facebook, hell, even my DeviantArt account was flooded with messages from both of them trying to convince me to send them the collection. The messages swung wildly between being sweet and pleading to angry and accusatory.

I told my mom if she gave me $80 to cover the gas I'd bought and accept the collection POD, I'd wash my hands of this, but she was too angry to negotiate. She wanted the stamps. She wanted them now. She wanted them no strings attached.

Angrily, I shoved the collection into my closet and told her to stop calling. So of course she called every. Single. Day. She called from friend's numbers, blocked numbers, she sent me e-mails, texts, private messages, snail mail. F**K. She sent me FLOWERS with messages begging me to pick up the phone.

Eventually, the storm died down over the course of a year, but we'd pretty effectively stopped talking. Then one day, my sister knocked on my door. I was baffled. I knew she'd be in town for a game, but we were not friends and I wasn't expecting her to visit. She said mom had sent her to pick up the stamps.

I was furious all over again. But I kept my cool, went back into my house, and packed all the inexpensive parts of the collection into one box- unfilled binders, info books, various supplies for setting the stamps in their books, and the junior stamp collected kits I'd done with him as a kid. I told her it was all I'd found and passed it off.

My mom later called and said she'd sent it back to my father without ever opening it because it had caused so much drama between everyone. The air cleared a lot between us after that, even though I still have the stamps, though my father hasn't spoken to me since.

I'm not going to tell my family I still have the stamps. I've brought them with me every move I've made. They've crossed the planet with me. Twice. I've never once tried to sell them or even had them appraised. No one involved in the in incident- my mother, my father, my sister, not even me- is going to profit off the stamps.

They're staying away from the light of day until I have a grandchild or grand-niece/nephew I decide will appreciate them. And if I'm not the last of us four alive when the time comes to pass them off, they go into long term storage and willed to that person to be opened only once all four of us are dead.

15. Pretending for the sake of the family

The wife of a close friend knows that the friend was closeted and was gay before they got married. She believes that she is the only reason he decided to be straight instead. She admitted this to me on a 12-hour road trip once and then realized she'd said too much and swore me to secrecy.

I didn't tell her that, before getting married, the close friend admitted to me that he wanted to be gay but that he never dared to out of fear of judgment of his rural, conservative family. He almost didn't get married because he didn't think he could pull it off, but it seemed like the to save face with his family. They have been married over 20 years now.

16. Regret

One night I woke up with my mind in a twist, my mom was in the hospital at the time, I had a crazy urge to call them and check on her, but I reasoned not to because I couldn't think of an excuse so I fell back to sleep.

5am I get a call that they checked on her and she didn't have a pulse, I just think there was something I could have done that destroys me to even think about it.

17. It's not their fault

My friend in 8th grade called me before he killed himself and told me it was my fault. If I called his mom sooner instead of feeling sorry for myself and for him he might still be here

18. A secret to keep from his dad

I'm a 6ft4, 320lb MMA fighter, bouncer, and weight lifter. My Dad thinks of me as the manliest guy in the world, and often times I'll even feign a call and chat with ine of my female friends. He thinks I'm a chick magnet since I get a decent amount of looks in public if my shirt is tighter than usual.

His daughter is a 35 year old woman with two kids, both of which are failing school. She married a deadbeat and essentially is ruined, living in a sh**ty leased house which she struggles to keep afloat. I know my Dad wants me to be successful, form a family, and pretty much be the successor of his family. To bear him eventual grandchildren even, and just to be his "pride."

I don't have the heart to tell him I'm gay, and since he was raised rather racist considering he is of German decent and his father was a decently high ranking KKK member, he'd be even more pissed that I'm dating a latino guy. He isn't very open minded at all, and is pretty strict and tunneled in his views. I don't think I coukd ever break his heart and tell him.

To top it all off, he was ahem.. "snipped" rather early on in life, so there's no chance of having another success kid. He expects the world out of me, and I wish I could give him that. I just want him to be happy.

19. What dishonesty does to the innocent

In 5th grade, I cheated on an exam. My buddy and I were the only two people in the grade who got this particular question correct, but I copied him. The worst part was he was considered 'dumb' while I was at the top of the class, so the teacher was convinced that he copied me and he ended up getting suspended.

Long story short, I was too p**sy to admit that I was the one who cheated as my parents would have murdered me if I failed the test and even worse if I got suspended.

20. They're probably not real friends.

That I hate all my f*****g friends for not inviting me anywhere and my cycles of sudden realization that nobody cares about me except for my family.

21. Uh oh.

I saw my friends nipple when I looked down her bra the other night whilst nursing her sunburnt shoulders and back

22. That's scary!

I burned down a train station.

23. They weren't meant to be.

My parents are divorced and remarried (my dad is very happily married to my step-mom; my mom, is not so happily married to my step-dad).

They both confided in me a long time ago that they’re both still very much in love with each other (separately, of course; they live thousands of miles apart), but they asked me to never tell anybody in our lives about this. I intend on keeping that promise, but it hurts to know that they still feel so strongly about each other, and maybe, just maybe, could have gotten back together if they weren’t so proud and stubborn.

Such is life.

Edit: extra detail that I totally forgot to mention - when I turned 18, my father and his parents (we’re all very close) sat me down and handed me a folder with everything that happened regarding their divorce. All of the letters between my parents, the confession of the situation that started it all, and it kind of shattered my world at the time.

I had this image of my mom and my dad, and these images and ideas of who they were had to be edited to add all of this new information in, and they clashed very strongly. Over time, I came to understand that people change, and the parents I saw dealing with their divorce are not the parents I have today.

My mom was only 19 when they started dating, and they married 2 years later. My dad was 7 years older, so he had more life experience. From what I gathered, my mom just wasn’t ready for that kind of life, that kind of commitment. I understand it a lot clearer now that I’ve been in my own relationship with my partner for 4 years now, and we got together when he was 18 and I was 21.

Things are all the more difficult when you’re living with someone at such a young age. We’ve made it work and we are extremely happy that we did, but we honestly felt like it would end at any point during the first 2.5 years; they were hellish.

It also didn’t help that my mom came from a pastor’s family, and they were extremely strict, to the point of disregarding their faith for the sake of the family image to the public. There are some very dark stories about that, but this thread isn’t the place to get into that, I feel.

24. It was an accident.

When I was younger I was at my friends house sledding. He had to leave with his family but I kept sledding. I lost control and ran over a baby pine tree they had planted earlier in the year. A tree they had planted in remembrance of my friends grandma passing away that year.

I had snapped the tree when I hit it. So I just stuck it in the snow and left. Weeks later and it warms up enough that the snow melts and the tree falls over. They were devastated when they discovered their tree was broken with no explanation how it happened.

25. Not his real child

That this child isn't actually my bastard, but my sister's son, whose dad passed away.

26. We hope this person's life will eventually change and they'll be happy in the end.

That I'm actually really f*****g miserable. I really dislike the rest of the family save Grandma and Aunt. Everyday I want to just disappear and there is no one I genuinely love. I don't even know what it feels like to love.

And I don't know why. I don't know what I want to do in life and would love to have never been to college. I really just want friends but I'm a depressed wreck who's limited and is too scared to do anything to change it.

I can't tell anyone about this because everyone says just to go out and meet people or get help. No car, no buses here, nowhere to meet people, and a social wreck. We can't afford help. And it just kills me to never tell my mom, the one person I should tell because she'll either say I'm overreacting or feel like she failed as a mother.

Edit 1: Thanks for offers guys and gals. Sad to say talking doesn't help me anymore. I used to talk about problems but it never made me feel better or actually changed things.

27. Faking a bad eyesight to get glasses

When I was like... 10 or 11, a lot of my classmates got glasses. I thought they were pretty cool, so I faked having myopia in order to get glasses as well. I wasn't too dumb tho, I pretended that I could see better with lenses that had a small diopter so they didn't actually damage my eyesight.

The downside was that my parents thought using the computer had something to do with it, so they didn't allow me to use it anymore. Also, I got bored of the glasses quickly, so there's that. I don't really wear them anymore, but I'm ashamed to tell my folks that I faked having bad eyesight because they were really upset at the time.

28. He discovered something in his dad's PC.

I was using my dad's computer and it auto-completed "(our city) escorts". I was fourteen and had no idea what to do. It's been 8 years now so I feel it's kind of past the familial statute of limitations

29. She needs to get divorced eventually.

I'm still married but have been in a relationship with my SO for a year and a half. I was in a really ugly, domestic violence ridden marriage with my childhood sweetheart, one night he choked me in a grocery store parking lot until I blacked out and the next day I maxed out my credit card and got on a plane to Florida to see my grandma.

I graduated college a week prior and didn't have a job and had no financial means to leave my husband. I stayed in Florida for about a month, took my state boards for my RN license and passed the exam. I flew back to my home state, called my mom who I hadn't spoken to in 5 years and went to stay with her.

About a week later I found my first RN job and worked while I stayed with my parents and was miserable and tried to hide from my crazy husband. Fast forward a few months and I saved about 5 grand. I was constantly scared of my husband knowing where I was and coming to find me, it was just an all around absolutely shitty time in my life.

I have never been so depressed. I told my mom I had enough money to either hire an attorney or move far away somewhere that I could be safe and start over but I didn't know what to do. She encouraged me to leave and start fresh and take care of myself for a while. So I did. I packed what little I had in my car and drove across the country with no plan to somewhere I had only visited a few times.

I ended up doing ok, finding a job as soon as I got here (yay nursing) and never telling anyone about my actual past. Everyone thinks I'm a divorced girl who left the Midwest because of the Cold. To this day the only people who know I'm actually still married is my family back home.

I'm just now getting to the point where I can probably start figuring out how to get divorced but still scared that my ex will find out where I live through the divorce process/papers and would have to work really hard to keep it all a secret so my current SO doesn't find out.

It's a serious relationship and we've talked about marriage etc and I plan to try as hard as I can to keep this all a secret. He would never forgive me if he found out I had been lying the entire time about being secretly married.

Tl;dr ran away from abusive husband moved across the country started a new life and currently in a serious relationship with someone who has no idea I'm married.

30. Don't do this kids!

In 7th grade, me and my friend Simon got the password for the admin accounts on our classroom's computer and our teacher always came in late so we would just change our grades whenever we got to class before him and the door was unlocked.

I'm pretty sure this is what got me into a really good high school because i rarely did homework, but I usually knew the material.

31. Virgin dad and mom

My mother is a virgin but has kids

She's psychologically traumatized due to having weird, extremely conservative parents that stigmatized anything sexual to a weird degree. She was kind of like this with me too but I broke the barrier she tried to impose on me. She went through IVF with my father to have me and my siblings.

I know this because my Aunt told me. I knew I was an IVF baby but my parents gave me a nonsensical health reason as to why. My Aunt told me when my mother got married she was fretting over having sex for the first time and she was holding it off for ages, but it just never happened and several years into marriage they wanted kids.

It possibly means my father is a virgin too as they got married extremely young and dated nobody previous to each other. My father would have had to have cheated on my mother to not be a virgin, which doesn't seem like something he would do (he's a very loyal person and follows his personal moral code very strictly, I always remember him like this).

I think I might be the only person in the world other than Biblical Jesus to be in this situation. At first I didn't believe my Aunt but then I realized it connected all the dots about everything I knew about my parents.

I don't think I'll reveal this about them to anyone for their own sake, even when they're dead.

People keep secrets for all sorts of reasons, but often it’s because the secret is wrapped up in their identity.

It’s a part of who they are, and revealing it would mean giving up that part of themselves. That can be a scary prospect, especially if the secret is something damaging or shameful.

But sometimes people also keep secrets simply because they enjoy having something to themselves, something that nobody else knows about.

May