Recently, we wrote about secrets people accidentally stumbled upon, and members of the BuzzFeed Community* had their own stories to submit. Here are 39 shocking things people discovered that they weren't supposed to know.
*We also used some replies from the original Reddit thread.
NOTE: There are mentions of violence, murder, suicide, sexual assault, sexual abuse, child abuse, and incest.
1. "My sister told me that she felt bad for our pastor, who just went through a divorce. I think she was like 19 or 20 at the time. Anyway, she told me she slept with him because he was so sad and she wanted to comfort him. I mean, I know she clearly wanted me to know the secret, but I'm guessing he 200% did NOT want me to know. He was the same age as our parents. Technically, she was an adult and off at college and was just visiting home at the time, so I felt like it was her adult decision — and I felt like telling my parents would do nothing but hurt them."
"After she told me, I was so mad at the pastor for being so inappropriate that I rarely interacted with him again. My entire family was invited to his wedding to some lady a few years later, and I went, but I drank underage just to sort of drown it out. He tried to comment on it, and I said, 'Well, sometimes we all do something risky and underage when we're in a weird spot.' And I think he realized I knew. We didn't really talk ever again after that."
2. "A friend of mine in high school was fucking the PE teacher. I knew they were 'friendly' or whatever, but then she started to tell me about it, and it escalated to them going away together for a weekend (her lying to her parents about where she was going, of course) and that sort of thing. Wild. For those wondering ages: she was 18 and he was, like, 40. They got caught when he was dropping her off at home, and her dad came out and punched his wing mirror off. The wild part is he didn't even lose his job...the school just reprimanded him or whatever. She was due to graduate from high school in a month or two anyway. She and I have never discussed it again!"
3. "My husband's stepfather was his idol and the person who influenced him the most, even though he passed away when my husband was just 13 (over 30 years ago). His stepfather is also the love of my mother-in-law's life. I learned he sexually abused my sister-in-law repeatedly during her childhood, and to her, he is the person who most negatively impacted her life. I will never tell either of them. They would be incredibly devastated."
—Anonymous, 49, Florida
4. "I learned one of my beloved older aunts on my dad's side was raped by her youngest son and his friends. He got into drugs and used to bring his drug-addicted friends home. They lived in an isolated area with hardly any neighbors around or traffic. On that day, all three of them were high on drugs. My aunt locked herself in her room for protection, but they kicked down the door. After being raped, she walked to the nearest neighbor, who called the police. All three men went to jail. Months later, my cousin died while in custody. One of his older brothers was traumatized by the whole incident and died by suicide. My aunt lived to be 92 and eventually died from Alzheimer's-related issues. I wish I had never known about it."
—Anonymous, 57, California
5. "My ex-fiancé told me after a few drinks one night in South Beach that his uncle on his very rich mother's side decapitated a girl on a boat in high school. His uncle took his dad's speedboat out without permission with some friends and forgot what time high tide would roll in and that they had to cross under a bridge to get back home. Well, after many drinks and partying with substances, they made their way back, and his uncle thought it would be fun to gun it down the canal. With high tide, the boat had very little clearance under the bridge, and when they got to it, everyone ducked except this one girl who was standing. He got off because his parents were extremely wealthy, and they pulled strings and paid her family off, and it was filed as a simple boating accident. I'm not sure if he remembers telling me, but I will never forget it. His uncle was super cool, but I never looked at him the same at family functions."
—Anonymous, 32 Palm Beach FL
6. "As a bit of a computer geek (privately and professionally), I am the fixer for a lot of family and friends. One friend asked me to help with his computer as it had crashed, and everything was on it — including every digital photo of their kids growing up, with no backups. He handed me the disk (mechanical) and said that everything he needed was on the main account. He had two other accounts, but they were password protected, and he didn't care about what was on them. He said it was mostly work and banking stuff."
"I did a whole disk data recovery to get everything, specifically JPGs, which is how he saved the photos. The thing about earlier Windows versions is that password protection was not done by encryption; it was just a convention that Windows defined and followed. Linux ignored those rules, and so I got everything from all the accounts.
As I sifted through the photos to get rid of the extra images like icons, thumbnails, game tiles, website cached images, etc., I discovered that he and his wife have many, many friends. Many of them seem very close friends — quite uninhibited, athletic, and very, very inventive. There were thousands of images of everything from solo to groups of seven or eight, and every combination of men and women.
I recovered the photos of his kids and holidays, etc, put them on a CD, deleted the rest, and said nothing. None of my business; they were all adults. I still see them to this day, and it's still none of my business.
...I never got an invite to a party though, I'm not sure how I would feel if I did."
7. "My mom had put me up for adoption when I was just born. I spent about a week with the new family before she took me back."
8. "When I was a kid, my mum was studying part-time. Every month or so, she would get together for study groups with some other mums who were doing the same degree, so I got to know some of the other kids pretty well. Two in particular — a brother (Adam) and sister (Sally) – were roughly the same age as my sister and me, so we hung out with them a lot."
"Generally, I'd hang out with Adam, and my sister would hang out with Sally. We'd known them since we were about eight, and when we were about 12 or 13, Adam said he had a secret to tell me. The secret was that he'd had sex. This seemed very odd, because I'd never even seen him talk to a girl, let alone have any kind of relationship with one, and I said as much. Then he told me who it was...Sally. I didn't know what to say, so I just said, 'Ah, yeah, okay' and carried on as if he had never said it. In my mind, I was sure he was full of shit. That evening, I told my sister what he'd said, and she went pale. Then she told me that Sally had told her the same thing.
Shortly after all this, my mum graduated, and we stopped hanging out with them as much. I still saw them from time to time, and I'm friends with Sally still on Facebook. But I've never mentioned it to anyone."
9. "I think I have another sibling. My mom and I were drinking too much, and we were recounting regrets. As you do. I have two older sisters. She mentioned a brother. She said my grandpa made her have the baby, and she doesn't know anything about who or where he is. I don't think she remembers telling me. I don't know what to do with this. I haven't said anything to my siblings or even to her. I wouldn't even know where to begin."
10. "When I was in second grade, my best friend and I were playing in the wood chips. We were telling each other stories, like if we had ever held hands with anyone. I told her that my dad hit me. She told me her father took her to his room and would touch her. I told her my dad did that, too. She got really scared and tried to tell me she was lying. I didn't believe she had lied. I kept talking to her while she was crying. I told her she wouldn't get in trouble for telling someone. She said she was really scared of not seeing her brother again or getting in big trouble with her dad. I asked if she would feel better if I told the nurse for her. I did tell the nurse later that day. I never saw her again at school. I did have to talk to a CPS agent at some point. I was forced to lie about what she later said about my dad. (I am thankful she said something about my abuse, even if in my case, nothing changed.)"
I hope she is ok. She was my only friend at that school. We moved the next year. Now that I'm older, I remember other small signs. She came to school with bruises, and she often got in trouble for falling asleep in class. I guess until she said something, I felt like all that was normal."
11. "I was breaking up with a girl in college. I had known her older brother, who had since graduated. As I was breaking up with her, she sobbingly told me not only had her brother let his drunk friends sexually assault her when she was still under 18, but that he himself, while drunk, once assaulted her. I saw him a few weeks later and it was all I could do not to sucker punch him."
—Anonymous
12. "A lifelong close friend got REALLY drunk and confessed to me that he'd always been in love with me but didn't want to ruin the friendship, so he'd never made a move. But that he would leave his wife for me if I ever told him to. I was in total shock. I had been in their freaking wedding, for crying out loud! I'd babysat their kids! I never would've guessed he felt that way about me!"
"So I told him, 'Dude, you know I love you like a brother, but you're married and I adore your wife. Thank you for telling me, but the feeling is not mutual. Sorry!' He then started immediately apologizing and crying, begging me to forget he'd said it and to never tell anyone. I told him it was fine, I appreciated the compliment, and I wouldn't tell anyone.
We then talked for another 20 minutes, just assuaging his guilt at both feeling that way and having confessed at all. We didn't go back inside until I knew he was okay.
He called me the next morning and was like, 'Dude, I don't know what I did last night, but I woke up this morning feeling like I needed to apologize to you for some reason! And (wife) told me that we stood outside for like 30 minutes talking. What the hell did we talk about?'
So I replied, 'I'm not going to tell you what you told me because you're better off not remembering. But just know I'm not mad, we're totally good, and you have no reason to apologize.'
He pressed the issue a couple of times, but I kept reiterating that it was for his own good that he didn't remember. I think if he had, he would've been weird around me, and it would've affected our friendship. As it stands, our friendship never changed, and I've always acted like I didn't know. It's been about a decade, and we're still friends."
13. "When I was maybe about 12, a neighbor girl asked me if my brother 'did it to me' and said that her brother did it to her. Her brother was maybe 18 or so at the time. I was shocked, but it didn't occur to me to tell anyone. Many years later, she had moved to a different state. I saw her and she was talking about what a good brother she had. I realized that she seemed to have suppressed the whole thing."
14. "My mother is a hoarder of old documents. My sibling finally got her to accept help getting things cleaned up, throwing out receipts older than we are, etc. I found documentation of my mother consulting a divorce attorney — the same year I was alone with my dad in the car, and he asked me if they should get a divorce."
"I told him no at the time, because I was a child (seriously, why ask your middle school age child to decide the fate of your marriage?), but as I've gotten older, I realized they probably should have gotten the divorce. There's nothing more empty than 'staying together for the kids.' Maybe they would have been more attentive parents if they were happy."
15. "I was in first or second grade. A neighbor friend (same age) asked if I wanted to see her parents' money-making machine. I shrugged my shoulders and off we went; it was just one of many activities that day. And there it was, a bulky gadget in their basement, of no interest to me. I didn't give it another thought until, a few months later, my parents started talking about how the XYZ neighbors got arrested for printing counterfeit money. I remember connecting the dots, but that's about it."
16. "I have a work associate that I'm somewhat friendly with; we've gone out for lunch, and I've met her young adult children multiple times. Before I knew her, I was good friends with someone who knew her for most of their life, who blabbed that her kids are adopted, but said it was a secret because the kids don't know. Every time I see her kids, it's all I can think about, wondering if they suspect anything."
17. "My former friend of many years has a boyfriend who raped a child and is a registered sex offender."
18. "I used to be a bartender, and a regular was crying and let it slip that she'd just found out that her ex-husband had been sexually assaulting their children for years before they divorced, and she never knew. She was wracked with guilt that she hadn't done anything sooner. She hadn't known they were in trouble, but she knew he was an asshole and was convincing herself that should have been enough. But like, damn, what do you even say to that?"
19. "My friend's dad killed his mom. He was raised by his aunt, who is his mother's sister. He doesn't know about it."
20. "My dad died suddenly, and while trying to get his affairs in order, we found his years-long forays into gay hookups via Craigslist. Then we found three burner phones. It was a strict Catholic household, too. My mom's an awful, narcissistic woman who taught her kids to be anti-gay. Wonder why? She totally knew. But divorce is a sin! They lived miserable lives because of religion and worrying about how they'd look in their community."
21. "I'm pretty sure my parents would have divorced if it weren't for my birth. When I was around 13, I found a box of journals in my mom's closet; being nosy and not understanding privacy, I read them. My mom talked about how my dad had anger issues and would yell and berate her a lot, basically verbally abusing her. She questioned if she would ever truly be loved. The journal entries stopped the year I was born. I've never gotten along with my dad, and due to him, I've dealt with depression and suicidal ideations all throughout my teenage years. I believe that my birth gave him someone to take out his anger on other than my mom and 'saved' their marriage."
22. "When I was a kid, I overheard my parents arguing about money, which was normal since they had a restaurant. But apparently, the FBI and IRS came to their work asking for their accountant, who didn't show up that day. She had stolen around $200k in taxes owed to the IRS and TABC, and did the same to other local business owners. They were saying we were going to lose the business and our house. My dad then started yelling about the expensive private school they put me in, and he said it was a waste of money because I was still dumb. That was a lot for a kid to take in."
23. "My parents didn't intend for me to know I was never vaccinated. Unfortunately for them, I have basic research skills and was able to get all my childhood medical records without their interference."
24. "I caught a coworker having an affair with another coworker. We were at a bar, and when I went to the bathroom, they were up against a wall making out. He was married; she wasn't. I ended up telling them I'd seen them, and they denied it right to my face. I told them there was no point denying it because I saw them with my own eyes, and after some time, they copped to it."
"The whole thing was awful, and although I only brought it up in the hope they'd do the right thing, I ended up being forced to keep secret upon secret. ... I never minced words about telling him to end his marriage or at least confess. The worst part was the social events at work when his wife would come. I spent a decent amount of time lying by omission, but I didn't want to be the catalyst for a fucking divorce! Even though it would of course have been them who were the catalyst. Basically, I know I should've told her, but it really didn't feel like my place. It sucked."
25. "I discovered that one of my (now former) co-workers was arrested for downloading thousands of child sexual abuse images onto his work computer when I Googled his name to check out his portfolio. Then he went to prison for it two months after I started. This is a man who designed children's books for one of our clients. God, I still feel gross thinking about this. This is why I am super distrustful of middle-aged white Christian men."
26. "I found out my father was a spy by reading a Washington Times article."
"He had died a year ago, and I was still obsessively googling him. Looking back, there were…signs. Our childhood was weird. But kids normalize everything."
27. "My mother died of cancer when I was six and my older sister was eight. She left a trust, which I knew existed, but I had no idea what was in it. Due to a bunch of drama involving my older sister, my father mentioned being unsure of what to do with the income from the trust. When I asked what he was talking about, he got very defensive and cagey. I snooped the next time I was housesitting. I found out that my mother left a trust that is generating $30k a year in income. My father gets a retirement package of $105k. He owns four houses and a huge plot of land. His stock portfolio is worth a few million, and at least one bank account has over $850k sitting in it. I am on SNAP and Medicaid, having never made more than $24k in a year, between disability and bad luck."
"The language of the trust puts him in control of everything — when I asked, he openly told me he kept the income from the trust for himself. The copies that I found do not mention me or my sister benefiting until he dies.
The trust was signed two weeks before my mother went into a permanent coma. Her best friend was a doctor, and he assured me she was barely lucid at that point. My own father swindled my mother on her deathbed to keep money from his own children. Then again, he has never been a man to let his children have more if it meant he would have less."
28. "My high school band director (I was in choir, but lots of friends were in band) got caught cheating on his wife with a student. She began divorce proceedings, and he left a note on the whiteboard for his eighth graders to find, telling them that it was their fault that he was going to off himself because they didn't make regionals or something similar, and killed himself. His son was in my grade. The principal threatened to suspend me for saying that band teacher was a huge piece of shit and for telling people what had actually happened. I found out through one of the band kids who found the note."
29. "Through no fault of my own, I discovered that a couple I am close with suffered a miscarriage. I was browsing a subreddit discussing the pain of losing a loved one, and in the thread I read about them discussing it, and realized I knew the username after the fact. To this day, I've kept quiet about it and plan on keeping it that way. I do feel somewhat guilty because it wasn't like I intended to find out about it, and to my knowledge, they never shared this with anyone in our friend group."
30. "My dad's second wife was showing me something on her phone. It rang as she was showing me a picture. The caller ID was 'My Boo.' My dad was NOT the caller. She panicked, trying to swipe it away."
31. "I found out the company owner's dad had another family. He was an old racist white guy in public, and he had a Black family in the next state over. His other family tried to show up to his funeral, and his white family used their money (police) to block them from attending. I've known about this since the '90s, but they still tried to squelch attempts by anyone else from finding out."
32. "[I found out] that the owners of my workplace are swingers. We started getting personal messages on the work iPad detailing meetups.😭"
33. "I was reading through my mom's texts to a former family friend one night. We used to go to their house every summer out of state and would spend a week together. ... One year, we just stopped, and my mom wouldn't talk about it. One night, I found a long text thread of their conversation. The lady essentially said, 'You're a bad friend and I don't want to see you again.' My mom was very unstable and traumatized after my parents split, and I have no trouble understanding her friend's POV. One thing I didn't expect to find was my mom dropping the fact that my dad cheated on my mom, and that was the reason for the divorce."
34. "At my side job, we had a show that slowly turned more and more towards the far-right crowd over time. Eventually, it joined a far-right misinformation network (kinda like a YouTube-style site but with only far-right misinformation as its content). I wasn't happy about the turn of events, but couldn't find other work at the time. In one of the email chains between the boss and someone else, I was accidentally cc'd. I discovered that the financial backer for that network was one of the wealthiest people in Canada — not just regular wealthy, but 'places named after him' wealthy. And he was doing it through some shadowy accounts, to make the money less traceable. But here I was, accidentally cc'd in an email chain that could blow things wide open."
"I was unable to do so, however. Mostly because shortly after, he stopped being alive, and the whole network shut down as a result.
But man, oh man, it could've been a huge scandal. (He was a lawyer and survived by tons of lawyer friends, so I hesitate to release his name.)"
35. "My former mother-in-law told me, while I was divorcing her son, that his father had cheated on her during the Korean War. She told me because she thought I might change my mind about the divorce. She asked me to never reveal it to any of their children. I've kept that secret for 40 years."
—Anonymous, 70, Arizona
36. And finally..."My ex-friend's brother is Goatse."
What shocking secret did you uncover? Let us know in the comments below or via this anonymous form.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE, which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local center here.
If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453(4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
Dial 988 in the United States to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The 988 Lifeline is available 24/7/365. Your conversations are free and confidential. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. The Trevor Project, which provides help and suicide-prevention resources for LGBTQ youth, is 1-866-488-7386.