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We recently compiled a Reddit thread by u/Comfortable_Tomato_3 that revealed shocking secrets about relatives and friends discovered after their passing—now, we’re back with even more!
Here are 23 additional jaw-dropping revelations that emerged about people after their deaths.
1. "A family friend, who felt like a cousin, passed away from an overdose around a year ago. After his death, we learned that he had massive social media accounts—millions of followers—where he glorified his drugged-out lifestyle to a young crowd of almost-adults."
"It broke my heart to realize he was living a secret life, encouraged by strangers, while his loved ones were desperately asking him to seek help. I hope at least one of his followers learned something valuable after witnessing what happened to him."
—karismaw
2. "When my parents went to clean out my grandfather's house and move him to a care facility, they discovered that my step-grandmother, who passed away years ago, had faked her cancer diagnosis and was deeply involved in drug addiction."
—maddiec4dbdcafdc
3. "My great-grandfather immigrated from Ireland as a baby with his parents and siblings...or at least that’s what we were told. A few years ago, long after his passing, I discovered that his mother actually died during childbirth. The woman I thought was my great-great-grandmother was actually his stepmother, who married his father only weeks after his mother’s death."
"The stepmother essentially took the place of the children’s real mother; they believed she had given birth to them. One of the reasons this was so convincing was that they shared the same name: Winifred. My great-great-grandfather swapped out his wife—the mother of his children—for a near-identical woman and passed her off as the original in their new life in America. How messed up is that?"
—NYCGirl2014
4. "My mom always told me that her mother, who passed away when she was 7, died due to complications from diabetes. However, when I was a teenager, one of my uncles (my mom's older brother) told me that my grandmother died from a botched abortion."
"It was the '60s; she was a single mother with several kids already. She turned to a back-alley abortion. She bled out afterward. I believe my uncle isn’t lying, and we’ve always been close. I never mentioned it to my mom because I truly think that since she was so young, no one ever told her the truth."
—Mizztina
5. "A few years ago, my boyfriend’s aunt passed away suddenly, likely in her mid-60s. When it was time to clean out her house, my boyfriend’s mom (her sister) and a few of his sisters took on the task and found multiple crack pipes hidden around her home, as well as pornographic videos on her phone."
"We later discovered that she had been turning to prostitution to feed her drug habit. And that’s not even the worst part...the real shocker?? One of the videos on her phone featured her with her niece’s now ex-husband."
—alysiashae
6. "After my grandfather passed away, I discovered that it is almost certain that his son from his first marriage isn't biologically his. I grew up believing that my grandmother, his second wife, was unable to have children, which is why my mom and aunt were adopted."
"After he passed, I came across a nearly autobiographical document he had written for personal record, and it revealed that my uncle is likely not his biological son. The rest of the family is aware of this, but my uncle remains oblivious. It's quite strange, especially since my uncle looks so much like my grandfather, but science usually doesn’t make mistakes."
—madihawes
7. "I learned that the great-grandmother I was named after had killed one of her husbands. What's odd is that his death was officially labeled as a mining accident... but so was the death of her previous husband. I guess we'll never really know."
—caramelldansen
8. "After my married uncle passed away, we discovered that he had another 'wife' and children living in a different state. His wallet had contact information for both women, and they were both notified! He even had the audacity to give both daughters from his two marriages the same name. So, there were two Susans. The funeral turned into a chaotic mess."
—Arihat
9. "A few years ago, I received a Facebook message from a neighbor of my mom's mom telling us that she had passed away a few months earlier. She and my mom never had the best relationship — they hadn’t talked for years, and my mom had spent over a decade trying to locate her. The real shock came when we found out that my dad's mother and my mom's mom had been friends for over 20 YEARS. My dad's mom had even gone to parties at her house, but she never told us. She didn’t even inform us when she passed away."
—oceanflower97
10. "I was around eight years old when my father passed away. He wasn’t very involved in our lives, but I still recall the moment he died. We were having dinner when there was a knock at the door. My mom opened it, and it was a teenage boy. I’m not sure what he said, but my mom just told him to leave and slammed the door on him."
"I later learned that my father had a hidden wife whom he would visit during his gambling trips to Macau. The boy at the door was my half-brother, who came looking for his father's family. I never saw him again."
—mutagenic
11. "My wife's uncle and his family had lived in poverty for as long as anyone could remember. There was never enough food, barely any shelter, and they had to rely on handouts from relatives. He was the last to pass, with only one daughter remaining. His wife and two children died from illness. When the family went to help his last child, we discovered coffee cans hidden everywhere, filled with cash."
"Some of the money was in rare collectible denominations and mints worth far more than their face value. When everything was — or at least we think it was — counted, it amounted to OVER $1 million. And no one had any idea."
—scooterdude1340
12. "My mother deeply regretted adopting me. I was brought into the family at just six months old, and she had this idealized notion of what raising a child should look like — what they should do, how they should act. When I didn't meet these expectations and behaved like an ordinary child, she couldn’t cope. She took me to several doctors, child psychologists, and other questionable practitioners, all in an attempt to shape me into the perfect child in her eyes. She even kept daily journals and hundreds of audio recordings, where she expressed her dissatisfaction with me being too energetic and unruly."
"She also maintained a detailed ledger from the time of my adoption until her passing, itemizing everything they spent on me: birthdays, Christmas gifts, random buys, school fees, and more, all meticulously recorded down to the last cent."
—u/taint_of_love
My grandpa always insisted that everyone refer to him as the high kleagle. To all of us—his children and grandchildren—it seemed like a funny, affectionate nickname that we would joke about. When he passed away, my aunt was tasked with writing his eulogy but wasn't sure how to spell the nickname, so she Googled it. That's when she discovered that the 'high kleagle' was actually a title within the Ku Klux Klan for the person in charge of recruiting new members.
It hit me why we were always the least favorite grandkids — because our mother grew up Jewish.
—u/aschills5
I heard from a friend about an older man who had served as a fighter pilot during World War II and was considered an ace. After his death, it was discovered that he wasn’t buried with the American flag draped over his coffin. In fact, he was a German ace.
—u/tony_staxxx
When my great-grandfather passed away, I inherited a box that seemed to hold his most prized possession—a vintage revolver. It was an old but well-preserved weapon, accompanied by a small leather-bound journal. As it turns out, my great-grandfather’s father had been a kind of enforcer in an old mining town. If you took something that wasn’t yours, he’d use that very gun to enact his own form of vigilante justice. After his father passed from illness, my great-grandfather was sent to live with some relatives, whom he described as truly awful.
The journal held a chilling confession from my great-grandfather: he admitted to killing his aunt, uncle, and three cousins. This gentle old man, who had taught me about trains and science when I was a child, was the same person who, when pushed to his limits, didn’t hesitate to spill his own family's blood.
—u/TheModernRouge
My maiden name is quite distinctive. A few towns over, there’s another family with the same surname, but they aren't related to us in any way. The same name even repeats in some cases. I know this because I once met someone at a former job who had the exact same first and last name as my brother.
I discovered that my great-great-grandfather didn’t actually die when we thought he did. Instead, he vanished and started a second family. They lived only about 20 kilometers away from us, and he ultimately passed away in some sort of accident. A peculiar thing about our family is that all the men share the same names.
—u/MsFoxxx
When I was a kid, my uncle had a friend named Dicky, an older man who was always very quiet and seemed kind-hearted. He passed away when I was in middle school, and at the time, I always thought of him as just a shy, gentle soul. Years later, when my uncle passed as well, my aunt mentioned one night that she believed Dicky might have killed someone in his younger days.
In the 1950s, there had been a shocking murder in our town of a high school girl who was a friend of my aunt. Her body was found on a country road, wrapped in a burlap sack, and the killer was never found. My aunt, however, claimed she was certain Dicky had committed the crime. Dicky lived along that same road where the girl’s body was discovered, his family were farmers who had access to the burlap sacks used to cover the body, and he was known to be a loner, a bit of a creep, and had a crush on the girl. A few days after the murder, Dicky and some other boys were questioned, but they were cleared because they claimed they were at a bonfire that nearly the entire class had attended. But my aunt swore she never saw him there. When I asked her why she never reported it, she said that my uncle had convinced her otherwise, which made me think he must have known Dicky was guilty and covered for him.
—u/scrotallywicked
My dad’s great-aunt married a man who was always somewhat of an enigma to the rest of the family. After his death, she came into a significant sum of money. Later, it was discovered that he had been part of the relief force during the Battle of Peking in 1900. It turns out he had done very well for himself during the looting.
—u/Flight_19_Navigator
While cleaning out my dad’s house after his passing, I stumbled upon a thick envelope in his safe, bearing the words, 'To be opened only by [me] after my death. My suggestion: BURN IT.' To make a long story short, we learned that dear old Dad had a whole other identity and family. Suddenly, my sister and I found ourselves with several new siblings.
Inside the envelope wasn’t a confession, but rather a haphazard collection of birth certificates, official-looking court papers (most of which appeared to be faked), and a mishmash of random documents. We had no idea what any of it meant or why it had been left to me in such a peculiar way. My sister eventually pieced together the mystery of the missing family from a distinctive last name on one of the birth certificates. This name appeared on her 23andMe profile, which made us wonder if this document was actually Dad’s. She searched for several people with that name on Facebook, and eventually, we found our long-lost uncle, now in his 80s. That moment was deeply emotional. When we spoke to him on the phone, he sounded just like my dad, and he looked 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.'
—u/Frozboz
My grandmother accidentally caused her younger sister’s death. The two were walking home from school when my grandmother pushed her sister, who fell under a car that ended up running her over.
—u/Thestolenone
21. "My friend was always so cheerful and outgoing, but tragically, he ended up being brutally beaten to death by a group of three or four men in the street. They were likely intoxicated. No one was ever held accountable. After his passing, his sister went through his belongings and discovered a USB drive filled with disturbing child abuse images."
—u/_violet_sparkles
22. "The well-respected community leader and trusted financial advisor to many people was exposed for squandering all of their savings. At his funeral, everyone spoke highly of him, but in the weeks that followed, they learned he had spent their entire life savings."
—u/candlesandfish
And to wrap things up with something that's a bit unsettling to discover about your grandparents, but overall rather humorous:
23. "This one's much lighter compared to the others in this thread, but I found out that my stepgrandparents were nudists and would only put on clothes when we came over to visit."
—u/ITS_A_GUNDAAAM
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
