“When I was leaving for Basic Training, my sister was dating an old friend of mine named George. After basic and tech school, I came back to find out that George had married my mom while I was away.”

I'm a Senior Staff Writer based in New York City, where I've been covering classic BuzzFeed-style content since 2020.

We used replies from these Reddit threads and the BuzzFeed Community.

NOTE: There are mentions of molestation, sexual assault, murder, and suicide. 

"Her stomach became roundish, but it never became nearly as big as any pregnancy. She kept smoking and had me buy her tampons once in a while. She gave me a legit doctor's name. And no, chemo doesn't ALWAYS destroy your hair. She was very pale already.

No one who saw her knew, not even my parents...And they know their pregnant people.

She is a pathological liar. Certain facts were twisted.

I found out only when she went into labor in the ER."

"On June 27th, the young blonde girl of the two 'Chicks with Sticks' showed up in her Jeep at our doorstep alone. She asked to talk to my mom and handed her an 18-year-old newspaper with a picture of a baby in a locket on the front page. It's the locket from my mom's dresser. She said, in a sort of sublime haze, 'I think you're my mother.'

Turns out my mom had a child when she was 17. This girl, now called Jenn, not Sarah, was given this piece of newspaper as an 18th birthday present by her Aunt. Her own mother had hired her as a landscaper a month prior.

Still can't believe this shit to this day. It's been 12 years, and she's probably the coolest sister in the universe. It's unbelievable how much she's like my mother and me. It really makes me question that nature/nurture thing."

"The piece of shit who made my sister's life hell for two years, who I had to call the police on numerous times...my mother was fucking him in his car at her place of work in the parking lot on her lunch breaks. 

Further twist: When all this came out, my dad kicked my sister out because she said she couldn't live in the same house as our mother. I paid to rent her an apartment because she had just finished college and had only been working for a week before this all came out. Obviously, my sister and I no longer consider these people 'parents' and do not associate with them."

"We kinda looked alike and were only a couple of months apart in age. Turns out my biological uncle slept with his best friend's wife, and my friend, whom I had considered my cousin for most of my life, was actually my biological first cousin. It was a total mind fuck for everyone, especially for her. She is the best thing that came out of my biological uncle's life."

"My girlfriend called her mom and asked her mom to call 'Aunt xyz' and ask where 'xyz' is. Her mom said okay, hung up, and called back a few minutes later to tell us that 'xyz' is in Los Angeles on a TV shoot (he works in the entertainment industry). At that point, my girlfriend spilled the beans and told her. So wild — we live in Charleston, SC, and he lives/lived in Chicago, and we ran into him cheating on his wife in a casino in Las Vegas. It turned out to be completely true; he had a whole separate life that he was living in California. They are now divorced."

"What is weird about it is that the daughter's father had decided he didn't want her, and let her go into foster care, so her mom was able to get her back. At no point did she actually kidnap her daughter. 

The cops didn't even run my dad's name, so he was never arrested. His wife was released the same day, when the police figured out she was telling the truth."

"I learned that my crush was arrested in his twenties for molesting his girlfriend's one-year-old baby and was still in jail for it. Really ruined the nice memories of first love!"

"Fast forward to winter break, my ex and I met in person to discuss what had happened and to see if a friendship could be salvaged between us. At the end of it, she asked me if I had met anyone new, and our conversation went something like this:

Ex: 'Oh really, so is my bf... what school did she go to?'

Ex: 'Wow! What a coincidence, so did my bf! What's her name?'

I had started dating her boyfriend's ex. We went to schools across the country from each other, and of all the people to meet, we wound up dating the partners of another ex-couple. After debating for a bit if I should tell the girl I was seeing about this news, I went for it. She was not amused, and it created a serious rift between us that led to our demise. Whatever, her loss. I'm awesome."

"Uncle Jeffery went nearly catatonic, thinking he had let this happen, and that it was his fault.

Uncle Alan and Aunt Joan were both in the hospital on life support, with severe head trauma and all kinds of scrapes and bruises. Our family was a wreck. Once again, the cops investigated. Neighbors didn't see anyone out of the ordinary. Nothing was out of place. 

Now here comes the twist. I'll never forget this night. The PS2 had just come out, and I'd gotten my hands on one. While I was playing Madden,  there was frantic knocking at my door. It was my cousin Andrew, Uncle Jeffrey's son, crying his eyes out. I remember it being weird because I never saw him show any emotion.

He told us the whole story. Uncle Jeffery told him point-blank that he did it. He assaulted both Uncle Alan and Aunt Joan. Turns out, when Andrew was a little kid, my Uncle Alan molested him a few times. Not only that, but Aunt Joan knew about it. 

Apparently, Andrew had just revealed it to Uncle Jeffery, and Jeffery snapped. He stormed over to Uncle Alan's house and confronted him. Uncle Alan broke down and admitted everything, including that Aunt Joan knew about it and 'didn't think it was a big deal.' So Uncle Jeffery lost his shit and beat Uncle Alan within an inch of his life. Now, keep in mind they're not blood related; Jeffrey's wife is Uncle Alan's sister. A few days later, Uncle Jeffery volunteered to take care of Aunt Joan and then confronted her, too. He said she was acting coldly about it at first, reiterating that it wasn't a big deal, but then got really scared when she realized what this was all about. Jeffery beat her, too. He was in such a cold state that it didn't faze him, and it allowed him to calmly explain everything to Andrew.

Andrew ran away from home and told us everything. My parents immediately called the cops. Jeffery was taken in and had no problem admitting everything. My aunt and uncle died a day apart in the hospital, so he got two life sentences for two counts of first-degree murder. Uncle Jeffery is now rotting away in prison. Uncle Alan and Aunt Joan are dead. Thankfully, Andrew is fine. He had a lot of therapy, but he just got married last year and has a kid on the way, and also just opened a bakery."

"He was absolutely devastated all over again. I went with him to the funeral a few days later for moral support, and he was just broken. He spent a couple of weeks just moping and being depressed. And here comes the plot twist.

He got a fucking call from Janni. He had a twin brother we never knew about, who was apparently a big troublemaker and had been sent off to boarding school. When he'd been home to visit last, they'd swapped places for some reason. Either simply for a laugh or for some other reason I never knew, but they did. His twin was the one that had been avoiding John and 'broke up' with him, and he had been drinking and doing drugs before he got into the accident that killed him. Janni had been off at boarding school so he wasn't able to make it back for the funeral, and when he did get home he had to work up his nerve for a few days to tell his parents what they had done, which led to them realizing that the child they thought was dead is actually alive and vice versa, which led to some fun family complications, not the least of which being obituary retractions, headstone replacement and lots of screaming, apparently.

Meanwhile, he and John had a whirlwind romance afterward in a giddy fit of reunited bliss, but it fizzled out after a month or so because John was furious after the reality sank in at what Janni had done without telling him and letting him be so miserable all that time, not to mention letting him think that he'd died.

I was the third-party observer in all this, but to this day, it's probably the most unbelievable thing that's ever happened in my life."

"Turns out my parents planted it for me to find. Specifically, I found the certificate stating that my Dad was my adoptive legal guardian. My mom was my real mum, which is why I had pictures of her with me at the hospital when I was born, which is also why I never suspected a thing. They had me via a sperm donor.

I always wondered why I didn't look at ALL like my Dad, but I looked like a carbon copy of my mom. Apparently, this was a huge relief to her as I grew up because the ENTIRE FAMILY knew except me, and the fear of having a huge, loud, Irish family letting something like that slip was pretty serious. I'm honestly shocked they managed.

They were never going to tell me, but they decided that for an accurate medical history, I should know that I don't have my Dad's predisposition to heart disease.

My Dad cried when he told me because he was so worried that I suddenly wouldn't love him anymore...as if my entire childhood was a lie or something. I laughed and told him that, of course, he was my Dad and always would be. It brought us closer."

"This ruined every friendship I had, except the one with my/her crush. He and I remained friends even after he moved away, and then closer friends when he moved back. Today, he and I are going on four years together. We bought a house and car, had a daughter, and are working on plans to build our next and probably permanent home. Ten years later, my cousin is still greener than a Granny Smith apple."

"My dad was a genius. He worked for Lockheed Martin on the Blackbird SR-71 fleet as the head engineer in the '90s. He mostly worked on making that fucker invisible. He then took all that brain and focused it on making a drug operation. A wing of a plane had fallen on him in 1999; he was on disability, but could see that it wouldn't pay for my college expenses. 

He was able to make a HIGHLY potent strain of marijuana. The cops had never seen such good bud. There was also a meth operation, but it didn't look like Breaking Bad. It was like a bunch of water heaters with fans taped to the top. I only knew it was meth because I found the crystal.

The cops only saw what my dad had in my Grandma's basement (when he died, he was moving all of his stuff to her empty house because his rental house was being appraised for refinancing). So we disposed of all the drugs in black trash bags. We dropped them in like 20 apartment complex dumpsters all over town.

Now that I understand more about marijuana (I was 15 and sheltered), I really wish we had kept it to sell because that grow-op wasn't free, and Discover Card and Chase wanted their money. There was probably 50 pounds of marijuana, thinking back.

I guess the guns were there because he could trade. Some of the bullets we found were an inch in diameter and seven inches long. There was also a closet with a few tuxedos and a bunch of printers and TVs. I wore one of those tuxedos to prom.

He had all this set up, and Dad died of natural causes at age 47. Massive fucking heart attack. Like 100 people I didn't know showed up to his funeral. He was a staunch atheist, so we just had a party to remember him, no service. It was actually one of the best parties I've ever been to. We had an open bar and food for days. Everyone was drunk as fuck and telling stories about what a cool guy he was."

"She had a whirlwind romance with some traveling jackass con artist who left her as soon as he could. My grandfather offered to marry Grandmother and raise my mom as his own. Mom never knew. I was stunned.

My grandmother was always really judgmental of other people and looked down on anyone else in this exact situation. She was sobbing at this point, and I snapped at her to stop because blood never really played all that heavily into what my sister and I considered family, and that she shouldn't consider it, either.

Anyway, that's how I found out one of my family's biggest secrets by accident."

"It's one of my favorite fun facts to share about myself, though, it's always great watching people's facial expressions when I tell them my parents are related. Oh, and they're still together, too."

"He was the drummer in our band for a music festival, and we were all partying after the gig. I just gave him some and told him to be careful, and laughed at him when he did a big line. Turns out it wasn't really funny, and the dude sold off all his shit and went a little silly for a while there. I won't do that again."

"He had left his wife for me...then left me for his wife. Before he kicked me out of our apartment, I suddenly remembered that 'friend' from when he was in the hospital. I guess he was pretending to be the friend. And he never went to the hospital. He would walk to a payphone to call me so his wife wouldn't find out or see it on his phone."

"I recently finished a treatment, and the doctor told me it went well! The original diagnosis was actually given by the pathologist (I think...) after taking a biopsy sample. They wrote in their report 'undifferentiated,' which was the cause for alarm. After having a specialist look at my samples before, during, and after surgery, he determined it to be an easier-to-deal-with cancer."

"TL;DR: My great-grandfathers were good friends who sailed to America together. Their kids married by sheer coincidence, and no one had any idea until they met at the wedding."

"I finished treatment in January 2011. The chemo destroyed my hips, but they were replaced. I'll be going to culinary school in September without pain! There is always something to look forward to."

"When I asked her what actually happened, she got quiet and then said that the lady we were renting the house from rented other houses as well. Her husband was a real estate guy and left them to her. When he died, she rented three houses out and kept the other two to sell, though she planned on selling them all eventually because she was getting older. 

After the house burned to the ground, my mom managed to get a job in another state, and we moved with the help of the Red Cross. The police officers from the fire case kept in touch to ask questions. One day, she got a phone call, and the police finally explained what happened to our rental house. Turns out the landlady's son was mad because she wasn't leaving the houses to him, so he was going to each house every other month to burn them down. The only reason he got caught was that he stole his mom's rental keys because he couldn't get through the windows of our house. So he went to jail for arson and attempted murder because one of the houses he burned down had people inside, and they barely got out. He liked to use the stove to start fires (he was an electrician), so it would seem like an accident."

"He took her original request as a personal insult and spent the rest of his life trying to make everyone miserable. His most douchy moment came when the millionaire tied up my grandmother's assets for a year before she died and had his siblings investigated for fraud. As the oldest grandchild, I was tasked with providing a joint eulogy from us cousins at her wake. We decided it was the proper time to let the 300 mourners, including two bishops and a cardinal, know exactly who my uncle was. At the end of my fawning account of her legacy, I informed the church that, on her deathbed, my uncle had agreed to personally finance the new church roof and a memorial chapel that would bear her name. FAFO!"

"Long story short, it turns out she made up the story about college because she was really moving away to start HIGH SCHOOL! She was 15 and didn't even have a license. She deceived my brother and both of our families because she lied to hers as well about my brother's age. Most fucked-up situation ever!"

"Shortly before we got married, we were at her aunt's house, and there were quite a few things from a famous Western painter around. I said, 'That's cool! My great-grandparents were friends with him!' Her aunt said, 'Oh wow, so were (now wife's) great grandparents!'

Me: 'Honey! We need to get a DNA test before we have kids! There are way too many times our families have crossed paths over the generations!'"

"So Wallace and I walked the two blocks over to the hospital, by now three full sheets to the wind and wondering what the hell was happening. When we reached the hospital, several police cars had pulled up with lights flashing, having just finished escorting an ambulance into the emergency room. Several officers noticed us and asked us who we were. As soon as I gave my name, one attempted to arrest me on the spot, while another got a very puzzled look on his face and disappeared. Only at the urging of Wallace, a friend of ours, and that friend's mother did the officer postpone my detainment. A few minutes later, the other officer returned. I learned that the ambulance, police, hospital, and really everybody involved had been operating with the understanding that I was dead or dying in the hospital, having broken into Wallace's house and attempted to kill his father when he prevented me from killing myself with his own set of kitchen knives. After knifing the other John (with whom I have always been very close), I allegedly mutilated myself in a bid to kill myself.

Turns out another guy who I'd gone to high school with, and who I had never thought looked much like me, had been drinking and doing drugs with his friends that evening when he decided to kill himself. After returning home and making every preparation to go to bed, including stripping down to his boxers, he grabbed his car keys and set off, planning to drive off a cliff. Somewhere near Wallace's house, he drunkenly rolled his car onto the lawn of another friend of mine (I would discover this at school the next week). Confused but undeterred, he sprinted away from the wreckage and decided to break into a house and secure a means of finishing the job.

When he came across Wallace's house, he noticed a sliding glass door opening onto the patio, and dove through the glass to get into the kitchen. Hearing the noise, Wallace's father came downstairs. Because I had stayed at Wallace's house so many times, and was in the habit of sleeping in my boxers, the elder John saw this guy's brown hair, dress, and general body shape, and asked what the hell 'I' was doing. Startled, my look-alike (let's call him David) whirled and stabbed without thinking, embedding the blade of a knife deep into the upper rib cage of John Sr., maybe four or five inches above his heart. 

John Sr. managed to restrain David for a period of time while his wife (Wallace's mother) phoned the police, but soon David escaped his grasp and started really doing damage to himself. The police and ambulance arrived to find both John Sr. and David both bloody and somewhere between unconscious and dead. With all the blood, David was still mistaken for me.

Both John Sr. and David survived the night, so there is some good in the world. Wallace's family didn't press charges under the condition that David get help, which he did. I hope he's doing much better now than he was before. I'd had classes with him, and he never seemed troubled, but they say that's how these things always go. Wallace's family and I joke about the story now, and it's brought us closer together."